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About the Author
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William Schnack is a free thinking mutualist and a truth-seeking pantheist who writes about topics such as cosmology, biology, history, and social philosophy with an emphasis on the emerging capacity for humans to engage with one another voluntarily, consensually, and reciprocally. He considers his views to be non-political and Far Center, taking insight from the Far Left, the Far Right, and everything in between. That is, after all, the very nature of a truth-seeking free thinker.
Schnack has authored five books and a board game, all of which have been released with a Creative Commons license, being mostly free cultural works. Aside from this, William has been a drummer in hardcore punk rock bands and a part-time homesteader, otherwise working regular wage jobs at a vegan restaurant, a Vietnamese sandwich shop, a consumer-owned health food co-op, and a producer-owned urban farming co-op. He eats a majority-vegan diet and lives a near-vegan lifestyle, having had been fully vegan for 10 years but having since taken up raising his own egg-laying fowl and dairy animals, eating lacto-ovo sourced from his own livestock raised on his own smallhold. He continues to boycott the commercial meat, egg, and dairy industry, believing veganism to be the appropriate choice where ecology does not demand otherwise, such as in urban environments.
What is Ambiarchy?
Ambiarchy describes the symbiotic mutualism between anarchists and non-anarchists, and their resulting institutions, which can be equally and simultaneously regarded as models of good government and of anarchy de jure. It is a panarchy synarchically-led by anarchists; paleomutualism for the postmodern condition.
Ambiarchy is established upon the metaphysical premise of Ambitheism
NOTICE
There are different kinds of information on this blog:
- factual information
- speculative information
- visionary information
The proper applications correlate as follows:
- for independent confirmation by the reader
- for independent and concerted consideration by the reader and their associates
- for independent and concerted amusement of the reader and their associates
The purpose of the content of this blog is for the following:
- spiritual
- research
- philosophical
- civic
This content has been created with the following motives:
- sharing observations
- artful musing
- hypotheticals
- conjecture
- model-making
- conviviality
- scholarship
- peer education
- morality
- social progression
This blog uses the concept of anarchy. Anarchy, as used in this blog, does not refer to a condition of disorder, chaos, or disunity. Instead, anarchy refers to a condition of order, structure, and unity without the presence of a ruler, someone or a group of someones who establish(es) rules that others must follow without those others’ prior consent having been given. This is a colloquially uncommon definition, though many of the other definitions used on the site are also different from their colloquial one, while still more are in fact colloquial. This provides an example of the care that the reader should take in the interpretation of the words used on this site: a great deal of it. All definitions are those of the author and are to be construed in a manner appropriate to the context of the information on the rest of the blog.
DISCLAIMER
The author is a lifelong learner, who is perpetually continuing his education socially by engaging in conversation with other lifelong learners. The author’s education is not and never will be considered finalized.
The author is a self-educated autodidact. The author’s education is not in any way formal, the author having no degrees or certificates (excepting a GED and a Permaculture Teacher Certificate). The author is a lay learner, lay philosopher, and lay researcher.
The informational content of this blog is cross-disciplinary in nature. The cross-disciplinary nature of this content naturally impedes the author as a specialist in the various fields from which the information is derived. This being the case, the informational content is abstract and general in nature, and much of it represents the half-baked ideas of the author, the details having not been worked out.
The information used in this blog is the best of the author’s knowledge at the time of writing, but the author reserves the right to change his opinion and may do so without making an immediate change or any edits at all to his previously stated opinion.
The author does not condone any unlawful, illegal, vicious, or hateful behavior. No information on this blog is to be construed otherwise.
Nothing on this blog should be construed for legal, accounting, financial, relational, or living advice.
Any information used or derived from this blog is used under the reader’s own discretion and at the reader’s own risk. The reader, if sharing information derived from this blog with others, assumes all liability associated with sharing the information. The author cannot be held liable for any damages caused from the use or misuse of the information herein.
Dualist Pantheism: An Introduction
Geo-Mutualist Panarchism: An Introduction
William Schnack on Primo Nutmeg
Reversing the Thermoeconomic Arrow of Time
Please Keep an Open Mind and be Polite
While here, I ask that you maintain the proper etiquette of a free and critically-thinking truth seeker. This can be achieved by following this sequence:
- Actively Listen – Read, watch, or listen with the intentions of being able to paraphrase what has been said. This helps to ensure that what has been said is well understood, enough that one may repeat it.
