Why Libertarians & Liberty Lovers Should Pursue Exit and Build Strategy (Derrick Broze - Texas Libertarian Party Convention)

Share some ideas while you guys enjoy your food. Hopefully it'll be interesting, thought provoking and yeah, let you enjoy your lunch. So first off, thanks to everybody in the Texas Libertarian Party who had a role in inviting me. I had a few people tell me they nominated me or pushed for me, and I appreciate that. So for those who know my work and, you know, are aware of who I am and help me get here, thank you for that. And for those who don't, well, you're about to learn about me. So I hope to, as I said, inform you a little bit and share some ideas. So, first of all, my name is Derek Brose. I'm 41 years old. I'm from Texas, born and raised in Houston until about six years ago I moved to Mexico. And I'm an independent journalist. I'm an author, documentary filmmaker. I run a website called the Conscious Resistance Network, which is sort of a place where I do podcasts and documentary films and interviews and explore everything from libertarianism and voluntarism to spirituality, search for meaning, things like that. And I write for a website called the Last American Vagabond where I work with Ryan Christian and Whitney Webb, who some of you may know. And just in general, been doing independent media for about 16 years now, starting in Houston as an activist. And as far as my Libertarian credentials, it was back in Houston in 2009 where I, when I was about a year out of getting out of prison, I went to prison earlier at 20 years old, got addicted to drugs, had first hand experience with the drug war, got out, started questioning the justice system, criminal justice system. And then in 2009, I read a book called Revolution, A Manifesto by a Man Named Ron Paul. And then about a year later in 2010, I heard Ron Paul speak at Texas Southern University and it was off to the races after that. That was the beginning of my independent journalism career. I traveled to Tampa to cover the Republican National Convention and watched the whole circus with the delegates and watched Ron Paul get screwed by the Republican Party. And it was pretty much at that point where I realized that politics was not going to save us. And so I've never been a member of the LP. I actually looked up, I spoke at the Texas LP convention 10 years ago, 2016. So that's kind of cool about some of the same ideas I'm going to share today, but maybe a little bit more in depth. And so since that time, though, my activism and my journalism as well has largely been influenced by people like Ron Paul. And you know, I've become in Many ways, though, I don't necessarily regularly participate or focus only on libertarian events. These days I hold an event in Mexico every year that is not promoted as a libertarian event or a voluntarist event or anything like that. But that's absolutely what it is and it allows us to reach a big tent and a broad group of people who know that they don't like government, but they don't really understand the principles behind it or thoughts behind it. And through that, we kind of introduce them to these ideas. So my path has taken me within and beyond the libertarian movement to try to build, I think, a bigger tent in some ways. Also in 2019, despite my, as I said, lack of interest and being involved in the political world, I did vote one time in my life. I was 18 years old and I was in a punk band and I hated the Iraq war and like many people at the time, was just getting out of high school and I hated George Bush. So I voted against apparently his cousin John Kerry. I don't know if you guys have ever looked into that weird thing, but after that it just didn't feel very much like politics was the answer. As I said, I went to prison really at a young age, at 20 years old, discovered the ins and outs of the criminal justice system, got out as a felon, and as I said, kind of continued on my way. But that largely did influence my anti government views, you could say. But despite all that, in 2019 and in 2023, I did run for mayor of Houston and I was endorsed by the Harris County Libertarian Party, which again, was really grateful just to kind of use that as a way to both say, hey, if you didn't know, there's a Libertarian Party in Houston in the Houston area. And apparently they like me, but I didn't run because I had any aspirations to actually win. I have been an activist on a local level in Houston and I tend to tell people that really if they're going to get involved in politics, they should focus their energy locally. And I do believe that. But maybe in a place as big as Houston, it's literally too corrupt and too far gone. And I got to witness that and report on it from within as a candidate firsthand. And also I did all the going to city council for years, fighting for this thing and this thing and being ignored, being laughed at. Our activist group did a bunch of fundraising for anti war veterans groups, anti drug war stuff, all kinds of different causes. And we made the local media, we made waves on the local level. So I've seen The power of it. I've also seen the way that it's just as stifling as anything on the national level. One quick aside. One time we had a community party. We threw this big fundraiser and hundreds of people showed up. We weren't prepared for it. We had a bunch of free bands and free alcohol. That usually helps. And we were just having a good time trying to tell people about our activism and our issues. And the Houston Police Department showed up, allegedly on a noise complaint. They came 10 cars deep. They ended up arresting me, saying that I had failure. I'd failed to obey a lawful order from an officer, which I never was told what it was. Pulled out a shotgun on a crowd of 100 unarmed people, pointed it at us. We caught it all on video. When I got out of jail the next day, I collected all the video from our activist group, edited it together real quick, sent out a press release to all the media that afternoon. Every news station Houston had interviewed me. Alex Jones