Night is Falling

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:46:53 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Jim Davidson at The Libertarian Enterprise - 30 years ago, J. Neil Schulman wrote a novel , Alongside Night, about a collapsing society, and how free people thrived through that collapse. Sounds sorta familiar, doesn't it? Sorta like now? I bought the Kindle version for my iPhone. Haven't read much yet. Too busy building Trubanc. I also pre-ordered the graphic novel version, which will be based on the movie script (PDF), and will be illustrated by Scott Bieser. [gsc]

Is it possible to reform the existing system by working within it? I don't know. I do know that the campaign finance reform laws have protected incumbents, evil, vicious, hateful incumbents like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who have never seen anything wrong with domestic wiretaps, massacres of foreigners in their villages, huge defense contracts, war, bloodshed, torture, and the evisceration of freedom.

If it is possible, then groups like the Boston Tea Party should find good candidates and support them. If it is possible to fix the system while it is going rapidly down the drain, great.

But if it is not, then you should be prepared for alternatives. You should think about how to disconnect from the grid, now, while it is a choice. If contemporary civilisation collapsed tomorrow, how would you get electricity? Water? Fuel? Internet connectivity?

It is possible to provide all these things with centralisation, corruption, and the inefficiencies that come with huge bureaucracies. But it is also possible to get the same objectives using decentralised systems, using individual participation or small networks, in ways that enhance your privacy instead of compromising it.

That, to me, is what Alongside Night is all about. That's why I've dedicated my career to its success.

From Scott Bieser:

Agorism is a relatively under-developed branch of market anarchist theory, but also a very promising one. In fact, novelist J. Neil Schulman wrote a science-fiction story, Alongside Night, dramatizing how agorist theory might someday rescue civilization from a future crisis -- a crisis which looks alarmingly similar to what we face presently. Schulman has developed a screenplay adaptation of his story and is endeavoring, with the aid of activist Jim Davidson, to raise the capital needed to produce a feature film.

(I have also been asked to produce a graphic novel version in the event the screenplay is green-lighted.)

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Excellent news

Submitted by Arto Bendiken on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:52:02 GMT

Looking forward to the graphic novel, as I loved this novel and it was my first introduction to agorism. Scott Bieser's previous work on The Probability Broach graphic novel and Roswell, Texas (which I've just finished reading) was outstanding, as well.

I've e-mailed Jim Davidson to see if I can pre-order some copies using Pecunix (don't want to support PayPal any more than one must).

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