The Nature of Armament

Much time is expended debating the merits and demerits of individual possession of arms. Particularly here in the United States where those who choose to can enjoy a great deal of government permission to own, trade and use a variety of small arms.
Usually I often avoid these debates, particularly online, as they tend to be emotional and rarely logical or factual. It's also a topic I avoid writing much about as directly – As in my life, in my writing ownership of firearms (and armament in general) is a constant undercurrent. It is all at once foundation to, representative of, and wholly entwined in what I believe about personal freedom, capability, responsibility and even human nature itself. Particularly in the case of this Armed Bohemian business, armament is an essential (definitional) quality, and I have accordingly spoken of armament both as the right to keep and bear arms and as more than simple possession of a gun.
Recently I was drawn into one of these discussions, and the response I composed brought together a series of thoughts I'd been trying to assemble in written form, for the Armed Bohemian. It is still a sort of rambling screed, but what the hell, its a place to begin.

The right to keep and bear arms is a Human right, at a very fundamental level. By all appearances skill-at-arms (whatever those arms may be) is deeply hardwired into us, perhaps even deeper than many other technological skills that are presently common to humans, i.e. fire, some form of protective clothing, etc. Armament is an essential part of who we are as humans, given that our forward progress is directly tied to our technological process, and one of the dominant tech areas contributing to our rise has been improved hunting and warfare technologies. Human beings keep moving forward, regardless of any societal pressures, and advancing these systems and taking them on at an individual level. We're wired to make, own, and be competitive with, modern armament, starting as individuals.
This can be directly observed today with the Makers crowd (small batch, garage, tech dev. and manufacturing) beginning to DIY aerial drone platforms that are quickly headed towards functionally outstripping US Predator/Reaper platforms. What is emerging is that if the drone performs (and inexpensive, >$50, guidance systems available off-the-shelf ensure it can ), the weapons package doesn't need to be as advanced as a missile. The drone could have a very crude container release and still mount effective weapons package, which would cost a target hundreds of thousands (if not millions) to knock out of the air, but only a few thousand at most to build. So far, none of the open source innovators working on these things want to use them as weapons, they just want to build them “because”. “Because”, it could be argued is the Red Queen at work: Someone somewhere got ahead and the others are running faster simply to keep up. This seems to be the natural course, and is not at all abated or slowed down by state regulation or monopoly on armament, even advanced. Introduction of a monopoly on such systems actually creates greater pressure to innovate competitive solutions.
The point here is not to argue that everyone needs a Reaper drone, but the fact that people as autonomous individuals, not employed by a state contractor or other power innovating similar technologies serves as a great example (to my way of thinking at least) of the natural order in which the individual organism, and his/her hardwired evolutionary need to be competitive, behaves with regard to possession and use of armaments.

