Written by Clayton for The Voluntaryist Reader. If you were to bring a contract to an arbitration hearing that had been signed under duress, the contract would be viewed as null and void because it had been signed under duress. It is not evidence of an agreement because no agreement was ever made or reached…
Category: Voluntaryism
The Power of the Individual
Written by Doris Lessing, as published in The Voluntaryist, February 1992. It is particularly hard for young people, faced with what seem like impervious walls of obstacles, to have belief in their ability to change things, to keep their personal and individual viewpoints intact. I remember very clearly how it seemed to me in my…
Power’s Struggle to Transcend Legitimacy
Written by Clayton for The Voluntaryist Reader. Imagine you are a young adult, say, sixteen or seventeen years old. Driving down the highway, you and your friends are laughing and joking. Without warning, you see a police cruiser, circus lights blazing, in your rearview mirror, and quickly pull to the side of the road. You…
An Opinion on Gun Control
Written by Larry Correia for Monster Hunter Nation. I didn’t want to post about this, because frankly, it is exhausting. I’ve been having this exact same argument for my entire adult life. It is not an exaggeration when I say that I know pretty much exactly every single thing an anti-gun person can say. I’ve…
It’s About Love
Written by Skyler J. Collins. Modified from the original written in August 2011. I am wont to harp on non-voluntaryist political philosophies because of their foundations in violence. I’d like to take just a moment to explain something that I haven’t done a good enough job explaining.Voluntaryism to me is about one thing: Love. I’ve…
Panarchy, Not Anarchy, Is the Answer
Written by Paul Bonneau for Strike The Root. One other characteristic that is usually included with panarchism is that of extraterritoriality. In other words, people of different polities live all mixed up together, again similar to people of modern religions. I don’t find this entirely prescriptive of panarchy, though, since people can live where they…
The Rationally Misinformed Voter
Written by Thomas J. DiLorenzo for LewRockwell.com. In the sub-discipline of economics known as public choice, an important concept is the theory of “rational ignorance.” First articulated by political scientist Anthony Downs in the 1950s, and expanded upon by economist Gordon Tullock and others, the theory of rational ignorance holds that it is perfectly rational…
The Threat of Voluntary Associations
Written by David Glasner, as published in The Voluntaryist, October 1991. The notion that a regime — even a totalitarian regime — could survive the universal disapproval of it subjects is difficult to comprehend. Ordinarily one would assume that a nearly unanimous desire by the subjects of a regime to oust it eventually would make…
But What About Voluntary Slaves?
Written by Clayton for The Voluntaryist Reader. One of the objections that is raised against voluntaryism is that, since “anything goes” in a voluntary society so long as it is voluntary, wouldn’t there be voluntary slavery? If Smith sells himself into slavery to Jones, we as voluntaryists must respect this voluntary choice, no?Read the full…
Obsessed by Megalomania
Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe by German weekly Junge Freiheit. Are taxes nothing but protection money? The state a kind of mafia? Democracy a fraud? Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe is not only considered one of the most prominent pioneering intellectuals of the libertarian movement, but also perhaps the sharpest critic of the Western political system. Professor Hoppe:…