Let's clear things up

[Ellen Stuttle]

June 22, 2007 - Wolf on his multiplicity of experiences:

Let's speak candidly about pleasure (having a good time). Allowing for individual taste and constitutional deficits, it remains that travel will broaden your understanding of pleasure. It may be enough to relocate and work in two dozen US states and foreign countries, as I have. But what matters most is society. I learned a great deal in prison, for instance; adventure is infinite opportunity to discover pain.

I've also dined with princes, poets, and A-list Hollywood superstars. I met Mrs Thatcher and watched her interact with Bush Sr and Helmut Kohl at a NATO summit. I've been married four times and held children and grandchildren in my arms. I've also been cheated, jilted, slandered, sandbagged, and threatened with death (by guys who really meant it). The goal of freedom in the widest sense is to integrate and transcend each experience and to go forward, unchained, unbroken.

It is altogether too easy to get stuck in an emotional groove. The ultimate tyranny is habit nestled in parochial expectation. The Unknown is supposed to be unexpected, by definition. Remaining in your familiar sandbox is risk-averse. You have to go to grow. Exploration is a transformative challenge, and it has little to do with "liking" or "disliking" anything.

W.

--

July 4, 2014 - excerpts from an article about "living free":

Lawyers, Guns and Money

anti-state.com

by Wolf DeVoon

5/11/2005

Living free has its awkwardnesses. It offers almost zero leverage to project power and influence. No power to raise an army. Insufficient influence to force a billion Catholics to utter slightly different magic words.

Freemen tend to be loners, living on the margins of society by choice or side-constraint. If you don't file tax returns, it's red flag scary to have W-2 employment. If you speak your mind in public and mention the right to resist tyranny, please do so with both eyes wide open, alert to the consequences. [....]

Hence, a hefty majority of pleasure seekers worldwide prefer the Me Generation tactic of selling one's mind and body wholesale to gain a sizable pot of plunder by fair means or foul, supposedly to bask in the lap of liberty later on as a retired recluse who likes to prune roses. Go in peace asshole and sin no more, that's the philistine fantasy of redemption as if delayed gratification will automatically absolve all guilt, no matter how personally reptilean or complicit one was in maintaining the state (U.S., U.K., P.R.C., Russia, etc).

Redemption doesn't work that way in reality. Once an asshole, always an asshole. I've seen them by the jetload in Costa Rica. Made a pile of money working construction or in real estate or dope dealing with a Top Secret security clearance now pretending to be Average Joe Nice Guys, no different than anyone else, except they have a couple million bulging in their back pockets and a cyclone fence topped with razor wire around Home Sweet Fortress, a hilltop bunker overlooking the Pacific that they never feel quite free enough to exit for a breath of conversational fresh air. It's so-o-o much easier and less threatening to hire a squad of hapless, interchangeable whores to boss around the kitchen and poolside.

[....]

Look, let's cut to the chase, shall we? Whether rationally or in defiance of an uncomfortable truth, you have chosen (or are perhaps considering) a fugitive's life, perpetually on the run, an outlaw by definition as an anarchist. That's not the sort of thing one does on weekends for fun, while working 9 to 5 as a hamburger flipper for Homeland Security.

The learning curve is so steep that few can succeed as Permanent Tourists, like vagabonds of old. There are very, very few opportunities for advancement unless you master offshore banking and the arcane science of anonymous proxies. Hawala is strictly a family business, so don't ask where you can get started. You can't. And steer clear of those well-intentioned barter exchanges. Don't put your name on anything. Don't join anything. Go underground ASAP and get to know some real anarchists the criminals who contradict government 24-7 as a career. They'll show you how to get alternate identity papers. They'll teach you life on life's terms, after which it's a good idea to exit stage left. Quietly use that new birth certificate and relocate, preferably with a new hairstyle and new shoes.

[....]

