Anarchy is not the same thing as chaos contrary to what you are indoctrinated with in schools these days.   I do believe a number of people are very aware of this on steemit.   Not everyone is though, so I thought it might be interesting to some to learn about some DIFFERENT people that were not the status quo.

Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner definitely qualifies at being very different.   If people learn about him in history it usually presented as a nut that had a business that competed with the U.S. Postal Service.

There was a lot more to the man than that.   He had some very deep ideas, and you could tell he was a man that was very much into philosophy and thought.

 Lysander was a strong advocate for the term "Natural Law" which some fellow steemit bloggers have shared some links to videos that discuss Natural Law extensively:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 of a massively long seminar on the topic.   I plan to watch these myself but haven't had the time to do so yet.  My wife and I will watch those together.   Thank you to @ultramari0 for bringing them to my attention.

I've been active in Libertarian, Anarchist, and Anarcho-Capitalist debates and discussions for a number of years, but I vividly recall the first time I encountered Lysander Spooner.   I had never heard of him.

It was when someone posted a flow chart that was almost a family tree of anarchism, libertarians, austrian economics, and other things.

I did have a bookmark to it until I failed to back those bookmarks up between a machine image, and I have not been able to find it again.

It had a lot of people I had never heard of, so it became a READING LIST on people to go and research.

I personally found Lysander Spooner to be a VERY INTERESTING person.

Here are a few quotes for things Lysander said or wrote:

"Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property."

"Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally - perhaps more than equally, because more boldly - rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power."

"Legally speaking, there are no such things as 'public rights,' as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as 'the public.'"

"A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government."

The next one in particular resonates with me during the current political climate.

Now Lysander Spooner did author a book/essay called "No Treason The Constitution of No Authority" which is very interesting, especially when you consider how long ago it was written.   You can read this book for free online as it is in the public domain and there are plenty of people that have made audio books of it.   It has some thought processes that were spoken long ago and yet I never heard a word of it in school.   If you hear anything about the man in school it is about his business designed to compete with the U.S. Postal Service that the government forced him to close.

I will provide you a link to some of these if you want to listen to them or read them:

Lew Rockwell Site

Mises.org - has text and audio

And of course there are videos and video bloggers on youtube that have talked about him:

I noticed there are numerous fellow anarchists on steemit.   I wanted to share some information so people that are not anarchists or may not be familiar with it will be able to debate with the rest of us based upon historical information.   Debate, and discussion are good.

EDIT: Some bullet points for highlights in some of the material above:

• Experienced contract law at an early age with a contract with his father
• Studied law under prominent Lawyers and went on to be a lawyer without a college degree and in fact fought to have that requirement tossed out, and won.
• U.S. Postal services was charging exorbitant prices for delivering letters (see the first video) and he created a competing business.   Congress eventually put him out of business mainly by having deeper pockets than he could afford to defend himself against.   They did dramatically lower their prices for letters after they put him out of business.   First the U.S. Postal Service lowered it's prices by 41% and then a few years later to 20% of what their prices were before Lysander's business challenged them.   So that 80% extra was graft and kick backs which did go away for the most part due to Lysander's efforts.
• He was a staunch abolitionist and against Slavery.    He approached it from a very different way from other abolitionists.  Others would come at slavery indicating the Constitution supports slavery and they therefore were against the Constitution.  Lysander approached the Constitution as a contract and showed there was no where in the Constitution that justified slavery.   He also focused a lot on Natural Law in these arguments. The Unconstitutionality of Slavery is a published document he wrote.  
• Lysander also explains how to read the Constitution using Natural Law and what is explicitly written as opposed to what someone thinks is IMPLIED.
• Eventually he started viewing the Constitution as a contract, and legally a contract is only binding to signatories on the contract.  That is where No Treason the written document came from.   If you have a chance read at least section 6 of No Treason or listen to the audio books I linked to I highly recommend it.   For the time it was written, and even today you won't likely find anything quite like it.