Market Manifesto

Let’s talk about free­dom, and of depen­den­cy. We speak of liv­ing free in an unfree world.

We live in a world sur­pris­ing­ly lack­ing in free­dom.

In the Unit­ed States and in many oth­er west­ern indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries we live inside a myth of free­dom, that is, we believe we are freer than we actu­al­ly are. Our belief in free­dom results from the con­stant bar­rage of com­mer­cial pro­pa­gan­da that fills the air­waves and mass mar­ket print pub­li­ca­tions. It derives from the shared val­ues that the cit­i­zen­ry pro­pounds. But this idea of free­dom is an illu­sion.

Now I do not mean the free­dom to express minor dif­fer­ences of opin­ion with­in the exist­ing polit­i­cal sys­tem. Indeed the night­ly scream­ing match­es on tele­vi­sion and the con­stant ban­ter­ing and bick­er­ing of the press pro­vide cov­er for the illu­sion of free­dom that we car­ry with us.

But is this free­dom to dis­cuss mod­est dif­fer­ences of opin­ion a reflec­tion of true free­dom of thought? How much free­dom real­ly does exist?

We main­tain that it is not until we have free­dom of income, and free­dom of choice about work, and free­dom of move­ment, and free­dom from intru­sive gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion and per­son­al data bank­ing, that we can know the mean­ing of the word free­dom.

We do have some idea of the nature of slav­ery, which we might say is the lack of free­dom writ large. On the one hand we acknowl­edge slav­ery to the state, whose pow­er has grown immense­ly in recent decades gov­ern­ments around the world try to cope with the major stress­es of increased pop­u­la­tion and dimin­ish­ing resources. On the oth­er hand we see the slav­ery of forced opin­ions and rigid thought-process­es man­dat­ed by the soci­ety at large, that is, the crowd.

The crowd, the mass, the mob – these words call to mind a group of per­haps 100 peo­ple who are scream­ing for action – vengeance, jus­tice, food, water, what­ev­er. But in the 21st cen­tu­ry the force of the crowd has been mul­ti­plied a mil­lion-fold through mass com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The pow­er of crowd is ubiq­ui­tous and the cry of the mob is pro­ject­ed into every liv­ing room, indeed into the palm of every hand. We and our chil­dren are con­stant­ly sub­ject­ed to the mind-shap­ing influ­ence of pas­sive­ly-received cul­tur­al mes­sages for hours and hours every day from our ear­li­est age until death. The vast major­i­ty of these mes­sages have an agen­da, and that agen­da is to influ­ence, con­trol, and moti­vate your thoughts and actions. For the bet­ter part of each day we will­ing­ly per­mit oth­ers to attempt to con­trol our inner­most thoughts.

It is strange that we do this. The tools that are brought to bear in this bat­tle for our mind are very sophis­ti­cat­ed, and very pow­er­ful. The strongest and most aware indi­vid­u­als have some slight chance of resist­ing the influ­ence of these mes­sages, most usu­al­ly by shut­ting off the stream, but the great mass of soci­ety has no chance at all. And as for chil­dren, well, for­get it. Unless there are spe­cial cir­cum­stances at play, the mind-train­ing is quick and com­plete.

And what is being con­veyed? Com­mer­cial lust, mate­ri­al­ism, will­ing acqui­es­cence to slav­ery and indebt­ed­ness. Com­pli­ance in the col­lec­tion and trans­fer of mon­ey to the sell­ers. Loy­al­ty to the State, so that mon­ey can be col­lect­ed with­out protest and redis­trib­uted accord­ing to polit­i­cal agen­das. Ulti­mate­ly the mes­sage is that we must be will­ing to die to pro­tect the mes­sage senders.

The chal­lenge of liv­ing in our age is that the tech­nol­o­gy of mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion has mul­ti­plied the pow­er of the crowd by orders of mag­ni­tude. It is every­where, and it is inescapable. How are we to live under such con­di­tions, assum­ing that we desire gen­uine free­dom?