The purpose of market anarchism is moral freedom. What you do with that freedom is a personal and individual headache. Consorting with criminals for a time usually persuades sensible people to try another career path. But clinging to old cronies, parents, church elders and holy writs is absolutely toxic to moral freedom. For 30 years or so I was an Objectivist, although excommunicated several times starting in 1973 when Rand ordered my name struck from The Ayn Rand Letter subscriber list. A "student of Objectivism" in good standing is akin to being an Amish female. You can't question the Good Book or the Big Cheese too openly or, like archangel Lucifer, you'll be summarily banished from further contact with the elect.

I bring this up to emphasize the importance of looking beyond the canon of history, however wonderfully enlightened our forefathers and mothers were. Moral freedom and market anarchism exist for the valhalla of fresh discovery. The implicit goal of Liberty, for all concerned including the least privileged, is to glimpse a vista Unknown to others.

[....] As an anarchist, you're 100% prequalified to help search out strange new worlds, perhaps build one as a test. Our team built a humdinger. Took seven years and $7 million, attracting three hundred participants on six continents. Now it's your turn at the helm of history.

[....]

Crime is not unique. Freedom philosophy already has a pantheon of honored heroes and heroines, plenty of precedent so, moral freedom is meaningless if you wobble along the tried and true NAP libertarian path. There is an anecdote I trundle out on such occasions. Tibor Machan was lounging on my patio, getting hot under the collar, and suddenly thundered: "It's important to be right!" to which I replied: "It's more important to be original."

This being the case, I recommend some handy travel accessories. Look for a good lawyer. I have three and I'm always hunting for more. [....]

You'll also need a gun from time to time. [....]

Lastly, put some money aside for emergencies. A few thousand bucks on a debit card is enough. Try not to spend it. Wherever you go in life, whatever project you find yourself creating, make sure that it's a paying proposition right from jump street. Don't touch your reserve fund, the sole purpose of which is to ameliorate a genuine emergency. I've had several such emergencies. In Central Java, I had to rescue two damsels and myself on expired visas. In Holland, a big project (my first feature) went kablooey. In 1979, when Three Mile Island blew up, I suddenly needed a hotel room in Washington and a plane ticket to Harrisburg. In Sydney three years later, I bailed a mother of two out of jail and hired a lawyer to defend her. So, no matter what you think you're doing or how Plan A is supposed to proceed, hold back a couple grand for disaster relief.

In other words, pick up the three tools of state: lawyers, guns and money. They're helpful and rightly yours to explore the Unknown terrain of a freer, less irrational future.

--

September 8, 2014 - brief comment on LFC:

Laissez Faire City was populated with ~30% Objectivists, 60% Rothbard anarcho-capitalists, and 10% ex-military, CIA, KGB, Red Army pirates. It's hard to say which group was worse. O'ists had spectacular romances, dramas, and children. The pirates were generally well behaved, but heavily armed and prone to fistfights. Anarchists resisted the rule of law, wrote complicated "protocols" about arbitration, and lost the most money. I don't think I should publish a detailed account of what happened, but I hinted at key themes in OL posts and other writing. I acknowledged my depth of involvement. Professional ethics and common sense keep me from spilling more. A lot of prominent people were involved, names you'd recognize. I didn't have much sadness about what happened or why. Freedom is exhilarating.

Ellen

PS: Michael,

I'm glad you fixed the incorrect date in Wolf's opening post. I think that that post is likely to be quoted on other sites, where the wrong date could have confused people further about an already murky tale.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Prefatory note: The reason I went searching for Wolf's references to his serving a prison term was because of Brant's saying (#44) that this "may just be another story he made up." I think that the story is true, and I was hoping to find some corroborative details.

I did a second search on "jail." That turned up a link to an article Wolf wrote in which he described his adolescence. Although he says in the article that he spent some nights in jail, I don't think that those incidents are what he means in speaking of a prison term.

The compressed story he tells of his early years indicates that his general "rebelliousness" had early roots:

The Right to Do Wrong.

November 15, 2006

(exclusive to The Plug Nickel Times)

I was young once, and I remember how deeply I hated the oppressive, all-seeing matrix of smalltown society. The only refuge from parents, siblings, school, church and extended family was the wee hours of the night, when I had no legal right to be roaming the village streets. It prompted me to truancy, delinquency, early emancipation at age 17, and a variety of blunders that seemed unending. Before I became an adult at age 21, I had comitted a wide variety of crimes and misdemeanors, morally as well as legally forbidden by common sense and centuries of philosophy.

