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An End to Coercion:
How to Realize It and Why.
I have often been told that there is no way to escape
the reality of government coercion: governments have to do a dirty job,
and they must make and enforce laws which aren't always fair or just,
and these laws must be enforced and policed with police and guns. I've
been told that this fact of life cannot be overcome. Although most people
are willing to admit that some regulations and laws are out of control
- from smoking bans to the war on drugs to laws against homosexuality,
most people still feel that the government has no choice but to handle
things such as collecting taxes and enforcing traffic laws under penalty
of imprisonment.
Just because most individuals don't find a moral problem with state
coercion, the consensus that it is therefore the correct way for a human
being to live in society is not necessarily the right conclusion. This
essay is in answer to this widely-held notion. I intend to prove that,
in fact, a just, honest and self-reliant society is possible without
the constant spectre of government force hanging over it.
Our Daily Agony
Everyday, we are confronted with several specific avenues in which
the state exercises its use of coercion upon us in methods contradictory
to our rights as human beings and which we often feel helpless to find
a solution for. The list I was able to come up with includes all of
the following: the draft or selective service, military and police protection,
taxes on production (income) and consumption (sales), the jurisdiction
of the courts, traffic law and infrastructure, broadcasting and the
media, education, health care, pensions, the welfare state, and numerous
other areas. I will attempt to address these as comprehensively as possible.
Personal Coercion: The Draft
The idea that the military draft could be in any way justifiable in
a free society is laughable. If a society is free and just, there should
be no shortage of men willing to fight for that freedom and justice
when it is threatened. If the cause is unjust or the actions of the
government are sketchy, it is only right that men are unwilling to take
up arms in the name of that government. The primary reason the draft
is often seen as justifiable is because most of the military actions
of the state today are in no way tied to the protection of our country
or our national interests, and thus most individuals are unwilling to
fight those battles voluntarily.
If a standing army is required due to generally hostile geopolitical
conditions, it would be adequately staffed if only the government were
willing to pay its members the equivalent of their civilian pay in their
respective field.
Financing this, as well as for the various research and development
and weapons procurement necessary for a viable military machine, would
be based upon tax on real property, accepted voluntarily by property
owners. After all, the rational basic purpose of any free country's
military is to protect the property of its citizens from seizure by
a foreign entity. Those who own property would be the ones to finance
that protection, based upon their respective holdings.
The enforcement of this tax does not have to be based upon coercion,
as is tax collection today. The military would merely keep track of
those who are not paying for their services, and publish their records,
in a way blacklisting those who are in arrears. This policy would show
businessmen whether they are doing business with honest, secure individuals
or dodgy cheats. There is sure to be a small percentage of free riders,
but like most insurance policies today, men who wish to be secure in
their property would be more likely than not to purchase such insurance
- if they value their property and their freedom.
Those who don't value these things would find themselves far less
able to deal with their fellow men, since those men would quickly note
their poor planning and evasive practices.
Police and Judicial Activity
Like the military, law enforcement and protection could be handled
much differently and far less coercively. The same type of federalized
jurisdiction as we have today could be maintained, in a far more just
manner, if based upon a participatory, voluntary system.
Today, most legal protection is universal, and laws universally enforced.
If a home is invaded, the owner calls the police and the police handle
the case, regardless of how the property owner's tax record reads. If
instead of general taxes the police and judiciary were funded by a subscription-based
property tax and contract tax, the laws could be enforced much more
justly.
In the case of criminal offenses, individual rights would be protected
by contract law, since property owners are paying not only for the protection
of their property, but also for the legal system which would try those
accused of violating their rights, similar to uninsured motorist insurance
on an auto policy. Because the criminal code is full of unjust and superfluous
laws, this system would not be as inefficient as it appears. Such things
as drug offenses, "moral" offenses, or other such violations would be
eradicated when every property owner was faced with the full cost of
the enforcement thereof.
In the case of contract law, all contracts which the partners wish
to be enforceable under civil law would require the endorsement of the
governing body. Thus, contracts not receiving the approval of a qualified
legal representative would be unenforceable, and any violation thereof
would not be under the jurisdiction of the state.
Those who leave their taxes unpaid would not face criminal proceedings,
as is currently the case. Rather, tax evasion would be in all cases
treated similarly to unpaid child support - those in arrears would be
denied access to the legal system. Police would recognize a plaintiff
as a non-paying citizen, fellow citizens and businessmen would not trust
them, and their contracts would go unendorsed and unenforceable.
Please understand that the above suggestions, radical as they may
seem, do not suggest an anarchic, libertarian distopia. I am in no way
advocating the Slavic ideal of "competing governments" in any way, but
rather I fully support a single central government with a federal system.
I do agree that the state, whether strongly central or confederal, should
have a monopoly upon the issuance and enforcement of the law, but that
the means and methods of that enforcement should be voluntary, and under
the consent of the governed.
