On voluntaryism
The voluntaryist moral position
What is voluntaryism?
Voluntaryism is not a political system, a social solution, or a utopia. It doesn’t describe how things should or should not work.
Voluntaryism is a moral position from which said systems can emerge. It is the first guiding principle on which systems of self-governance and frameworks of morality can be formed by anyone who values voluntary interactions - the only ones that matter and hold meaning.
Defining voluntaryism
Voluntaryism is the most basic moral of no initiation of aggression under any alleged utilitarian rationalisations. Nothing happens unless all parties directly involved or affected are in freely willed agreement or consent. Coercion to agree is not free consent. Misinformed or manufactured consent is not voluntary consent. Submission to the threat of violence (implied or otherwise) is not free consent.
On the same line of thinking, one claiming to be indirectly affected by a transaction between two parties that doesn’t directly affect him other than his taste or ego being allegedly injured is not grounds to require his consent, and any action taken without his consent is not a violation of voluntaryism.
Applied voluntaryism
Most human interactions on a personal and transactional level are voluntaryist. In personal relationships, nothing happens unless all parties agree. We understand that we need to offer value for value, and that we cannot coerce others to be in relationships with us, otherwise the relationships have no meaning. In freely conducted business (that little that government allows), vendors understand that they need to provide as much value as possible within the selling price so as to remain competitive. Customers understand that they need to pay in value if they are to get value from the vendors they like the most. It is a free uncoerced voluntary transaction based on mutual self-interest (nothing wrong with that). It is a meaningful win-win because each party gains more value from the cost they incurred to provide value to the other, otherwise the transaction would not have taken place: the customer values the product/service more than the money he paid, and the vendor values the customer’s money more than his cost of the product/service he provided.
What is not voluntaryism
Government is the opposite of voluntaryism. Everything the state does is based on the threat of violence. There is nothing voluntary about the state. Government evokes utilitarian excuses to “justify” its initiation of aggression against innocent people. Utilitarianism rationalises and “justifies” any atrocity against innocents as long as it alleges greater value sometime, somewhere, to someone other than the ones doing the suffering. Utilitarianism is the “justification” of all criminals. The thief justifies his crime because, in his mind, his utility is greater than the cost of his victim. The rapist thinks the same. The genocidal dictator too. The unjustifiable “justification” of the initiation of force has been the motivation behind every single crime and atrocity in history. Yet we presume to be civilised when our entire system of social (dis)order is predicated upon utilitarian statist violence. Our whole “civilisation” relies on uncivilised practices, such as the rule of violence - not the rule of deontology.
Voluntaryism is the exact opposite of statism. Nothing happens that violates people’s free choice and self-ownership. You cannot forcibly rob people and call it “tax” for a supposed forced charity baptised as “welfare.” You cannot wage war because of an alleged greater good that may or may not come in the unlikely event of victory, a “good” that only some people may enjoy, one day, maybe… (definitely not for the gullible useful idiots manning the trenches).
Stateless voluntaryist society
Voluntaryism negates the deludedly perceived “need” for government. There is absolutely no utility in government. Every single “utility” that government barely provides can be provided more effectively and efficiently by free voluntary interactions by and to those who choose to have them. Laws, policing, security, property registries, criminal punishment, insurance, health and safety standards, environmental standards, charity, roads and common property management…
Everything that the state miserably fails to provide the free voluntary market can provide better and cheaper.
I won’t go through the whole bibliography, as better minds than me have already done so again and again (Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Murray Rothbard, Lysander Spooner, Auberon Herbert, Ludwig von Mises, Robert P. Murphy, to name a few).
I also ask you to consider how the free market solved the “hole in the ozone layer” problem through the free-market competition incentive of producing spray cans without ozone-depleting chemicals… or how the free market first creates health and safety standards through free-market incentives to outcompete competitors - such as the creation of HACCP much earlier than government rushed to impose it to take all the credit.
The morality of voluntarysim
Voluntaryism is the first and ultimate moral. Every other moral or ideal is worthless and meaningless if it needs force to emerge - if it cannot be broadly adopted without the threat of force. Charity has no meaning or value if it cannot be without force (tax-funded welfare). Chastity has no meaning or worth if it is only there because the alternative is violently punished. Health and safety standards have no purpose if people don’t freely choose to have them. And if there is no free-market pressure for them, then it means that the cast majority of people never asked for them (so long for democracy). And for the few that did, there is always a niche market for almost everything.
Therefore, no government is morally justifiable if even one person does not freely choose to live under its dictates.
The immorality of democracy
Democracy is the tyranny of the most consolidated minority over the majority. It is a false assumption that democracy is the tyranny of the majority over the minority. And even it if were the latter (it isn’t), then aren’t we hypocritical to pretend to care about minority rights? And who gets to determine the whole from which the alleged “majority” is counted? Who says that it is morally justifiable for the many to bully the few? Who the hell told us that the oppression of the few and weak by the many and powerful (mob rule) is anything better than the vicious law of the jungle? At least overt dictatorships are honest. Modern demon-cratic states are dishonest dictatorships, which makes them worse, since no single “leader” is accountable, and therefore, more likely to play the blame game. So, demon-cratic officials are more likely to engage in corruption, embezzlement and warmongering.
Key takeaway
Anything outside the scope of voluntaryism is immoral. Here is the emerging hypothetical imperative: if we wish to be moral, then we ought engage in voluntary interactions, consistently, everywhere, every time.
Any form of statism is thus immmoral, be it branded as monarchy, dictatorship, socialism, fascism, technocratic aristocracy, theocracy, republic or democracy. If we wish to identify as ‘moral,’ we must replace the state with free-market solutions that are indeed moral, but also work much better than the inefficient disincentivised monopoly of government ever could.
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I love the Austrian Economic insight that a transaction done voluntarily means increased value for both parties involved. People being able to act and exchange freely is what everyone actually concerned with the rights of the weak should advocate.