[....]

I did wrong and people were hurt. I had nothing to justify 'rebellion' or criminal conduct, except an incoherent thirst for freedom, long before I was competent to manage my own affairs. Given the ineptitude of all government, public and private (church, school, neighborhood, family), anarchy has no effective counterweight. I spent a few nights in jail, got lectured, sent to boarding school - but the punishments visited on an 'incorrigible' teenager were always mild in the 1960's. Today they are almost nonexistent, providing you don't blow up a public building, like Timothy McVeigh, or start a shooting war with campus police, like Eric Harris. I am very much impressed by the fact that no one prevented McVeigh or Harris from catastrophic wrongdoing.

Having obtained early manumission and bright enough to make bigger trouble, much of my life was spent gambling that I could get away with mild havoc of an ever-increasing scope, especially in show business. [....]

[...] I claim to know something about error and deliberate wrongdoing. Frankly, I'm in favor of it, including but not limited to homosexuality, misappropriation of funds, lies, conscription of the willing, reckless fatherhood, high-speed games of chance, contraband, and gross negligence in tax matters. Liberty entails the right to do wrong and get away with most of it. [....]

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

deleted--for now.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

I think Wolf took a hike last fall after being back a bit. He had some writing project. Previously he disappeared in May, I think, the year I forget, after it got to hot so he packed up and moved out.

--Brant

[Peter]

I don’t think much about victimless crimes. So many things were morally ambiguous and illegal but now they are legal. Religion’s influence and conventional thinking lasted for centuries but eventually our Western culture evolved into today’s (is it fashionable or permanent?) more personal freedom, but at the same time socialism and higher taxes are a fact of life.

What is disturbing about Wolf’s sporadic honesty is that he sounds like a habitual criminal, not just a wayward teenager, and his crimes were the initiation of force and fraud. In that light, his emphasis on The Law and being a self-taught lawyer translates into a defense mechanism from the real law.

It will be interested if Woof reads any of this or posts again.

Peter

(aside. I saw an article which I think was from Business Insider that calculated Donald Trump’s lowered tax plan would cost an addition 12 trillion dollars of debt. That did not take into account lower spending or growth, but as soon as he gets specific that figure may turn into a lower deficit. I hope. Another article calculated the odds of the candidates who are most likely to win the Presidency. As of now, Old Hickory Clingon was number one and Donald Trump was number two.)

[Jonathan]

Prefatory note: The reason I went searching for Wolf's references to his serving a prison term was because of Brant's saying (#44) that this "may just be another story he made up." I think that the story is true, and I was hoping to find some corroborative details.

I did a second search on "jail." That turned up a link to an article Wolf wrote in which he described his adolescence. Although he says in the article that he spent some nights in jail, I don't think that those incidents are what he means in speaking of a prison term.

The compressed story he tells of his early years indicates that his general "rebelliousness" had early roots:

The Right to Do Wrong.

November 15, 2006

(exclusive to The Plug Nickel Times)

I was young once, and I remember how deeply I hated the oppressive, all-seeing matrix of smalltown society. The only refuge from parents, siblings, school, church and extended family was the wee hours of the night, when I had no legal right to be roaming the village streets. It prompted me to truancy, delinquency, early emancipation at age 17, and a variety of blunders that seemed unending. Before I became an adult at age 21, I had comitted a wide variety of crimes and misdemeanors, morally as well as legally forbidden by common sense and centuries of philosophy.

[....]

I did wrong and people were hurt. I had nothing to justify 'rebellion' or criminal conduct, except an incoherent thirst for freedom, long before I was competent to manage my own affairs. Given the ineptitude of all government, public and private (church, school, neighborhood, family), anarchy has no effective counterweight. I spent a few nights in jail, got lectured, sent to boarding school - but the punishments visited on an 'incorrigible' teenager were always mild in the 1960's. Today they are almost nonexistent, providing you don't blow up a public building, like Timothy McVeigh, or start a shooting war with campus police, like Eric Harris. I am very much impressed by the fact that no one prevented McVeigh or Harris from catastrophic wrongdoing.

