@head1 Page ## John Zube, 7 Oxley St., Berrima, NSW 2577, Australia 18 October 89 LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING, PEACE PLANS, ON PANARCHY, POOR1810.89 RESEARCH CENTRE FOR MONETARY AND FINANCIAL FREEDOM, MONETARY FREEDOM NEWSLETTER AND MICROFICHE. Peggy Poor, ED., THE UPRIGHT OSTRICH, Box 11 691, Milwaukee, WI 53 211 Dear Peggy, Many thanks for keeping me on your mailing list and for reproducing a few times a classifieds hint towards my LMP efforts. I did get a few enquiries in response and, hopefully, one or the other of them will take up the microfiche self-publishing option. In response, I reproduced 10 sample pages of U.O., June-Nov. 88, in PP 817, the advertisement form you sent me at least in PP 817-118, 821-823, 827-829, 833, 835, 838, 846, 848-852, 864, 866 and probably in most others of Peace Plans 869-902, without always listing the reproduction in my contents page. I have also filmed issues Oct. 88 to Jan. 89, 56pp, in PP 817, Feb. 89 to April 89, 64pp, in PP 849 and only today, May 89 to Oct. 89, 120 pp, in Peace Plans No. 903. Sine the microfiche option is still largely unknown and thus unused, you should not expect many responses as a result, at least not in the short run. I missed the adv. for LMP in the October 89 issue but thanks for the run you gave it. I understand your space limitations. But as a positive proposal for an underutilized freedom of expression and information opportunity might mention this option again, at some length, when you have studied it yourself and are impressed by it or if you get someone to check it out for you. For my reproduction of TUP in PP 903, I had to photocopy the last 120 pages, sometimes repeatedly, in order to eliminate some of the background shading and colours which do lessen legibility. Especially deep red has drawbacks for photocopying and filming, since in many cases it copies and films as black. Anyone wanting to preserve his or her writings should abstain from such colourful efforts. Some of the previous reproductions, directly from the originals, did not turn out well for some pages because of that background problem. I can imagine your main reason for choosing cheap newsprint for the production of TUP. However, that paper condemns it to an early death. For archival purposes and to be able to make good photocopies later, without damaging fragile and oxydized originals, a number of excellent copies should perhaps be made now, on good paper, to serve as originals for future copying. Otherwise, airtight and lightproof seeling in plastic might help. Please consider getting all your back issues onto microfiche, either through your own account, through a micrographic service bureau, through one of the established microfiche publishing houses or, only as a last resort ( I have too much work on hand ), through me. In that format you could also affort to publish a comprehensive index. I enclose a few more pamphlets on this subject. And if you mentioned afterwards, in every issue, that TUO is now one of the tenthoudands of magazines that are permanently accessible on microfiche, you would also greatllly help the popularization of this medium - and thereby the advocacy of any truth. Microfiche masters can serve to make up to 50,000 duplicates and masters and duplicates are expected to last 100 to 300 years with some care. From reader-printer machines paper copies can be made of them, too, at photocopy prices. A few days ago I saw a used reader printer advertised for as little as $ 150. $ 300 to 600 were the lowest such offers I heard of before. For myself such a machine is not very useful at this stage, since I have mostly only my own microfiche and have kept the paper masters of them. I can only hope that if and when I reach your age, I will be still as active as you are now. Much remains to be done to give everone a chance for a much longer lifespan and I would gladly reproduce all references on this made available to me for microfilming. With all such references becoming easily and cheaply accessible, research of this kind would be promoted, too. Since the name POOR is not a common one, there is for instance not a single person listed under that name in the Sydney telephone book, I wonder whether you are by any chance a descendant of Henry V. POOR, whose works MONEY AND ITS LAWS, 1877, 663pp and THE MONEY QUESTION, 1898, 457 pp, I liked enough to reproduce in PEACE PLANS Nos. 540/541 & 558. Both books are sound on quite a few points and thus have still to teach something today to some of the monetary freedom advocates. So much so, that initially I mistook them to be monetary freedom books. You offer and mention many alternative publications, most in relatively small print runs. Most of the publishers are, I believe, not yet aware of the microfiche option for themselves, a) for archival purposes, b) for cheap reproductions in small circles of like-minded people, c) to continue and even expand productions which otherwise would become too expensive. The few words of an advertisement cannot, as a rule, convey enough of a radical and affordable alternative to conventional publishing and reading. Advertisemens are most effective when they merely point out something that people already do know and now happen to want. That is rarely the case for innovations or innovative uses of older techniques, especially when they go counter to long estabished habits and attitudes. For instance, few believe themselves "rich enough" for independent self-publishing or they imagine that it would require huge sacrifices. Unfortunately, micrographics does not offer the potential user any of the numemous games that draws beginners into personal computer use. And computerized information banks and computer magazines have so far failed to inform their users and readers that micrographics is the cheapest print-out option for them for large number of pages that are wanted in a few