TOTW: Money trouble

So, you're not a millionaire, you can't buy half a house, but you're not skint anymore.

I imagine there are at least a few anarchists out there who are relatively used to substantial amounts of money in bank accounts. Perhaps there are even a few more on top who actually know how to utilize the numerical pixels without the deleterious headfuck. I have never had either experience as an anarchist; That is, until now.

It's a baneful feeling for me, as it has taken the deaths of both my parents within 6 months for the status quo to take a big magical fiat dump on my pretensions. Sure, a little bit of money gets me a new pair of reading glasses and the prospect of getting my teeth fixed, but I have much beyond a flash amp and a stupidly priced guitar. Maybe you have a grander plan that doesn't include resorting to recursive money wank.

This topic of the week is an expedition for me. Despite the radical isms that surround me, it is to my poverty that there are few within my direct milieu who are not seduced by the comfort and rot of prevailing Liberal and middle-class fairy tales. I am very much tempted to deprive this bunch of arseholes of an arsehole, and parachute my loaded butt-cheeks onto another more "worthy" ecology.

I don't know what to do with all this dough. I'm worn down.

What would you do?


*Thanks to Anonymous for this Topic of the Week guest submission. To submit a future TOTW, email thecollective [at] anarchistnews [dot] org!

There are 60 Comments

Buy a space to make a project that builds our infrastructure, together with your crew and dispossessed peoples. Collectivise it to the best of your ability. Make cool stuff happen.

Hope you're ok about what happened with your parents.

yes, every rando just happens to have a crew and a dispossessed peoples to make it rain upon. collectivise the flex.

If you don't have a crew, then that can be step one. Isn't it always?

Anyway I wasn't talking generally, I did assume the person who posted this has a crew.

lets breakdown the bad faith criticism for fun and to save time!

1. assuming we have friends ASSHOLE, fuck you for assuming that and no, obviously we won't fix it by being more charming.

2. where are we supposed to find work that needs doing or people that need help? WHERE I ASK YOU?!

the missionaries of charity, the red-caped (or orange, in the comment above yours) do-gooders, small scale philanthropists, like Bill Gates, but broke

if op had friends, maybe they’d ask them, instead of asking anons, talk about last-ditch bottom-of-the-barrel resort

if op wanted to do charitable work, they wouldn’t be asking, since like you said, many charity cases abound

Something I always wanted to do:

Building a network of humans that share resources with each other.
The network is big enough so that it can fulfil the basic needs of anyone that participates.
People within the network don't sell to others that are part of the network, since this would encourage the counterpart to do the same to others. Basically trying to break the circle of reciprocity.
So basically getting some houses, some land for food, tools that can be used to build and repair stuff, something that helps people of they are sick (maybe some medics)...etc.
(And nope, not just with cash, you only use cash where it seems to difficult other wise)

What is it that we "all" "need" money?
Basically break that concept and build something new.

you can’t “build” a “network” of “humans”. you think you can just plug an ethernet cable up people’s ass? who even speaks like this? a robot alien from another galaxy?

do you mean “meet people”, “make friends”? yes, money may buy gas and bus fare to get around and meet people, and time off work to spend on that.

No I don't meen just meeting people and making friends.
With network I mean people who have a significant higher connection rate towards each other. Meaning more of those people, know more of those people being part, but it's not a collective neither is it a circle of friends.

Give me a word that suits better, and I gonna use that.

i would use it to start a land project. get a land tax exemption by starting a non profit and then buy some land and start a food forest on it. check out 'a forest garden primer' from backwoods on the anarchist library.

the prompt says not enough money to buy half a house. so you think this money can buy enough land to build what? a shed? THE PEOPLE’S SHED. THE PEOPLE’S BIKE RACK.

i’d save it for a medical emergency. maybe split the savings between a checking account, a savings deposits account, a mutual fund. buy a bitcoin or something like that to sell later. maybe consider moving to a place where cost of life is cheaper to make money last longer, and maybe this place has a milieu that is not the middle class trap you’re trying to avoid/escape.

