Do You Think States Should Be Allowed to Mint Their Own Currency?

I actually agree with Tom Woods in the video, but his argument doesn't really address what I meant or contradict it: What I meant is that the Constitution explicitly says the states shall not "coin money," which nixes the topic suggestion from a Constitutional point of view. Tom's argument on the other hand is all about what the Constitution says about restrictions on federal monetary powers: The federal government cannot make anything but gold and silver money...legally, that is.

Considering where we are today, it doesn't really matter that the Constitution isn't a "freedom document" in the absolute sense (i.e. taking things all the way to voluntaryism). Compared to what we have today and what the Founders and Framers had before 1776, the Constitution is very much a "freedom document." The Anti-Federalists had powerful arguments against it that proved prescient, and there are many writings today that more clearly delineate natural rights and the principles of human liberty, but it's both unfair and counterproductive to dismiss the Constitution entirely on those grounds.

I consider the Constitution an important part of our cultural heritage (both as Americans and as libertarians), and as the "supreme law of the land" it carries greater legal authority and wider recognition than, say, anything written by Lysander Spooner or Murray Rothbard. Reining in the government to Constitutional levels is only an intermediate goal for libertarians like us, but it's still a goal we share with paleoconservatives and many others with classical liberal influences, so the Constitution is perhaps the most effective common rallying point available to us. It's not wholly libertarian, and even an honest reading of it affords the federal government more powers than anti-federalists and minarchists (let alone anarchists) would condone, but it's a great start and reference point for just how out of control the current government has gotten.

In the specific case of money, it might be a little overbearing from a libertarian point of view that the Constitution forbids the states from coining their own money...but from a fully hardcore anarchist point of view, the states shouldn't print their own money anyway, since they should be dissolved. ;) In that sense, whether someone is a Constitutionalist, anti-federalist, minarchist, or anarchist, Article I, Section 10 shouldn't really be all that particularly objectionable, especially compared to some of the other powers afforded to the government.

It doesn't seem to, no:
"No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit..."
The prohibition against coining money is pretty clear, and I think that it's meant to be taken literally (in the sense of actually coining silver), especially in light of the precise use of language that Tom Woods described so well.

Either way, I don't really see a natural tendency in kids to view the Constitution as dead men's baggage: Kids today reading the Constitution for the first time really aren't reading it much later than us on a timescale relative to its ratification. Instead, the notion of the Constitution being so "outdated" seems to come mainly from statist propaganda, which views the Constitution as a legal obstacle to be dismantled.

Their reason for discrediting the Constitution should be obvious: It's not being obeyed, so it may seem worthless on the surface, but it's still the supreme law of the land, which poses the threat of rediscovery and more strict enforcement in the future...especially if statist agendas are pursued too quickly. If it were really so outdated and worthless, full-blown statists wouldn't be spending so much time trying to convince people of it.

As such, I think the Constitution will continue to be a relevant rallying point until it's replaced entirely by another one. At that point, the new one will either be a better rallying point or a totally depraved monument to the almighty state's glory...and once the old one loses any claim to legal authority, we'll have to resort to spreading purely philosophical musings. Nowadays, we can dispute statist sophistry about case law with the words of the Constitution itself. Without it, we would be utterly powerless in any legal debate, because philosophy about natural rights and self-ownership can simply go ignored as "irrelevant moralism." While newer writings espouse more ideologically pure libertarianism, they simply don't carry the same historical and cultural weight or legal significance, so relying entirely on them would be coming from a weaker position...one that only philosophically minded people would respect (and there frankly are not that many of us: people who care about such things are greatly outnumbered by legalists, sophists, and the morons who listen to them). In the meantime, introducing high schoolers to writers like Spooner is still a pretty good idea, before they have their imaginations beaten out of them by the seemingly eternal status quo. He was so before his time that he'll still be before his time by the time we die. :D

Well, most people rely on a huge national transportation infrastructure and agricorporations for food. That's not ideal, but the reality is that if you source your food locally you're an exception...and besides, even smaller farms are still big enough to get noticed and shut down by SWAT teams. The government already has enough incentive to do this (and they do, based on the thinnest of public health pretexts), so I can only imagine how bad it would get if agorism were seriously cutting into the mafia's revenue. The same applies to the manufacture of clothes, tools, electronics, etc. You might not technically need a lot of material things to survive, but it would be nice to *live* in freedom rather than just subsist in hiding. Also, since not everyone lives in places with a lot of sun, it will be a while before there's an acceptable universal alternative to [taxable] grid power.