dozen to a few hundred duplicates. When it comes to largely automatically produced pocketbooks of 20,000 and over impressions, then per copy production costs come reasonably close to those of microfiche duplicates. Only storage and mailing costs remain higher and, naturally, the initial outlays per title and the risks in this kind of speculative investment. If I had a high enough income for this and if advertisements for my LMP offer were already paying propositions, I would, naturally, advertise it extensively. As it is, I can only rely on people being interested enough in freedom of expression and information opportunities to mention this one, too, at least now and then. However, for most "media institutes" and "media studies", mass media as well as alterative media, this medium does not appear to exist as yet, although it is much older and has been much more productive than the electronic media for the have been - for the written word. Prisoners in the U.S. : While we agree regarding the preparation for concentration camps in the U.S., and on "criminals" without victims and the morality of tax refusals and other resistance against bureaucracy, what should be done about genuine criminals with victims and the indemnification of their victims at the expense of these offenders? I hold that there would be room for competing and diverse private enterprise and profit-making gaols, not tax funded, based on different constitutional, legal, juridical and penal systems - in the same country, but subscribed to by different volunteer groups. Current private gaols are only first steps in such a direction, still burden the tax payer and do not indemnify the crime victims or refund the tax payers. However, even the worst U.S. prisons are in some respects so humane still that most of the inhabitants of the real Gulags would gladly swap with them whilst most of the U.S. prisoners, if transferred to USSR or Cuban or some other Gulags, would desperately want to go back to their former prisons, after a few days in prisons or prison camps of "peoples' republics" Throughout you attack usury without making necessary distinctions. Jeremy Bentham had already written a comprehensive defence of usury 200 years ago. I recently included a French and an English edition of it in my series. The question of interest, profit and rent is far from settled. What is now called "usury", under a system of monetary despotism and credit monopolies, all tied by and to an exclusive and forced currency, would become something very different under monetary and financial freedom. If we had to pay interet and repay capital using rare flowers as means of payment, as Tolstoi is supposed to have suggested somewhere, we would be still worse off. Such impositions of exclusive means of payment can, indeed, lead to slavery and have done so several times, historically. However, they should never be taken as arguments against money, capital and interest. A debtor who can clear his debts, electronically, by clearing certificates or book entries, against his readiness to supply his own goods, produce and services, is relatively free. When, instead, he is legally or juridically bound to supply scarce metal coins or legal tender, he is often in trouble and against these exclusive and forced currencies his goods and services are often hard to sell. Then debts and interest payments on them do become a real burden instead of just bearable costs in his process of production. Then he becomes often unable to pay and thinks that debt and interest are the real cause of his trouble, rather than the exclusive means of payment in which they are collected. Dogs have a notion of property but none of exchange. Most people have a notion of exchange, but only few and confused and mostly wrong notions on exchange media, value standards and their self regulation by free contracts. It is one of the most important questions of our times whether enough people are sufficiently teachable or willing to learn the minimum requirements of monetary freedom. I see in monetary freedom, individual secessionism, individual rights declarations, ideal volunteer militias for their protection and in microfiche for the collection, retrieval and communication of information, some Archimedean Leverage options for us. Alas, few of the alternative media have so far discussed them. Sometimes a kind of populist protectionism against imported foreign goods and foreign immigrants show up in your pages. It has been intellectually refuted numerous times but these refutations are, unfortunatly, not readily accessible to most people. As part of an EXCHANGE process, no import is economically harmful. Nor is an import of multi-purpose and self-repairing robots, like immigrants. However, to defuse prejudices against them, freetraders and free immigrants and free investors as well as their sympathizers and sponsors should try for exterritorial autonomy for them, as well as for all other minorities, to run their own affairs, at their own profit and loss accounts or budgets, without becoming welfare state burdens to anyone else. Under such experimental freedom, their associations would soon come to represent relatively wealthy but non-geographical "countries" with whom trade relationships and political alliances or defence treaties would be very much welcomed - and their successes would be more and more copied. Failurs would be self-eliminating, like most of the geographical or smaller private and cooperative intentional communities and utopian colonies were. My subseries ON PANARCHY does develop this theme of full exterritorial minority autonomy for volunteers, including its military defence aspect. Volume No. XVI has just been readied for filming, in Peace Plans No. 901. Why am I telling you this? Some people get more radical with their advancing years, like e.g. Lysander Spooner did. Perhaps you are one of these. There is inherently no