Ross Ulbricht Speaks Truth to Power

by | Jul 2, 2021 | 81 comments

For the first time since being caged, Ross Ulbricht — no stranger to readers of FreeKeene.com — candidly, and powerfully spoke out. In this 25-minute audio recording he:

  • details his motivation for creating the Silk Road and his subsequent character assassination and caging
  • implores his captors to act not with contempt but compassion
  • shares his excitement about the liberating impact of decentralized cryptocurrency for individuals & humanity

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Remembering Carl Watner

by | Jan 9, 2021 | 7 comments

Carl Watner, longtime proponent of voluntaryism, has passed away. He was 72 years young. He will be missed. And his efforts will live on through those of us seeking complete liberty.

Who was Carl Watner?

According to OpenlyVoluntary.com, Watner was:

an American author and historian of libertarian studies, and a voluntaryist. He has written articles for Reason magazine, the Libertarian Forum, Mises Institute and the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Although use of the label “voluntaryist” waned after the death of Auberon Herbert in 1906, its use was renewed in 1982, when George H. Smith, Wendy McElroy, and Carl Watner began publishing The Voluntaryist magazine.

That newsletter, The Voluntaryist, was published continuously since October 1982. For almost four decades Watner, a family man who ran a business in South Carolina, made time to share ideas he believed would foster human flourishing. He also wrote and edited a bevy of books, and is credited with tracking-down and making again accessible the seminal essay by Lysander Spooner, Vices Are Not Crimes.

Watner excelled at communicating a clear, consistent, strike-the-root message. Indeed, in no uncertain terms, Wendy McElroy wrote on her blog that Watner “was the primary hand in founding the modern Voluntaryist movement in the early 1980s.” She continues:

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Growing Soil Sprouts

by | Dec 28, 2019 | 8 comments

Concepts like self-sufficiency and independence are great, but just how obtainable are they? True, we each alone are responsible for our self-actualization and for our actions, but at the end of the day interdependence is the name of the game (thus the emphasis by many FreeKeene.com bloggers on mutual aid). After all, as Leonard Reed pointed out, even something as seemingly simple as a pencil necessitates the involvement of many.

So it is with the sustenance we each rely on to survive. Your cheeseburger and fry lunch from Local Burger may involve lettuce and tomatoes grown in California’s Central Valley, beef raised in Wyoming and slaughtered and packaged in Oklahoma, cheese from Wisconsin, potatoes from Idaho, salt from Pakistan. You get the idea.

In this economy that is built on the division of labor almost all of us turn to others for most, if not all of the food we consume.

In 2018, when my lady and I lived in Las Vegas we were able to run out for anything at any hour of the day. But during most of 2019, when we lived in a small town in the Intermountain West that lacked a grocery store, we had to plan our resupply expeditions. We could acquire enough eggs, raw milk, meat, and other vittles to keep us provisioned for long stints. But we found that having fresh greens on hand was difficult.

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New Hampshire Home to “Special Concentration” of Dash-Accepting Merchants

by | Mar 5, 2019 | 7 comments

Those in New Hampshire have been at the vanguard of cryptocurrency penetration since the creation of Bitcoin a decade ago. From developers who have constructed crypto ATMs, payment solutions, and digital marketplaces to entrepreneurs who made it easier to  buy and sell of cryptocurrency, to early-adopters who have informed their friends, family and neighbors about the empowering aspects of being ones own bank. It’s no surprise then that Amanda B. Johnson — a one-time resident of the ‘shire — makes mention of this special place in her recent video recounting Dash-accepting merchants worldwide.

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