interviewed me. All these different media attention came, and they came to my apartment. They were very friendly. And then the next morning in the evening, whenever the newspaper articles and the TV spots came out, they said a local group of conspirators, theorist, surrounds the Houston police and did things like that. Which really showed me early on is like, oh, this was one of the things that pushed me towards journalism, actually, because I was like, you know what? Maybe I can do a better job. These people clearly don't care about truth and facts. And started showing up to press conferences and getting kicked out and all that fun stuff. But point is, I did the political thing. And when I did decide to run for mayor in 2019, it largely was, at least at first, to spite the mayor, who had been fighting me at city council for years, and I'd been confronting him as a journalist when he wouldn't listen to it at city Council, I'd show up at public events and put a camera in his face and ask hard questions. And his security started to get real familiar with me. And, you know, I started out as a joke, like, you know what? Somebody needs to run for the nobodies. Maybe I'll go run for mayor. And then it turned into a real campaign, and I was speaking on all the local TV stations and radio stations. I was getting invited to high schools, to old folks homes, to black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, Republican groups, Democrat groups. One of the things I love about, you know, the local race in Houston is that there is. They're officially nonpartisan, right? It's clear which candidates work with The Democrats and Republicans. But I didn't have to pledge allegiance to anybody to be a part of this. I just said I'm just running, you know, no allegiance to any party. Which I appreciated. But my point is, by sort of playing that game, which in some ways it was a challenge for my principals, I realized that it opened up the door, opened up doors that Derrick Brose, the independent journalist slash local conspiracy theorist, didn't get access to. But Derrick Bros, candidate for mayor. Come right on, Come right in. We want to talk to you. We want to sit down with you. Which I thought is really silly, but I figured, well, I might as well take advantage of this. I'm capable of running intellectual circles around these local candidates and they don't have any principles or any philosophy behind them. Why not try to debate them directly? And so it was very successful in that way. I think we got a couple thousand votes in 2019. Overall, I felt like I achieved the goals that I wanted to do. Four years later, in 2023, Middle sort of late part of COVID I decided it felt like even more important to run again. And so I ran again with the support of the Harris County Libertarian Party. But I was this time stopped by that same mayor who was on his way out, who after I ran successfully in 2019, used my now 20 year old non violent drug felony to disqualify me from the race. And again, it brought more media attention to me, which allowed me to write an op ed in the Houston Chronicle and to go on local news stations and say, hey, you know, I did my time, right? Am I not forgiven by society? Shouldn't I be able to run? Ultimately, the mayor, the city attorney, they kept me off the ballot. In 2023, I sued the state of Texas. We lost because Texas doesn't like felonies. And so according to, as far as we got up, we didn't take it to the Texas Supreme Court. We, you know, I just, overall, the signs weren't pointing in my direction. Every court was just not interested in helping, no matter what arguments my lawyer made. And he made some effective arguments. So they kept me off the ballot in 2023. And what I chose to do at that time was to sort of shift my strategies from, well, if I'm not going to be on the ballot, one of the things that was on the ballot, which I had a role in playing, was what they were calling Proposition A. And for those who don't know, Houston actually has the strongest mayoral position in the United States. The only one that's second to it in terms of the way the structure is and how powerful it is, is Denver. And so Houston's got a strong mayor system, like a lot of cities, but it's particularly strong. And so the city council basically just figureheads. They have no real power. They can't put anything on the agenda, which means they can't control what gets voted on. And so that's, that's something I learned firsthand when we were trying to fight all sorts of initiatives like getting the fluoride out of Houston's water, or just different causes that we took up back in 2010s we would always run up to. We would get three or four or five or six or seven council members who agreed with us about this issue. And then they'd ultimately say, but we have no power to introduce it. Like, you know, if the mayor is not against it, nothing gets on that agenda. And the mayors have never lied to me. So I realized that this was a problem. So when I was running in 2019, I said that the first thing I would do if elected would be to change, change the city's city government system and basically give away the power of the mayor and sort of redistribute it to city council to make the city council members actually representatives of the parts of the city. It's a novel idea. They might actually be able to represent the people that vote for them. And that idea did actually catch on even though I didn't win. And by 2023, the second election, Proposition A came around where other groups, from Democrats and socialists to libertarians and Houston started to realize that this was a problem. And so Proposition A, that the mayor's power would be, it would be only like one third of city council members would be needed to get something on the agenda. Actually, no, what it was is that if at least three council members come together and say, hey, we care about X, Y and Z, our constituents care about this, it's automatically on the agenda that the mayor had no power to stop it. Which then meant, of course, it could be discussed, debated, resolutions