Yet Another Dissenter's Manifesto
In order to "save the masses", you must first be able to look them square in
the eye and tell them that they don't know what's best for them. It is
difficult to use the excuse that they are "misinformed" or "ignorant"
anymore, in this day and age of information availability. anyone who really
wanted a neutral or balanced opinion can find one. Intellectual poverty is
not something Americans suffer from for lack of opportunity.

As a result, political messiahs of liberal and conservative bent alike are
required then to assert that people are instead incompetent to govern their
own affairs, and this is the fundamental sin of condescension.

Americans are ruled by industry because *they want to be*. There is dissent,
yes, but it is futile and arrogant to continue to persuade "America" -
meaning a majority of Americans. It is as pointless to preach to those who
will not budge as to the converted.

What then, must the dissenters do? Take the willing, and make an effort to
create communities of solidarity and real power on the smaller scale in which
they find themselves, rather than pining for a day when all people will think
as they do. Don't continue to waste your spirits away in repeated
"educational campaigns" that, with time, yield decreasing returns in
converts, and turn into coercive propaganda. Once the information, the
ideas, and views are in the open, and available to the public, they will
compete on their own merits in the marketplace of ideas rather than the
merits of those who promote them. This is the information age, for crying
out loud. Making one's thoughts available is a trivial exercise.

Decide where you're going, then discover who's coming with you. Never get
the order mixed up. Some of you know who said that (Sean Kennedy, in his
Virus Manifesto). Your decision about the changes you want to make or see
in the world should never be based on persuading a large number of people to
cooperate. You have to recognize who is with you, and make it work with the
resources and connections that you have.



Form economic support networks. Take care of each other. Start spending
money on those in need who agree with you politically. Be prepared to offer
temporary support to the underemployed among us. Many of you certainly
already do this.

I would go one step further, by encouraging more private enterprise among
us. Recognize, take up, and exploit the freedom and power that are being
used against us by big industry.

I would suggest that the largest reason workers don't own the means of
production is that they don't want it. The stock market system may have some
discriminatory barriers, for certain, but these exist on the larger-scale
corporate level (companies on the scale we would be operating on are easily
accommodated by LLC structures, which are by and large unregulated). In
addition, the bureaucratic barriers to buying stock in your company pale in
comparison to the lethargy and apathy the average worker has been
conditioned into by those privileged classes who DO own stock. Our attitude
needs to change. Given that in this day and age of corporate lobbying,
private industry wields massive power in the arena of legislation, it
only makes sense to acquire the same sense of civic responsibility in
regards to one's employment or business as one would expect in one's
participation in democratic governance (especially, I might add, when the
average person's employment typically consumes FAR more attention and effort
than one's involvement in politics).

I'd like to pioneer a company charter to spread among fellow dissenters of
capitalism; one that establishes and upholds a convention that all those
involved in a company's work are granted an equity stake of voting stock in that
company, in proportion to the value of that person's contribution of time
and attention to the company's business. Employment with companies that are
not than traded on the open market, and refuse to
entertain requests for ownership should be temporary at best. If dissenters
are truly serious about economic equality, then making progress into a
workplace that agrees with them is important, and isn't something that's
implausible to achieve.