We plump for free­dom, but seek the ulti­mate free­dom, the free­dom to think and act with­out con­straint. Per­fect free­dom is not pos­si­ble in today’s world but sure­ly we can move clos­er to it than is con­ven­tion­al­ly thought.

The man or woman who has acquired free­dom of income, whose income is depen­dent only upon his or her own opin­ions and actions, has a chance of know­ing free­dom. The indi­vid­ual whose finan­cial sup­port depends upon the opin­ions and actions of oth­ers has more bar­ri­ers to the expe­ri­ence of true free­dom.

To know free­dom we must first under­stand the nature of slav­ery. We fre­quent­ly see slav­ery in the bonds of employ­ment and the sub­or­di­na­tion of employ­ment rela­tion­ships, where the slav­ery is to the wage-giv­er. We see slav­ery in the men­tal bondage of polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, or rela­tion­ship opin­ions that are forced upon the recip­i­ent. And we see the phys­i­cal slav­ery in the mil­i­tary, in com­pul­so­ry tax­a­tion, and in the reg­u­la­tion of land and allo­ca­tion of com­mon resources.

Indi­vid­u­als who refuse to be bound by income slav­ery (by virtue of reli­gious vows of pover­ty or by “dropping out” and liv­ing on the mar­gins of soci­ety), can gain great men­tal free­dom and con­se­quent­ly have enhanced abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate free thoughts. The result­ing free­dom car­ries with it the abil­i­ty to change the way your mind maps the world around you, and to gen­er­ate tru­ly unique and inter­est­ing thoughts.

Indi­vid­u­als who can devel­op an inde­pen­dent income suf­fi­cient to main­tain a lifestyle that suits them have the poten­tial to achieve free­dom. Since the inde­pen­dent trad­er has such a pos­si­bil­i­ty, we urge you to reflect on the nature of free­dom, and to deter­mine if that is a goal you wish to pur­sue.

The impli­ca­tions of finan­cial free­dom are more than is usu­al­ly thought.

If we are free to think beyond the con­fines of what the cul­ture con­ven­tion­al­ly regards as accept­able, then what shall we think?

If we are free to live any­where and to estab­lish any lev­el of lifestyle that we choose, from the low­est to the high­est, then what shall we choose?

On what grounds shall we make our choice?

I am explor­ing these mat­ters here because trad­ing is one of the few rare activ­i­ties that poten­tial­ly offer the ordi­nary indi­vid­ual free­dom from finan­cial con­straints. Such free­dom has not been offered to many in the course of human his­to­ry. True free­dom from finan­cial lim­i­ta­tions hard­ly ever occurs. The monk, the mys­tic, the Zen mas­ter — these indi­vid­u­als become free because they sep­a­rate them­selves from con­ven­tion­al needs and desires, and restrict their require­ments to the most basic food and shel­ter. Thus these phys­i­cal require­ments can eas­i­ly be met.

But for those who would live a lit­tle more in the con­ven­tion­al world?

For the trad­er con­tem­plat­ing free­dom, I sug­gest the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “What would I do if mon­ey were no object?”

It is my belief that the fear of this ques­tion, or the inabil­i­ty to answer it intel­li­gent­ly, is a major psy­cho­log­i­cal bar­ri­er hold­ing traders back from achiev­ing great wealth.

Free thought is rare. What we usu­al­ly expe­ri­ence as free thought is real­ly thought that con­forms to the mores of dif­fer­ent sub­groups. It appears to be free thought because it com­petes with and is in con­flict with the philoso­phies of oth­er sub­groups. We see the dif­fer­ence between this thought and that espoused by oth­ers, and thus we take the dif­fer­ence as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of free­dom.

But the true free­thinker is so remark­able that he or she stands out as if they were afire. Their words leap off the page with strik­ing force and orig­i­nal­i­ty. One thinks of Gand­hi, or King, or Hav­el.