Gotta say, if your goal is the overthrow of cisheteropatriarchicalracistcapitalism then investing in its prolongation seems counterproductive.

overthrow is a verb that doesn’t fit with that mishmash of analytical spooks of limited utility. money is a more immediately useful spook. if your goal is subversion, you can research what gives you the most bang for your buck, literally. set the plan in motion to go out with the bang once the money and the joy ride runs out.

Money is useful in *this* world, tis true.
Me, I want to destroy *this* world, not invest in it, however short-term that investment may be.

i agree. however, every time you buy a gallon of gas or a pound of coffee, you are investing in the perpetuation of *this* world.

idealism + pragmatism = ... fuck isms

Yes all bad things are bad in exactly the same way, everyone knows this.

i would start with asking yourself what are your core values and how you can put them into action. everyone will have a different answer. i find myself in a similar place (more money than i am used to, but not enough to buy a house or land). for myself it means being able to pay rent for a couple of years while i devote myself to full time forest defense. for someone else maybe it means opening an infoshop or making art or taking /giving skill share classes or starting a mutual aid project. etc. or even just having the chance to spend time to listen to what your soul is calling you to do with your time on the planet. most importantly use the opportunity to grow and give back to the world.

^gotta second this. I mean "open an infoshop", really? those things couldn't cover their own costs in the rental market of the 90s

I have run the projections and I can say with certainty that if we merge our Midi-chlorians ;-) the resultant Little Center for Stateless Black Cart Society will become an unstoppable to spread anarchy through the realm. What say you, chisel?

It is not a typo. *Force is always present.
Everybody knows this.

true! but then I only need a crowbar and some scrap lumber? so I guess chisel says you should buy everyone crowbars?

actually don't pay for those either ... this question is hard cuz anarchy was designed for broke people

yes, this is true. money is for surviving in capitalism, anarchy is free (as in both beer and freedom!)

Use your newfound wealth to humblebrag and dunk on destitute people on anews

I’m very sorry to hear about your parents. My two cents would be to get those reading glasses, but maybe also a sweet pair of sunglasses and get the teeth fixed. Buy a boat, sail across the ocean, and pick me up.

Other anarchist stronks in the comments above have mentioned starting like a savings account and bank stuff like that, but like inflation is pretty much savings account (and less!). Back in like 2010, Anokchan was talking about anarchists buying Bitcoin. Flash forward to the crypto-currency world of 2022. I think this seems like the easiest legal anarchist get rich with a little investment nowadays, although very risky. Signal just came out with way to send anonymous money around the world via their messaging app in form of MobileCoin. Monero is very privacy focused, butt-cheeks parachute dropped on me I might settle for some Cardano.
- part-time nihilism

I mean, yeah, if an anarchist had put $7000 into a few cryptos like Cardano and Solana a year ago they would have enough money now to out-right buy their land project if they cashed out the coins. But good luck evading taxes; proof-of-stake blockchains like those mentioned above use much less energy but also don't have any of the fundamental privacy of Monero (mentioned above) or covert bitcoin tx. In short, crypto could supercharge the funding of anarchist activities, but would likely be a victim of their own success if they ever graduated from gadfly status to full-blown threat. A $100k warchest for anarchists in an ETH or ADA wallet would likely be a juicy target for cyber-counter-insurgency ops.

You can't totally trust crypto to be safe enough on their own, but applying this type of multilayered anonymizing exchange that prevents from backtracking, your crypto money account becomes impossible to crack.

'member Al-Taqwa Bank? The entire US intel weren't able to track down their paper trail, despite freezing their activities for roughly 10 years, and there was no crypto around back then. Everybody knows they've been financing Islamist groups including jihadists, but no one could find out who was paying who, or even if there were exchanges, coz the money was being sent through downstream payments, across layers of IOUs, proxies and offline channels.

I agree with getting your glasses and getting your teeth fixed. You can't really help anyone else if you are also still in need.
Other than that my suggestions are, tip generously if you have the opportunity, give when asked by strangers on the street, give to a friend to get their zine printed.

I don't know. Throw a huge party, if that's your thing, because when you get down to it who knows what sort of time frame we're looking at here. This (gestures at everything) could all go sideways tomorrow.

