Concurrent Voluntaryism

Concurrent Voluntaryism – The Plan

Veresapiens LogoWouldn’t it be nice to minimize the level of government coercion in your own life right now, without having to wait for the whole country to wake up?

We have lots of interesting theoretical discussions about how we could better organize our society if we could just get rid of, or at least minimize, government, but no one seems to have a working plan to deal with that 800 pound gorilla blocking our path to a better society.

Maybe we’ve just been going down the wrong path.

Instead of spending all of our time and energy fighting the gorilla, perhaps we should simply follow a different path…

Earlier, I announced The Start Of A Truly Human Society and explained How We Can Have A Voluntary Society And The State.

In short, a voluntary society does not want to govern, so it is not competing for the right to govern. It considers those who govern to be ‘a criminal gang writ large’. The presence of a large, well-armed criminal gang is unfortunate, but does not preclude non-coercive people from conducting their affairs in voluntary ways, in every way possible.

Some of the big goals I have for our concurrent, voluntary, Truly Human Society are:

  1. To enable individual voluntaryists to gain the benefits of a community of like-minded people and organizations.
  2. To expand the range of voluntary options available to those who prefer to avoid coercively funded or operated organizations.
  3. To allow us to demonstrate that voluntaryism is not utopian.
  4. To instantiate voluntaryist structures and mechanisms ahead of time so as not to be caught unprepared in case any fortuitous changes lead to a period of anarchy or minarchy.

So here’s the plan…

The path to our voluntary Truly Human Society is actually simplified in some ways by the fact that the State is still present. Because we are not talking about ending the State as part of our plan, it means that we do not have to include in the plan such things as how to manage the transition of everyone who is currently dependent on the State.

This concurrent approach also simplifies our task in that we are not trying to satisfy everyone. Our Truly Human Society, being voluntary, will be comprised of only those who want to participate. We can implement just those things that we voluntaryists are interested in implementing.

In the plan itself, there is a primary piece and an optional piece. (The optional piece is actually aimed at the gorilla, because I can’t resist the urge to give him a poke.)

The primary part of the plan is aimed at reducing our day-to-day exposure to coercion.

Everything involved with government and its cronies entails coercion.

Government uses coercion to give itself monopolies in many areas, such as postal service, police, etc. And, government uses coercive regulations to support cartels for cronies in almost every area where big business has an interest.

Beyond the open coercion of enforcing monopolies for its ‘services’, there is also the method in which those services are funded. Voluntaryists well understand that government can’t offer them anything that wasn’t originally taken via coercion from someone else. Usage of government services, then, involves us in the coercion of others.

So, the primary part of the plan is to find ways to shun the monopolies and cartels that government attempts to force us to patronize.

Alternatives may be hard to find, in many cases, thanks to the successful efforts of the criminal gang. But we can all look – and share with each other what we do find.

Sometimes alternatives are not hard to find, just expensive relative to the coercively funded monopolies and cartels. (Private schools, for instance.) But if we purposefully direct more business to these alternatives it will encourage more start-ups and help bring down prices through greater competition.

Even where the alternatives do come at a relatively higher cost, that may still be acceptable, given the added value to you and I of thwarting the monopoly.

For instance, I used to go to a shooting range at a state park, which charged just $3 per hour. It was a very nice facility, and clearly the $3 from users was not fully funding it. Now that a private range has opened near me, I quite willingly give them my business at $18 per hour.

One potential bonus effect of enough of us shunning the monopolies and directing all of our business to their competitors can be seen in the looming bankruptcy of the US Post Office. Maybe that will become a template.

It seems that most people think poorly of politicians and government bureaucracies. But they also hold to the belief that government, even though composed of only politicians and bureaucrats, somehow provides valuable, necessary, even critical, services.

When people complain to us about government, we say “So why don’t we just get rid of it?”. But they then simply fall back on their list of important things “only government” can do.

So, for the second (optional) piece of our plan, I envision us identifying and supporting, or even creating, private equivalents to government services, so that every time the doubter says “only government can do X” we can point to an existing private alternative.