could be introduced, maybe something could happen. And once I got kicked off the ballot, which was like August 2023, my team and I, we shifted gears and said, let's just focus on passing Proposition A. At least that's kind of something that we helped put out there, this idea that maybe we should shrink the government. And we won. We passed it like 80%. It was a great victory for a moment, but as I'll share in just a bit, it was short lived. So all that's to say, these are some of my experiences in the libertarian world and the political world. And I'm now going to share a little bit of libertarian history actually with you guys. For those who might not know, I'm a nerd about the libertarian movement, less so the party, but the broader movement and how this relates to the ideas that I want to share with you today. So in 2011, before the the RNC, I discovered Samuel Conkin and his strategy, his philosophy of agorism and counter economics. Is anybody familiar with Konkin or knew him at all? It's cool. He knew. Awesome. Yeah, I've met some people. So let me just tell you a little bit about him. He was part of the student movement of the 60s, which really was the eventual founding of the libertarian party in 1971. So of course people know about Murray Rothbard and there's Walter Bloch and there's all these kind of legendary intellectual names in the libertarian movement. They were all students or in their late 20s and early 30s. And there was the New Left, there was all these different student groups going on. The Libertarians were one of them. And Conkin was one of them as well. He came down from Canada, he was at the University of Wisconsin. He was at a lot of famous events like the 1969St. Louis Convention where the Libertarians walked out of the Young Americans for Freedom conference. And basically that is seen by a lot of people as the birth of the modern libertarian movement. So Conkin was around for all that stuff. And prior to the party, that's all you had. You had student groups, you had organizations like Leonard Reed's foundation for Economic Education, you had the Objectivists, you had Murray Rothbard and eventually what he would call anarcho capitalists, and 1968 Rothbard, Walter Bloch and some of these other activists, they actually start trying to form a bridge today since this point, unfortunately, most people understandably seem to think that libertarians should only try to align with the right, the Republican Party, because they agree with us on a lot of things. And the left has become more crazy than ever, right? So it seems like a common fit. And there was that going on in the 1960s. But there was also people who realized, you know, these right wingers, they love this war on communism. They all were for World War II. Like they're not, they're not non interventionists. Maybe we should try working with this burgeoning movement, the Students for a Democratic Society, the New Left, all the hippies and these kind of people, like, hey, they Seem to want government off the back. They like to smoke weed. They understand that they should have the freedom to do that. So Rothbard came up, there was like a two year period, I think it was 68 to just early 70. And he had a journal called the Journal of Left and Right that was all about doing this, trying to bridge like a gap between libertarians and left wing activists and as well to the right, but just sort of saying there should be a strategy to reach out to both. It's one of my favorite parts of libertarian history. There's a lot of really powerful ideas discussed around them. Then by 1972, 1994, Conkin actually was the first person to found Samuel Conkin, the first person to found a radical cop within the Libertarian Party. So he was very much skeptical of it, but he joined it and he kind of felt like his role was to be a critic, to push it, to be more radical. Like that was always his goal, how can I be here and just always hold that line for the more radical, voluntarist, libertarian, anarchist position. And he was involved in the New York party, California, and he would go to the conventions and everything. 1972, he wrote an essay called the Libertarian Party Pro and Congressman. And the interesting part about this, this was actually Samuel Conkin trading letters, debates with David Nolan, who, you guys know, probably, you know, was one of the founders of the Libertarian Party. So in the beginning, right as it was created, Konkin starts, you know, criticizing, but not just criticizing just for the sake of criticizing, but trying to, like push it to be, as I said, more radical. And so at the time, David Nolan wrote, you tend to favor a radical or even revolutionary approach, while we favor a more moderate, gradualist approach. That's how he was talking about those who said, you know what, coming out of the student movement now, we think the best thing to do is to create a party. And that might seem obvious because we're living in the time period where the party exists. But if you think about this before then, like a lot, for a lot of people, it felt like a selling out of what was this radical student movement that we're against the government and we're against the draft. They used to have this. I've got a bunch of the old pamphlets and stuff. And it was like, no war, no conscription, no tax is like a very radical, strong message. And so for some people, it felt like the Libertarian Party was kind of giving up on those principles. In 1994, Conkin put out a pamphlet called Listen LP. And he said this in Referencing his arguments, he says, we libertarians can win and a political party can win, but they are fighting opposing battles. A political party, by its nature seeks to control the machinery of the monopoly of legitimized coercion, the state. Libertarians seek to abolish the state. A political party cannot abolish the state. It is part of the electoral machinery. It is the state. And then 1976, he wrote another essay called Invaders from the State. The Libertarian Party calls for hope, or Trojan horse. So throughout the 70s, he's part of the party, he's a critic of the party. And then by the end of that decade, 1980, he wrote his most famous book, the New Libertarian Manifesto, which really outlines all of his ideas and ideas that I said I discovered in 2011 and have gone on to really inspire my activism and sort of the approach that I make now. My question is, was Conkin right? Because as I said, he had a lot of debates. David Nolan, Ed Crane, Rothbard himself. And for the most part, they sort of viewed him as an ally that was an intellectual fly on the wall and annoyance. You know, like they understood he had good faith arguments, at least that, you know, he was among them, but just felt they were wrong. And so they, you know, they didn't hate each other. Now, I think the important question is it's 2026. You can do the math on the number of years there. What has the party achieved? What year was the Texas LP founded? 