Ultimately, I do agree with you that as tax resistors are sympathized with more broadly, the tax base will shrink...but that will only make the government focus their taxation on the hubs of economic production that people most rely on, and tax everyone indirectly through those. Agorism is helpful, but taxes (and government violence) will always be there until the government's laws are taken on directly in the political sphere. Moreover, it takes a lot more personal courage and awareness for the average person to put their neck on the line and hide their income (for example) than it does to change their voting habits (i.e. vote for anyone OTHER than the two anointed candidates). Since political action requires about the same critical mass as civil disobedience with fewer risks and entry barriers, I think it's more likely to be the first to gain that critical mass...and either way, it's going to have to if we ever want to truly be free, since agorism isn't going to stop a police state if there's enough political support to sustain it.

I'm eagerly awaiting the day when nobody is willing to fund or fight an unjust war. It might be possible after achieving enough mindshare and shutting down the propaganda machine, but once we get there, we'll already be at the point where minarchists (at least) could win elections in landslides, which would make "soldier skip day" pretty unnecessary in a practical sense.

Even then though, there will always be people and personality types inclined to domination, coercion, and violence...and they will almost always outnumber the thinkers. Trying to genuinely turn them into us by logical argumentation is futile, and I think too few libertarians understand that. I've learned that a lot of hardcore principled libertarians are so extremely intelligent that they have trouble comprehending how much differently other people's brains work, since it's so far out of their experience. If critical thinking is as natural as breathing to you, it's easy to forget that people that look like you and sound like you are often largely incapable of it.

Most people don't really care about philosophy or consistent morality and never will. Most people care about what works for them, the people they care about, and the groups they identify with, and some care only about getting their way (preferably without disturbing social relationships and standing). Ideologically earnest and epistemically rational people are few and far between...probably born more often than made. Almost every liberty nerd once held different beliefs, but there's a reason you changed your mind before almost everyone else, and there's a reason you care about this so much more than almost everyone else.

There are still plenty of people with exceptional intelligence and/or intuitive personalities who haven't had their epiphanies yet, but we have to face the reality that most of the time, Joe Six-Pack will always be Joe Six-Pack. The best we can do is neutralize his coercive impulses by making them as emotionally unrewarding as possible: Almost anyone is capable of remembering and internalizing a rational argument if they're emotionally accepting of it, but the problem is that emotions are the controlling factor in most cases. Most people initially form (and change) their viewpoints based on social cues, emotional and social reinforcement, etc. (Going further, none of us are Vulcans. Even those few who change their viewpoints for rational reasons only really do so after some emotional incentive brought down their barriers and let them seriously entertain a contrary worldview.) In that sense, most people will always be deeply susceptible to persistent group psychology and propaganda. We can't cure them of this tendency, and we can't break through the propaganda with logic and philosophy alone, but if we can make libertarianism more emotionally appealing, its increased popularity will become self-perpetuating through social proof. Agorism, political action, and educational efforts all help to increase our profile here.

As you say, agorism is indeed part to all of what is needed...it has a market role, and it has an educational and philosophical role. It's helpful and perhaps necessary...but I still have to stress that it is not sufficient in and of itself to rein in the state, let alone dissolve it.

If only 1% voted and the rest of us were content with agorism, the government would still have a strong tax base and kidnap people or kill them in no-knock raids. It might not find you, and it might not kill you, but it will still kill someone. Realistically speaking, we will never get 99% of people to be so radically and fundamentally changed enough in their hearts that they won't vote out of disgust for coercion. If we ever did get to that point, we would have long since had the critical mass necessary to take control of the legislative branches and limit government...or even dissolve it, if people were ready enough that we could do it without a resurgence of reactionary statism.

In the meantime, we're not there yet. The practical problem with pursuing agorism as a sole strategy is that to truly eliminate the government's tax base, nearly everyone would need to grow food for themselves or take up other pre-industrial occupations. Without the economies of scale that come with large-scale capital goods and widespread division of labor, the economy would be primitive and grossly inefficient. Living such a lifestyle under the radar might be called living in freedom if it were comfortable enough to feel that way, but the hardships involved would be a constant reminder that we were really just hiding in the shadows and running scared from the daywalking vampires while pretending to "ignore" them.

You can't simply ignore the gun to your head without severe consequences, and you will never convince 99% of people to live like that. *I* won't live like that, and I'm a principled libertarian myself...the kind of guy who actually likes agorism. I want liberty to exist in the sunlight, and political action is pretty indispensible for achieving that. Political action cannot "legislate freedom" in a vacuum, but it can certainly be used offensively to infringe upon it, so it can and should similarly be used defensively to block these efforts and make them harder to accomplish in the future.

