Anarchists have apparently decided that fixing potholes themselves is better than waiting for the city of Portland, Oregon to do it.  This is music to many people’s ears, mine included, and for me that’s because it confirms one of my arguments in favor of what I have come to call “self-issued currency” about which I have of course written many times.  I have not published much about this particular argument here on Liberty Road Media, but I have written about it in my forthcoming book on the subject, and this story of pothole-fixing anarchists provides the perfect opportunity to air this argument/theory publicly.

The purpose of this argument is to counter those detractors of the self-issued currency idea who typically will ask something along the lines of “If every individual can create the national currency in unlimited amounts, what will be the incentive for them to work, particularly at unpleasant or difficult—but necessary—tasks?”

In Portland, as we can see, simply being able to drive on smooth public roads is incentive and compensation enough to motivate these anarchists   This is but one example of how society could work going forward in a system of self-issued currency, in which profit is not measured in dollars and cents, but is measured in actual profit of being able to live in a well-functioning, cooperative society.  Believe it or not, there are people who like patching potholes, plumbing, math, housework, picking up trash, mending fences, digging ditches, and insert-unpleasant-task-here.  In a society of self-issued currency, the incentive to get these things done will be to get these things done, not to be paid a salary of imaginary, arbitrary government chits whose only real value is to pay the taxman and to control the wage slaves.