Having obtained early manumission and bright enough to make bigger trouble, much of my life was spent gambling that I could get away with mild havoc of an ever-increasing scope, especially in show business. [....]

[...] I claim to know something about error and deliberate wrongdoing. Frankly, I'm in favor of it, including but not limited to homosexuality, misappropriation of funds, lies, conscription of the willing, reckless fatherhood, high-speed games of chance, contraband, and gross negligence in tax matters. Liberty entails the right to do wrong and get away with most of it. [....]

Ellen

"Wolf's" notions, in the above, of "freedom" and "liberty" are what most other people know as "sociopathy."

J

[Jonathan]

The Right to Do Wrong.

From the above link:

"I believe that Ayn Rand gave us two versions of Ayn Rand, and I forgive her the mismash of minarchy that she was seduced into misappropriating. The young Rand was a vamp -- my kind of babe. The Fountainhead had it all. Rape, dynamite, ruthless manipulation of weaker characters like Peter Keating, smashing up priceless museum pieces and fireplaces by the dozen (if you include Night of January 16th and We The Living, written in the same period). How anti-NAP can you get? I sometimes wonder why Randroids don't seem to grasp the obvious, that Rand the seeker was an immoral anarchist to the very roots of her hair, top and bottom. Galt killed tens of thousands by starvation, right?"

"Wolf" is mostly right in the above statement, except for the bit about young Rand's being an anarchist, and the last sentence stating that Galt killed people.

There were indeed two Rands, and the one who wrote The Fountainhead was not yet anywhere near to becoming an Objectivist. Roark is not an Objectivist hero or an Objectivist "ideal man." His actions are anti-Objectivist. He does not, however, represent or partake in anarchism, but in vigilantism. "Wolf" seems to confuse the two to this day.

Roark and young Rand were not opposed to the state or to government. They just held the notion that they were special and therefore could do as they pleased once in a while.

As for Galt, he didn't kill anyone, let alone tens of thousands. Removing oneself from society is not the act of killing others.

J

[Jonathan]

P.S. Regarding "Wolf's" The Right to Do Wrong, talk about a perfect example of a shallow, self-adoring, verbal 'selfie'. It's pretty much all that he writes.

J

[Jonathan]

And so one wonders about Wolf. He says he spent several years in prison but doesn't tell us why. I do know it may just be another story he made up.

I searched Wolf's content for the word "prison," since I recalled his having mentioned several times during his previous OL appearances that he'd done a stint in prison. He didn't specify why in any of the mentions I found.

June 22,2007:

I learned a great deal in prison, for instance[.]

January 14, 2008:

Okay, Jordan. I understand. I did something similar in my 20's, went to prison for it. I did it again in my 40's, got slammed and then shunned. Attempting to be completely honest on OL these days, gonna end up looking like a nut. Barrel o' fun being truthful. If I had a job, how long do you think I (or anyone else) would be employed, if I told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

September 4, 2014:

[N]ot one of the 2,000 criminals I met in prison went to court voluntarily.

September 5, 2014:

Dictatorships of North Africa and SE Asia, big city drug lords, company CEOs, Russian mobsters, ministers of state, Hollywood producers, A-list stars and agents, prison guards, riot police, and "OGAs" are not abstract ideas to me.

September 22, 2015:

The story of making "Zooty Brisko" (1973) is recounted in my book First Feature. I went to prison, Technicolor closed their Chicago lab, and 22 rolls of negative were thrown in a dumpster.

That last, and most recent, mention comes closest to even specifying the circumstances.

The search turned up some other material relevant to the current thread. I'll give links and excerpts in a separate post.

Ellen

"Wolf" has also claimed to have worked in a prison, so who knows how much of what he says about time in prison was working versus serving time there?

