My Introduction!

Hello Steemit! I'm Ryan, and I'm an anarcho-capitalist. That being said, the idea of decentralized life is very appealing to me in a world where we are brought up to cling to "the way things are" which benefit the few at the expense of the many. I believe the old adage "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime" is lost. More and more seem to unabashedly yearn for the leash as long as they're taken care of.

This has lead to a boom in the welfare state, and there are many other facets of the state that are equally terrifying, the police state for one, but the welfare state is particularly insidious as it promotes dependance, which leads to acceptance, which leads to those whom they depend on (The State) completely dominating their lives.

But enough about me, haha I guess I went on a tangent there, eh? OK, ok, so a bit more about myself. I was raised in a single parent home, the eldest of 3. At the age of 20 I joined the United States Air Force, and in Basic Training my individuality was all but beaten out of me. Or so my demeanor showed. I spent the next 5 years of my life taking orders, living off of stolen money, and being a a cog in the most violent killing machine in the world. At the time, I was still asleep, I was still dependent.

The military paid me, fed me, clothed me. In return I let it chain me. I adhered to the UCMJ, until 2006. I had grown tired of how I kept seeing people get ahead. People below me would step on the toes of others and kiss up to their superiors in order to get ahead, and were rewarded with it. I didn't want to play that game. My ID card was out of date and I was going on vacation. My CO gave me additional orders to get my card up to date, and I forgot to do so. Coming back, when they found out I failed to complete my orders, I was given a general discharge.

I never fought it, I didn't care to get it upgraded to an honorable. I got out of the military and ended up working at a call center in Georgia with a friend. We would ride to work together, and he liked talk radio. It was then I was introduced to Neal Boortz. For those who don't know, Neal Boortz is a self-proclaimed libertarian, but is actually a right-winger. But in spite of that, I was introduced with libertarianism through him, and I took the idea of limited government to heart. I remembered the saying that Franklin said about those who want to trade freedom for security don't deserve freedom and will end up with little of both, or something like that.

Well, in the coming months Neal mentioned Frederick Bastiat's The Law, which I went looking for and read, and liked. Scouring youtube for more libertarian information resulted in me finding Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman. I watched a few episodes of Friedman's Free to Choose, read Basic Economics by Sowell, and kept looking. This lead me to The Mises Institute.

By this time I already was pretty skeptical of government, I knew that there was probably answers to "Muh Roads, policeman, courts" etc. that most minarchists claim government must provide. I knew taxation was theft from the moment I read Bastiat's passage about "legal plunder", wherein the government can do legally what the average man cannot do without committing a crime.

One day I found a video on mises.org with Jeffrey Tucker doing book reviews. I was hungry to delve further down the rabbit hole, and found Murray Rothbard to be pretty inspirational. I listened to For A New Liberty on audiobook and have never looked back! I tried to listen to Stephan Molyneux but my time was limited and he seemed to ramble. Lately, I've heard he's kind of reverted to a minarchy stance.

Outside of philosophical/political things, I enjoy games of all kinds, I have a decent board game/card game collection and enjoy mobile games, as well as retro console video games. I am married and have a daughter. I hope to provide some good content on Steem, I've never blogged before and I don't know if I have a ton to offer, but I'll try to offer something of value!