New glasses, new teeth, a campervan and a deckchair. Tour the coast eating ice cream. Wear a hankie on your head like Steve Jones. Every Brit's dream.

What not to do: buy a drinking problem, buy shiny shit, buy 'a new life for yourself abroad' etc. If somewhere catches your eye on your magical mystery tour then consider planting your boots in a new locale, but otherwise one place is as good as another. For now.

See you on the road!

If you are not stuck in one location for some reason, then I recommend traveling the world. Go visit different countries that you know little to nothing about. Learn new things, meet new people and have new experiences.

That is a privileged yuppyesque activity, even backpackers I have seen are all bourgeois enough to afford airfairs and stay at secure hostels. Real anarch travellers hitchhike and sleep in hedgerows and old barns, and if lucky get some menial work and a foam matress in a storage room, and have to urinate into plastic bottles, and eat out of dumpsters, like hobos and lumps used to do etc!

speaking as a lump, piss jugs are fukin gross and only longhaul truck driving or extreme winter conditions justify them, otherwise wtf is wrong with you? just piss outside like literally everyone for millions of years! and this is a proud scumbag hobo saying this!

Agreed, and also, you walk the walk and talk the talk, because you have actually lived outside of the capitalists money in the harshest environment with the least services. Bravo true anarchist Lumpy!

This is gonna hurt me as much as it does you, but there's nothing noble or heroic about being a hobo, its only the culmination of having ressentiment coalescing into a negative contrarian lifestyle out of rejection and stubbornness.

yo lumps, you ever had to go outside to piss at 2am when it is 40 below zero farenheit? i bet you'd prefer a piss jug. i speak from many years of experience.

yo, not lumps but here to point out that you’re illiterate because:

“… and only longhaul truck driving or extreme winter conditions justify them” —lumps

hey, my reading comprehension drops right off when my stream freezes in midair too

i've thought more about this and i think maybe the entire course of my destiny was altered by piss jugs, ya know? like, thats when my hobo resolve cracked. i like hot showers too. BECAUSE I'M WEAK

With a well piss crafted jug and a strong enough hobo resolve you can urinate indoors AND have a hot shower via the same device AT THE SAME TIME. Reclaim your anarch hoboness, lumpy!

It's true. Urine is sterile and is quite an excellent medium for cleaning the body. Until very recently all humans bathed in a combination of urine and whatever local aromatics the region provided. Capitalism and Christian morality changed all of this. Look it up.

I equally inherited a substantial sum from the death of a parent, but can't make sense out of living like some richer guy, I tried it, in a rather poor country for a while, but it's meaningless living for me. I'll stick to my looter/dumpsterer/squatter/free-sharer ways as they're the only ones that ever made sense for a personal and also ideally interpersonal existence in this world.

So what I'd prefer is that we'd set up a kind of Bandits Guild that could work as a kind of cult or secret society, where we could pool some of our personal funds into, as well as all the loot, so we can all equally (at least those in the cult) live like billionaires and chill out on the Med and invite celebs to our parties, lol Wild fantasies but not that impracticable, no? As for many things we just gotta start somewhere... There's been a few attempts lately at an anarchist fund, tho not sure whatever happened with those, and let's say there's a lot of potential for same-old extortion in here if the means of exchange and trust-building aren't well set up.

As of now, the closest places to this anarchist got are squats. Tho squats are famous for actually not needing money, and helping their occupants at removing the need for money.

Sorry for you loss. This is very Primal Anarchist thinking.
I don’t want to go into details, but if you can help, I’d appreciate it.
Cashapp: $blackandgreenpress
PayPal: blackandgreen
Thank you.

Missed one line where I say: "there's a lot of potential for same-old extortion in here if the means of exchange and trust-building aren't well set up."

If you were serious...

Cashapp for international payments only works in the UK.

Paypal are

1- frauds. Very unreliable service with a huge record of holding back funds for whatever "technical" reasons. If you didn't had problems with it before that's cool, but thousands other people did, and you never know when a lil hidden policy change will affect your withdrayals.

2- the police. You can't avoid their records of freezing assets to some activists, but that's only the tip of the iceberg where they just collect very personal data on users and send it to the cops.

