And speaking of this contract we never signed, also known as a constitution, did the signers of the US Constitution really have the power to contract for people other than themselves in any matter? Legally a contract can only bind those that sign it, so how does the US Constitution (or any other nation-state's constitution) apply to anyone besides those who sign it? Could you write a valid contract that said everyone in your neighborhood has to give you a hundred dollars a week for some service they never asked for and never signed in agreement to? Of course not. And furthermore, could you make that contract binding on all their children, and their children's children, going on forever? That would be laughed at wouldn't it? Yet that's the same thing as a constitution, it's false authority manifest. We are told that the constitution protects our freedoms, but it violates our most fundamental freedom, to live as sovereign natural humans in harmony with the Earth (self-sufficiently & sustainably), by forcing us to pay taxes and submit to an unjust and undemocratic social-hierarchy.
Some may say: "If you don't like this country than why don't you just leave?" But this is a very short-sighted perspective since there is nowhere where human farms are not, they border one another across the globe, so there is nowhere to go; it is not a matter of leaving, it is a matter of staying wherever you and your family are and wish to be, and claiming your fair share of the currently unjustly used land as your human right to live sustainably on. Some might object to that as well saying: "What about the people that bought large amounts of land and worked hard to earn the money to do so, how is that fair to them?" A quote from Alexander Berkman's book "What is Anarchism?" is a good beginning to a response:
"The first requirement of justice is equal liberty and opportunity. Under government and exploitation there can be neither equal liberty nor equal opportunity -- hence all the evils and troubles of present-day society."
We do not have equal liberty and opportunity when we don't have equal access to the Earth's resources, which should belong to everyone as a birthright for being human, irrespective of whatever country they are supposedly born into. The exploitation begins there, and then capitalism compounds the injustice (usury, unfair and highly disparate wage differences, inheritance originating in conquest, etc.). So someone who has gained large amounts of land through these means have not gained them fairly, and once they have more than their fair-share of land it becomes the theft of the birthright of others; therefore even if you had to work hard to attain those riches, it does not justify the continuation of that theft, denying others their birthright. All the land that is uncultivated and just kept as an investment by the rich, while millions have no place to live and are hungry, cannot be justified.
And even those that "earned" their land can be victimied by the system; if they ever stopped paying taxes the land would be seized from them as well. Moreover the government officials can at any time still claim the land for themselves as "eminent domain." For the majority of people on Earth, saving enough money to buy land, pay all the taxes, fees, etc. and not having to do additional work besides their natural work, is not a viable option. How many are only able to just meet their expenses, while having bank debt on top of that? Most people that's who! Unless you are ultra-rich, you will still need to earn money to pay for mortgages, property taxes, etc. and so therefore have not achieved freedom from the monetary system of control and exploitation. And if one is rich enough to pay for all those bills without having to work outside of homesteading, they are in a very small exclusive social class that is not at all likely, or possible, for the majority. You may continue: "Yeah people may need to earn some money on the side, maybe a small business, but whats wrong with that? They are earning their keep." But this is where the corruption of the natural life begins (along with beginning of our discontent), having to sacrifice time that could be much better used towards things like creativity, spirituality and sharing pleasure; instead that time has to go towards earning money to appease other peoples conditions for living on the Earth.
"2500 years is long enough for us to have learned that escape from community, and from the earth, is not a solution, but a root cause of our troubles."
-- John Zerzan, from his book "Twilight of the Machines"
The fundamental issue that needs to be recognized is that there is no valid justification for why land & water should not be a human right, there is no principled reason for why we must pay some people called "officials" for their "services" and be automatically subjugated to "citizenship"; all the usual justifications, "It's for the greater good", etc. are just dogmatic opinion, (opposed by history and current reality) that has no logic or principle to take precedence over the perspective that one should be free and sovereign and not be forced to obey life-restrictions via a social contract that they never signed.
Can you imagine living on a homestead with nearby friends and family on their own homesteads, sharing and enjoying the abundance to be had by growing food, living simple happy lives, out of the grasp of the consumerist corporate world? It would be nice wouldn't it? We might even call it a return to Eden, the establishing of true little kingdoms of heaven. Yet your imagination might soon drift to what might disturb that peace and satisfaction, and what, if anything, might do that? Government officials would have us believe that if lots of people started living this way they would be victimized by terrorists and so on, yet isn't it they themselves that would be the first to arrive with weapons, arresting us, taking away our homes, tearing up our gardens? Of course the answer is yes, this is what they do today (and have done for centuries) whenever anybody tries to live separated from their social system of control and exploitation. Government is telling us that we need protection, from people just like themselves! (Speaking of which, if you look into quality sources of information on the terrorist events of 9/11/2001 in New York and 7/7/2005 in London, it's obvious that the official stories given to us about those events are false, and that those events had to be state-sponsored, just like many others throughout history). Government is just like the mafia by making you pay, through the threat of violence (arrest and imprisonment carried out by people with guns), for protection from themselves; except the mafia doesn't pretend to be your friend. The only way we can eliminate this true threat is to eliminate their positions of power, and the only way we can do that is to cut off the life-line to this toxic Beast: our subservience and fruits of our labor (taxes).