J

[Jonathan]

From here:

"Director-choreographer Wolf DeVoon filmed hundreds of actors and musicians, in a career that spanned 20 years and all six continents. FIRST FEATURE is the story of his rise from obscurity and hardship in a Midwest 'rust belt' factory town, to wasted years in prison and a gamble that wrecked his marriage to a glamourous businesswoman. In defeat and despair, he boards a Greyhound bus for Hollywood. Adult fiction. Graphic language."

I hadn't seen the "choreographer" claim before. Um, so, "Wolf," when we meet in person, and I get the opportunity to call you "Pup BaBoon" to your face, you're not going to try to dance-fight me, are you? Like the Sharks and the Jets? Or the guys in Michael Jackson's Beat It video? If so, I'm not interested. I'll gladly fight you in a straight up normal fight, but if it's going to be a dance-off, I'll forfeit right now.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

There were indeed two Rands, and the one who wrote The Fountainhead was not yet anywhere near to becoming an Objectivist. Roark is not an Objectivist hero or an Objectivist "ideal man." His actions are anti-Objectivist. He does not, however, represent or partake in anarchism, but in vigilantism. "Wolf" seems to confuse the two to this day.

We differ on the degree of nearness of The Fountainhead Rand to the Objectivist Rand, though I agree that the former wasn't yet the latter.

Rand not only was never an anarchist, she tended to the end of her life to have the image of Russian anarchists as her prototype of the category.

Agreed, too, about Galt.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

From here:

"Director-choreographer Wolf DeVoon filmed hundreds of actors and musicians, in a career that spanned 20 years and all six continents. FIRST FEATURE is the story of his rise from obscurity and hardship in a Midwest 'rust belt' factory town, to wasted years in prison and a gamble that wrecked his marriage to a glamourous businesswoman. In defeat and despair, he boards a Greyhound bus for Hollywood. Adult fiction. Graphic language."

That sounds as if the "wasted years in prison" proceed his filmmaking.

However, this statement, which I quoted in #47, sounds as if the prison stint came after - and was somehow because of - his first film:

September 22, 2015:

The story of making "Zooty Brisko" (1973) is recounted in my book First Feature. I went to prison, Technicolor closed their Chicago lab, and 22 rolls of negative were thrown in a dumpster.

Maybe the first film was made before Wolf went to Hollywood. He does say "Chicago lab."

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

It will be interested if Woof reads any of this or posts again.

When I check to see what's happening on OL, I characteristically take a look at the "Who's Online" screen. Often there are people viewing threads which I either never saw or had forgotten about or hadn't had time to read, so I find some interesting material via the "Who's Online" listing.

Wolf was on-line and was listed as posting in this thread when I looked earlier. He subsequently went off-line without posting.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

Roark was a Randian hero. He was followed by the Randian hero more explicated upon. In that sense they're "Objectivist" heroes. However, it's best not to call any of them Objectivist heroes. "Objectivist" is a post-AS add on.

Her heroes became more and more abstract unless they started out with lack of knowledge conflict problems like Dominique, Dagny and Hank.

Rand didn't get completely up on her public high horse until she got into writing the moralistic-philosophical screed that is Galt's Speech. Prior to that her natural philosophy encompassed bedding down Nathaniel Branden. Nothing "Objectivist" about that, but it fits The Fountainhead pretty well.

--Brant

[Peter]

Jonathan quoted: I sometimes wonder why Randroids don't seem to grasp the obvious, that Rand the seeker was an immoral anarchist to the very roots of her hair, top and bottom. Galt killed tens of thousands by starvation, right?
end quote

Oh, boy. I was going to brave the storm, but just a few more rambling thoughts, s’il vous plait. Justice from the wealthy and powerful anarchist's standpoint is that there are multiple justices. Many times a con man, as in Lazy Fair City, takes the undeserved because they think you had the expropriation of wealth coming to you by seeking the undeserved. Theirs’ is a gotcha and I was robbed, sense of justice. Who determines their guidelines for justice in anarchy? Each individual - and their posse may be bigger than your posse. But in anarchy does a lynch mob then have as much right to decide the wealthy criminal’s guilt? Who determines their guidelines? Whoever declares this is justice and enforces it over others, is declaring themselves a legal monopoly – which is once again, a government. Yet, I would not want to go back to trial by combat, duels, or the old west gun fighting either.