In order to carry such an ideal to its fullest, however, our society
would have to, by necessity, accept the tenants of personal responsibility
for our actions and for our property, and behave accordingly. Thus the
more we have, the more we must pay to insure what we have. We cannot
rely upon our community to protect our bodies or our health from ourselves,
and thus drug laws and behavioral laws would be impossible. Those who
choose to smoke would have to pay huge insurance premiums to justify
the higher outlays their carrier would have to provide, and those who
fail to support their ends will find themselves without means. That
is justice.
Taxes Taxes Taxes
As I've shown, the only justifiable function of the state's outlays
should be for the purpose of protecting property and enforcing contracts,
and thus those who hold property and make contractual agreements must
be willing to insure themselves with government and judicial protection.
This means that the financing of the government would have to be based
wholly upon property and contract taxing.
Income tax (tax on production) is one of the most unjust and evil
actions taken by government today. By taxing a man progressively based
upon the degree of his productivity, we are discouraging productivity
and inviting all men to understate their earnings in shame, when in
fact they should be proud of every penny of their wealth. The same goes
for probate taxes, which literally beat dead men after their corpse
is in the grave. Probate taxes visciously strip men of the right to
choose to whom they award their wealth after their death, and are an
attack upon the tendency of honest men to save and invest their wealth,
rather than squander it in order to keep it out of state coffers.
Sales tax (tax on consumption) is only a slightly lesser evil than
taxes on production. It is often levied upon the most basic goods, including
food and clothing, and does nothing to discourage consumption or encourage
savings. Most sales taxes finance pork-barrel projects or failing local
welfare, transit or subsidy systems, and history has proven that "temporary
sales tax" initiatives are a contradiction in terms.
The majority of government projects for which taxes are levied today
are in no way the realm in which the state should be involved. Welfare,
education, health care, pensions and transportation should all be severed
from their state shackles. More efficient and viable industries would
develop in their wake, and the cost of citizenship would be reduced
considerably.
If a community or state wishes to sponsor a pet project unrelated
to property protection or contract enforcement, such activities would
have to be funded by voluntary fundraising methods, such as lottery,
donation, or subscription. Any method of extracting wealth from the
general population by legal coercion is by nature unjust and wicked.
Traffic, Infrastructure, and the Media
Traffic law would be a far more justifiable and just if a single,
simple change were made: the privatization of transportation. Roads,
highways and freeways which were privately owned would have traffic
laws and regulations enforceable based upon contractual agreement, where
the toll ticket or subscription fee one pays for the use of a transit
system is a contract between the owner and user. Like parking garages
and event venues, this contract establishes the regulations which the
owner wishes to levy on his customers, and what the penalties for violating
them could be.
Thus the enforcement of speed limits and the like would be the responsibility
of the owner of the facility, and the penalties for violating such rules
would be covered by the more benevolent realm of civil and contract
law, rather than criminal proceedings. This would, of course, not rule
out the jurisdiction of the state in felony and capital cases, such
as manslaughter or use of a vehicle as a weapon on private property,
just as such law currently applies on both private and public property.
In terms of electricity and telecommunications infrastructure, the
emergence of cheap and competitive wireless communications has shown
how much better a consumer market would be created if the means of transmission
is privately owned and regulated.
Along the same lines are the broadcast media, which have been under
the unjust thumb of state regulation since their inception. When the
ability to utilize radio waves for audio and video broadcast were discovered,
the government immediately seized the ownership of the broadcast spectrum,
declaring that it "had always been there" and thus was "everyone's property",
and have since managed (or mismanaged) to regulate this industry into
a spineless, meaningless nothingness.
In a just broadcasting system, the creators of the methods of sending
and receiving broadcast signals should have been the owners of the resource.
After all, it was their invention which created the productive existence
of radio waves. Contrary to the state's previous actions in cases such
as mining claims or homesteading, in the case of broadcasting, the state
in no way protected the innovation of broadcast media or its innovators,
but declared that anything discovered in broadcast production was by
nature community property, subject to government whims and regulation.
The only way to bring justice back to broadcasting is to dismantle all
regulatory bodies, except those voluntarily maintained by the industry
itself. Content, frequency propagation, methods and policies would be
the responsibility of independent broadcasters or their voluntary cooperative
organizations, and the entire media industry would function more justly
and efficiently as a result.
Finally, there would remain such things as insurance and services
which are currently handled by the state, but which would be far more
just if handled independently and privately. In such cases as fire protection,
unemployment insurance, health insurance, workers compensation, pensions,
and all other assurance-related services, businessmen and property owners
would be served far better with private insurance services. Insurance
companies would be in charge of insuring against fire and contracting
fire protection for their customers based upon the level of service
for which customers paid. The issuance of insurance would be governed
by the same rules which insurance providers currently use, including
location-based premiums, where for example, those who live in an area
with few insured households would be required to pay a higher premium,
just as people in Los Angeles tend to pay higher homeowners permiums
due to the crime rate and density of their city. This is just, because
people are free to choose where they with to live.