And, the private alternatives will no doubt provide better, more useful, services.

Take consumer protection, for instance, which lots of people see as a critical function that justifies the existence of government. Do you remember when all electrical devices (in the US) used to have the little round UL tag on the cord? UL was (is) a private company that rigorously tested new products for safety, and awarded them its seal if they met the appropriate standards.

UL was basically incorruptible. They knew that if they ever gave undeserved certifications and lost their reputation, they were finished. Same thing with Consumer Reports.

Contrast that with government ‘watchdog’ agencies that have well-deserved reputations for being bought and paid for, or ‘captured’, by the big crony industries they are supposed to be protecting us from.

All we seem to get from the government consumer protection agencies are lots of ugly, moronic warning labels all over products, and then when products are proven, by others, to be unsafe, they simply blame their ‘limited’ budget and go right back to work protecting their crony bosses.

If you think back to the recent controversies over Bovine Growth Hormone (rbGH) in milk and BPA in plastic bottles, the FDA fought tooth and nail to support the use of both of them until private organizations like EWG were able to bring enough public visibility and outrage to force the industry to ‘voluntarily’ abandon them. As far as I can tell, the FDA continues to support the use of both chemicals.

So the second piece of the plan is about continually undermining the path the gorilla sits on.

But remember, the primary reason to start our own Truly Human Society is to rid our lives of as much coercion as possible right now by working together as a community to find and support all of the private alternatives that will enable us to shun coercive government monopolies and crony cartels.

I will be blogging my ideas for our Truly Human Society on this site, and will be re-blogging pertinent posts from other sites here as well. Please add your ideas and suggestions in the comments.

Let’s get it started!

16 thoughts on “Concurrent Voluntaryism – The Plan

  1. Tim

    I’m searching for, and so far not finding, an email subscription to this blog. This post literally answers a question that’s been on my mind for days. The very first sentence could have been plucked from my own mind!

    As you discover and share specific ways to fulfill this primary objective, I don’t want to miss a beat. If you have an email subscription already, please let me know how to access it. If not, please get it!

    I’d be all over it.

    Reply
  2. @Veresapiens Post author

    Thanks Tim! Unfortunately you’re right about the ‘follow by email’ option being well hidden. I think the ‘notify of new posts’ check box at the bottom of the comments box is the only way to subscribe.
    I do have some new posts coming that follow up on this post, so hopefully I’ll be able to bring them to your attention ;)
    Thanks again,
    Jim

    Reply
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  5. Pete Sisco

    A parallel system of voluntary interaction is EXACTLY what is needed to get humanity to the next level toward Freedom.

    As egregiously bad as the current social system is, if it disappeared or collapsed overnight there would be very widespread turmoil in the vacuum. It makes much greater sense to build a better social system alongside the inferior one – like using steamships while jet aircraft are being developed.

    Let me know if I can help in any way.

    Reply
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  9. John Howard

    Some great thoughts in this piece. Thank you! But *please* think of the alternative to government schools as homeschooling, which can operate for roughly 1% of the cost! Homeschool families can work together, take turns teaching and heading field trips. Homeschool kids are far better socialized than gov’t school kids. A recent study showed gov’t school kids clinging together by age group and clique, whereas teenage homeschool kids helped the young children in the group, and all homeschoolers mixed at all ages. Clearly, the homeschoolers felt far more secure as individuals.

    Reply
  10. John Howard

    Your “concurrent voluntaryism” is a noble idea, and I hope it will be productive. But, as I libertarian for nearly 40 years, I can say that it has been tried before. Probably many times. Maybe your attempt will be different. While I hope that it will be, I also think that approach is damn close to impossible. Attempting to live voluntarily in an authoritarian society means inevitably breaking the state’s laws, getting ourselves into trouble, and thereby minimizing our freedom rather than maximizing it.