Perceived, unequal justice is a moral and honest concept because interpretations vary even among rational people who trust in government. And wealthy criminals can prosper under Constitutional government based on Individual Rights, but in any variation of Lazy Fair City, they rule. What can be done with wealthy criminals under anarchy? Not much, because they are protected. Under Constitutional government justice relies on your delegation of retaliatory force (the police and the courts) and perhaps a shared public opinion. Again, that sounds almost like Lazy Fair City, but the difference is the proven longevity of Constitutional Government and the recourse of our courts and those time honored and tested, precedents.

In a sense, under a Constitutional monarchy as in England in the 1800’s, the king or queen is a variation of our supreme court.

Challenging Woof would either be an ambush, a duel with a yeti, or a dance fight with the invisible man.

Peter

[Wolf DeVoon]

Constitutional Government ... mentor and guardian of the Cherokee, adjudicator of Vietnam and Iraq, killed and maimed nearly 1 million Americans in a discretionary Civil War at a cost of five times the nation's GNP. Devalued its currency 98% since the Federal Reserve was established. Progenitor and patriotic paymaster of entitlements that now comprise over 2/3 of all government spending, federal and state. Politically driven to impoverish children trapped in government schools, for whom there will be no future employment, no constitutional liberty as it was understood by the Framers.

Who's the sociopath? - me or Hillary Clinton? me or John Corzine? me or Sonia Sotomayor?

How you divine a categorical imperative of obedience to an Uncle Santa ponzi racket escapes me.

(yep, satellite service connected at another location)

[Jonathan]

Who's the sociopath? - me or Hillary Clinton? me or John Corzine? me or Sonia Sotomayor?

Or all of the above?

J

From the top, ladies. 5,6,7,8...

When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way...

[moralist]

Wolf writes:

Progenitor and patriotic paymaster of entitlements that now comprise over 2/3 of all government spending, federal and state.

Just an off topic side comment...

The fact you just stated explains why Conservatives have ZERO leverage over the President.

Over half the nation has degenerated into government check cashing parasites who

scream like raped apes at even the HINT of a government shutdown...

...and don't think for a nanosecond that Obama doesn't know that and isn't using it to his personal advantage.

Greg

[Jonathan]

Who's the sociopath? - me or Hillary Clinton? me or John Corzine? me or Sonia Sotomayor?

Or all of the above?

J

From the top, ladies. 5,6,7,8...

When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way...

Members of OL, take a few minutes and browse through "Wolf's" history of posts here. Notice anything missing? Are there any common human characteristics that everyone else here has but which are absent from "Wolf's" posts? Compare, say, Bill Scherk's writings to "Wolf's." What does Billy have in spades that "Wolf" totally lacks?

J

[william.scherk]

Who's the sociopath? - me or Hillary Clinton? me or John Corzine? me or Sonia Sotomayor?

Glad you are not heading off into the sunset. I can't answer a forced-choice question. Only Peter has suggested sociopathy in Costa Rica, as far as I understand his confusing comments.

So, set yourself aside from questions of psychopathy. Do tell us if you saw the signs in "Rex"... please?

I self-published it as an e-book and sold 200 copies of “An Illustrated All-Purpose Guide To Female Women And What To Do With Them.” One copy was purchased by some doofus in Costa Rica, whose name meant nothing to me. When I arrived at LFC headquarters a year later, both the City Clerk and the Crown Prince greeted me with enthusiastic thanks for writing the All-Purpose Guide. There's little doubt that it figured significantly in my being recruited to join Laissez Faire City as their celebrated writer-in-residence.

Is that e-book still available somehow? I can't find any other reference to it but your claim above.

