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Add an EventEverything has its cost: our time, once spent, can be bought back neither by king nor trillionaire. We give up our time for what we do not want; 10-20 years for a house, 5-10 for a car, 50-100 hours per month for food, then phone bills, utilities, holiday gifts, shopping shopping shopping. We lose years to mortgage debt, car debt, student loan debt, credit card debt. Our careers become our lives.
In exchange for lost time we reproduce ourselves as obedient laborers, our consciousness accepts the global economic system as not only necessary but good, our taxes directly fund the imperialist monstrosities of the day, while our contribution to the GDP indirectly funds them.
We aim to help you take your time back and use it as you wish, alone and together: climb mountains, infiltrate weapons manufacturer supply chains and disable them, play video games, torch heavy machinery, hop freight trains, assassinate a magnate, dance in the woods, become a cyber warrior or wanderer, touch your lovers, defend a forest, live in common, bankrupt a factory animal farm. Beyond the life of a domesticated serf is something new.
Below we offer some suggestions for escaping this domestication. Most of them require little or no resources. They come in three strategies, cunning, collectivity, and shared wealth, that each have a corresponding budget, none, low, and high.
For the shared wealth strategy, we appeal to those with money to use their wealth to free up the time of their comrades. Although it is fashionable for anarchists to pretend they come from poverty, that is most often not the case. To those with means, whether from a career, or inherited from family, spending money on infrastructure like housing and transportation can have an enduring effect: 80K to a friend might help them live for a while, but 80K on a house can help generations of anarchists live indefinitely into the future for only the cost of utilities, insurance, property taxes, and repairs.
Because most readers will not be interested in a discussion of the suggestions, we present them first, divided into categories for food, housing, transportation, and cash. At the end we discuss the three strategies, followed by a resource list.
Food
In the "US" we are lucky to have an overabundance of food, most of which comes from exploited farm workers and enslaved animals. Don't give up your valuable time for what can be had cheaply or freely. For this reason we present only no budget options. For low budget, a simple strategy is to avoid restaurants, delivery, and take-out, and instead cook collective meals whenever possible.
No budget (cunning)
-Visit Food not Bombs, food pantries, soup kitchens
-Sign up for EBT/government programs
-Dumpster dive (grocery stores, bakeries, bagel shops)
-Grab take-out orders from the free shelf
-Shop into a grocery bag in a basket or cart and then walk out with the bag
-Push a cart at a supermarket in the wealthy suburbs
Housing
Anarchists waste resources on renting or mortgaging individual or small group houses and apartments. We only help our enemies, the landlords, the real estate investment companies, and the banks, by doing this. With a bit of cunning, collectivity, and shared wealth, we can both free up our time and starve these predators.
No budget (cunning)
-Stealth camp with a backpack, sleeping bag, pad, and a tent (these can usually be stolen)
-Sleep on the streets or under bridges wherever you can
-Build a bricolage shack/lean-to/A-frame in vacant areas (woods, post-industrial zones)
-Squat an abandoned house, apartment, commercial or municipal building
-Live in a disabled car/van/bus/boat
-Use libraries, supermarkets, Walmarts, Whole Foods, chemical toilets, and other publicly accessible infrastructure for restrooms, water, electricity
-Use pools, beaches, truck stop bathrooms, recreation centers, or free gyms for showers (if you need to appear "clean")
-Use a free laundry option, find free donated clothes, or just steal clean clothes
Low budget (collectivity)
Pool a small amount of resources to
-Build a yurt/cob house/underground house with some purchased materials
-Buy and live in a semi-functional car/van/bus/boat (remember insurance, gas, repairs)
-Buy a functional but cheap shared collective house in cash
-Share a gym membership among as many people as you can get away with
High budget (shared wealth)
-Open your existing properties to trusted comrades
-Offer zero interest loans for new properties to trusted comrades
-Buy new properties for trusted comrades with a shared ownership structure
Transportation
Individual travel by car is extremely costly. Cars lose their value over time, require expensive insurance, gas, and repairs, and must be replaced after so many thousand miles. Cars also damage the global and local environments. There's almost no reason to own and operate a car just for yourself. Here's some alternatives.
