Agorists often speak of organizations, including businesses, that we can create to promote freedom. As these often help those not familiar with agorism or anarchism see peaceful ways to progress this is a great approach. These alternatives address immediate practical concerns, which is often a great way to get others on board. However, there is a relatively untouched area of life that as agorists we are well suited to tackle, a bigger picture area largely left unexamined: The marketplace of ideas.

“The evil in this world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding” – Albert Camus

Ideas are unique in that they cannot be owned. They can be taught, encouraged, spread, even created though some argue that no new ideas are even possible. When you share an idea, you still retain it, unlike when you give or sell property to others. You can keep an idea to yourself, and in that way control it only as long as no one else has the same idea. Furthermore ideas cannot harm, though they can be very powerful. It was the power of the new ideas of a representational government that led to the American Revolution. The first tentative step towards self-governing, a path that logically leads to agorism, or at least some form of anarchy.

No idea, not even a good idea, should ever be forced upon peaceful persons. Morality requires that we have no right to control the peaceful lives of others, including the ideas that they choose to hold. Ideas should have to compete just like any good or service. Sadly, we no more have a free market in ideas today than we have a free market in any product or service. What we see today are legislated ideas, carefully controlled ideas, and ideas subtly imposed on everyone.

Obviously we also have ideas such as agorism, but such ideas are little known to the masses. The ideas that are best known in our current society are those presented by the state and its supporters. Very often these ideas are forced upon us. Put another way, the state is used as a weapon against those who have different beliefs and ideas. We as a thinking species can do better than this.

Unfortunately we have seen ideas forced onto us, ideas that may have initially had some merit, with life-ruining consequences. Many of those ideas are those trying to impose social change. Hiring practices are amongst the most common and obvious examples of such ideas. Particularly in places like academia, hiring practices take a misguided form in which all male applicants are weeded out, and all white applicants as well, where possible. Instead of opposing racism, racism is used to force the preferred change of those in power. Other businesses have similar — though more relaxed — policies all based on federal “affirmative action” regulations. Perhaps these were intended to eliminate bias and “racism,” but as we have clearly seen, in practice this has backfired to the point of making “race” and sex the first considerations for any potential candidate.

Before affirmative action regulations, there were other regulations based on skin tone, or “race.” In the past, however, the racial preference of those in power was somewhat different in focus. We are all familiar with segregation which was forced on people as some businesses refused to deny blacks the goods and services they provided. The bigots were able to use the power of the state to force their biased and irrational views onto everyone, ruining the lives of those discriminated against as either customers or businesses. Eventually, in reaction to these bigoted laws, some self identified “do-gooders” imposed affirmative action onto businesses, creating even more problems because they employ the category of biases and the exact same methodology, that of coercion. As we have seen, swinging the pendulum so that another group is harmed is never the answer. The group that is helped or harmed is irrelevant; harm to innocents is always wrong.

Hiring practices and “race” issues are far from the only areas that fall into the sights of the weapon of the state. Some are in the self-interest of those in positions of power. So called “sin taxes” exist supposedly to penalize those who engage in “sinful” (as defined by the person imposing the tax) activities. Usually these taxes apply to “vices” such as smoking, gambling, alcohol, and the like. What these are in practice are the coercive actions of those who have been unable to win in the marketplace of ideas. They want their religious or perhaps health views to be universal, but lacking the ability to convince people to adopt those views, these persons of power force behaviors and harms upon us to try to coerce people into either adopting the desired views, else enriching the state through extortion.

Many other examples exist and almost all of the “solutions” we hear about involve either electing some new person to office, or yet again swinging the pendulum in another direction. These processes are the problem, not a possible solution. The solution comes from basic respect for persons. Accept that every person will make up their own mind with regard to what ideas to hold and which to discard.

We as a species are coming to understand the power of crowd-sourcing answers to our questions. Why not treat ideas in the same fashion? We put out ideas into the marketplace and see which ones come out on top. The beauty is that we can always change those ideas and no one is being forced to accept them. Until quite recently this has been the environment in which science developed, but it is applicable to the entire world of ideas.

Ideas should have to compete for acceptance.

While taking statism on head to head with statists seldom produces a positive result for agorists, we can engage in the marketplace of ideas by noting that in an agorist world there are no ideas that are off the table. We may immediately reject some ideas as being not worthy of being practiced — ideas such as tyranny, abuse, theft, murder, and the like — but this does not mean that they were initially off the table. We have considered those ideas and rejected them because each of those harms innocent persons, and because of this, are unacceptable. The speed of dismissal does not indicate a closed mind.

We can point out that ideas such as equality for women and minorities are welcome in the agorist community and would be free to compete with other ideas in the marketplace of ideas in a free society. As we are already individualists, there is no reason why we would not be natural allies to those with such ideas.

