Ron Paul is a Voluntaryist

Ron Paul is a Voluntaryist



Ron Paul has re-ignited the spark for liberty in the United States and around the world. He has generated unprecedented interest in libertarian philosophy and sound Austrian economics.

The modern libertarian movement, founded by Murray Rothbard, opposes the initiation of force by anyone. In this way, modern libertarians go further than the classical liberals, who accepted the initiation of force by the State, believing taxation to be necessary for security.

This position is known by various names including voluntaryism, self-government, anarcho-capitalism, market anarchism, and libertarian anarchism.

In this video, using Ron Paul's own words from his books and interviews, it is shown that Ron Paul's goal is voluntaryism. He adopts limited-government positions and appeals to the U.S. Constitution as part of a long-term strategy for achieving a completely free society, absent any State.

Law without Government, Part One: Principles

Law without Government, Part One: Principles

Part One of a series of films exploring a society where there is law and order, but no government.

This part introduces the definitions of law and government, illustrating the concepts using a simple desert-island scenario.

Ron Paul 2012 - The Liberty Movement will be Ignited Again

Ron Paul has declared that he running for the 2012 Presidential election.  In opinion polls, he is statistically tied in a one-on-one race against Barack Obama... the best result of any Republican candidate or potential Republian candidate.  He is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

The Ron Paul Revolution began in 2007 in the build up to the 2008 primaries.  His main goal of running for the Presidency was, and is now again, to educate the public about the idea of liberty.  The grassroots Ron Paul campaign of 2008 started from nothing and built up huge momentum.  The idea of liberty was given a great rebirth in the minds of Americans and individuals worldwide who followed the campaign.

After achieving respectable results in the primaries of 2008, Ron Paul withdrew and set up the Campaign for Liberty, which would continue the Revolution and the all-important spreading of his ideas.  The Tea Party grew out of an End The Fed rally organized by Ron Paul supporters.  There has been a shift in the mindset of Americans in the last four years, in the direction of liberty.  So much so, that many Republicans are eager to appeal to Tea Partiers.  While some parts of the Tea Party have swayed from the original message of liberty, choosing instead to back un-libertarian candidates like Sarah Palin, Ron Paul's 2012 run will remind Tea Partiers, and everyone else, of the true principles of liberty.

Ron Paul is not starting from scratch this time round.  His support has only grown over the past four years.  His predictions that America will enter a deep recession have come true.  The wars and invasions of civil liberties continue despite Obama's promises to the contrary, just as Ron Paul said they would.  If we want peace and prosperity, "we have to change our ideas about what the role of government ought to be," by getting government out of our lives, as Ron Paul so eloquently explains.  

Through the Ron Paul 2012 campaign, the liberty movement will be ignited again.  The Ron Paul Revolution continues.

10 approaches in making a case for liberty or anarchy

Here is a list of 10 fairly distinct approaches that I have used in the past when making a case for liberty or anarchy.


1. The ‘Gun in the Room’ Approach

Governments require taxation; taxation is theft; theft is unethical. By advocating government, you are advocating something unethical. You are saying you have no problem with a criminal gang stealing my money from me using threats of violence.


2. The Free Market v Monopoly Approach

Calculation problem. Knowledge Problem. Incentives. With free markets comes quality, low price, efficiency, diversity and choice. Monopolies are necessarily aggressive, corrupt, inefficient, and ineffective in satisfying consumer demand. Arguments should be completely general… The monopoly on law should be emphasized: we have bad quality laws because law is currently produced by a monopolist.


3. The Secession Approach

National boundaries are arbitrary, imaginary lines drawn on political maps and set by the outcomes of historical wars. Any advocate of government must propose some ideal territorial size that a nation should be, as well as his ideal form, scope and policies of government. If a group of people within a nation want to declare independence, secede and create their own smaller nation, who should decide whether this is allowed to happen: the people seceding, or the government they are trying to secede from? The latter is clear slavery and justifies world government. And if the former, if a group of people have the right to secede, then by the same argument, individuals have the right to secede. Individual secessionism is anarchism.


4. The ‘Competing Governments’ Approach

How can we know what type of government is best? Trying them out could be a good way. Let a thousand nations bloom. Or tens of thousands. Let the many micro-national governments compete with each other, and see under which type of government the people become most prosperous? Why not even try having more than one government in one territory? ;-)


5. The Government-as-Slavery Approach

A slave is someone who has the fruits of his labor taken off him by his master. The master sets the rules, telling the slave what he can and can’t do, using threats or acts of violence. The slaves massively outnumber the masters, but the slaves have been brainwashed, confused and distracted, and have accepted their condition of slavery. They have given up on the idea on freedom; they don’t think they will be able to survive without the master around to take care of them. Let’s abolish slavery: become an anarchist.


