What is the most valuable limited resource in the world? Who should decide how that resource is used?

My name is Ryan and I am an agorist. Today we are looking at the currency of life.

At tax time each year, I am always reminded of the value of life. While we pay taxes using money, the reality is that we ultimately only have one real currency to spend, and it is our lives. Each of us have a life which is unique, one of a kind, and our lives are the most valuable, resources on the earth. But, like all valuable resources, our lives are limited. We only have one life to live and we measure that life in terms of time.

Imagine that your life will last eighty-five years. That means that you have eighty-five years of life to spend, or 744,600 hours to spend. Over the course of your life, whether you realize it or note, you are spending that time. Every moment is a value judgment of what you want to spend your time on. If you spend two hours watching an enjoyable movie, you have traded two hours of your seven hundred something thousand hours in order to gain the pleasure and enjoyment that came from watching it.

When you work at a job, you are literally trading chunks of your life, of your limited time, in order to gain another kind of currency that is more easily traded for goods and services. If you spend X number of hours of your limited life in order to gain Y amount of money, that money is actually the physical manifestation of your time investment. It is the physical manifestation of the time that you spent in order to receive it. If you hold that money in your hand, you are holding the physical manifestation of part of your life.

As an agorist, I realize that I own my life. I realize that my time is mine to spend, and the things that I trade parts of my life for are mine to keep. Tax time reminds me of the value of life because taxation is, unfortunately, where a group of people decide that they are allowed to literally steal chunks of your life from you. As they see it, your life is theirs to spend.

Agorism is fundamentally opposed to this way of thinking because agorism understands that our lives are our own and what we do with our lives are up to us. There will only be one me in all of human history. There will only one you in all of human history. It feels like an understatement to say that life is invaluable. There aren't adequate words to describe how valuable each of our lives are. We each exist for a short time, live a completely unique life with completely unique experiences. Nobody will ever live your life ever again. This currency of each of our lives can only be spent once.

So, make the most of your life. Do your best to spend it in ways that best benefit you and your family, not megalomaniacs on counterfeit thrones.

This is TechnoAgorist, episode 4.