72 right away. So Texas was one of the first, huh? Yeah, Texas still continues to be one of the biggest as well. Isn't that accurate? Somebody was telling me that this is one of the biggest conventions they went to. So what has the National LP or the Texas lp, and we could think of probably some examples maybe where a candidate, you know, won a race or maybe an initiative. Like I mentioned, Proposition A got passed or something. But no matter what we do, we're participating in those states, systems, their elections. This is what Conkin said. He said the state continues to grow. No matter how much money, time and energy we put into it, at best, we beat it back in small and important ways. So I mentioned Proposition A. We passed it, and it was a big moment. And it felt like, oh, my God. I think we just. We did have some victories, actually. I'll tell you one other victory that we did without government, which was really cool. And it was just people pressure. Houston became the only city to get rid of the tsa. And part of that, they're still in the airports. But in 2012, Sheila Jackson Lee and a bunch of other politicians, DHS officials came to Houston. They went on the Metro line downtown and they had this big press conference announcing bus safe, which was going to be an expansion of TSA from the airport to the bus line. So anybody who was riding the bus would be subject. They claim to search and seizure. And so that day they like, we caught a bunch of criminals. They caught like two prostitutes and some people with weed in their pockets. But they claimed it was like just try to stop terrorism and this and that. And they said you're going to have to produce id. So just by buying a bus ticket, the idea was you're giving up your right. And when you get on the bus or the Metro line or whatever, anybody can stop you. And so of course we were like, hell no, this is not going to happen. So we showed up to the. Because Metro is an independent corporation, right? Or they're like a city corporation, one of those kind of weird institutions. But we went to their board meeting, which is basically the only way to be heard. And our group was called the Houston Freethinkers. So we got a bunch of activists. The Harris County Criminal Lawyers association showed up. Everybody was giving speeches. We overwhelmed their meeting. It got on the local news and they were like, we totally were unprepared for this. We're gonna have another meeting in two weeks to discuss justice items. So then two weeks later, we brought even more people, even more media showed up. By the end of that meeting, we're there quoting Benjamin Franklin, doing the whole thing. And by the end of that meeting, they canceled the program. And that was in 2012. It's never come back. We did that. Yeah, it was definitely, definitely. I feel like one of my prouder moments in activism, especially as a young activist. Like I said, I was a couple years out of prison. I was in my mid to late 20s just getting activism. Two years into that, we shut this TSA program. I was like, holy shit, we can actually do something. Maybe this is, there's something to do this. But we didn't have to vote that program out, right? That was just putting pressure directly on a semi private company to respond. And they realized, okay, we're going to lose a lot of business. The, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers association said, please pass this because we are so excited to pat to file all these fourth Amendment lawsuits against you the moment this program goes into effect, you know, so they had these threats and they backed off. But with Proposition A, we didn't have that success. We passed it on the ballot overwhelmingly. Everybody Thought it was a no brainer. First thing that happens that the new mayor did going in from into 2023 was to say that in order to enact Proposition A there would now be a committee. They love the shit, stuff, stuff, shit in committees and it just goes there to die, right? So the resolution which the city voted on did not say anything about a committee. It said that if three city council members supportive topic, it automatically gets placed on the the following week's agenda. And that means I can show up. This is, this is why it really matters. I explained this earlier, but if you go to city council and you're speaking on a non city, like a non agenda item, you're at the back of the list, which means you're going to be there for five, six hours. It's at Tuesday, at 2 in the afternoon when everybody's got to work and go to school. So they put it at a really inconvenient time. And then if you're not on the agenda, which is very, very difficult to do, the only things on the agenda are things the mayor and whoever they are, their lobbying friends want to be on there. Then you just wait for hours. So I've been there waiting for five, six hours. People gotta leave. You know, it's very demoralizing. And by that point half them are on their phones, they're not even paying any attention, like the day is over, they're ready to go home, right? So being on the agenda is a big deal. And instead of them enforcing the resolution as it said, that if three members of city