Mike Gogulski Renouncing privilege and fake solidarity: 595-12-5274

This article was originally published on 9 May 2009 by Mike Gogulski at NoState.com

About a week ago I scanned my US Social Security card and published the images online, inviting readers to “steal” the number — as if numbers could really be owned, anyway.

In that posting I didn’t really give any reasons for doing it. Some looked at it as an act of pure anarchy, others looked at it as sheer insanity, and I was even accused of “aiding and abetting” “illegal” “aliens” who might use the number in the United States.

Now I’ll tell y’all why I done did it.

First of all, I’m going to burn the card later this year. That event is postponed until I, card and fire are in front of a camera suitable for making YouTube videos. So you can consider the posting just a teaser for the main event.

Second, and more importantly, I have resolved that I will never accept payments from Social Security, or any other state pension scheme.

Now, maybe you’re saying, “Eh, you’re not even a citizen any more anyway, so you lost that!” Not true. Citizenship has no bearing on “benefits” eligibility.

Or, you might be saying, “But you could at least take back what was stolen from you in taxes!” Not true either.

Given how Social Security is structured, what was stolen from me in taxes will always be stolen. It cannot reasonably be reclaimed, since it’s already been redistributed to millions of other people. Despite the fact that many Americans receive regular Social Security “statements” which twist language to make it appear that contributors have “invested” something, there is no investment. There are only ledger entries made, accruing future privileges to be delivered via robbing future workers.

The money that was taken from me in Social Security taxes between 1987 and 2003 is effectively gone. I cannot justify taking a Social Security pension twenty years from now in order to reclaim those funds, because to do so would be to support a system that will steal anew from other people in order to pay me. The notion of rightly getting back what you put into such a program is fallacious.

A Social Security pension — or any other state-funded pension program of the type — is a product of legal privilege. If I were to go out and rob a few million peaceful people in order to fund my retirement, civil society would rightly call me a criminal. The machinery of the state — or, even, a free people — would descend upon me to stop my crime, punish me, and perhaps attempt to make restitution to the victims.

When the state goes out and robs millions in order to fund people’s retirement pensions, the robbery is sanctified. It’s called “solidarity” or “the social contract” or other similar nonsense.

Marxists sometimes criticize what they call “capitalism” for “atomizing” society, for driving divisions between people and breaking the bonds of true solidarity which hold communities and societies together. But what could be more atomizing than a state pension system that says, “submit to robbery while you are young, so that you can enjoy the privilege of benefiting from robbery when you are old”?

No thanks. I’d prefer real solidarity. And given the choice between fake solidarity which supports the state’s privileged robbery and the real solidarity which must be expressed by each individual volunteering to support those worse off, I’ll choose the latter. Even if doing so means living in poverty at the end of my days.

Anyone who wants to fund my retirement — or, during this crisis, my living expenses — is warmly invited to do so by clicking “Support nostate.com”. Real solidarity is welcome. I won’t have any of the fake.

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