No budget (cunning)
-Get a free bus/metro pass for low income people
-Hitch rides
-Get on the bus and say you forgot your money
-Hop turnstiles
-Steal a bicycle/ebike/skateboard/scooter (14" bolt cutters and a bit of scouting)
-Hop freight trains
Low budget (collectivity)
-Repair/buy a shared bicycle/ebike/skateboard/scooter
-Buy an ebike kit and retrofit a shared bicycle
-Buy tickets on public bus/metro/amtrak/Greyhound/Flixbus/Megabus
-Pool cash and buy a collective vehicle
High budget (shared wealth)
-Share your vehicles with trusted comrades
-Offer zero interest loans to help trusted comrades buy shared vehicles
Cash
Getting cash with no or minimal participation in the taxable capitalist economy is the most difficult challenge for anarchists. Below we offer some alternatives to getting a job or selling drugs. For the cunning category these tend to be the riskiest and often don't yield profit unless carefully planned. You don't make cash by going to jail and having to pay fines and restitution.
No budget (cunning)
-Spanging, busking, street performing
-Shoplift and fence it
-Get good at burglary/robbery/extortion
-Work regular a job to embezzle, scheme, or scam
-Master cybercrime
Low budget (collectivity)
-Pool cash to start an underground business critical for anarchist infrastructure (print shop, sew balaclavas, anonymous used cars)
High budget (shared wealth)
-Give cash away to trusted comrades
-Offer zero interest personal loans for trusted comrades
-Make critical infrastructure available to trusted comrades to help them get cash (printing press, sewing machine, generators, crowbars, bolt cutters, getaway cars, bombs, guns)
-Use wealth/connections to infiltrate arenas of power, attract other wealthy people, do industrial espionage, blackmail, embezzle
A short discussion of each of the strategies
Cunning
The strength of the cunning approach is that anyone can do it, it requires no financial resources, and tends to damage our enemies every day, even if just a little bit. The drawback is, of course, getting caught. Catching a charge means lost time and paying bail. Getting convicted could mean prison time, a record that makes future convictions worse, and likely having to pay fines and restitution. Freeing up time using the cunning strategy requires being very careful to not get caught, practicing and perfecting tactics in low stakes environments, and helping comrades with bail and court support when things go wrong.
Collectivity
Collectivity has both financial and social benefits. We start with financial.
Housing and transportation have much more fixed than variable costs. A fixed cost is the cost to access something, regardless of how much is used. Water access for a house might be $30/month, meaning even if the household uses no water, it still costs $30/month. Variable costs increase with use. Each person might use 40 gallons of water per day, leading to about $50/month per person.
Consider buying a 3 bedroom 2 full bath house. The fixed costs might include a mortgage of $2,000/month, insurance ($150/month), property taxes ($500/month), and the fixed component of water, sewage, electricty, internet, and heat (assume each $50/month). The total is $2,900 in fixed costs per month.
Assume another $50/month in variable costs for each utility per person except internet and heat (which generally work for the whole house), giving $150/person/month.
The total (fixed + variable) cost/month and cost/person/month would then be:
1 person: total/month: $3050, cost/person/month $3050
2 people: total/month: $3200, cost/person/month $1600
3 people: total/month: $3350, cost/person/month $1117
4 people: total/month: $3500, cost/person/month $875
5 people: total/month: $3650, cost/person/month $730
6 people: total/month: $3800, cost/person/month $633
Because most of the costs are fixed, the cost/person/month is only slightly larger than the cost for 1 person divided by the number of people.
