Vote hacking was the last straw that made me an anarchist.

[longhairlover]

In the past, I called myself a libertarian, and later on, a minarchist. Many years ago, my brother showed me Ayn Rand, when I was a teenager, and that was how I got started moving towards anarchism. Ayn Rand didn't believe in anarchism, and so neither did I - at the time, I was trying to do whatever I thought Ayn Rand would have liked.

Before I read Ayn Rand, I used to have this feeling of confusion whenever I would hear the news on television. I would hear them talking about politics and government, and I had this feeling of being unable to judge or understand anything that was going on - it was all just meaningless noise, uninteresting, but important somehow. Objectivism gave me a structure that I could use to understand and judge what the government was doing. I still feel that everything they're doing is 'meaningless noise,' but I have a sense of how things are supposed to be instead.

I didn't call myself an anarchist because I agreed with whatever Ayn Rand said about it. She said anarchism was 'civil war.' So I called myself a minarchist, someone who believed that at least a little bit of government was necessary. I guess that's still almost what I am nowadays.

But in the early 2000s, I became aware of the existence of computer hackers. I had someone who was harassing me online and messing with my computer. Over a period of years, I learned how commonplace computer hacking was, and how easy it was to do. There are millions of websites where you can download software that helps you break into other people's computers and you can get instructions for how to use it.

So when I read this article, it was the last straw that changed me from a 'minarchist' to an 'anarchist': 'Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked' http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm . I had actually voted libertarian in the past. I had to write in the candidates' names, on the computer. It was very hard to do. There wasn't enough space, and I didn't even know if they would be able to figure out who I was talking about. But I felt that it was my duty to vote libertarian, even though I knew it was hopeless. It was meant to be an expression of what I wanted, even though I knew no one would listen.

But after reading about the people who are hacking the vote computers, I gave up. It's not even just the 'voting machines' that everyone makes a fuss over, even though, yes, the voting machines do suck, in many ways. No, it's the regular ordinary computers that the votes are counted on. They keep the votes in some kind of ordinary, insecure Excel file and send it across the internet to other computers. They're open to the internet and hackers can easily get in and just change the vote numbers. I can't even vote anymore, knowing that everything I say might just be erased in a couple of keystrokes.

So I am aware that I am living in a tyranny where people have almost no control whatsoever over who governs them. Even without vote hacking, we still don't get to vote for all the candidates who are blocked out of the election process because they have to collect thousands of signatures, and that kind of thing. But still, I thought there was some hope of changing the system and I thought there was some hope of voting for the few libertarian candidates who did make it into the vote. And now I don't think so anymore.

Now we can choose which tyranny to live in. There are degrees in the evilness of the various tyrannies around the world. You have to look for the most 'benevolent dictatorship,' and that's all you can do. You can compare the different countries in terms of their human rights violations and economic freedoms, and choose which one is the best for you. But every one of them will still be a tyranny, and every one that uses computers will still be controlled by the hackers, whoever they are.

I'm interested in intentional communities: you can control at least some aspects of the community that you create, even though you still live under the control of the larger government in that country. That's a way to empower people without voting.