council support an agenda item, it's automatically placed on the agenda and it can be discussed. The mayor created a committee and said that if city council members do that, then it goes to a committee where then the proposition, a committee will review it and blah, blah. You know, you just created this whole bureaucracy around it. So in the end, despite our months and months of lobbying and campaigning after I got kicked off the ballot and all these people voting for it, more than 80% of the city, more people voted for that than they voted for the actual mayor. Which kind of tells you something. They in the end found a way to just, you know, stop us. And that has been my experience with the political system and as a journalist watching it, reporting on it, as well as trying to do little things like that from within, is that they will always, you know, government will always try to find a way to expand, to stifle freedom and liberty. And that's all they can do. Right? And I've numerous other friends who've dedicated their time to politics. And you guys probably have your own stories of a time you might have got something good done, only for the state to stand in the way and screw it up or slow it down. And so I just wonder if this is the best use of our time as the state continues to grow. And the other thing is, in my experience, as I'll speak more about in a moment, that often there are my libertarian friends, whether in the party or part of the broader libertarian movement. As you guys know, the LP is just a part of a big international movement of people who believe in various strands of thought that we call the liberty movement, freedom movement, etc. And there's differences in there, some who are new to it, but don't understand the deeper principles. And there's people who choose to do politics and people who choose to do activism in other ways. But in this movement of the lp, let's ask ourselves, are the actions we're taking actually leading to liberty? And not only that, are we doing more than just politicking libertarianism? Are we doing more than just being an armchair Internet commenter that shares memes and sort of understands these ideas philosophically, theoretically, but it's not actually living them? My work is always focused on practicing what I preach and leading by example, because I think that's the main way we can lead people to liberty. I don't think we can force people to liberty, even with the best intentions with the LP or with the political system. So one of the other things that Conklin spoke about, which I think is really important, is the importance of consistency. In one of his essays called Our Enemy the Party, he wrote this, and I just want to share couple of quotes from he said, and this was like, I think 1978, he said, can means inconsistent with an end ever achieve that end? Can violence obtain peace? Can slavery obtain freedom? Can plunder protect against theft? The status? Who pursues war, conscription and taxation? Answers yes. The libertarian responds, no. Then why will an abolitionist anarchist pursue political means to abolish the political process? I get everybody doesn't consider themselves anarchists or abolitionists, but the point stands. The end of the libertarian is a voluntary society where the market has replaced the government, where economics functions without politics. The purpose of politics is the maintenance, extension and controlling of the state power. The market lies not on the road to power, but on the road away from it. And then in 1980, in the New Libertarian Manifesto, which was, as I said, his sort of 10 years of being involved in the party and activism led to his writing this book and sort of fleshing out the ideas, and this is where he's also talking about consistency. I think this one's really powerful. The basic principle which leads a libertarian from statism to a free society is the same that the founders of libertarianism used to discover the theory itself. That principle is consistency. Thus, the consistent application of the theory of libertarianism to every action the individual libertarian takes creates the libertarian society. I want to read that part again. The consistent application of the theory of libertarianism to every action that the individual libertarian takes is what creates the libertarian society. Just a fancy way of saying what we do actually matters and whether we're actually taking libertarian steps and leading libertarian lives is going to determine whether we actually get to a libertarian society. It's not necessarily the LP or the debates you guys have been having or anywhere else, or what the governments do at all. Obviously, what they do, and the expansion of government from left and right does affect our lives and it is affecting us. But at the same time, the way that we lead towards that society. And I think we have to be the leaders. If you're here, you obviously care about your local community in some way, whether you're doing it politics or elsewhere, to be the leaders, to step up and say, let me be an example of this philosophy. Like, a lot of people will talk about the power of libertarianism and voluntarism and how we can replace government institutions or. Or services with voluntary services done by the private market, right? But then what do we actually do to show people that's possible? I mean, for me, sometimes people get voluntourism, the idea, the fight for a voluntary society, the vision of a world where all relationships are voluntary and free of coercion. Some people confuse that with volunteerism, which is like the philosophy of volunteering. But there's some relation between the two. Because for me, when I've gone out and said, you know what, if I think that the government can be replaced or certain institutions can be replaced by the private sector or through charity and other ideas that libertarian philosophers have talked about, then maybe I need to back that up with action and show people. So I'll go volunteer. I'll go put in time in my community in different ways to show like, hey, we can