Voluntarism. We have been taught about it all our lives whether we realize it or not. When we were in preschool and took something from another child and the teacher would say “now Jimmy, you must ask if you can play with it before you take it from her”, we were being taught about voluntarism. Jimmy did not own what he took from Sally and Sally would have to voluntarily give it up, if she chose to do so, before Jimmy could take the object from her. All through life we are told that we are free, that we must volunteer our time or lives or assets before they can be taken from us. Essentially, these are the core tenants of a free society of which we are told we live in from birth to death. “America, land of the free!” But as we all know, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we do not live in a voluntary society. In this article we will be taking a look at what voluntarism is, what it’s implications are, and how it compares to the current model that we find ourselves living in.
I like to define words and terms as to be clear so we’ll look to the Martian-Webster’s Dictionary. Voluntarism is “the principal or system of doing something by or relying on voluntary action or volunteers. A volunteer is “ a person who voluntarily undertakes or expresses a willingness to undertake a service.” Ethically speaking this relates heavily to the non-aggression principal. The Non-Aggression Principal states that one should not steal another’s property, harm their property, use any kind of coercion, or aggress on another, except in cases of self defense. Voluntarism is highly related to the Non-Aggression Principal because in a Voluntaristic society one must volunteer to do something and cannot have force used against them as a means to one’s action. This means that if I do not want to do something or give something I own to another, for any reason, I do not have to and the other has zero authority or right to make me do or give them said object. Under any circumstances. This is not saying that I would not if it were for a good cause, say someone wanted to use some of my food to help feed themselves, but I do not have to if I do not feel so compelled. This may sound harsh to some but as the old adage goes, “ the ends do not justify the means.” A great example of this is that it is not okay to take one innocent life to save another innocent life. This is an extreme case but I find value in such cases as they seem to set ideas in perspective for myself. So what are the implications of voluntarism?
In a truly voluntaristic society there would essentially be no government. Whether we should have a small government or no government at all is up for debate, but that is not why I’m writing this article, so I will stay clear of that debate for now. My point is simply to point out the facts, and being that government in itself implies force, there can be no governing group in a truly voluntaristic society. There are many different schools of thought on how a society would go about this and keep peace and order.some have brought up private cities (4). Some have discussed binding spoken contracts that would be upheld by the community, such as in the short story, “And Then There Were None”, written by Eric Frank Russell. In this book there is a former Earth colony on a distant planet. The Terran (Earthling) Empire goes to re- conquer a long lost colony of former Terrans, now calling themselves Gans, on a distant planet. What they find is a society that has no government with the ultimate weapon: “I won’t. They do not violently resist, they simply reply to any demand “I Wont.” Their society is a voluntaristic society that abides by the Non-Aggression Principal and runs on a system of “Obs” or obligations. When one does something for another, they are now owed an “ob” by the other. Well, how could the guarantee that this system is upheld? There is a cautionary tale told to all the children on this planet called “Idle Jack”. In this story, Idle Jack comes to the Gan’s planet from Terra (Earth). Idle Jack studies the Gan’s economic system and decides to become a “Scratcher”. A Scratcher is someone who only takes obs and does not “plant his own”, one who accepts everything and gives nothing in return.. To age 16, Idle Jack was allowed to get away with this, as this pushing the limits is expected by the Gans. He went around town gathering obs and giving nothing in return. On the Gan’s planet there are no large cities, only small communities where everyone knows one another and everyone talks. Before too long, word got out that Idle Jack was a Scratcher at which point no one would allow him any obs. So he’d go to the next town and take the same course among that community as well. Eventually everyone would find out his ways and he’d go to the next town.
The Gans farmers would often go to different surrounding towns to trade, and by word of mouth Idle Jack’s reputation spread exponentially with every town he’d misuse. Wherever Idle Jack went people would give him “the I won’t.” So Idle Jack started stealing. The Gans would not try to stop him. He’d steal food and be hungry the next day only to find his former victim’s larder was locked up. Word spread around and eventually everything was locked up. Now, Idle Jack had no means of getting anything. In town two jack had to worry about being seen by someone from town number one. “As he went on he had to be weary about anyone from town nineteen. He never got to town 28. No. He lasted two weeks in 25, eight days in 26, and one day in 27. That was almost the end.” He went off into the open country and tried to live off berries and twigs and was later found hanging from a tree by some walkers. The Terran then explained that on Terra they did not hang people for being lazy, only to be responded to by the Gan that they did not either. The Gans left them to hang themselves (1).
In our modern day we do not have the luxury of only having small towns, we have massive sprawls of concrete jungle where you see someone, who lives in the same ten square mile area, only to never see them again. This makes for a society where people feel disconnected from one another. People stand inches from another only to never say a word. People don’t trust one another because they do not know them, their family, their friends, their reputation, their backstory. All the same, I think there is a valuable lesson is this story. Though we may not be able to operate the same way as the Gans, perhaps there is a variation of their “obs” that we could live by.