Consider how much money is saved for these 6 people by living collectively. With all 6 living together their total housing cost per month is $3,800. If they had each bought a separate house, the total cost would be $21,000 per month! What a massive waste of our time! Of course, for separate houses maybe each individual could buy a smaller house and make those numbers closer, and one must also consider whether there is enough space and bathrooms for all the people (1 full bath for up to 5 people has worked in the past), but there would still be a large gap.
The same arguments apply for vehicles: there is a large benefit of collectivity because the variable costs of fuel and repairs are small relative to the fixed costs of the vehicle and insurance.
In addition to the financial benefits, the social benefits of collectivity come from improvements to our lives and the development of new social relations. Meals are best enjoyed with our loved ones, in chorus combined over dregs of wine (or non-alcoholic beverage of your choice). Conversations, discussions, debates, dancing, singing, playing music, hiking, biking, sabotaging, rioting, whatever you wish. Doing these things together brings joys that cannot be had alone. They also require us to think about the feelings, desires, and needs of others, to address conflicts and come up with mutually beneficial solutions, and to coordinate, cooperate, and collaborate. Nothing is more of a motivator to fight than standing up for your loved ones, and no group of fighters is more powerful than those who regularly communicate, coordinate, and experience joy together.
Collectivity brings joy to our lives and makes us better at what we do together. If we please, we may eat together, dwell together, travel together, fight together, share wealth and resources together. This togetherness is a skill that we have lost, the inevitable result of a social-economic system based on the single family house, the deed, the title, the personal loan.
Shared Wealth
Aside from finding a wealthy and willing friend, the biggest challenges to the shared wealth approach are wealthy people having connections with people that they trust enough to use the shared wealth responsibly, and coming up with mechanisms for sharing wealth that don't constrain and destroy social relationships. The old adage never do business with friends or family is appropriate; relationships are often strained or broken when money is involved. Without awareness of this and care, comradery and class collaboration will dissolve.
We suggest that those with wealth, or those with enough extra resources to pool and make available to others, offer revolving-door zero interest loans to trusted comrades for housing and transportation. This has the effect of redistributing centralized capital to those who are willing to assume responsibility and put in a little effort, which makes sense, as those who aren't would do better with the no budget options anyway.
You might be asking, rightly, why create a loan system rather than just give money away? First there is the trivial problem that every oogle will demand as much money as possible and immediately kill themselves with drugs/tobacco/alcohol. All except the billionaires will quickly and unintentionally spend their resources on anarcho mass graves. Second, there's something about having to put in a little effort, paying back the loan, that makes people care more about what they are getting. And further, with a gift there's no guarantee that the recipient will do the same for others, using any wealth that they accumulate to help comrades free up their time. The revolving door loan system replenishes the wealth so that every dollar used to free up the time of some comrades can be used in the future to free up the time of others.
The downside is that loans involve significant control, frustration, and possibly the loss of friendships. If someone is believed to be trustworthy but fails to pay back, or is constantly making excuses about why they can't pay back, or blowing their money and getting into other types of debt (which is totally against the spirit of the project), then the benevolent benefactor must choose whether to forgive the loan (and have it just be a gift) or fight (turning a benefactor into a loan shark). Alternatively, if someone offering the loan is constantly making new demands, changing the goalposts, and using cash to control and manipulate others, then anarchists would do better without wealth that comes with strings attached. There's no easy answer here, but it's probably worthwhile to experiment with many different mechanisms of sharing wealth (gifts, loans, other ideas).
You must always remember that by giving someone a loan, or accepting it, the relationship is irreversibly altered, and there is a good chance of losing the friendship. This risk must be worth it. If possible, the better option is almost always doing without money: what can be had with cunning will free up more of your time, and create less social conflict, than what can be paid for with money.