such thing as "unfair" competition but, only "free" and "restricted" or "suppressed" competition. Competition itself should not be blamed when the subject is really its restriction or suppression. Then the less restricted should not be envied but should rather be wood as a potential and already somewhat experienced partner in the struggle against all restrictions upon competition - exept those voluntarily practised in exterritorial and personal law communities, at the expense and risk of their members. Several of your articles speak about the "swindle" of the Federal Reserve. Its legalization is thus ignored. What is involved is largely a legal coercion and legal monopoly, both based upon rather popular prejudices. My friend Ulrich von Beckerath used to say that the bankers and especially the central bankers, are merely the high priests of the popular religious beliefs on money. Most of them do act largelt honestly. out of ignorance and popular prejudices and consider free banking uptions as licences for swindling. However, they are not beyond swingliing a bit about or being rather selective in arriving at the official Consumer Privce Index. Neither the gold- nor the silver- nor the paper money bugs or any of the numerous forms of money cranks and money scientists, are usually aware that only full monetary freedom could gain for each of them what they want most for themselves - while leaving others to their own monetary payment, standard, credit and clearing devices, methods and systems. Seeing the numerous errors, prejudices and wrong premises still upheld by almost all monetary reformers, from the lowest to the highest, if would be much too dangerous if others than they themselves were to suffer under the uniform application of theories to all people living in a territory, one theory at a time. The varied and complex money, currency and credit systems should be subject to the same kind of competition that e.g. computer systems, newspapers, sects, sports clubs and languages are subjected to. Any standardization should arise naturally and freely in the market and should not go beyond the choices of sovereign consumers and producers. On page 11 of TUO Vic Humeniuk reckons that up to $ 150 billion is LOST because of underground economic activities. He should have been corrected, that as much of earnings was RETAINED and spent or invested by the owners. Rights of the still Unborn, TUO, July 89, page 19 : What they have to do with Admirality Courts and Maritime Law is not explained. Does the author presume that just because the unborn swim like submarines in a liquid....? Defence costs, July 89, page 20 : The highest unwarranted price increases do probably come from "cost-plus" contracts under which many to most of the American industries have been reduced in their competitiveness. They rather "compete" to include still higher costs in their contracts - at the expense of the taxpayer, whose tax burden then makes industry still more uncompetitive. Do you do your typesetting yourself? If so, I cannot blame you, since I tend to make up to 20 mistakes per page and even double proofreading does not eliminate all. However, if a "professional" is involved : In your MICROFICHE PUBLISHING adv. for me there were 3 typos : MicrofEche, freeEom and leaAflets. Luckily, the address was correct and so I got ca. 8 information requests so far. With more of an effort in this direction each libertarian journal could probably lead to one or two new libertarian microfiche publishers and they, between them, could do most of the job that still needs to be done. If people really were really self-interested and rational animals, with a long term view, and if these characteristics would dominate all their actions, would they go on ignoring this option? Alas, all too often and too much we are just creatures of HABITS and HABITUAL WAYS OF THINKING. Your reproduction of the "FUEL FOR FREE" advertisement requires some comments: The production of hydrogen is not free. It requires at least some electricity input. Thus electricity running costs per mile or kilometer of car driving should have been mentioned and compared with petrol costs for the same model car. The conversion costs should be stated and whether hydrogen is stored under low pressure, high pressure or in metal sponges, that can soak up to several thousand time their volume of Hydrogen and release it upon slight heating. Is the oxygen from electrolysis simply discharged? If so, a smoker opening a book in which it has accumulated, might get the surprise of his life : a cigarette or cigar exploding in his mouth! If no qualifications and explanations are offered, then you support to that extent a fraudulent claim. The steam engines, too, did use water. But they also required wood, coal or oil to get them running. Until we can tap the energy in other or alternative universes, the law of conservation of energy in THIS one remains unshaken. TANSTAAFL. Seeing your objections to the despotism and abuses of the IRS, I would have expected at least some discussion of voluntary taxation alternatives, for which at least a dozen different schemes exist by now. One should not tie one's thought too much to the model of one's original State constitution, no matter how superior it may be in its wording to those of other States. At least volunteers and for their own affairs, should consider alternative financing methods, as well as steps in this direction. PIOT, John Zube. Enclosures : PP 647, 868, 4pp of 1980 leaflets, Nettlau : Pan, Why Go Fiching? Never So Few, News release 1986, Dear Enquirer, Social Control, A Libertarian Information Paradise, supplementary list of free banking titles since PP 766 to 867, Cols. & Rows, cover PP 817, 903, Kindermann FR 5 portable. I may also enclose the draft of a paper on the "conspiracy" against fiching, since you seem to have a strong interest in conspiracy theories and practices.