6. The Voluntarism Approach

We can distinguish between two types of trade between individuals: free trade, and coerced trade. The former is when both individuals are making the trade voluntarily. The latter is when one individual is using threats or acts of violence to coerce the other individual into making the trade. Libertarians believe that initiating a coercive trade (aggression) is unjust. Statists, on the other hand, advocate the use of aggression; aggression is required for a state, a monolist of law in a given territory, to exist.


7. The Historical Approach

USA v USSR; East Germany v West Germany; North Korea v South Korea. Why did the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Scientific/Industrial Revolution take place in Europe? How did the US become the richest nation in the world? The historical lesson: freedom good, government bad.


8. The Paradigmatic Approach

The left-right paradigm is misleading; left and right are just forms of statism when what matters is the degree of statism; the more meaningful and useful paradigm is Liberty-Totalitarianism; all major political parties are towards the totalitarian end of it.


9. The ‘True Democracy’ Approach

Democracy can be described as ‘power to the people’. Yet anarchy is the only condition where all 'the people' have the power they need the most: the power to defend themselves. Statism is a system where the people have no power to stop a gang of thieves stealing their money and enslaving them through legislation and regulation. The state gives some privileged few people the power to rule over many others; a power that nobody should have. Democracy is a great fiction where everybody attempts to live at the expense of everyone else; everybody votes to try and get the state to use it's coercive power to benefit them.


10. The ‘Real Equality’ Approach

Only anarchy will create the only type of equality worth having: equality under the law. Anarchy is the only true classless society, where no individual is above the law. Only when there is free entry into the industry of producing law will we have acheived equality.


Post comments about which of these you have used and what seems to work best on different sorts of people.  I posted this list almost a year ago at the Mises forum and it generated a worthwhile discussion.

How Much Government is Necessary?

A lengthy, in-depth discussion and debate of the question: how much government is necessary.  Stephan Molyneux argues the anarchist position that no government is necessary.  Michael Badnarik defends the minarchist view that a small government, limited by a constitution, is necessary for the production of law.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_k93op7_Pc

What is Libertarianism?

Libertarianism is a political philosophy. Like all political philosophies, it is a system, or set of principles, for allocating property ownership. It provides an answer to the question: who is the rightful owner of X?

Law is the application of political philosophy. All courts must operate according to some political philosophy, since dispute resolution involves, first and foremost, determining who the rightful owner of the disputed property is.

In libertarianism, property can be rightfully acquired only by (a) homesteading, or (b) voluntary exchange. These principles are held to be universal: no-one can rightfully acquire property any other way, for example, by stealing it.

Property is originally created through the interaction of labor and nature. The homesteading principle is that the first owner of the property – the “homesteader” – is the individual who supplied the labor. It is the formation of an objective link between the homesteader and the property that gives him the right to ultimate decision-making jurisdiction over how that property is used, i.e. ownership rights.

Property ownership rights can be transferred from one individual to another by either voluntary exchange or coerced exchange. Libertarians believe that only voluntary exchanges constitute a rightful exchange of property. Involuntary exchanges include murder, rape, slavery, assault, theft, fraud and trespass. Under libertarian law, these activities are outlawed.

Libertarianism can be contrasted with socialism. Under socialism, the first owner of original property is not always the homesteader; the most obvious case being the outlawing of drugs. And some involuntary exchanges are lawful; the most obvious case being taxation.

Socialism is necessarily non-universal; there are different laws for State employees, such as tax collectors, than there are for non-State employees. Most individuals are not allowed to threaten others with violence if they do not pay tribute.

Government is incompatible with libertarianism. A government is a territorial monopolist of law. The only way a government can maintain this territorial monopoly is by aggressing against potential new competitors in the production of law and forcing individuals within the territory from using any other legal system for conflict resolution. Government therefore necessarily violates the libertarian principle that only voluntary exchanges are rightful.

A libertarian, qua libertarian, is concerned with ending acts of aggression, as that term is understood according to libertarian philosophy. Under libertarian law, no individual is allowed to initiate coercive exchanges.

Two Ways of Getting Rich

How can an individual get rich? There are only two ways:

One way is to steal his way to riches. He can use the “political means”, which is to use violence or threats of violence. People are coerced into giving up their money.

The other way is to persuade people to voluntarily give up their money. This is the “economic means”. This requires the individual to produce something that other people want.

Libertarians reject the initiation of violence or threats of violence, so they reject the “political means”. So in a libertarian society, if somebody is very rich, it must be because he has produced things of great value to other people. There simply is no other way for an individual to become rich.

The “desire to become rich,” usually presented as a bad thing, can be interpreted, in a libertarian society, as the “desire to satisfy the most urgent and important needs and wants of as many people as possible”.

In other words, greed is good, for want of a better phrase, as long as the economic means is used and not the political means.