Libertarianism is guilty of a single flaw: it promotes idealism ahead of practicality. Ideas that can’t come into fruition aren’t ideal, and practical living, without ideals, is a means to no end, and thus not practical. We need both idealism and practicality; given that the liberty movement stresses ideals a friend decided to challenge me to write a piece on living free in our society.
The scientists tell me to begin with a fact, and so I shall begin with a practical fact. Suppose you have invested in a telco – Rogers, Telus, or Bell. Now suppose your slice of the earnings is the equivalent of the monthly cost of your cell phone bill. In this case, you aren’t really paying a bill, you’re paying yourself when you get the monthly bill.
This is what it means to live free. It’s when you own the world around you. Freedom isn’t bestowed upon us and it never will be. It must be fought for. It must be laboriously pursued. To emancipate ourselves from the dark forces that seek to control our lives and steal our labour requires struggle.
Cell phone companies are permitted to write their own regulations in Canada, driving out competitors and increasing price plans. We can lament the removal of our freedom or we can own shares in the telcos.
This has always been a question looming in the mind of anyone financially savvy listening to a disgruntled customer goes on about the profits of Rogers. If someone complains about rich corporations this implies they believe them to be a wise investment.
The government will engage in the most vicious theft, victimizing our seniors and enriching our bankers through inflation. They artificially inflate the supply of money, decreasing it’s value, only for banks to lend out the additional money and collect it back with interest. It’s necessary that our bank accounts not be victimized by this diluting process. Bank profits must be our profits as well, we, as freedom-loving individuals ought to own shares in banks. We can be the disgruntled customer or we can emancipate ourselves from this theft by ensuring the profits come back to our bank accounts.
There are certainly other ways of living free in addition to owning stocks of companies that partner with the government. Using currencies such as Bitgold and Bitcoin avoids governmental oversight on our purchasing power. Buying a housing carries with it costly mortgage payments but the payments are mitigated with a rental property attached, that pays the mortgage. Growing your own food reduces the impact of cartels. Refinancing your house to be outfitted with solar paneling, depending on the geography of your house, can be a great way to live off of the grid and avoid energy regulations (and a power bill).
I promised myself I wouldn’t use tiresome adages, but freedom isn’t free. We don’t have to fight wars to obtain, just work hard and save our money. No more than 40% of our paycheck should go to paying debt, no more than 25% should go to housing costs, 10% ought to be spent toward charity, and 10% ought to go to owning the world around us – investment. These ratios can lead us to a life of much greater freedom. This isn’t free. All property is merely the result of our labour. But our day and age entails we can earn freedom in the workplace, saving our paycheck, rather than a battlefield.
Brandon Kirby
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