Time with Friends
With free time comes the opportunity to spend time with friends, doing as we wish. The more easily we can reproduce ourselves, meeting our basic survival needs for food, shelter, and transportation, the more easily we can help friends join our path. Without this, friends will gradually leave because their basic needs cannot be met, including needs beyond those covered here, for example healthy social and sexual relationships. If there are no prospects for meeting those basic needs, for every new friend made between sets at the renegade, two will be lost. These two aspects, the retention factor (probability of an existing friend staying), and replication factor (number of new friends who join us for each friend that joins us), determine whether the group grows and flourishes or shrinks and decays. We hope that these resources help both you, and people who you love to spend time with, free up your time, grow, and flourish.
Resources
We cannot give sufficient detail about how to do everything listed above, and we wouldn't want to anyway, because that would take the innovation (and fun) out of the discovery process. Yet learning from the successes and mistakes of others is one of the most important ways of saving our time. For this reason we list some resources below that might help you and your comrades along your path of temporal liberation. Those that focus on cleanliness are only relevant if you find it useful to fit into normal society.
General
https://stealthiswiki.com/special/index
https://ia801200.us.archive.org/15/items/militia_training_book_collection/Rough_Living.pdf
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-evasion
Food
No budget (cunning)
-Visit Food not Bombs, food pantries, soup kitchens
https://foodnotbombs.net/info/locations/
https://www.foodpantries.org/
-Sign up for EBT/government programs
https://www.usa.gov/food-stamps
https://www.nutrition.gov/topics/food-security-and-access/food-assistance-programs
-Dumpster dive (grocery stores, bakeries, bagel shops)
https://trashwiki.org/en/Main_Page
https://www.dumpstermap.org/page/about
https://www.reddit.com/r/DumpsterDiving/
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-evasion#toc2
-Grab take-out orders from the free shelf
Chipotle has a serious problem with people stealing the mobile/to-go orders
byu/dopedopedope50 inChipotle
-Shop into a grocery bag in a basket or cart and then walk out with the bag/Push a cart at a supermarket in the wealthy suburbs
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-steal-meat-be-a-kleptitarian-1#toc8
Housing
No budget (cunning)
-Stealth camp with a backpack, sleeping bag, pad, and a tent (these can usually be stolen)
Stealth Camping: A Complete Guide + 31 Tips For Your Next Trip
-Sleep on the streets or under bridges wherever you can
-Build a bricolage shack/lean-to/A-frame in vacant areas (woods, post-industrial zones)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/destroy-a-nihilist-understanding-of-social-war#toc5
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bushcraft/
https://ia804601.us.archive.org/26/items/survival-technique/Bushcraft%20101_%20A%20Field%20Guide%20to%20the%20Art%20of%20Wilderness%20Survival%20%28%20PDFDrive%20%29.pdf/
-Squat an abandoned house, apartment, commercial or municipal building
https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/direct-action/its-vacant-take-it/
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chimney-swift-raven-the-art-of-staying-in-limbo
https://stealthiswiki.com/library/free-land
https://en.squat.net/
-Live in a disabled car/van/bus/boat
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/moxie-marlinspike-the-promise-of-defeat
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-evasion#toc1
https://stealthiswiki.com/library/cars#toc19
-Use libraries, supermarkets, Walmarts, Whole Foods, chemical toilets, and other publicly accessible infrastructure for restrooms, water, electricity
Public Restrooms and personal cleanliness (Advice)
byu/johndoe_detroit inhomeless
-Use pools, beaches, truck stop bathrooms, recreation centers, or free gyms for showers (if you need to appear "clean")
https://publicshower.directory/
-Use a free laundry option, find free donated clothes, or just steal new clothes
Low budget (collectivity)
Pool a small amount of resources to
-Build a yurt/cob house/underground house with some purchased materials
https://www.instagram.com/ayu_mpls/p/C2GpeQSsxv6/?img_index=1
https://www.instagram.com/ayu_mpls/p/C87B4CVMwae/?img_index=1
https://www.motherearthnews.com/sustainable-living/green-homes/cob-building-basics-zm0z13onzrob/
https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Ecological_Building/The_$50_and_up_Underground_House_Book.pdf
-Buy and live in a semi-functional car/van/bus/boat (remember insurance, gas, repairs)
https://stealthiswiki.com/library/cars
https://stealthiswiki.com/library/sail-away
-Buy a functional but cheap shared collective house in cash
https://www.cltweb.org/what-is-a-community-land-trust/ (not endorsing CLT, but should be aware)
-Share a gym membership among as many people as you can get away with
High budget (shared wealth)
-Open your existing properties to trusted comrades
-Offer zero interest loans for new properties to trusted comrades
*You can do cash but also consider using a line of credit to give a loan. For example, a securities backed line of credit or home equity line of credit can allow you to hold onto assets while paying just the interest. Beware of gift taxes if you are going to do it legitimately.
