Guest post by Jerry M. Tinker. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, August 1987. As many writers have noted, the basic thesis, or strategy, upon which Gandhi’s satyagraha and all non-violent resistance rests is that all structures of power – government and social organizations – always depend upon the voluntary cooperation of great numbers of people…
Tag: coercion
The Inflation of Rights
Guest post by Sir Alfred Sherman. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, April 1987. In this essay I wish to argue that the inflation of rights, in the sense of hypertrophy of claims on society that the state is responsible for levying, is inherently self-defeating. It is bound to generate conflicts of rights that will end…
Freedom: A Truly Unknown Ideal
What is truly new is economic freedom. As Molinari pointed out in the 19th century, this can really only be traced back two hundred years. Governments have always existed in one form or another. Let’s get rid of “the political means” once and for all if you want to achieve something new.
Re: Monopoly Police
When the police have a monopoly (enforced via state coercion), you get service like this: A New Mexico policeman Tasered a 10-year-old child on a playground because the boy refused to clean his patrol car, the boy claims in court. Guardian ad litem Rachel Higgins sued the New Mexico Department of Public Safety and Motor…
Open Systems vs. Closed Systems
Guest post by Joseph Dejan. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, February 1987. To the academic question of more or less government, we may find more useful to compare the political structure with the voluntary system. To sustain life and maximize his well-being, organized human efforts are mandatory. Individually, man may survive, but complete independence requires…
Living Slavery And All That
Guest post by Alan P. Koontz. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, August 1985. In various forums, at least since the birth of the [Libertarian Party], Murray Rothbard has invoked what he calls the “slavery analogy,” to point up the morality of political voting. The question is: Does the slavery analogy really help in this way?…
The Subsidy of History
Guest post by Kevin Carson. A considerable number of libertarian commentators have remarked on the sheer scale of subsidies and protections to big business, on their structural importance to the existing form of corporate capitalism, and on the close inter-meshing of corporate and state interests in the present state capitalist economy. We pay less attention,…
Button Pushing or Abdication: Which?
Guest post by Carl Watner. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, August 1985. For an earlier article on this topic, with a different perspective, at Everything-Voluntary.com, see this post. In Detroit on April 29,1946, Leonard Read gave a speech to the Midwestern Conference of the Controllers Institute of America. The address, which was titled “I’d Push…
Voluntaryism Transcends Anarchism
Post by Skyler J. Collins: I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had, and some ways that my mind has compartmentalized concepts and ideas relating to voluntaryism. Watch a video exploration of these ideas here. In my humble opinion, voluntaryism is more than just a political philosophy, as I explained in the introduction of my…
Prostitution and Coercion
Guest post by Russell Hasan. I was recently thinking about why prostitution is illegal. As a libertarian I think that it should be legal, as an extension of people’s absolute right to own their own bodies. But many Americans disagree. If there is a rational, persuasive argument against the legalization of prostitutes (or “sex workers,”…