It comes down to the Non-Aggression Principal. I do not believe that with the amount of people that live in certain areas this planet, with the dense populations of our cities (which is correlated to a higher crime rate) that we could live in a pacifist society. Fortunately the Non-Aggression Principal allows for self defense. If we lived in our voluntarist society, obviously not everyone would follow suit. We live in a governed society right now and still people do not abide to non-aggression even at the threat of the State’s iron fist. But by using self defense, when necessary, we could guarantee our safety. We do not need police to do this. They often are not there on time even now. The average interaction between a criminal and a victim lasts about 90 seconds. According to the Justice Department, the best response times in the country are about four minutes to an hour. In Detroit, the response time on priority 911 calls is about 24 minutes. These response times fluctuate a bit but we’ll stick with the averages just to get the idea. I am not blaming this on the police. Whether police are jack boots of the state or not is another debate that I am not touching on here. The fact is there is about one police officer to every 400 citizens (2). The point is, the police cannot protect us, and largely do not, simply due to response time. The biggest way they protect is simply by deterrence just by existing in our respective areas. Some potential criminal would not commit a crime because they know there are people with guns and a badge that will come take them away. But a lot of criminal pay no mind to this. I do not believe in non violent crime, so to clarify, I’m talking about violent criminals. Which means that when you are attacked, you will almost definitely have to protect yourself unless there happens to be a police officer standing right around the corner.
Okay so I made a concession, stating that police offer protection through deterrence simply by being there. So let’s dig into this a bit. Why do they deter crime? Is it their badge and uniform? Actually partially yes, studies show that people will take orders more willingly from someone in a uniform. I believe this is largely due to indoctrination though, and would not be so if we were a couple generations deep into our voluntaristic society. So what else could it be? The gun and the threat of more people with guns to come if resisted? I would say that’s the big one. A person knows that if they commit a crime and the police do make it there in time to stop them, there will be a gun pointed in their face. Mono a mono isn’t so bad perhaps, but knowing that when the two throw down that the other will have an army on the way in minutes with more guns and larger guns, battle ready knowing what they’re walking into, is a massive deterrent.
But why does it seem that only police are capable of this? They’re not. Actually, it’s only relatively recent that people have allowed themselves to be fully protected by the local police force. With the second amendment, almost all households had some sort of fire arm and some kind of protection pact with their neighbors surrounding them. And it worked well. Let’s get into the violent criminals mind a bit.
Let’s say I’m a violent criminal, I’m looking to commit a violent crime and there are two neighborhoods. Neighborhood #1 is completely protected by a police force that has the same average response time given by the justice department (4-60 minutes) with the exception of a handful of houses that have their own fire arms, and neighborhood #2 every household has at least one fire arm in it and the neighbors are relatively close knit and look out for one another. Which neighborhood will I go commit my crime in? Even without neighborhood 2’s close knit groups, I’m still going to commit my crime in neighborhood 1 because there is a much larger chance of success. As long as I monitor a house to see which one is least likely to have a fire arm, and then get in and out in the given 90 seconds interaction time or event the four minutes minimum response time , my chances of at least getting away for the night are much much higher in neighborhood 1. So why do we need a government to protect us? We don’t. But what about armies? Well, the Revolutionary war was largely fought by militias, small groups of citizen soldiers and given that we have the second amendment that allows for any and all fire arms, period, I think our society would fair equally as well. In fact this would encourage a less imperialistic United States (voluntary states that is) because we would not have a standing army. When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail. The hammer does not just look at a nail. It drives the nail into the wood. Armies are no different. They do what they are made for, which is fighting wars. Especially with vested corporate interests funding their existence (anyone say Military Industrial Complex?). Proof of this would stand in the fact that since WWII we have been in some kind of conflict, whether it be war, Cold War or small operations like Black Hawk down depicted. By only having voluntary militias, our “military” would be crowd sources by willing individuals and composed of people who have much more to do then travel around waging wars. Kind of like the minute men of the Revolutionary War. Again, this is not a bash on the soldiers, many of them know exactly what I speak of. Many of them join thinking they’re protecting their beloved land, the land that I also love, only to find imperialistic wars being waged around the world.
And yes the Second Amendment does allow for every type of gun. A letter from James Madison to the Captain of The Prince of Neufchatel, a privately owned ship, confirmed that the ship could have and keep its 18 cannons (3), a right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. This is just to drive the point home, that even as is, we do not need the government. But in a voluntaristic society we would not have the amendments. Perhaps it would be appropriate to have some “God-given” universal inherent rights clarified in writing, voluntarily protected by the free men and woman of the society just so they are recognized and secured. That would be another discussion.
So how does this hypothetical society differ from our own? Well, the idea of government in itself implies force. That’s the biggest difference. You cannot have force in a voluntaristic society. This means that taxes of all kinds, are violently enforced. If you think these are just social contracts that we voluntarily agree to pay to keep our nation running (most common excuses include cruddy parks and pot holes roads), just try and stop paying them and we’ll find out just how voluntary they are. Eventually, they will send masked men to your house to break in, hurt you, or worse, and then kidnap you and put you in a cage for some period of time. A piece of metal (a badge) and a uniform does not give anyone the right to disobey universal law and enact violence. If no one has thisnright, which is what we are taught growing up, neither do they.. This means, any and all substance control is violently enforced. The very idea that you are told what you can and cannot put into your body directly implies that you do not own your body in the mind of the state. This is wrong. We do own our bodies, and for better or for worse, at the detriment of our own health, it is ours to do with what we wish. Any and all laws that prohibit an act of nonviolence is immoral and does not abide by voluntarism and non aggression. And as for laws dealing with violent crimes, we do not need thousands of laws to deal with them, we have one: the Non-Aggression Principle. It is simple and precise. It does not need to be added to or taken away from. And for those who break this one law, we have self protection. Done deal.
Citations
(1) http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php
(2) http://gundata.org/blog/post/after-you-call-911/
(3) http://www.constitution.org/mil/lmr/1812amer1.htm
(4) https://fee.org/articles/private-cities-a-path-to-liberty/
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