    I’d like to offer: (1) a semantic distinction, and (2) an alternative to concurrent voluntaryism. First, let me ask: Would you prefer self-government or anarchy? Anarchy means no government at all, not even over oneself. I see that as reckless abandon, living for the moment, and I believe that very few people see that as an ideal. I recommend that we should drop the call for anarchy and instead champion *self-government* as real government. Calling for anarchy is often confused with the collectivist goals of Antifa and other authoritarian causes. Having a monopolistic gang (the state) is mob rule – and that is clearly not *governance* over one’s own life and property. Mob rule is not government. Self-government is rightful government. I believe that self-government is the terminology that we should adopt.

    Secondly, rather than attempting to live voluntarily in an authoritarian society, I suggest that we hit at the conceptual head of the dragon and destroy all attempts to sanctify the root problem, which is the ideal of democracy. Democracy is the ultimate social perversion, and yet it is held by nearly everyone worldwide as the ultimate ideal. Obviously, the replacement for democracy is not dictatorship, but self-rule. Unfortunately, the state is legitimized in most people’s minds by the act of voting. But voting to confiscate other people’s lives and property makes voters *complicit* with those who control the state, who commit the same crime. Then insidiously, rather than realize their own guilt for committing an immoral act, voters self-righteously defend themselves for the cause of democracy. In doing so, they find that they must defend the mob that controls the state because, to do otherwise and condemn the state for its violence, they would also be condemning themselves for voting, which they dare not permit themselves to do! Democracy, therefore, is no doubt the most insidious defense of the state ever devised. Most non-democratic states throughout history have collapsed for the scam that they are. Only the so-called democratic states are still held as legitimate. But democracy undermines an individual’s sense of morality, and when democracy is finally de-legitimized and exposed as the social perversion that it is, the last excuse for the state will no longer exist.

    Reply
    1. James Howe Post author

      Thanks for adding your thoughts to the discussion, John. I think Voluntaryists would overwhelmingly agree with your assessment of Government Democracy. To explore your plan further, when you suggest that we should hit at the conceptual head of the dragon and destroy all attempts to sanctify the root problem, which is the ideal of democracy, what kind of destroy-all-attempts-to-sanctify-the-root-problem actions should we focus on to most effectively hit at the head of the dragon?

      Reply
  11. John Howard

    Quite frankly, I don’t know the answer yet. Certain books may give us some ideas. But if I already feel timid by calling for anarchy amidst the general public, I feel even more so by calling for an end to democracy! I am confident about my insights. But I know with certainty that the vast majority of people are going to hear something different from what I am saying. They aren’t going to hear that I am replacing democracy with self-government. They are going to perceive me as some kind of communist anti-American enemy. So, I think it is ultra important to frame the discussion by presenting the proper contrast, in a clear context, before getting to the proposal. That said, I think it can be done, especially by starting the discussion with libertarian insiders.

    Likewise, the distinction between anarchy and self-government must be carefully handled. Even to me, it feels weird to consider myself pro-government, after all these years as an ‘anarchist’, now that I have repurposed the term government, properly defined as *self-government* – the only effective kind of governance over one’s own life and property.

    It’s easy to point out the logical abomination of democracy. If your child and his friends came to you about several of them stealing your child’s bicycle, would you explain that it is wrong to steal and explain how people work at jobs to make money to buy things they want? Or would you tell your child and his friends that the only thing wrong was that they didn’t take a vote first! If they just take had taken a head count first and found that most of them wanted to take the child’s bicycle, then the theft would be perfectly okay! And so on. There is nothing legitimate about stealing something from someone because a majority of other people wanted to take it. The morality doesn’t change based on the quantity of thieves.

    That’s the cornerstone. But the state itself can never legitimately be started. We have discussed this before. No human being can claim to be a party to a contract with unborn people or living people who never chose to participate. If I have the right to start a state with a group of people, then I also have the same absurd right to sell other people’s property out from under them, or to declare that your fifth generation descendant is hereby the slave of my fifth generation descendant. No, we are each only responsible for oneself and can make agreements only with those who are living and agree.

    It’s all a matter of changing minds; getting people to see that being clear on these issues is very important even if no changes become visible for generations. Clarity reduces stress right now and helps to bring contentment in our current situation, if nothing else.

    Reply
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