When it is said that government (in it all it's forms) is, and has always been, the greatest source of evil in the world, some may object and say it is lack of democracy that is the evil, but again, government and real democracy are mutually exclusive. Also some may say it is not government itself that is the problem, but corporate control of government, i.e. fascist government. But again this is really the same argument pointing out lack of democracy, and if you look at history, like the history of the United States, you find that the original colonies actually began as companies themselves; government and corporate/industrial power are really one and the same, this supposed battle between the two is really just theater to keep you complacent, to keep you in subservience. We send letters to our "representatives," saying things like "Please don't allow this corporation to destroy this natural area", or "Please don't let this corporation contaminate our whole food supply with GMO's," and even if the local politician her/himself happens to be an ethical individual that somehow temporarily got in office (like the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota) and agrees with you, there is little they can do since the system itself is there to protect and serve corporate interest, not the public interest. A quote from the Bible comes to mind, don't take it as a religious endorsement, it's just fitting here:
"For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the Principalities and the Powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness...
In my mind I translate "flesh and blood" as our neighbor, those in the same lot as us basically. The government uses mass media every day to instill fear of our neighbors, to point out and dramatically assault our consciousness repeatedly with crimes, distorting just how common it really is, and most importantly to them, to make you feel that you need protection from it, to make you feel that you need your Big Brother to protect you from your neighbor because they are always out to get you. Yet what they never reveal in the media is that most crime is actually a result of the system itself, most people are brought to desperation and mental illness by being forced into this unnatural and soul-suppressing consumerist/industrialist society. The other important factor to understand is that yes, there are disturbed people out there that can be destructive, so in the interest of our safety we should minimize the amount of destruction they can yield. Therefore we should stop supporting the formation of centralized power which produces nuclear weapons, "smart" bombs, etc. because it is very likely that a disturbed person will gain control of those weapons (just look at all of military history!); False authority and hierarchy is unnatural and corrupts the human mind, and so that means anyone in positions of great power are most likely disturbed individuals! And so, the solution to this dilemma is to eliminate those positions of false power in the first place. A world without governance is actually safer than a world with it; on top of the aforementioned reasoning, there are the historical examples of communities without a central authority that had much less disorder and violence than those with it; this also refutes the belief that without social-systems we are doomed to destructive chaos.
The corporate media also doesn't mention all the violence government officials take themselves against the public, particularly those speaking and working for peace and justice. After all, as anyone involved in activism knows, entire legions of government agents are being payed to do that as their sole occupation, violating people's privacy constantly and worse, all of course in the name of "safety." But safety for whom? Of course it is the preservation of the status-quo that the employers of these agents are concerned with, maintaining their power and control, and peace and justice aren't exactly compatible with that. The "4th Branch" of the government may talk about a corrupt politician now and then, but they never question the existence of governance overall, and whether it could actually be harmful to the public; it is always portrayed as our benevolent parental overlord. It's fairly easy to fall for this trick and think that what we need to control all the "anarchy" in the world is more governance, more centralized control, but this forgets that the whole planet now consists of one human farm (aka country) bordering another, and that has not ensured greater safety at all, it has actually brought us to the point of possible world extinction through nuclear war and/or ecological collapse . The chaos/destruction we observe around us, from wars, various physical/mental diseases, state-sponsored terrorism, oceans/rivers filled with toxic chemicals, forest clear-cutting, to nuclear waste/radiation/weapons, etc., have social-systems themselves as root cause ; most would not exist entirely, and the others reduced dramatically, if we didn't give the few the unnatural power to create and yield all this destruction in the first place .
Returning to the root solution, there is definitely some recognition that very localized agriculture and trade is a crucial part of it among activists world-wide, yet as humans born into this techno-industrial society, many have a hard time forming a clear conception of what a natural life would even look like, or consist of; they are like animals born in captivity. Having been so indoctrinated into this social-system they may miss the insurmountable obstacle to a sustainable vision: the forcible restriction to living naturally on the Earth. A very good idea may surface, like "We should all grow food gardens and become self-sufficient," but then the not-so-minor detail that they cant afford the land (or time) to do so is not addressed! How exactly are all these corporate buildings to be replaced with gardens & small natural homes? Do you think sending a nice petition to a CEO of a big company, or to some politician, asking for your fair share of the land & water, free of charge, would be effective?
"[H]aving reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion's share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists." -"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
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