Seeing eye-to-eye.

Lots of interesting comments and thought on my recent post about Voluntaryism. There were several comments which shared some erroneous assumptions about the philosophy, so I wanted to post one of my responses to those comments here, with quotes from the original response.

The types of objections listed are quite common, so for the sake of those wishing to understand the idea of self-ownership better, I thought it would be advantageous to share.

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Thanks for your comment. I think maybe reading a little more about what market anarchism actually is might help to clear up some of your concerns.

Imagine a world where there were no overarching sets of laws, standards, a system in which traveling across state, county, city, neighborhood, even property lines means constantly entering and leaving fluctuating sets of laws.

The world is already like this now, isn't it? I can have CBD oil in Colorado, and then be put in a cage in Kansas if I take it there. I can run around naked in my house, but not in yours. Society is already loosely based on private property, just with a cancerous, coercive state heaped on top of it, perverting those ideas via the application of force against non-violent individuals.

Recourse against those who do cause harm would be difficult if not impossible. Say someone does bash your window in with a brick. What can you do?

I would encourage you to watch the video above in the post explaining private law society. How this would work ( and already does in so many ways) is covered there.

What we have now is, in a sense, anarchy-capitalism.

This is categorically false, as the bedrock and non-negotiable foundation of anarcho-capitalism is the axiomatic reality of self-ownership, and by extension, the Non-Agression Principle, which states that all legitimate human interaction is consensual. Government is based foundationally upon coercion. These two systems are diametrically opposed, by definition.

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Commenter's response:

1: That first part did not at all address the concern of the hypothetical minority traversing an unpredictable and diffulct landscape of hostile laws. Your reply that that already happens as things are now does nothing to address how infinitely worse it would be under your proposed arrangement.

2: I will watch that when I get home and see if it is some new take on law enforcement and anarchy that I've never heard before.

3: I disagree. Well I mean I agree that coercion is a major part of our actual reality, what I disagree with is that it is even remotely possible to create any kind of stable and prosperous system that did not involve coercion. My statement was that a system of government and coercive laws is what a species or originally private and free creatures have come up with due to the stability and prosperity it affords, and that any anarchic system would eventually have to adopt that model or fall into an inoperable mess.

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My response, # 2:

I don't find the chaos currently engulfing the world stable or prosperous. And no, rulers and violent people "came up" with applying force to rule. The second part, "...any anarchic system would eventually have to adopt that model or fall into an inoperable mess," is an assertion. You would have to substantiate it to make it a valid argument.

You'll have to have an open mind and understand that the philosophy is not a pacificistic one, either, as self-defense is necessary for self-preservation and is a nature-conferred capacity as a result of individual self-ownership.

Here's the video again.

What do you think, fellow Steemians?

~KafkA

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Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)