The New Revolution: Anarcho-Creatarianism

The New Revolution: Anarcho-Creatarianism

by Alex Merced

Many people call themselves many things yet come to the same conclusions, but many of us come to those conclusions for many reasons, for example...

Conservatives find themselves wanting to preserve traditional values of the United State which happen to be Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Libertarians value Liberty as an End in itself so policy that leads Liberty is the goal

an Individualist values the individual above all collectives

Anarchist find freedom from coercion and oppression as the utmost value while they may disagree how to manage resources once this is done (Anarcho-Capitalist versus Anarcho-Socialist)

Although while I agree with many of the views and conclusions of Anarchist, Libertarians, and Conservatives I can't say I really fit any of these philosophies in it's purest sense. At the end of the day my arch virtue, my chief principal is Creativity. So if I spent a moment and try to figure what you would call someone who's life doctrine focuses around Creativity and the term I came up with is...

Creatarian (Someone who holds the doctrine of Creation)

Although this word alone only explains the ends which is creativity/creation which also explains my disdain for it's antithesis, Destruction/Violence. Although what institution embodies violence more than government, which at the end of day is a monopoly on violence over a given people, so to emphasize this realization I figured I'd add the Anarcho pre-fix to emphasize this. Although I guess if you valued creativity and believed in government you'd be a Creatocrat (Rule/Strength by Creation).

Why have a Doctrine of Creation?

Well, I've always been someone who's loved creativity, loved music, art and anything that gives me new experiences. Creativity is Creation, and there is nothing greater than to create and bring something new into this world whether it be a song, an idea, or even a child. New is a beautiful thing, and if you live you life pursuing the creation of relationships, ideas, hope and anything else it can only lead to an enriching life. Vice Versa, living a life of destruction can only lead to life of misery as you live your life destroying relationships and hope around you.

So what are the views of an Anarcho-Creatarian?

 (I'm now writing the Anarcho-Creatarian Manifesto, it'll be released soon)

Liberty: If you are an An-Creat you do value Liberty but not as an ends but as a means because having and valuing Liberty not only allows you the autonomy to be creative but also the mental autonomy, if you think it terms of liberty not only are your actions free'd so is your mind to generate endless ideas on how to create in the world around you.

Life: To give life is creation, to take it is destruction. Also, While people due to their liberty have the autonomy to live a life of destruction they cannot destroy the creations of another (homesteading).

War: Violence, especially war are acts of destruction and the aim of an An-Creat is to reduce destruction in the world and induce creation without violating anyones Liberty (since Liberty is pivotal to a Creative Environment)

Economics: An-Creat desires a strong economy because it fosters incentives for creativity and provides for more leisure and resources for society to pursue creative endeavors. So An-Creat is a strong support of real free market economics (Austrian Economics) in pursuit to these ends.

When the Anarcho-Creatarian Manifesto is created further issues will be illustrated and discussed, and hopefully this will begin the development of Creatarian Philosophy and Ethics.

I have Created a Facebook Page Anarcho-Creatarian if you want to join this new movement as it develops please search and join the page.

How do you read the Economy?

How do you read the Economy?
by Alex Merced

 Many people always ask me, since I'm so critical about using any type of statistics to measure whether the economy is doing well or bad, how would I measure the performance of the economy? I wouldn't, while I believe some economic environments are better than others, I don't really buy into measuring the economies performance as a whole for many reasons including;

1. Regional Differences in culture and resources
2. Does the country really have it's own economy? Aren't the borders just arbitrary lines? So what makes such a drastic difference being on one side of the line other than the governments?
3. Aggregating data smooths out outliers in the data, unlike somebody's grades those outliers can be very important economic events that effect peoples quality of life, which statistics erase with vast amount of aggregated data.

Albeit, even using that macro data, many Austrians have still been able to see standard free market principles hold up, but it seems fruitless. There is so much value in joy versus despair in peoples lives that can't be measured by wages, GDP, unemployment numbers which aggregate too much information to mean anything despite their sometimes questionable methodology.

Although, one of the things you can infer from data is how well is the market doing it's job, creating innovations and getting them widespread adoption. Happiness, that's our job, a good or bad economy is still world where you can be happy if you try. Although, it doesn't hurt to have new gadgets and tools to make my day to day life easier and free up my time to pursue that happiness... and that's the roll of a free market.

So if I'm assessing the economic environment on any level I ask myself many questions;

What is the most recent big innovations? (example: smartphones and e-readers)

What is the adoption of that product?

If the adoption is high, is savings increasing to provide capital to develop the next innovation?

If savings isn't increasing, is there another innovation or good that I'm missing?

I ask these questions because it's that adoption of new technologies to me is a much better sign of growing standard of life than most wage, employment, and GDP statistics. I know people who are perfectly content to stay unemployed in their parents basements with their gadgets, and they're happy. Not everyone can be rich, nor should they, the only benefit to being rich is having a say in what gets produced, which ends quick if you choose wrong.

So letting the market sort out the best people to wield power over capital, and allowing real incentives for people to save when there is no innovation to adopt is important to keep this real growth in the standard of life important.

The Illusion of a "Standard" of Life

The Illusion of a "Standard" of Life
by Alex Merced

Government constantly uses the concept of a "standard" of life in justifying it's policies in the name of improving this standard. Can there really be a standard, this is only possible if you believe in objective values and that certain things all people will value the same cause of some sort of  intrinsic worth. The reality is every experience, good, service, etc. is subjectively valued so even if you standardized the resources available (which we know an unsustainable practice) you still have varying levels of quality of the life individuals from how they value their own lives. Individuals will all subjectively value those identical resources differently and subjectively value the experiences they get from them differently as well.

There is no way to standarized how people value goods and services, and there is not accurate way to measure these valuations much less aggregate them. The quality of someones life can be vary to low or high whether someone is rich, poor, or in whatever condition they are in it's realtive to their preferences and understanding of the world around them. With all this in mind, it's impossible to construct any policy that can truly create real value other than pushing arbritary numbers higher. On top of it, these numbers (statistics) don't quite capture the resources wasted now, or the resources that'll be lacking tomrrow cause of the artificial upward pressure put on these numbers by government. (such as GDP, College Enrollments, Construction Projects)

The only way for someone to improve the quality of their life isn't to push some imaginary floor of quality but to free a persons autonomy to pursue the things they value and prefer as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone elses ability to do the same in a direct manner (indirectly, every action can arguably affect everyone). So policy shouldn't be geared to improving a standard life that can't truly be measured but to pursue the liberty for individuals to try to find happiness.

I've seen poor and rich be misrable, and I've seen them both be joyous, and no government can replace the journey that is the one to fulfillment, self-discovery, and happiness.