Peter Cohen

I am largely self educated. I taught myself to read at the age of four. My favorite place to hide while playing hookey in school, which was the norm, was the library. I escaped most reprimand by acing their tests anyway. To this day I spend much of my time reading. Whereas in the past, that was mostly books, nowadays it is the Web. I have often found that by the time I read a book, the lag time caused by hard copy publication has rendered it already old news, as I've already read it on the Web.

I was bred to be an anarchist, not so much by my parents, though I was mostly left to raise myself, but rather by my awareness even as early as five that my requirement to attend school was simply might makes right, force. I didn't really think it all the way through until I found Stefan, but I was officially a Libertarian Minarchist by the age of 20.  Nowadays I tend to be viscerally cynical about anything to do with the state, though when I converse with people it tends to be less from an ethical and more a pragmatic cynicism. I point out the extreme evil of the consequence of the state, often from an economic perspective. Die hard communists tend to enjoy my perspective, and I often wind up leading them to question their own thoughts on the state as being any possible solution.

I have a strong foundation in economics and much of my thinking finds itself extrapolating from there. I am ecologically minded in much the same way as Bjørn Lomborg. I am the very antithesis of a Luddite, believing fervently that individual entrepreneurship and technology can and will ultimately solve all problems, if they are not stopped from doing so by the state. Political sophisticates often label me as a Libertarian Socialist. I tend to identify myself as a left leaning Anarcho-Capitalist, left leaning because I envisage a common ownership of "the commons", paying a dividend to every individual. I do not envisage that common ownership as being a state, as it by no means implies any monopoly upon, or right to initiate force.

I have been self employed for twenty years creating extreme fetish erotica. Though the quality has been very low budget and therefore somewhat amateurish, I am very proud of the work I have done, as I believe I have evolved that media in a cathartic fashion that has significantly improved the lives of a great many people. I dare say I have even saved lives with it. The changing nature of media however has made it difficult to market such things, given that I dare not put my work where children and other innocents can easily acquire it, and so nowadays I live as a pauper, waiting for inspiration to take me down a new path.

I am 54 years old and the kids are alright.