The Douchebag Bible (76 page)

things: labor and money. It wants us to work. And it

wants us to use the money we made working to buy

things.

What does this mean? It means our value is

only what we can do and what we can afford. If

someone has more money than you in a free market

capitalist society, then they have more power. What

do politicians want from us? Ignorance and votes.

We can conceivably thwart the politician by not

being ignorant. It’s not likely to happen—but it is

possible, and there exists a strategy by which we

could conceivably have some power over the

politician. However, we the people stand no chance

against the businessman. The deeper we let them

into the halls of power, the more deeply fucked we

are.

The libertarian model of freedom is mostly the

absence of authority. But a more accurate measure

of freedom is the presence of robust choice in as

many areas of our daily lives as possible.

We are, with no doubt, freer than our hunter-

gatherer ancestors. Yet--they had no central

government! They didn’t have the freedom to say,

“I’m going to become an artist,” or, “I don’t feel like

gathering today.” They either spent every waking

minute trying to survive . . . or they died. And that

was it for them. Their lives offered them no choices.

Our lives, on the other hand, offer us a glut of

choices. What’s for breakfast? Whatever the fuck

you want! But without a central power structure,

without cooperation, without forced taxation—the

choices we have as a modern human being would

not be possible.