The small batch DIY-Drone innovators are also representative of something else I see happening. While many are still stuck on arguments about firearms, or knife, ownership and possession, there are others who are moving further forward – Development and possession of arms of the type, and scale, previously limited to the possession of states and governments. With the decreasing costs of development and manufacturing, and the “small batch” revolution, innovation and production of advanced technology is not limited to the laboratories of major governments and their contractors. People may not be building missile systems in their garages, but what they are doing is creating solutions that, while different, are increasingly competitive with the armaments of state.
How long this lasts, legally, may be a worthwhile question. The regulation of arms and armament is, to an extent, mandatory for the state (although only recently, in the grand scheme, has it been truly feasible in a large scale way).
This applies from possession of knives to possession of tanks. While easy to believe as "for the children" or "for the good of everyones safety", arms regulations are primarily for the benefit of the machines of state. I suspect this is more of an unconscious benefit, as most of those pushing for arms control measures are true believers (or political opportunists) doing it for the children, for the perception of safety. Though few working for disarmament of individuals see it as being for the states benefit, the natural effect is just that. It can only be that, as there is no actual benefit to the individual for being disarmed by the state.
Individuals remain threatened by predators who have accepted acting outside the rule/benefit of law. Such predators, by their very nature, can and will acquire weapons even in the strictest of societies. Meanwhile, the individuals who remain complaint with the states regulations are under-secured by the state despite their investment in it ("if I give up my ability to protect myself, you will protect me") because there is no way for the system to be able to effectively track, identify and respond to every threat to its citizenry in a preemptive manner. It is simply too complex a task to be done. Rather the system can only apply broad coverage, on a greatest benefit for the widest range basis. Out of necessity the state has made the acceptable baseline for protecting its citizens outlawing certain behaviors and acts, and trying to apprehend individuals who've committed those behaviors or acts anyway. That is a complex task anyway, but a far less complex one than trying to give protection to ever individual within the system at the very moment they encounter a predator.
Despite the failure to the individual of this system, many individuals continue their cooperation. It is not so much a direct dupe, as it is is driven by both convention and a loop of reward for cooperation. Cooperation with the state guarantees being able to reap the benefits afforded by the state; Resisting the state supposedly guarantees being unable to enjoy the benefits, and possibly meeting with the force (or greater levels of force) the state claims a monopoly on.
Early weapons bans (armament possession by serfs, sword bans in Europe and Asia, etc.) were enforced far more on the threat of meeting with the superior levels of force deliverable by the state, than by cooperation for reward. Today, in most first world states at least, that approach is little used and at least attempts to avoid it are usually taken, preferring the cooperation equals full access to benefit and non-coop equals restriction of access (imprisonment, felon status, etc.)

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

Trouble for the cooperators arises in those who choose to disobey the state control in a predatory fashion – By simply the act of disobeying they find the fallibility of the state, and knowing that state-control has left many of those who cooperate in a weakened position (dependent on the state for protection it cannot possibly provide) are given new freedoms to exploit this rich victim pool.
Non-cooperators who are not predatory, but have taken means to protect themselves from such predation while appearing to be compliant, are in a much better position in this situation than true cooperators.
Among such individuals, there are those who take such means as legally as possible – Classically, and into this century, we see agrarian cultures taking up farm implements both for defense and as means of predation in the absence of easily available advanced weapons tech. We also see people producing weapons that are within the allowance of law at that time – Much of the self defense products industry is built around these types of arms, and the DIY/Small Batch'ers have shown a capability of doing this on an even greater scale.
Then there are those who will fully cross into illegal territory by obtaining more competitive armament from the black market, or by producing it themselves. Of course, they run the risk of punishment by the state, but part of the arithmetic essential to the decision to not cooperate is calculating what that risk means. If punishment is fines, or jail time, and resultant loss of rights or privileges, and not otherwise severe, what detriment to life and well-being is the states punishment, particularly in the face of possible death or great loss of advantage to predation?

The natural state is an armed state, and as time progresses the organism must maintain that, and do so aggressively and competitively. It is a natural process, yet so many are trying to make it a conscious decision and are advocating for deciding not to. That is scarier than the idea of someone firing up their 3d printer and rolling out a Reaper complete with Hellfires.

(As a note folks - The colored, underlined, bits of text are links. They are relevant and important. Rather than breaking out the style guide and writing my sources in a bibliography, I use links. This serves, sort of, to prove I am not madly ranting in my own private ideological wilderness. I also notice via analytics and sitemeter that most of you are not clicking them. You should, really. You'll learn more that way.)

"What Are You Doing?"

I wonder if those who've been following from the beginning, or read the earlier entries, aren't beginning to question: Why all this noise about resilience, resilient communities and the future? I thought this was a blog about war stuffs and armed conflict?

Well... Yes. It is. But, it's also rather rapidly become something more. Or has taught me that it is something more. This hasn't changed, so much as my understanding of what this is has become more complete. My understanding has become more whole, and less stuck in the “armed” half of the title.
My interests in being the Armed Bohemian, particularly the armed part, my interests in military service, private security/military work, are very much about long-term resiliency on a independent level (and for my family/tribe). But that is only a small part of that complete resilience. The bohemian is a resilient animal, by nature, in large part due to the autodidact and polymath qualities necessary to be successfully “bohemian”.
The idea of the Armed Bohemian presents an individual perfectly suited for the massive shifts and changes in the global environment. This is a blog about the truly personal (individual) resilience, and the contribution of the individual to the select whole.