- Suspend Judgment – Before criticizing or dismissing, grasp what is being said in its own context, and what is meant by the speaker. Don’t look immediately for flaws, but focus on comprehending what is being said and what the intentions of the speaker are.
- Critically Think – Consider what has been said, and whether or not it is in line with those things understood to be more fundamental. If so, decide where the adjustment should be made to your beliefs, whether the thing is truly fundamental or not, and if the other thing is right or wrong because of it.
- Constructively Criticize – If you think there is something wrong, criticize with the intentions to be constructive, and offer an alternative to the position you are criticizing. Ask yourself if you are fairly applying your criticism, and if it would also be true if used against you.
- Nonviolently Communicate – Communicate in manners that are not aggressive or attacking, but which are open, polite, and considerate.
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Most Recent
- On Retrocausality and Idealism in Neutral Monism March 26, 2024
- If You Can’t Read Them Out, and Can’t Bleed Them Out, Breed Them Out! March 26, 2024
- Classical and Neo-Anarchism Compared and Considered with Regard to Synarchy March 26, 2024
- Mutualist Land Tenure, as Rooted in Anglo-Saxon Tradition March 25, 2024
- Elements of My Utopia March 10, 2024
Mutualism, Emergence, and the Right of Increase
Difficulty Mutualism can be understood to be distinct from both capitalism and communism, while maintaining elements of each. Mutualism’s most-celebrated founder, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was interested in the manner in which theses and antitheses synthesize, and in which antinomies may come to balance one another. Mutuality, or reciprocity, forever approximates this place of synthesis or balance. This places mutualism between capitalism and communism. One of the fundamental values of mutualist political economy is the idea that prices should be dictated by voluntary costs alone. This is known as the cost-principle, which states “cost the limit of price.” Cost is effort, manual or physical. Any price paid to get someone to work— wages— covers cost. Profit, rent, and interest are prices paid above cost, because they are not payments for work, but for having government privileges, such as exclusive licenses or externalized property protection costs. Landlords, bosses, and private lenders could (more…)
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Thoughts on History and the State
Difficulty The geo-mutualist panarchist interpretation of history is important for its theory of progress. Rather than, as many anarchists, holding a defeatist and determinist attitude toward history, geo-mutualist panarchists embrace the changes in history, and seek to understand them, in order to influence history further. Origins of the State Geo-mutualist panarchists understand prehistoric, historic, and contemporary hunter-gatherers and simple horticultural people to often constitute stateless peoples. These hunter-gatherers and early horticultural people were and are always on the move, and, as such, could not and cannot maintain large surpluses with which to govern a society. In order for authority to have established itself, it must have accumulated wealth, either through conquest or through geographic advantages. Most likely, Different grades of land allowed for environmental advantages to be held by different societies, which could then produce food more efficiently, produce larger populations, retain more knowledge, and produce more technology. There (more…)
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The Philosophy and Origins of Geo-Mutualist Panarchism
Difficulty THREE WISE MEN Geo-mutualist panarchism is a complex political and economic philosophy that combines the solutions of three radical libertarian social viewpoints: Georgism, Mutualism, and Panarchism. In order to fully grasp geo-mutualist panarchism, we must look to the originators of each of the philosophies from which it is primarily derived. In the case of the “geo-” prefix, I am speaking of American philosopher and economist, Henry George, from which Georgism, and the shortened geoism, derive their names. Mutualism was a view expressed in the philosophy of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, from France, whose anarchism impacted the early utopian socialist movement. Panarchism was espoused by the Belgian botanist and economist, Paul Emile de Puydt. Georgism focuses on land politics, mutualism primarily on money, and panarchism on social governance. Georgists believe that everyone should have an equal right to land. Mutualists believe that everyone should have an equal right to money. Panarchists (more…)
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Geo-Mutualist Panarchism: A Synopsis
Difficulty The vision I propose for society is called “geo-mutualist panarchism.” This view is a combination of the mutualism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the classical liberalism of Henry George, and the panarchism of Paul Emile de Puydt, supplemented with libertarian and classical liberal theories of law and jurisprudence, and socialist approaches toward worker self-management and social involvement in decision-making. What would such a society look like? In line with the panarchy of Paul Emile de Puydt, everyone would be able to live in the society of their choice, governmental or anarchistic, without moving location, with the only limit to their success being economic viability. Democrats can subscribe to a democratic system of social management, Republicans to theirs, and the same is true of more radical communists or nationalists, and even of my beloved anarchists. I support a treatise between these groups, with two balancing rules: the non-aggression principle and the (more…)