I wish you would name the folks you refer to; perhaps you never learned their non-pseudonyms. For example, the City Clerk of Laissez-Faire City International Trust (LFCIT) was for a number of years Sonny Vleisides. The 'Trustee' was a Russian native named Mikhail Languine. Do you have names for the 'Crown Prince'? So far it is impossible to figure out who you are talking about, and speculation is likely to be wrong. So ...

Was the 'Crown Prince' Orlin Grabbe? Was the City Clerk at the time mentioned the son of James Ray Houston ("Rex") as I have noted?

For an Objectivist, the prospect of joining Galt's Gulch is an easy decision. Emails and phone calls with Rex settled the matter of airfare and upfront cash to wind up my obligations in Colorado.

[...] No matter what you may believe, LFC's headquarters was plush and magnificently well-equipped with computer systems and fast T1 dedicated pipes, which very few people had in Costa Rica at the time. Rand University was a gated tree-lined campus with a big luxury house, garages, and a separate building with six fairly nice classrooms. I was guest of honor at the City Club restaurant that evening with Rex, Alex, and Samantha the accountant.

[...] Arrangements were made to send me to Nosara, where LFC leased a mansion overlooking the beach to accommodate visitors. I was given a car and cash and introduced to Boris

[...] 200 people from all over the world came to visit me at the hilltop mansion in Nosara, and my articles in Laissez Faire City Times began to appear “above the fold.”

[...] No author has ever had carte blanche like I did at Laissez Faire City. It went to print weekly without editorial pressure or rewrite, a story that contradicted and mocked the prevailing sentiment in Laissez Faire City, projecting a future completely unlike the fascist top-dog enclave ruled by Rex and Alex.

OK. Airfare, cash. T1 internet. A 'Rand University' with six classrooms and a luxury house. Restaurant and Inn. A mansion, a car, more cash.

All of this was paid out by "Rex" ... why shouldn't "Rex" be the top-dog and order about his employees?

At one point I went on strike, refusing to write another word and was placed on house arrest at headquarters in San Jose. The issue was money and I returned to Nosara with cash in my pocket, which Rex did not want to part with.

More cash in your pocket, from Rex's pocket. From the scammed funds from Rex's lottery fraud.

I had no knowledge of the lottery or anything else behind the scenes. I told visitors that it didn't matter whether it made sense to become a “founder” of Laissez Faire City and pay in $6000 for worthless warrants in MuniCorp. They were close to rolling out encrypted banking and a stock exchange, which Orlin ultimately operated in Dubai after he split with Rex in 2002.

You now have the opportunity to extend your knowledge of the long-running James Ray Houston lottery scam.

I told people to back the effort and expect nothing in return for their investment. Win or lose, it was a worthy project to attempt a pirate cybereconomy free of government surveillance, regulation and taxation.

Well, that didn't work out well. Since the head scammers were avoidant of any outside scrutiny, they also were able to avoid the scrutiny of investors. Lucky contract employees like you ... the pirated money was good while it flowed, right? Who cared where it came from?

I despised the pitch Rex made to investors. I ignored it, argued against it, saw it as yet another reason to advocate the rule of law in Laissez Faire City – which pissed Rex and all of the key players off. My articles in Laissez Faire City Times became more pointed and emphatic about the role of an independent judiciary. Everyone else wanted voluntary arbitration, or Law Merchant, or absolute autonomy as “sovereign individuals.”

The rule of law had no enforcement provisions. The 'State' of Laissez-Faire City was a shell game designed to enrich the principal pirates. I cannot find a single thing preserved from back in the day that shows you had any problem with Rex, as long as you were paid from the slush funds.

When LFC was in trouble, after Orlin ran off with all the “freedom technology” software, I came back to help Rex. I don't regret it.

Help him how? Why help him? What help did he need? What did you actually do, Wolf? The record is almost entirely opaque.

There were 40,000 readers of Laissez Faire City Times who saw it as a beacon of freedom. There were 1,500 LFC stakeholders on six continents. I did what I could to patch things up between Orlin and Rex and the Crown Prince and a hostile Board of Governors. I failed because it was an impossible task. Too much was wrong.

But to this day we have no idea of what you think was "wrong." The 'Crown Prince' was who?