https://www.fidelity.com/lending/securities-backed-line-of-credit
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/home-equity/what-is-a-home-equity-line-of-credit/
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/frequently-asked-questions-on-gift-taxes
-Buy new properties for trusted comrades with a shared ownership structure
*See ownership ideas in collective housing section (or come up with your own). Can also use line of credit instead of cash. Also beware of gift tax.
Transportation
No budget (cunning)
-Get a free bus/metro pass for low income people
-Hitch rides
https://hitchmap.com/
https://hitchwiki.org/en/Main_Page
https://www.reddit.com/r/hitchhiking/
-Get on the bus and say you forgot your money
-Hop turnstiles
-Steal a bicycle/ebike/skateboard/scooter (14" bolt cutters and a bit of scouting)
Former Thief Interviewed: How Does Bike Stealing Actually Work?
-Hop freight trains
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-ridin-dirty-a-basic-reference-for-freight-hopping
Low budget (collectivity)
-Repair/buy a shared bicycle/ebike/skateboard/scooter
https://solarpunktravel.org/bike-coop-map.html
-Buy an ebike kit and retrofit a shared bicycle
-Tickets on public bus/metro/amtrak/Greyhound/Flixbus/Megabus
-Pool cash and buy a collective vehicle
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/sharing-car-with-friends-neighbors
High budget (shared wealth)
-Share your vehicles with trusted comrades
-Offer zero interest loans to help trusted comrades buy shared vehicles
*Line of credit and gift tax issues previously mentioned apply here.
Cash
No budget (cunning)
-Spanging, busking, street performing
https://www.reddit.com/r/Busking/
-Shoplift and fence it
*Take your time getting good at shoplifting first, starting small. Fences can be found through friends with eBay accounts in good standing or searching Craigslist wanted ads for people who are looking for stuff to sell on eBay. You can also sell stuff yourself on eBay, FB Marketplace, Craigslist, OfferUp. Be careful to not be too obvious.
-Get good at burglary/robbery/extortion
https://ia800304.us.archive.org/4/items/criminal-guides-and-manuals/Manaugh_Geoff_A_Burglar%27s_Guide_to_the_City%20%20.pdf
-Work regular a job to embezzle, scheme, or scam
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-get-a-job
-Master cybercrime
https://www.hackthebox.com/
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/subcowmandante-marcos-hack-back
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/phineas-fisher-hackback-a-diy-guide-i
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/phineas-fisher-hackback-a-diy-guide-ii
Low budget (collectivity)
-Pool cash to start an underground business critical for anarchist infrastructure (print shop, sew balaclavas, anonymous used cars)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wolfi-landstreicher-against-the-logic-of-submission#toc12
High budget (shared wealth)
-Give cash away to trusted comrades
*Gift tax applies here.
-Offer zero interest personal loans for trusted comrades
*Gift tax and line of credit information apply here.
-Make critical infrastructure available to trusted comrades to help them get cash (printing press, sewing machine, generators, crowbars, bolt cutters, getaway cars, bombs, guns)
-Use wealth/connections to infiltrate arenas of power, attract other wealthy people, do industrial espionage, blackmail, embezzle
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mikhail-bakunin-letter-to-sergey-nechayev
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