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Cost, Aggression, and Access to the Land
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) Introduction In this essay, I intend on demonstrating the complementarity between the cost-principle (as used by mutualists), rent-sharing (as displayed by the Georgists), and the principle of non-aggression (as used by the voluntaryists). I will also demonstrate why geo-mutualism is a better way to distribute land than by balancing its use either by individualizing or collectivizing it, as done in the extremes of capitalism and communism. I hope this essay to demonstrate the efficiency, both ethical and practical, of geo-mutualism, and its relatability to the non-aggression and cost-principles. The Cost-principle In “The Mutualist Cost-principle,” I outline the dynamic of mutualist economics, which follows the maxim, “cost-the-limit-of-price.” According to this view, any price above or below the cost of manufacture is discouraged, including all forms of taxes, interest, profit, and rent. Wages, salaries, (more…)
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On Mutualism & Interest on Capital
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) Much of the conflict between mutualism and other schools of economics seems to be based on terminology. Mutualists lack the terminology to properly separate returns from land, capital, and labor, while Georgists, and others, divide them classically into rent, interest, and wages. Georgists, and others, lack the language necessary to describe returns on these factors due purely to privilege, while mutualists describe these usurious returns as rent, interest, and profit. Naturally, this brings us to conflict. One reason the mutualists lack terminology to divide the fair and unfair returns on the three factors of production may be because of their belief that competitive markets (or, as I argue, bilateral monopolies) push prices to costs. Because they oppose patent-restrictions, land monopoly, and other privileges, they believe that, fairly quickly, in a free market, (more…)
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Interest & Premium: A Geo-Mutualist Synthesis
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) Introduction Two beautifully libertarian and populist philosophies, Georgism and mutualism, should not find themselves at such odds with one another, and, yet, they do. In this treatise I will analyze the conflict between these two schools of thought, Georgism and mutualism, and show that these two groups, at the root of their philosophies, actually share a lot more in common, than different, from one another, and would gain largely from cooperating and adapting one another’s ideas. I will also be contributing a new model of returns, which will allow us (Georgists and mutualists) to better communicate our meanings with one another as it relates to issues regarding the returns and fairness of distribution. I will conclude with discussion regarding the social effects of geo-mutualism and its expression as a panarchy. The (more…)
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The Proper Rate of Money
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) Introduction What is The Proper Rate of Money? Money has always carried with it a price of some sort. When one is loaned money, one is asked a price, called interest, for the loan. If one mortgages their things, there is a seigniorage fee which often must be paid. At times, governments will devalue currencies by way deflation, or increase their value by way of inflation. What is the proper rate of money, though? That is the question which is being asked. How much interest should really be charged? How much should the price of money stray from the value of its basis? How much inflation and deflation should occur? The Nature of Money In order to examine the proper rate of money, we must begin with its nature. Today, money is (more…)
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Mutual Credit: Its Function and Purpose
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) This was composed for a speech given to the People’s Arcane School on May 4, 2013 in Fort Worth, Texas. ____________________________________ The Necessity of Money Money is both the most important and most destructive means of human interaction. With the use of money we have constructed vast cities for people to thrive in, as well as the bombs with which our lives are made to seem so trivial. It’s impossible to have an advanced economy, teaming with its many wealths for enjoyment, without money. But money is such a crushing force in our lives, for when the landlord calls for their rent, the state for its taxes, money is what is actually being demanded. In the end, money is so useful people are willing to kill in order to get it. But (more…)
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The Mutualist Cost-Principle
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) This was composed for a speech given to the UNT Students for Liberty on October 4, 2012 in Denton, Texas. _______________________________________ Introduction The cost-principle, in various forms, is the main tenant of the original forms of anarchism in both the Americas and in Europe. The cost-principle states that everyone should live at their own cost, and not at the expense of others; that prices should not rise above, or fall below, the cost of production, but should remain in equilibrium at the cost of production. Josiah Warren, the father of the cost-principle, is an often unspoken name in libertarian circles, though his role in the development of the strain of thought known as individualist anarchism, and anarchism as a whole, is often seen by historians as a founding figure. Although Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, (more…)