Examples of such an insurer-based system currently exist throughout
the business and financial world, and work very efficiently, especially
in areas subject to the least amount of state restriction or regulation.
Auto insurance carriers would be able to liscense drivers, and thus
be responsible if their insure a poor or reckless driver. Just as liability
insurers are responsible when they insure a bad doctor or lawyer, they
should better scrutinize the professionals they insure, and be responsible
for their liscensing and the determinations of their qualifications.
Transferring the entire liscencing and regulatory infrastructure to
the insurance industry would be the best check on insurance companies,
and the best method to ensure honesty between traders and partners.
Education
A common issue of contention exists in the field of education. Most
people see education as a right, to varying degrees. This is a common
fallacy. It was started by the sons of the Founding Fathers, who believed
that a free state could not be maintained unless the populace was educated
in the functioning thereof. This is a flawed argument at best, and a
total contradiction at least.
The right to become educated is irrefutable, and is tied to the right
to life. Men, to survive, must learn the proper values by which to live,
and our success as a species shows we are actually good at it. But the
right to educate ourselves in no way implies the right to be
educated by others. From birth, all children are eager to learn, and
the best of parents provide a benevolent environment in which to foster
this eagerness. The most important lessons of being human are learned
in the first few years of life, and thus the role of parents in steering
the education of their children is vital. Unfortunately, most people
suddenly deny this role after infancy.
It is generally assumed that parents are no longer responsible for
the education of their children after the age of kindergarten. The reason
I make that statement is because most people assume they have a right
to send their children off to state-funded schools after they reach
a certain age, and that the state should be responsible for education
for anywhere from six to twenty years of that person's life.
This is tragic, because it erodes the sense of responsibility parents
should feel for their children and their development as human beings.
If parents feel they have done their job by age four, do they really
love their children? Why would one bear children when one does not plan
to provide for that child's development and growth in every way to adulthood?
The best way to replace this sense of responsibility in parents is
to privatize the entire education industry. For much of the industrial
revolution, the average child received their education from a combination
of parental nurturing and on-the-job training. Parents would bring up
their children to understand the value of productive work, and once
old enough, that child would begin their career, usually with a family
firm, farm, or local factory. The social mobility of the child was based
exclusively upon their ability and ambition, as well as the extent to
which their parents nurtured and exploited that ability.
Today we could easily return to a more just system, if state education
was abolished and in its place were scholarship- or sponsorship-based
educational systems. Parents with the resources to send their children
to private schools would be free to do so, and those who could not could
choose several other avenues which would quickly become available. One
would be similar to today's corporate trade schools or military academies,
where students are educated under contract to employ themselves with
their sponsoring institution upon graduation. Many employers would readily
offer education memberships as a benefit, similar to today's pension
and health plans. Such a benefit would be a powerful recruitment tool
for employers who wanted responsible, trustworthy workers, and they
would know immediately upon the worker's utilization of such a benefit
that that worker had a strong sense of parental responsibility.
Scholarship and sponsorship-based schools would be the most efficient
ever in existence, because they would provide immediately marketable
knowledge and skills, and most students would have immediate placement
upon graduation. Companies offering education benefits for parents could
choose between subscribing to independent education providers or forming
their own schools, similar to current health care organizations for
employers. The result would be a far more rational, responsible and
intelligent populace, and a return to the virtues of productivity and
self-reliance.
Realize It...
Utopian? Hardly. What I've described is suggested by the simplicity
and innate rational beauty of a document known as the Constitution of
the United States. Although it had many loopholes and contradictions
which have been appropriated for the collectivist and intrinsicist lobby
over the more than 200 years of its existence, it remains one of the
most cogent frames for a free state and free society. It advocates justice,
life, productivity and self-reliance.
To make it happen, one has only to stop giving moral sanction to the
infrastructure which denies us justice every day, in our taxes, criminal
code and regulatory maze. I'm not advocating the old libertarian line
of "don't pay your taxes" or the anarchist line of revolution. I advocate
order and justice. That is not possible without the rule of law. But
even the rule of law is unjust and will not instill a sense of liberty
and order unless it is based upon the voluntary participation of those
under its jurisdiction. A legal system is only as strong as the justice
it provides, and a system based upon coercion from within is never just.
Would that mankind understood this and stopped assuming that "order"
must always mean "force", and saw society as something in which they
voluntarily participated, rather than grudgingly accepted as just another
penalty for the sin of being alive. I do not believe my life is a sin,
and I have always maintained that the ability to enjoy it rests in my
own hands, and none other. Would that every man could wake up and be
vested with the self-confidence and resolute character necessary to
make a just world realizable for himself and for us all.
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