actually take care of ourselves. We don't have to wait for the government to do this, right? So my point is, in whatever ways you can think of, how can you actually embody libertarianism? Be an example of it to your neighbors, to your friends, to your church members, to your community. Whatever it is, your little sphere of influence, that to me, is what's going to help us bring more people into the fold. Because you may have noticed that in the mainstream world, especially in media, libertarians are promoted as people who love corporations and are selfish and these kind of things. There's like, there's a lot of misconceptions about what libertarianism is or what a libertarian is. And that's because this consistency issue, like if there's no consistent message as well as example of behavior of what it means to be a libertarian, then you can have anybody labeling themselves libertarian. How many times have you seen somebody in the news media or elsewhere calling themselves a libertarian or being described as a libertarian, and you're like, that person is the furthest thing from a libertarian. Peter Thiel. People who take state money and who take state subsidies, which to me goes against libertarian principles, they'll get promoted as libertarian this and that. And so there's just a. There's a marketing problem, of course, but the way we can counteract that is by showing people, no, this is what a libertarian is. This is how a libertarian acts and behaves because of these principles that I believe in, because of these ideas. So without consistently applying the principles, not just in theory or on the Internet, but in our daily actions, this does lead to the dilution of what it even means. And that's what I'm talking about. Because people just don't have good examples. They don't really understand that. So we can reclaim the libertarian philosophy, the movement, by actually practicing it in our daily lives, by voting with your actions. And yes, you can do both. You can vote with your actions and you can vote in the party if you choose to. But I want to tell you a little bit more. You guys still with me? Cool. I'm almost done. Thank you guys for being with me and hope you enjoyed your lunch. So what I focus on is Konkin's ideas of agorism and counter economics, which I'll outline here briefly, as well as what I've taken, sort of expanded on them and what I call exit and build. So as I mentioned, other than running for mayor two times, which was more of a kind of local Ron Paul move, trying to, like, get on the media, like I said, it opens up certain doors for me. And I figure, you know what, if I can, if I can do this and communicate these ideas well, why not walk through those doors and use them as much as I can? And it was a worthy effort. But beyond that, my main focus is on what I can actually do in my life to create and to promote libertarianism. And when I discovered Conkin's ideas in 2011, I read the new Libertarian Manifesto. In his other writings, he had a bunch of newsletters, but he didn't write many books in his life. And unfortunately he didn't take care of his health. And he died at a young age of 52, I think, in 2004. So he didn't get to see a lot of the ideas that he believed in kind of take off because in many ways he predicted things like Bitcoin and others. He predicted that technology. He was also kind of like a sci fi nerd, like a lot of libertarians. And he predicted that technology, computers were going to play a role in helping create parallel systems and creating libertarian values. And we see that with the cyberpunk movement and so many different movements that have been spawned by the Internet. But when I discovered his work and his idea of, he calls it agorism, based on the Greek word the agora or the agora for the marketplace. And that was like his vision. If he had a utopia, that was the Agora. It was this place in the future where we would all be living voluntary relationships in a libertarian society where people could trade goods, services, ideas, without third party intervention, interference. And so he asked, how do we get there? Again, he rejected politics based on his experience within the lp. So politics isn't going to be the way. He also rejected insurrection, the initiation of violence. He didn't think that was the answer either. Again, you can't force people to be free. He didn't believe that it was possible to have a mass conversion of libertarians overnight, that it was going to happen individual by individual, through education and through what he called counter economics. And so counter economics was kind of like his middle path, his third way. He didn't want the politics, he didn't want violence. So then the other option, most people would say, is just be apathetic, give up, you know, just sort of not even try. But he thought again, through our lifestyles, through our actions, and what he called counter economics, you could create a path towards the Agora by focusing on parallel systems. We call them counter economy, the underground economy. And it's actually a very interesting field of research all on its own that has been studied quite a bit since Konkin. It's sometimes known as System D or like I said, the informal economy. The underground economy, it's very popular in most places in the world. In fact, there's by most estimates the informal economy of the world. Is in the trillions of dollars and bigger than any one state's gdp. And so what is meant by informal economy is the people who deal in cash, the people who are not paying taxes on their transactions on their exchanges, that could be also the local garage sale, the yard sale, nobody's tracking that money. Like all these areas that Konkin thought were what he called the gray market and of course the black market as well. He also had a term for, you know, because people hear black market and they automatically think mafia mobsters. That must be like violent. But as a libertarian, he thought there was a distinction between quote, unquote illegal or untaxed activity and illegal immoral activity. So violence