We all know, or ought to know, the truth about the State’s origins. To a one, they are built on a foundation of violence, and they maintain their statehood through the systematic implementation of violence and oppression.

In Some economics of invasion and the State, constant‘s most interesting idea is that since overthrowing a State appears to be a public good, then according to conventional wisdom, it will be undersupplied. In short order, he proceeds to lay out a pretty elementary case for the common defense as public good.

This case, however, is always argued upon a single iteration of the game. Surely, upon learning that one’s neighbor had been violently deposed by an invading bandit, the remaining freemen should begin to see the true costs of their failure to voluntarily provide for a common defense. Historically speaking, this might’ve been difficult in practice, but I’m not convinced that this is any longer the case.

One very private good is the ability to hide one’s assets, or perhaps more importantly, the ability to hide one’s production from the State. If the wealth you create was never part of the white market in the first place, it becomes almost impossible to track or quantify. The State can only steal what it can see, what it knows to exist.

The concept behind the Agorist movement, is to take Constant’s second course: free yourself, as much as is humanly possible, from the State’s constraints. Work with others who share these goals and ideals, to assist them in freeing themselves. It certainly has a Galt-ian appeal to it: by working together and outside the system with people you trust, to better yourselves, the oppressive state should collapse under its own weight.