i think you bring up a lot of valid points, but i respectfully disagree. i believe your perspective to be defeatist, and i am by no means an optimist. but before i make that claim, I would have to ask...
Defeatist? By recognizing reality and choosing to spend my time, money and effort on stuff I can actually impact? To prefer creating a sound foundation for my future wife and children rather than risking everything on stuff that would have a negligible impact on the future? No, that's the complete opposite of defeatism. The real way to change the world is to build what you can in your own lifetime and raise your children to carry on the work.
The Amish are an exempt group because they were exempt while the current generation of tax laws were being developed. Good luck legally finding a way for you to enter a similar level of tax exemption... unless you're willing to give up everything and actually become Amish yourself.
The fix you listed is not one that most people can pull off. Sure, you can live in a small town (I'd argue that's ideal and I love my town), you can become self-sufficient to a degree, but unless you're a full-blown farmer (aka. agrarianism), you won't be able to be 100% independent. Point of fact, even farmers rely on some level of outside supply and aid, whether that's from corporations OR the government.
As for not trading in fiat, again: good luck, at least in our lifetime. Most people do not trade in Bitcoin, gold or other hard assets for various reasons. There may yet be a day when they do... again, that's part of why the biggest impact is to raise children the right way to carry on the work and make the world a better place for THEIR children and so forth. However, in our current age, that's extremely unfeasible unless you're living in a commune or are Amish, as you pointed out.
Trading skills/services works in some cases for sure, but not everyone is skilled enough at important things to be able to fully sustain themselves upon that. Making less than $1k/year is a recipe for eternal homelessness.
As for the niche tools part, what I'm saying is that the argument is that the only way to achieve true freedom is to use tools like that or become full-blown agrarian. Again, for the majority of people, this is not an option.
I do, however, agree entirely that it's ideal to support local small businesses and resources. I do that as much as I can but this cuts back to the "don't use fiat" part: I have yet to find a single local business, other than a junk shop, that accepts anything other than fiat.
The "statecuck" part is referring to the argument that some folks make about realists like myself. "You're not agrarian, you're using government money and you're not 100% off the grid so you're a statecuck" is effectivly the argument that many use.
At the end of the day, I just take issue with the idea that we, in our current generation, have the ability to be 100% self-sufficient. It's not defeatism to say that, it's simply an observation of the current state of our world. Again, I am a firm believer that the only way to fix this long-term is to start building things now, raise as many children as we can and teach them the value of what we're doing so that when we're old, we can pass down the torch and then, once we're gone, they'll repeat the process.
The goal is to build a dynasty.
In my eyes, I don't want to live like a 'free' hippie nor do I plan to be an agrarian like the Amish. I respect the Amish (though hippies are gay), but that's absolutely not what most people are called to.
Instead, I'm building a dynasty. I reign as a regent and plan to raise stewards to follow: not a king in wealth, nor in stature, nor immediate political power, but a patriarch of a dynasty of descendants. Stewards of Gondor, so to speak, in the spirit of Faramir.
In Christian terms (as a believer myself), I plan to raise my children in the fear of the Lord, trusting in His salvation and His provision in order to build His Kingdom on earth as much as possible, and to pass that goal down to their descendants. By the end of all things, I will eventually get to see just how much that decision impacted humanity as a whole.
Every man is a king among his own family and household. It's our choice whether we wish to reign wisely or foolishly, and I find it incredibly foolish to throw everything away instead of raising children in the Way.
The Amish are an exempt group because they were exempt while the current generation of tax laws were being developed. Good luck legally finding a way for you to enter a similar level of tax exemption... unless you're willing to give up everything and actually become Amish yourself.
The fix you listed is not one that most people can pull off. Sure, you can live in a small town (I'd argue that's ideal and I love my town), you can become self-sufficient to a degree, but unless you're a full-blown farmer (aka. agrarianism), you won't be able to be 100% independent. Point of fact, even farmers rely on some level of outside supply and aid, whether that's from corporations OR the government.
As for not trading in fiat, again: good luck, at least in our lifetime. Most people do not trade in Bitcoin, gold or other hard assets for various reasons. There may yet be a day when they do... again, that's part of why the biggest impact is to raise children the right way to carry on the work and make the world a better place for THEIR children and so forth. However, in our current age, that's extremely unfeasible unless you're living in a commune or are Amish, as you pointed out.
Trading skills/services works in some cases for sure, but not everyone is skilled enough at important things to be able to fully sustain themselves upon that. Making less than $1k/year is a recipe for eternal homelessness.
As for the niche tools part, what I'm saying is that the argument is that the only way to achieve true freedom is to use tools like that or become full-blown agrarian. Again, for the majority of people, this is not an option.
I do, however, agree entirely that it's ideal to support local small businesses and resources. I do that as much as I can but this cuts back to the "don't use fiat" part: I have yet to find a single local business, other than a junk shop, that accepts anything other than fiat.
The "statecuck" part is referring to the argument that some folks make about realists like myself. "You're not agrarian, you're using government money and you're not 100% off the grid so you're a statecuck" is effectivly the argument that many use.
At the end of the day, I just take issue with the idea that we, in our current generation, have the ability to be 100% self-sufficient. It's not defeatism to say that, it's simply an observation of the current state of our world. Again, I am a firm believer that the only way to fix this long-term is to start building things now, raise as many children as we can and teach them the value of what we're doing so that when we're old, we can pass down the torch and then, once we're gone, they'll repeat the process.
The goal is to build a dynasty.
In my eyes, I don't want to live like a 'free' hippie nor do I plan to be an agrarian like the Amish. I respect the Amish (though hippies are gay), but that's absolutely not what most people are called to.
Instead, I'm building a dynasty. I reign as a regent and plan to raise stewards to follow: not a king in wealth, nor in stature, nor immediate political power, but a patriarch of a dynasty of descendants. Stewards of Gondor, so to speak, in the spirit of Faramir.
In Christian terms (as a believer myself), I plan to raise my children in the fear of the Lord, trusting in His salvation and His provision in order to build His Kingdom on earth as much as possible, and to pass that goal down to their descendants. By the end of all things, I will eventually get to see just how much that decision impacted humanity as a whole.
Every man is a king among his own family and household. It's our choice whether we wish to reign wisely or foolishly, and I find it incredibly foolish to throw everything away instead of raising children in the Way.