I saved a couple of people who were stuck in positions of trust, victims of Rex's folly and bluster. A dozen of the best people left HQ and joined me in Nosara. For several years after LFC collapsed we lived privately and happily as neighbors in a rump Objectivist community at the beach, self-reliant and entrepreneurial in a rural province that was a long way from organized government and had a local tradition of expat self-government.

As I have been suggesting, all of this will make for a good, gripping story, either in fiction or in memoir. It sounds like the money paid out of lottery scams and founder scams was cut off at some point, whereafter you had to fend for yourself.

Seriously, Wolf, there has to be more to the story than "Rex's folly and bluster."

Edited October 4, 2015 by william.scherk

[Wolf DeVoon]

Who's the sociopath? - me or Hillary Clinton? me or John Corzine? me or Sonia Sotomayor?

Or all of the above?

Please try to think a minute. Government is not a personal genie at your beck and call to fight crime, right wrongs, or defend your community. In fact it shirks most of its duties and couldn't stop two separate attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, the latter perpetrated by ringleaders and flight school students known to the FBI.

The purpose of a constitution is to restrain government, not to adjudicate the internal affairs of foreign nations, nor to tax Peter to pay Paul, with ever-increasing numbers of beneficiaries and fewer taxpayers, all of it hopelessly upside down financially today.

Jeez, Jonathan, use your noodle.

[Brant Gaede]

Who's the sociopath? - me or Hillary Clinton? me or John Corzine? me or Sonia Sotomayor?

Or all of the above?

J

From the top, ladies. 5,6,7,8...

When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way...

Members of OL, take a few minutes and browse through "Wolf's" history of posts here. Notice anything missing? Are there any common human characteristics that everyone else here has but which are absent from "Wolf's" posts? Compare, say, Bill Scherk's writings to "Wolf's." What does Billy have in spades that "Wolf" totally lacks?

J

Identity? There is no real sense of a person that I got when he contacted me by PM some time ago using what I assume was his real name. Pen name? Sure. Pen person? That would take a hell of a lot of imagining. The concentration required would be so staggering he'd have to go away and regroup every now and then.

--Brant

The Mystery Objectivist?

[Wolf DeVoon]

William,

The "crown prince" was Sonny, of course. He was busy organizing a sports book start-up, not the only one in Costa Rica. The City Clerk while I was there was a 20-something Cockney. As previously stated I knew nothing about a lottery or details of funding. I later saw in documents that Rex had contributed at least $3 million paid-in capital. I don't have anything to add to the audit report that you quoted earlier, and have no reason to doubt its findings. My key relationship was with Orlin as editor of LFC Times.

I don't recall who suggested above that Laissez Faire City was a "government" of some kind. That's not what anyone experienced or advocated. Nor were we employed by Rex as such. He had very little operational control over what anyone did, although several people became unwitting stooges because Rex put them in charge of ATM and other projects that depended on Rex handling money as a fiduciary. I think it's a mistake to say that Rex pilfered funds or benefited from illiquid accounts. Exactly the other way around. He went broke promising too much, paying too much for software development, paying too much to Russian and Dutch intermediaries -- but that's just a guess on my part.

Like I said previously, Rex took the fall. He didn't have to.

[Brant Gaede]

Who's the sociopath? - me or Hillary Clinton? me or John Corzine? me or Sonia Sotomayor?

Or all of the above?

Please try to think a minute. Government is not a personal genie at your beck and call to fight crime, right wrongs, or defend your community. In fact it shirks most of its duties and couldn't stop two separate attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, the latter perpetrated by ringleaders and flight school students known to the FBI.

The purpose of a constitution is to restrain government, not to adjudicate the internal affairs of foreign nations, nor to tax Peter to pay Paul, with ever-increasing numbers of beneficiaries and fewer taxpayers, all of it hopelessly upside down financially today.

Jeez, Jonathan, use your noodle.

Well, that's no blast from the past.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Wolfo, you sound quite different since you came back. Much better. Were you dehydrated?

--Brant

I hope you get over that crap about your creativity being shot