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Welfare, Minus the State
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) Introduction Upon learning about anarchism for the first time, many questions pop into the head of the initiate; questions about law, money, and general civility. That is, questions about the welfare of society spring up. Who will build the roads? The hospitals? Who will deal with criminals? Will there be law to define criminal activity in the first place? In this essay, I hope to dispel the myth that government, a state, is necessary to induce cooperation and mutual aid. I will demonstrate the evolutionary origins of cooperation and examples of cooperative organizing throughout history, before turning the discussion toward the non-necessity of government intervention in our lives. Conflict Over Welfare Welfare carries differing meanings for various people, but upon hearing the word, it generally brings to mind its application in today’s (more…)
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Anarchy, de Facto and de Jure
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm. – Epicurus, Principle Doctrine XXXII ____________________________________ Anarchy Anarchy starts in the primitive context. What keeps anarchy anarchy is that there is a lack of a unilateral monopoly on force. That means no one individual believes they can impose costs on others without having costs imposed back. That is, no individual can be the sole aggressor. In primitive anarchy– let’s call the most extreme form the anarchy of tacit consent, or tort (where there are no contracts)– it is not anarchy simply because there is no violence, but (more…)
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Government and its “Solution”
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) As soon as we look for “solutions”— being the end of conflict—, rather than real solutions— being the end of the cause of conflict—, we get into the same problems that we have today. If people are engaged in conflict there is a reason, and this reason must be resolved. We need to acknowledge that conflict itself is a natural part of living, and, like the pain we feel when we burn ourselves, tells us that the cells (people) of the organism (society) that are acting out are not being looked after. As pain is to the individual, social distress is to the social unit. We can say we want the pain (social distress) to be over, but it does no good to put a bandage (government) on a finger (citizenry) that (more…)
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Information and the Dissolution of Authority
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) I was recently reading a study— published by The Royal Society B, on behalf of John R.G. Dyer, Anders Johansson, Dirk Helbing, Iain D. Couzin, and Jens Krause— regarding human consensus. These scientists took groups of volunteers and gave them rules: they were to stay with the group, not to communicate, and not to be any further apart than arm’s length from one another. There were letters on the floor and those conducting the study secretly told select individuals of the group, a small minority, to find their way to a specific location. The results showed that those who were given a location led the rest of the group to the stated location without breaking away from it and without any communication other than asserting themselves toward the goal. When individuals (more…)
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Credit, Collateral, and Spot-Pricing
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) If you are unfamiliar with mutual credit, please see my article, “Mutual Credit: Its Function and Purpose,” for an introduction. ____________________________________ Credit money is commonly misconstrued, and the misconception is oftentimes applied unfavorably toward mutualist systems of currency. When people generally think about credit, they think about a loan, generally without any backing other than debt, and often paid back with interest. Indeed, this is certainly a form of credit. This is fiat credit. When a mutualist speaks of mutual credit, however, this specific form of credit should not be applied exclusively to the definition. Instead, mutualism works with a much larger definition of credit-money. To understand what is meant by this, one must understand that money developed firstly from commodity exchanges. Those commodities which were commonly desired and had high exchange-values (more…)
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Two Incentives for Cooperation
Difficulty This Text Can Be Found in the Book, The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I) This was composed for a speech given to the People’s Arcane School on November 25, 2012 in Fort Worth, Texas. ____________________________________ Cooperation comes naturally to humanity. If left to nature, outside of our conscious and ethical influence, we would still be living in a world where the strongest and most violent of creatures prey on the weakest and most docile. In many ways we still are, but, while this is true, we experience a level of conscious consideration for others which is unheard of in the primate order, or historical chain of evolution, and which pushes us forward. As humans, we are under the impression that we are part of a world completely separated from the rest of nature. We call this world artificial. What is it that makes us feel (more…)
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