So yes, I'll be getting back to armament and all that business in time. I still find the warrior, the armed individual, etc. indispensable, and am still coming at all this from the perspective of that resilient personality and their contribution to the whole.

Punishing the Tribes

Random surfing today found me this news item out of Seattle:

$10 an Hour with Two Kids? The IRS Pounces

Rachel Porcaro knows she's hardly rich. When you're a single mom making 10 bucks an hour, you don't need government experts to tell you how broke you are.
But that's what happened. The government not only told Porcaro she was poor. They said she was too poor to make it in Seattle.
It all started a year ago, when Porcaro, a 32-year-old mom with two boys, was summoned to the Seattle office of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She had been flagged for an audit.
She couldn't believe it. She made $18,992 the previous year cutting hair at Supercuts. A few hundred of that she spent to have her taxes prepared by H&R Block.
"I asked the IRS lady straight upfront — 'I don't have anything, why are you auditing me?' " Porcaro recalled. "I said, 'Why me, when I don't own a home, a business, a car?' "
The answer stunned both Porcaro and the private tax specialist her dad had gotten to help her.
"They showed us a spreadsheet of incomes in the Seattle area," says Dante Driver, an accountant at Seattle's G.A. Michael and Co. "The auditor said, 'You made eighteen thousand, and our data show a family of three needs at least thirty-six thousand to get by in Seattle."
"They thought she must have unreported income. That she was hiding something. Basically they were auditing her for not making enough money."
[SNIP]
She had a yearlong odyssey into the maw of the IRS. After being told she couldn't survive in Seattle on so little, she was notified her returns for both 2006 and 2007 had been found "deficient." She owed the government more than $16,000 — almost an entire year's pay.
She couldn't pay it. Her dad, Rob, has run a local painting business, Porcaro Power Painting, for 30 years. He asked his accountant, Driver, for help.
Rachel's returns weren't all that complicated. At issue, though, was that she and her two sons, ages 10 and 8, were all living at her parents' house in Rainier Beach (she pays $400 a month rent). So the IRS concluded she wasn't providing for her children and therefore couldn't claim them as dependents.
She stood to lose what is called earned income tax credit, a refund targeted to help low-income workers. You qualify only if you're working, as Rachel has been.
Driver quickly determined the IRS was wrong in how it was interpreting the tax laws. He sent in the necessary code citations and hoped that would be the end of it.
Instead, the IRS responded by launching an audit of Rachel's parents."

Thats the meat of it, although the full article has all the numbers (which are ridiculous). Why I'm posting this is a single quote from the end of the article however.
The money quote:

“We're an Italian family," [Rachel] said. "We're surviving as a tribe. It seems like we got punished for that"

Punished for being a tribe. Of course they are – The machine doesn't want tribes, anymore than it wants individuals. The mechanisms of the state are inherently suspicious of such resilient organization. Another hurdle that more of us will probably have to be prepared to deal with, as we continue to adapt, and lead our tribes into resilient behaviors.

Entrepreneurial Resiliency

Again with the posting of links and brief commentary in lieu of anything substantial. It's coming, but I've been busy with literary efforts elsewhere. Bear with me, and feel free to comment and throw ideas into the mix via the comments. Open discussion is encouraged.

One of the hallmarks of the Armed Bohemian is that s/he is a resilient creature, both by nature and by effort.
John Robb at Global Guerrillas has just posted an excellent journal entry, part of an ongoing series on resilient communities: Entrepreneurship as Resilience

He's given the beginnings of a check list for developing entrepreneurial skill, with the promise of more to come. Take note, this is where and how many have survived in the interstices in the past, and will be how many of us survive in the future as things change.