Doug Kendall wrote in a Facebook group, “Voluntaryism is the vehicle, not the destination.” As long as I’ve identified as a voluntaryist, I’ve never looked at it quite like that. I’ve always considered voluntaryism as a less-controversial synonym of “anarchism”. Really, though, as Doug points out, voluntaryism is the vehicle, anarchism, the “free society”, the…
Category: Items of Note
Spanking as Punishment
A friend linked to this Australian study showing that most parents still spank their kids. I’m not surprised by this at all. For me, and I’d like to think most parents, you feel bad when you spank, but you do it because you think you have to, that it’s the only way to raise a…
Layout and Formatting
I’ve been messing with the layout and formatting of the site lately. Apologies if you accessed it while it was all jumbled up, and thought maybe a bomb had exploded. Voluntaryists are not bomb-throwers. I think I’ve settled on something for the time being.
Everything-Voluntary Newsletter
Feedburner, which handles our RSS/Atom feed, has an email subscription service. It creates a daily newsletter of all new posts on the website. This can be subscribed to by clicking here, or the Newsletter tab at the top of the page.
Re: Bah Humbug to The Christmas Carol
There’s been some lively discussion on this thread here and here. I’m open-minded, but have yet to be convinced. Feel free to chime in if you feel strongly either way, and please keep it civil and ad hominem-free.
Bah Humbug to The Christmas Carol
December’s finally here and I’ve been waiting to post this. We’re all familiar with the classic story The Christmas Carol, and how “evil” Ebeneezer Scrooge is. 2 years ago I shared on my Truth blog an essay by Butler Shaffer that completely changed my opinion of this story. Here’s what I posted then: I couldn’t believe…
Thou Shalt Not Steal
Says Veresapiens, If the guiding principle shaping a society was “Thou Shalt Not Steal” (TSNS), what kind of government, legal, and social systems would the society have? Before we begin to answer that question, we need to review one important aspect of TSNS. If you ‘own’ something, it means that you have total control over…
Re: In an Ideal Nation
I wanted say a thing or two about this piece by Leonard Read. Though Read was not a complete voluntaryist, you could call him a minarchist, this list of ideals are entirely voluntaryist. In fact, “to buy or not to buy any service or product offered for sale, even if the refusal displeases the seller”…
In an Ideal Nation
Every person should be free to pursue his ambition to the full extent of his abilities, regardless of race or creed or family background. to associate with whom he pleases for any reason he pleases, even if someone else thinks it’s a stupid reason. to worship God in his own way, even if it isn’t…
Exploitation Defined
I’ve often encountered when in discussion of “sweatshops” the charge that those who own them are exploiting those they employ. But I think it all depends on one’s definition of exploitation. The common definition is similar to: the act of employing to the greatest possible advantage. If that is all there is to exploitation, it…