Socrates never used the word “epistemology” or “metaphysics” when spreading his ideas. He used words like truth, virtue, justice and courage. I am seeking to spread the ideas of Voluntaryism in a similarly clear, concise, and simple manner that anyone can grasp and apply to their own lives.
The Voluntaryist philosophy simply states that relationships between human beings should be completely free of aggression, force, theft, fraud, or coercion. Using force, violence, or threats to get your way is immoral.
This is a philosophy of Non-Aggression, not pacifism. Force and violence are morally justified in cases of self-defense.
Otherwise, it is immoral to initiate aggression, force, violence, threats, or coercion against anyone in order to get them to do or give you what you want. You must convince them to enter into a relationship with you voluntarily, and trade with you freely and peacefully.
This implies that no human being, organization, or government has ownership of any other human being, or their personal property. The only way that any human being, organization, or government can obtain someone else’s labor or property is through peaceful, mutually agreed upon trade.
Involuntary taxation that is enforced through violence, or threats of violence, is immoral regardless of what human being, organization, or government is collecting it. Another word for forced taxation is extortion, which the Oxford dictionary defines as “the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.”
All human beings and organizations must either acquire labor and property through peaceful and voluntary trade, or through force, violence, and threats. Only one of these options is moral.
Related Quotes:
“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.
In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.” ― Robert Higgs
“The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.” – Ludwig Von Mises
“The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.” – Ludwig Von Mises
“Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.” – Harry Browne
“The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great scepticism – which foretells a coming change. As soon as scepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith.” – Stefan Molyneux