Even in the event of government collapse, the vast majority of people today are nowhere near ready for any kind of anarchism. They're preprogrammed for statism, so stable market anarchism won't be emerging in our lifetimes (barring extreme life-extending medical technologies ;)). When the US federal government collapses, the individual states probably won't, and another union is likely (or several). Even if government dissolves at all levels (unlikely ;)), people will clamor for another state, so we're going to have to be represented as loudly as possible at whatever Constitutional conventions are held to ensure the state is less violent and coercive and more strictly limited...as opposed to even worse than today.

Given enough libertarian mindshare, it's possible to return to Constitutionalism or anti-federalism in our lifetime, or even institute the (so far) smallest and most strictly limited minarchy ever (with severe consequences for attempting to breach those limitations). Such a situation would be most likely to happen in the wake of a governmental collapse. However, we will not go straight from a leviathan state to a vacuum to voluntaryism in this way, because it's just too fundamentally and radically different from what almost everyone understands to be natural societal organization. We're so far from that scenario that most people cannot even comprehend how it might work without mayhem and feudal lords. Even minarchists are deeply skeptical of the idea or even overtly hostile out of fear that it would lead to great tyranny, and these are people who otherwise deeply believe in human liberty...so deeply that they're willing to risk ridicule and defend positions far outside of a mainstream statist framing of political discourse. These are people who are often, on the fundamental level of personality, far more ideologically libertarian than the vast majority could ever be, and yet they're still not ready for voluntaryism. Heck, even I have my doubts, and I know of actual historical examples of similar societal organization from ancient Ireland! (They had a "pick your king" system. Don't like him? Pick another king or become one. They managed to coexist peacefully with overlapping geographical jurisdictions in a way that people all over the world would find incomprehensible today. The whole country was eventually conquered by the English, who had superior numbers and force of arms, but it took them a full century to subjugate the Irish. Introducing the idea of a geographical monopoly on the use of force was no picnic for them. ;))

What does all that mean? It means that if we're ever going to actually achieve voluntaryism, we'll have to bridge the gaps of imagination, comprehension, and acceptance, and the only way to do that is through non-disruptive gradualism. People actually need firsthand experience of life under a stable minarchist government, whose various parts gradually fade into market functions, until it finally clicks that, "Wow, this actually works?!?" The closer we get, the more it will register for more people, but it's just too far outside of most people's real-world experience to seem like anything more practical than a dangerous utopian pipe dream. I'm pretty idealistic, but even I have enough pragmatism to sympathize.

In short: We're going to have to accept that there's going to be a government for the forseeable future, and whether we want to change that or not, it's important to exert as much of our influence on it as possible (whether we're talking about this one or the next one). All governments are an evil, but it would truly be a grave miscalculation to "sit home" and refuse to participate under the assumption that degree is irrelevant and all governments are equally evil. Complete freedom is an ideal of perfection that we should strive for endlessly, but it's more like an asymptote than a destination, and every inch counts in making the world a more free place to live.

I detest coercion on a good day and dislike it on a bad one, and I have my own litmus tests for who I'm willing to vote for, much like any other libertarian. Every once in a while, Vermin Supreme is going to be the only acceptable candidate for office...but one way or another, what happens in the political realm is deeply relevant to the future of liberty.

There's a reason we're called the United STATES of America, and not the United PROVINCES of America, and it's because the Founders and Framers understood the danger of centralized power more than anyone at the time...or even most people today.

What makes you so certain that the best laws are the ones that would be passed at the federal level? When power is decentralized (and it's not nearly as decentralized as it was supposed to be), at least you can live in a place like Colorado where it's legal to smoke a joint, instead of it being illegal everywhere. (This competition between states also serves as a check against them all going to hell in a handbasket at the same time.) Well, that is, you can live in Colorado and smoke a joint until the feds start pulling typical tricks again like taxing them for education money and holding it hostage until they come back around on the War on Drugs.

Your last comment is precisely WHY this country - or some state in this country - is the best place in the world for libertarianism: It has the best history of it, and everywhere else has a stronger history of unchallenged centralized power. Do you really want every place in the world to be the same, with no pluralism or experimentation or diversity of ideas? If you really want to live in the rest of the world, why don't you do the moving instead of trying to turn every last place in the world into a model of conformity? I mean, seriously, libertarians don't want to dominate everyone and everything...all we want is somewhere, anywhere (anywhere temperate ;)), to live that reflects our values and lets us live in peace. Is that really too much to ask?