Will the best ideas always win out? Not necessarily. But there is an evolution of ideas very similar to biological evolution. Survival of the fittest is a phrase coined by Herbert Spencer, not Darwin as is commonly believed. Darwin set the standard lower and more accurately. Darwin spoke of the survival of the fit. Just like those species endure that are fit enough to reproduce, so too ideas that continue to exist need not be the best, only good enough to reproduce. This process is that of progress. Ideas are refined to fit the human condition most often becoming better descriptors of reality with each iteration.

Was the Newtonian description of physics the best? We know now that it isn’t, but it remains good enough that for virtually every aspect of our lives we still use it, despite Einsteinian physics providing a more accurate accounting of reality.

So if you put forth an idea, say, that there should be special consideration for minorities in hiring practices, your idea will compete with other ideas. The most persuasive will win out, but one of the great things about agorism is that you can always continue fighting for and spreading your ideas. Quite likely you will have a group of people who act so as to give preferential treatment to those that they feel deserve it, with other groups using other criteria such as merit or qualifications.

The marketplace of ideas cannot guarantee the absolute best outcome. Neither can the use of coercion. We are fallible beings. It is more important to always be striving to be better than to have the one and final answer for all things. The beauty of the marketplace of ideas however is that without the weapon of government those ideas cannot be forced upon individuals who reject them. This difference is vital. It is the difference between coercion and voluntaryism. The difference between force and persuasion. The difference between respect for others and treating others as property.

Is there hope for the future? As information becomes more easily accessible freedom seems to spring forth. With the printing press it became easier for people to learn about the world and events. So too with mass printing and copying. The internet has allowed a light to be shone into dark spaces, giving more people a voice. With these innovations societies went from explicit tyrannies of kings and emperors to legislatures and parliaments, which in theory were better suited to represent the interests of the people. With the internet and immediate information being available we are discovering the failures of these “representative” systems, and so our next step should be to move away from others representing us to representing ourselves. From there it is a very small step to just living our own peaceful life without concerning ourselves with how our neighbors peacefully live. It is here the state will become history.

Today we are seeing the issue of “race” being thrust into the forefront of every newscast, purchasing opportunity, or even simply trying to watch a movie online. Everyone has to put up some official statement. Whether we like it or not, that is how ideas can work. They can spread like wildfire so that everyone stakes a position and broadcasts that position for everyone else to know. This is not entirely a bad thing since at times we need to be shaken up and reminded that some ideas are worth changing. Without the state being involved, segregation would have been a bad idea left behind due to the desire of businesses to make a profit. The reason that segregation became law was not that everyone was inherently racist, but because those who felt hate for blacks were angered by the willingness of some businesses to engage in commerce with blacks. While the target of segregation was the black community, businesses were also victims of this bad idea combined with the weapon of the state.

We saw the end of “racial” separation in sports when great black players emerged. People, even people who hated blacks, wanted their team to win. The result: integration. The good idea of recruiting the best players regardless of skin tone, won out over the bad idea of hating someone based on their skin tone.

Statism dictates that there is only one way, one right idea: whatever the state dictates. In this way it is very much like religion. We can contrast that with agorism where we recognize that since not everyone is in the same position, there simply is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Statism, again like religion, pretends to have all knowledge and therefore the one true answer. Agorism requires us to be more humble, to recognize that we are not omniscient. Our ideas have to be compared to reality to determine which are true, which are practical, and which are effective.

The state itself can help us see the benefit of a free exchange of ideas, of persuasion over coercion. While littering has been illegal for decades it was the ad campaign featuring an Italian pretending to be a First Nations person, who shed a tear at the litter ruining the environment, that led to a dramatic decrease in littering. Now, instead of bemoaning the terrible problem of littering, NPR bemoans that over 80% of littering is unintentional littering. Or put a better way, only 20% of the litter was deliberately discarded. This is a vast improvement, almost entirely thanks to that single teardrop. The idea that littering saddened native peoples was a powerful enough idea to change behavior.

The job of agorists now is to find a similar appeal for the ideas we regard as important. While we are somewhat shackled at present with regard to ideas, and admittedly we are the underdogs as we are calling for personal responsibility and respect for persons, two very unpopular ideas at least to devout statists, we do have the opportunity to speak up and spread our ideas. We need to out-compete the ideas of servitude, taxation, coercion, and harm to innocents.

Over time the number of people who embrace these ideas of opposing coercion, opposing theft, opposing bullying, and just recognizing the right of every person to live their own peaceful life, will win out. No other ideas can have the same sort of universal appeal, as each of us ultimately wants to live our life as we see fit.