and things like that. He termed them the red market. But if you're just breaking the state's laws, but you're not harming anybody, then you're the black market. If you're doing a garage sale sale or some sort of cash exchange, that's gray market, right? So he started to look at these areas in India, Mexico and other parts of the world. This is back in the 70s, of course. And he could see that maybe there's power in those areas, maybe there's power in that untaxed market, that untaxed economy. And maybe if you were to help those people understand every time you're choosing to not pay taxes or to deal in cash or to kind of create your own gray market entrepreneurship businesses, you're actually sticking it to the man. And so his idea was like, if you could raise the consciousness of those people up to the point of understanding it as a sort of revolutionary act, then all of a sudden you activate this entire economy around the world of people who are bigger than the state. And then so his idea was that over time we would start to build institutions in the counter economy. Eventually, you know, you get the private insurance firms and protection agencies. He just had this whole bigger vision, whether you believe that or not. You know, he kind of saw it like in a four stage process that we would pass through over time, that more and more people, as the state continued to crumble under its own weight, under, you know, failed economics and empire building, which we're kind of witnessing, that more and more people would want to get away from that naturally, that there would just be this eventual sort of people like, hey, that counter economy that build, that new thing people are building is looking better than what we're dealing with. Maybe we should go over here. And he imagined that eventually there would be a mass exodus and of people that would sort of switch over to this new thing that was being built that he said could be the framework for a libertarian society. And it's interesting, his definition of revolution is when that mass exodus happens and those sort of failing bits of the state that are still left lash out and launch their last dying, gasping breath that surviving that attack would be a revolution. Like if we could actually show, like, look, the state is so weakened they can't even stop us as we exit and build our own things. So he had a nice big theory. Like I said, whether you buy the whole thing or not, what I took away from it is the importance of sort of being outside of the system or at least trying to move as much your money away from their systems. Because like I said, I heard about it in 2011. It was at an end of Fed rally in Houston. We're staring at the Federal Reserve and we've been there marching and protesting for weeks. We were participating in all kinds of actions. And I know you guys are going to be surprised by this, but the Fed never stopped. It didn't work. It didn't work. Every week we go there and they were still there. They were up there at the top of this fancy Fed building built by like the architect from Target or something, sipping on their wines and look at those silly protesters down there. And just started to realize it wasn't going to work. And it was in November 2011, at this end, the Fed rally, where I heard a friend talk about this idea of agorism and said, look, if you want to end the Fed, then we need to stop using the Fed. We need to focus on, you know, use our silver coins, our silver dollars. And Bitcoin was just emerging local currencies, whatever it is, to get out of that system. And that just sort of clicked for me that, yeah, I don't think that we can win or change things by using the same game that they have designed and playing within their rules. I think we have to look for more creative ideas. And so I took a lot of inspiration from this and then over the years kind of put it into practice in Houston, building local, what we call freedom cells or freedom hubs, just focusing on growing our own food, focusing on all this sort of philosophical and action oriented ideas because that's what I loved about it. Conkin didn't have to write a lot. His idea was go do it. You know, there's some philosophy behind it. But at the end of the day he was saying, go put it in action. You know, build it, build the next thing and then show people and Then inspire them and then they will join you. And then over generations it becomes something new. So, so I was inspired by that and I started to implement it in my life. Just it sort of naturally worked with the life I was leading. Especially because as a felon, society kind of already rejected me. You know, when I got out of prison as a 23, 24 year old young man, I couldn't really get rented anywhere in the city. As soon as people hear the word we like to say we have a bullseye on our back. And unfortunately, 20 years later, 21 years later, now it's still, thankfully I've been able to create my own, you know, path as an entrepreneur and as a journalist. So it doesn't faze me. Nobody really asked me for my, my criminal history to write articles for them. And I'm very public about my past and what I've been through. But if I was to go back to Houston and try to just apply it some, any old job, absolutely my 21 year old non violent drug felony would become an issue. And so I've had to sort of create my own life outside of their system already. So when I discovered these ideas, it made sense to me. And I took Conkin's ideas and I tried to make them a little bit more holistic where he mainly focused on just the economy. And obviously the economy is a big part of this. I started to think about, well, what other ways can we build parallel systems or vote with our actions? And this is where what I call exit and build comes in. And it's a really simple idea. I mean I talk more about it if anybody's curious. I've got my books out there, I've got a free online 45 day exit build challenge for anybody who wants to just look at the ideas and see how it might fit in your life. But the idea was, look, if we don't like the systems we're