True free­dom of thought and action is so rare that we bare­ly notice the lies our media and gov­ern­ments pour forth. The actu­al mean­ing of words fre­quent­ly stand in direct oppo­si­tion to the word’s denot­ed mean­ing. Thus we can have a law enti­tled the “Bank Secre­cy Act” which per­mits the gov­ern­ment unfet­tered access to every finan­cial detail of your life, yet the words would con­vey the oppo­site sen­ti­ment.

Free­dom com­mon­ly has an inverse asso­ci­a­tion with eco­nom­ic slav­ery of one sort or anoth­er. The need to make a liv­ing blinds most of the planet’s inhab­i­tants to the creep­ing dis­tor­tions that a lack of per­son­al free­dom engen­ders. Thus free­dom is more like­ly to be present in young peo­ple and in the very old, indi­vid­u­als for whom eco­nom­ic bonds to oth­ers can more eas­i­ly be sev­ered or done with­out.

Epicte­tus would remind us that true free­dom is avail­able to any­one who looks prop­er­ly at the world. Such a stance involves dis­tin­guish­ing between the things that one is actu­al­ly respon­si­ble for, such as one’s thoughts and actions, and the things that one can­not ulti­mate­ly be respon­si­ble for, such as the opin­ions of oth­ers and the col­lec­tive actions of mankind.

Because trad­ing is one of the few liveli­hoods that can be struc­tured to depend sole­ly upon the qual­i­ty of one’s own think­ing and ones per­son­al actions, trad­ing is one of the few places in the mod­ern world where true free­dom is still pos­si­ble.

Free­dom comes in part from antic­i­pa­tion, because with a prop­er mind­set you are always pre­pared, and being pre­pared is a nec­es­sary adjunct of free­dom.

In the world today much of the future is unknown. We know from his­to­ry how rad­i­cal­ly things can change in a few short years. Your bank accounts can be closed, your cur­ren­cies deval­ued, your prop­er­ty con­fis­cat­ed. But your knowl­edge base can­not be tak­en from you by force. As long as you have the abil­i­ty to see, to ana­lyze, and to act upon your knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion, then you will have the abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate income. Your abil­i­ty to func­tion is every­thing.

A trad­er with the prop­er mind­set does not depend on glob­al finan­cial mar­kets to be suc­cess­ful. Mar­ket struc­ture will occur in any mar­ket, orga­nized or dis­or­ga­nized. As long as mar­ket forces apply there will be fluc­tu­a­tions in price and these fluc­tu­a­tions will reflect the ebb and flow of crowd psy­chol­o­gy react­ing to the fun­da­men­tal ener­gy flows of the uni­verse. It doesn’t mat­ter if the mar­ket in ques­tion is the inter­na­tion­al cur­ren­cy mar­ket of tril­lions of Euros, Yen, and Dol­lars whizzing around the globe or the used car mar­ket in Brazil or the small arms mar­ket in Kaza­khstan

Your abil­i­ty to func­tion is what is essen­tial in today’s world.

Depen­den­cy is the ene­my of free­dom, and is its oppo­site. Inde­pen­dence is a nec­es­sary corol­lary of free­dom. We endorse as much inde­pen­dence as pos­si­ble, and sup­port the con­cept of finan­cial inde­pen­dence, and phys­i­cal inde­pen­dence.

The ques­tion aris­es: How does one live as a free indi­vid­ual in an envi­ron­ment sur­round­ed by the un-free, and while in soci­eties gov­erned by laws intend­ed to main­tain that sit­u­a­tion in per­pe­tu­ity?

There is no good answer to this ques­tion, in fact, and each will have to live through the accom­mo­da­tions that are right for him or her.

We think that what is required is to keep your eyes open, and your per­cep­tions fresh, and your mind aware of alter­na­tives. Nev­er accept state­ments with­out an under­stand­ing of their con­text. Be aware of the agen­da that is behind the words you hear each day. Oth­er peo­ple are pay­ing mon­ey for this oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­trol your mind. But you don’t have to per­mit the con­trol to hap­pen, if you don’t wish.

It is a chal­lenge.

