In this episode, Sunny Ray sits down with Johan Tangra, a libertarian educator, Bitcoin advocate, and functional medicine practitioner based in India. Tangra shares how a personal low point in college pushed him into deep research on spirituality, conspiracies, and monetary systems, eventually leading him to Bitcoin around the time it traded near 800 dollars. He explains his agorist lens on Bitcoin as a tool to defund the state rather than simply build wealth, and describes his organizing work in India, including Bitcoin meetups, anti lockdown protests, and a project called Anarchy for Freedom. The bulk of the conversation centers on his moral case for anarchy, grounded in self ownership, the non aggression principle, and consent, arguing that taxation is theft and that government is a monopolistic institution incompatible with individual rights. He addresses common objections around courts, police, and national defense, pointing to Austrian economists like Rothbard, Mises, and Hoppe for detailed frameworks on how a stateless, competitive free market could replace these functions.
A libertarian and Bitcoiner from India makes the moral case that anarchy, not the state, is the only consent-based way to live.
Who are you and what's your story?
I started digging into ideas in college during a low point in my life, which pushed me toward spirituality and then conspiracies around five or six years ago in India, when that was still taboo. That research led me into monetary policy, fractional reserve banking, and eventually Bitcoin, which I got into early around 800 dollars. My lens was never just about profit, it was agorist and libertarian, using Bitcoin to reduce state power. I now run Anarchy for Freedom, organize protests against medical mandates, and also work as a functional medicine practitioner.
You mentioned approaching anarchy from a place of morality. Can you dig into that a bit?
Almost everyone already agrees it's wrong to steal, murder, or rape another person, because we're sovereign beings who own our bodies. That understanding is the non aggression principle and the principle of self ownership, and from it comes property rights. The state violates this constantly through taxation without consent, which is really no different from theft, even if something is given back in return. That's why I see the state as a morally bankrupt institution built on force rather than consent.
How do you respond to people who say taxation isn't theft because you get roads and services in return?
If a thief steals from me and hands me a bouquet afterward, that doesn't undo the theft, it's the same logic with taxation. Consent is the deciding factor, the same way it separates sex from rape. If money is taken from me without my agreement and spent on things I don't support, that's theft, regardless of what I get back. People try to justify it with public welfare arguments, but you can't grant politicians rights that none of us individually have.
Anarchy is often conflated with chaos and destruction. How do you push back on that?
That's a misnomer. Anarchy is only achievable once people morally understand self ownership and property rights and start respecting those rights in others. It's essentially a free market without any forced monopoly, so different economic systems, capitalist or communist, could coexist as long as everything is voluntary. Nobody worries the clothing market will collapse without a government monopoly on it, and the same logic applies to roads, courts, or defense once profit incentives and competition are allowed to operate.
Without a state, how would something like national defense be funded and organized?
Defense is really just a service, similar to food or clothing, so wherever there's demand, entrepreneurs have an incentive to provide it competitively. In a private property respecting society, no single police or defense provider could keep taking away people's rights, because people could simply defund them and pay a different provider instead. That competitive pressure is what currently doesn't exist with a monopolized police and military funded through forced taxation.
What about courts? How would justice work without a government monopoly on law?
People often ask what happens if two parties in a dispute go to different private courts that rule in their own favor. These are old questions with existing answers in Austrian economics literature. My deontological answer is simpler though, it's already a crime for the state to steal tax money to fund a monopolized court system, and a second crime if they use force to shut down anyone trying to offer better justice services. I'd point people to Robert Murphy's work on this.
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