Ryan Burgett

The Cancer of Absolutism

by Ryan Burgett | Apr 28, 2019 | Blog

At its heart, Agorism is a pragmatic philosophy. It is about doing what is best for you and your family. It doesn't waste time worrying about the silly people who try and hold us back. But, even though we try and live outside of the system, it is possible for even an agorist to get stuck. One cancer that pops up in agorism is the cancer of absolutism. Agorists say that we are all about freedom and doing what we want, but then too many turn around and begin making absolute statements about what we can and cannot do. For example, they might say that agorists DON'T vote. Or, agorists ONLY buy...

The Currency of Life

by Ryan Burgett | Apr 26, 2019 | Blog

At tax time each year, I am always reminded of the value of life. While we pay taxes using money, the reality is that we ultimately only have one real currency to spend, and it is our lives. Our lives are each unique, one of a kind, and they are the most valuable resources on the earth. But, like all valuable resources, our lives are limited. We only have one life to live, and we measure that life in terms of time. Imagine that your life will last eighty-five years. That means that you have eighty-five years of life to spend or 744,600 hours to spend. Over the course of your life, whether...

Napster, File Sharing, and Private Property

by Ryan Burgett | Apr 25, 2019 | Blog

In 1999, a teenager named Shawn Fanning creating a file sharing application called Napster which took the world by storm. This application revolutionized how MP3 audio files could be shared. Anybody who was into computers at that time can remember how amazing it was to log into there and instantly find nearly any MP3 file that you wanted. One of the things that made Napster so cool was that it did not actually host the files which you downloaded using the application. Instead, Napster was a p2p or "person to person" application. When you wanted an audio file, Napster would connect your...

Tor and the So-Called Dark Web

by Ryan Burgett | Apr 24, 2019 | Blog

The word Tor comes from the acronym T-O-R which stands for The Onion Router. What the Onion Router--or Tor--does is it routes your internet traffic through multiple Tor nodes on its way to your destination. So, on the regular internet, what we call the clear web, if you go to a website address the browser sends a request directly to the server that hosts the website, and that server returns the page directly to you. What you end up with is that your ISP and the recipient both know your IP address and can potentially figure out your identity. With the Tor browser, when you go to a web...