Don't tell me there's no other options.

Also this is the internet. So call me an idiot, but there's no *external* way here to tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

Thanks, El-Fauv.
Your donations are appreciated.
Black and Green Press would like to work with you on a piece we're doing detailing the lives of wealthy anarchist tramps with Primal Anarchy tendencies. If interested send an email to kev @ blackandgreenpress . org with the subject line, "primal wealth" and we'll let you know next steps.
As Anarchists we know the shortcomings of Cyber donation systems but for reasons we won't go into we still use them all. So in addition to the others we give you more options you might be more comfortable using including Venmo and Patreon.
Thank you for your support it truly helps us do our important anti-civilization and Primal Anarchist work.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/kevintucker
Venmo.com/blackandgreen
Cashapp: $blackandgreenpress
PayPal: blackandgreen

Didn't get the KT joke at first.

Your sins... are forgiven.

No joke, brother.
Donations of any amount are greatly appreciated and will allow for more Primal Anarchy content.
Thank you.

Fool me once, shame on you... There's no second one coz I know how a lot about Muhricans.

Thecollective, for the sake of quality vs quantity, feel free to remove the whole useless chain of comments (including mine) that started with that KT trolling at 00:00. That last one above also has way too many soft typos for being even readable.

I will try not taking the bait next time there's our usual hater troll around.

aw come on, "primal wealth" is funny. give that scum sucking little troll the few splatters of scum worth of credit that they live to suck.
credit where it's due!

Just for the record if living with chronic, debilitating pain makes me scum sucker then so be it.

To the rest of my Primal homies thank you for your continued donations. We've almost reached our Monthly Prim(al)ary Goal! We're going to do another hard fundraising push because the propane cost here during the winter is BS!

Get pumped! We got this!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/kevintucker
Venmo.com/blackandgreen
Cashapp: $blackandgreenpress
PayPal: blackandgreen

#landback
#PrimalAnarchy
#greenanticolonialism

I'm an anarchist film maker thinking of breaking into the domestic tv market by making a reality show called The Real Anarchist Husbands of The Bay Area. It would be a great advertisement for the anarchist cause and produce alot of positive PR. Would you be interested in going into business with me and funding the production of my show. I've got intellectual ownership of the name and concept because its a guaranteed hit which could possibly have great international demand, especially from Greece, Spain and Rojava.

buy many domains and resell or use them to host websites (on your own servers) that give redundancy to those that may be targeted and taken down

or buy and hoard scarce things that may run out (cocoa? coffee? wine? helium? rosewood?). scalp and flip

or buy a food truck or ice cream cart for a food not bombs or something like that or distro on wheels

or host a giant super spreader event underground rave

buy various yearly vpn subscriptions, try them all out, see which one you like best

some lifetime membership or something, something with perks or economy of scale or bulk or tiers idunno

pay for classes and course like dancing lessons or martial arts or trainings in cool shit, or useless ego boosting certificates, forklift certified, realtor license, something IT related

uh buy insurance maybe, for postal room

My condolences.

We could use it. Not everyone gets to live in trees. Some of us are ground support. gotta stay in motels or buy good tents. Travel expenses cost mucho dinero. No planes for me, but trains and buses take a while and are not cheap. The earth groans under the weight of the dilettantes and social justice arsonists so we old school defenders of the wild need to stay on the move, evading the feds and helping out where we can. Forget EF!. Clusterfuck of a disorganization now. The lone wolves of earth liberation are on the job.

But where?

I throw a few thousands down some caches or in water-sealed bag in a river across border so you can pick them up and get some dick coke? That's not how insurgent funding's supposed to work...

Instead, you gotta set up a crowd-funding scheme over .onions that's using Monero and a gradual approval system that prevents funds being sent to the wrong people. I'm not fond of coding so that'd be up to those who're into it.

Glad you asked. You can donate to Earth Defense at:

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/kevintucker
Venmo.com/blackandgreen
Cashapp: $blackandgreenpress
PayPal: blackandgreen

#landback
#PrimalAnarchy
#greenanticolonialism
#EarthDefense
#trees

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