seeing that we're participating in, let's try to exit from them, opt out of them as much as possible and focus on building parallel alternative counter systems to them. Konkin talked about it specifically with the economy, but I think it applies when it comes to the food systems, the education systems. Obviously a lot of people care about homeschooling, like all those examples of just saying, you know what, I'm not going to participate in that. I'm going to homeschool my own kid or I'm going to unschool or get together with some parents and we're going to create a little school pod and we're going to co teach our kids or whatever you're saying. I don't want to participate in the system. It doesn't align with my values, my principles and instead of just complaining, I'm going to actually do something about it and I'm going to focus on either building or supporting those who are building new systems. That's the idea. And for me this is the way to really activate that consciousness in people, which I think that most people value and love liberty. It's just about whether or not they understand what that really means in action, of course. And sometimes people then still default to government, but overall I think most people do want and value liberty in their lives and the way to, I think help them see that is to try to activate that consciousness that Congan talked about. In these people who you guys might have noticed there's a bigger, bigger part of the population that is questioning the two party system probably than ever right now, like Epstein and all kinds, the people just don't trust the parties. Which to me does present an opportunity for the lp, you know, to sort of be a sensible, sane and I think radical alternative. But in general it opens up this window of like, look, people are questioning both sides. They don't trust in government is at an all time low. I mean you can look at any study, you can find any pull, trust in the media, trust in the government, and there's some dangers of that in many ways I think, but ultimately it's an opportunity. So if we can activate those people within the state of society who are already starting to question it and looking for answers, I think focus on building parallel systems and sure, bring them into the lp. Like I said, you can do both, you don't have to choose. I think some people think that what I'm proposing is saying this is the only answer. And I of course would never say that. And I know I'm talking to people who are very committed to a political party, but again I think you can do both. When you're not politicking, when it's not election season or even, especially during election season, you can vote with your actions in different ways and start to try to pull yourself out from institutions and systems that don't align with our libertarian values. And that's not easy, of course I will say like everything I'm just, I'm not proposing this is easy. I haven't used the banking system since 2008. It's very difficult and it comes with lots of challenges and figuring that out around that might not be possible for everybody. Or at least a challenge, depending on the situation you're in. I know we all have different circumstances, but my point is I've tried to lead by example and kind of push out to the extremes in the hopes of inspiring other people to figure out what works for them. And I think that is really what we need to focus on is how can we consistently apply our libertarian values and principles into our lives every day. And I think if you do that, you start to look holistically at all the different systems you're participating in, you might realize some of these don't line up with my values and I continue to use them every day. You know, maybe you don't like Jeffrey Epstein's actions and all the things there and the COVID up there. I know that's not explicitly a libertarian issue. It's just a do you care? Issue. Well, you could say, you know what, I read this article the other day that Chase bank helped Jeffrey Epstein launder all his money that was used to pound victims. And I've got three Chase accounts or whatever. And you could say, you know what, that's not a system. I want to participate anymore. I'm going to switch to the local small credit union. Not that they're perfect, but you know, as something, the idea is that you're doing this in phases. You're not going to go from 100% plugged into the system, not living your libertarian values, to being full on Mr. Mrs. Libertarian overnight. But if you start to take steps and make an exit plan, you can move closer and closer to your values. And I think that is what's really inspiring to people. I've seen this in my own life. The only reason I have any bit of following or people who pay attention to my work is because they know that the things I've written about, the things I talk about, I am doing, you know, and again, I'm not saying my path is for everybody, but the reason we moved to Mexico, I mentioned this earlier, is to get land. And I moved to Mexico March 2020, right when the COVID fund began. And we bought our land two years ago. We paid it off a year ago. We're about to build our first house. We've got a community of six families so far. We're aiming for eight to 10, just a small little freedom village. And my answer is not say everybody needs to move to Mexico or even buy land, although I think that's a wise idea. And I do think community is necessary, even if you're not living on the same land. But near each other in the same neighborhood. Community is going to be vital, as you guys, I'm sure, know, to survive and thrive. The point is, take the steps that you think are necessary in order to actually live your libertarian values in real time, in real life, and inspire the people around you. That's the only thing that I think is really going to bring them in, and that might be your goal, is to inspire them to come join the party or whatever. And that's fine. You do what you think works best. But also just know that by living as an example, you're actually going to be able to inspire more people.