Ous­pen­sky has writ­ten about those who were “asleep”, and unaware of the world around them. Here you find us talk­ing about slav­ery to a nar­row range of opin­ions, and the inabil­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion at large to step beyond the dom­i­nant opin­ion struc­ture.

Ous­pen­sky and most of the oth­er great philoso­phers and social the­o­rists of his­to­ry would roll in their graves were they to see the extent to which mass com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the 21st Cen­tu­ry have enslaved human­i­ty.

At var­i­ous points in our lives it is tempt­ing to rely on thoughts, opin­ions, and expe­ri­ence of oth­ers. We nat­u­ral­ly expe­ri­ence uncer­tain­ty, anx­i­ety and fear in the face of the new and unknown, and we seek the nat­ur­al relief of cer­tain­ty and knowl­edge and secu­ri­ty and pre­dictabil­i­ty.

The source of these desires is not hard to trace. We expe­ri­ence them first in child­hood and then again through­out our school­ing and edu­ca­tion. These urges are fil­ial in nature. Reduced to basics, we long for the secu­ri­ty we felt as chil­dren.

Although this long­ing is nat­ur­al, it is not the road to adult inde­pen­dence and free­dom of spir­it. Depen­den­cy in our inti­mate rela­tion­ships is one thing, and per­mis­si­ble, and a nec­es­sary ele­ment in liv­ing. But in our polit­i­cal think­ing, and in our obser­va­tion of social real­i­ty, and in our finan­cial and mar­ket analy­sis, and in our obser­va­tion of the world, depen­den­cy is nev­er appro­pri­ate. For a trad­er – indeed for any free­think­ing adult — inde­pen­dence of spir­it is essen­tial, and depen­den­cy in opin­ion-cre­ation, unfor­giv­able.

I have some exer­cis­es that I use to make vivid my under­stand­ing of “free­dom of thought”. I re-vis­it these when I detect that my think­ing has become slop­py (which hap­pens a lot I find).

1) Define what the word “wealth” means to you. Pick a fig­ure that you have com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with that word. Now mul­ti­ply that fig­ure by 1,000. Now reflect on the dif­fer­ence between your orig­i­nal con­cep­tion of that word and the new fig­ure. Now dou­ble the new fig­ure.

2) Make a list of the sources of news and infor­ma­tion that you come in con­tact with – the news­pa­pers, radio, tele­vi­sion, mag­a­zines, per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions. Elim­i­nate all of them from your life for two or three days.
This may entail a “mini-retreat” to cleanse the mind. Dur­ing this time, read no news­pa­per, lis­ten to no news or opin­ion on the radio, and watch no tele­vi­sion. When you encounter a news­pa­per again for the first time after this peri­od, read the news crit­i­cal­ly, ask­ing your­self where the infor­ma­tion came from and how these facts came to be select­ed for pre­sen­ta­tion. If you see tele­vi­sion news, ask your­self how it could have been done dif­fer­ent­ly. Describe the belief struc­ture of the news pro­duc­er.

Repeat this thought process when you encounter each form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing talk­ing with friends and asso­ciates. Make an effort not to react to any­thing that you hear before you com­plete your inte­ri­or mono­logue eval­u­at­ing the beliefs and point-of-view of the pre­sen­ter.

3) Make a five-year plan for your life as it might exist if you had no oblig­a­tions of any sort to any employ­er, client, investor, busi­ness part­ner, or gov­ern­ment agency. In short, what would you do if you could do what­ev­er you choose to do? Be as detailed as you choose in your plan­ning, but leave out any­thing relat­ed to mak­ing mon­ey. The point is to see how you might act if mon­ey were no con­straint.

4) Draw up a plan of edu­ca­tion for a child that you would like to see raised with gen­uine free­dom of thought. How would you approach the ques­tion of edu­ca­tion? What expe­ri­ences would you choose for the child to live through? What would be the val­ues that you would regards as essen­tial? What atti­tude about mon­ey and work would you chose to fos­ter in the child? How would you go about teach­ing the child these val­ues? How do these thoughts and plans relate to the edu­ca­tion you have acquired as a child and as an adult?