When will you take the next step?

Although I had had liberty minded ideas for a long time before I took the next step into voluntarism it wasn't until I came upon a couple of different readings that I made the transition. I didn't come upon these things by happenstance but through my quest of learning what exactly freedom is. What the logical foundation for such a thing is as well as its ethical and moral implications. This is how I've gotten here. My question is when are you going to take the next step? When are you going to reject the state in its every form for the evil that it is? As a libertarian I eventually went to the belief in minarchism, which essentially states that the only role for government in society is to protect private property and contract. There's a joke that's told about minarchists that goes like so "What's the difference between a minarchist and an anarchist? 6 months." It's true because I left minarchism and that's because it'll take you about that much time to learn about the beauty that is the Non-Aggression Principle. It is wrong to breach the Non-Aggression Principle and the State can only exist by breaching it, so its very existence is based on a foundation of immorality.

But what about the poor?

In a society where government intervention is rampant, like in America today, we see that the government is constantly "trying" to "help" the poor. Although I will whole heartedly say that the government has good intentions to protect the poor and help them I will note that their attempts have been futile at the very best. What we have in America today is a welfare state that has essentially kept the poor exactly that poor. We have minimum wages, rent control, and even worse forced unions. In a free society exactly how are the poor helped so they can have a better life? I will note that it is my goal to help everyone live a better life especially those who are poor. That is something I learned through my parents who constantly helped, voluntarily I'll note, those less fortunate than us that were in our family. I learned that I have a moral obligation to help people less fortunate than I am and this is without the use of the force that the State must enforce to "help" the poor. I will also state that the use of government control of the market in the forms of inflation, minimum wage laws, and rent controls in fact hurts the poor more than could ever make them better as well as the welfare state. As usual this is beyond the scope of this post but if you'd like me to expand on this please comment and I have no problem doing so. The scope of this post is to show how a true voluntary society could better help the poor than the State could ever wish to do so. In a voluntary society most believe that the poor would be completely helpless because they simply could not afford things. How will the poor afford protection, health care, emergency care, etc...? These are all straw man arguments that are based off the CURRENT situation. Basically since it is now hard for the poor to afford such things in our current system of statism where the government attempts to help it would be impossible for them to afford them without government. We must first understand why it is hard for the poor to afford such things in our current system and if it would be in the poor's best interest to live in a free society. Remember that us Voluntarist's idea of society is NOT a utopia by any means we just believe it to be a better society than what we have now. The poor would have much better access to those things we see as essential today for a few reasons. The first reason would be the abolishment of a central bank that has caused the value of all hard earned dollars to diminish at exponential rates. It would be a simple fact that what the poor earned would be far more worth in value what they are in the society we have today. Without government regulation of a completely free market we would see a much cheaper product with higher quality in all services that would be provided. This means that protection, health care, and emergency care plus more would be much more affordable to those with a lower income. The poor were adequately taken care of before the intervention of medicare and medicaid through the use of the voluntary choices of individuals who had a belief that is was a moral obligation to support charities. BUT TIMES ARE DIFFERENT they say people are more greedy than they ever were before. What must be realized is that the bulk of charity is NOT given by the wealthiest but by an accumulation of the middle class who far out give than the rich. We do not need the State to force charity, what we need is moral people voluntarily giving to help those less fortunate. Anything more than that is theft through taxation and can never morally be justified.

A free society and the laws that bind it

As we've been raised and educated about the American "justice" system it is the only form of "justice" we've come to know. So it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a world that could live without something that's been indoctrinated in our minds for more than 200 years. There exists though two justifications for the removal of the State and the so called justice system we have that live intrinsically in the State. The first is a moral justification, which is the strongest of the two, which notes that the State uses the monopoly of force and violence to implement such laws that individuals have no choice but to follow. I believe in a voluntary society where one can live without the use of force when such laws may be in place that still violate natural rights and are therefor not natural laws, I will get into natural laws in a little. The second justification is an economic one which goes hand and hand with the moral justification. I would argue, although not in this post, that all goods can be better served to consumers in a completely free market at a lower price and higher quality than government could ever imagine to accomplish with the use of compulsion and coercion. These justifications lay the foundations for a society that would be free from the State and flourish while individuals are safe from tyranny. Before I get into how private law can work we must first realize that just because there are current laws that forbid stealing, murder, etc it doesn't mean that without these laws people will en mass go on a spree of stealing and murdering. I know I would do no such things and I'm pretty sure you would do no such things. But I am a practical man and realize that there are bad people in this world that will do bad things but no amount of government can stop these people. In a free society where property rights exist as noted in my Property post there would exist a market for private law that could protect property which includes land and of course your body. At first it seems strange to expect to live in a world with no police, but of course even today where we have police they can only do so much and most of the time it is of course after the fact. In a free society there would exist a market for protection services to be had. These would be voluntary services that consumers would pay for and the protection services would be held accountable to these very consumers. Competition between protection firms would create firms that would produce great quality protection at a low cost. The wealthiest would pay higher costs to have higher quality services akin to bodyguards. Those that are not as wealthy could pool money together to pay to protect the community. There would also exist an incentive for certain firms to produce protection at very low costs that the poor could afford. This is how all goods exist in the somewhat free market that we have today and protective services are goods as well. Now to address the ideas of private law and how they would exist to protect individuals in a free market is one in the same as protective services. Arbitration exists outside of courts to settle disputes today so as to avoid going through the long process of public court. The idea is already set in place as people voluntarily choose to settle disputes with arbiters that both sides agree to go to and accept their decisions. This is an easy solution that exists where there are disputes that both parties would like to solve. The harder problem lies in the fact that sometimes people won't want to settle disputes with you and will avoid arbitration. The instances something like this might come to be is perhaps in the crimes of theft and murder and such. If for example someone steals your tv and for whichever reason you know who it is (you caught him leaving your house or caught it on video) and you would like to retrieve your property you might choose to confront him peacefully to get it back. He of course would say that he did not steal the tv and that he got it in some honest way. As the peaceful person you are, even though you could morally walk in and take it with force, you decide to settle the dispute in a civil matter. Your next course of action would be to see if this person would like to settle the dispute with an arbiter. He of course would claim he stole no property and has no reason to settle a dispute. Your next course of action would be to offer this man a choice of arbiters that you would agree to go to, let's say 10 different arbiters, and he could choose whichever he wanted to go to. You would also say that if he didn't choose one you would choose one to go to where he didn't have to represent himself but it would be in his best interest to do so. Once again he would refuse to go and you would seek an arbiter that has proven to give just decisions. This arbiter, seeing that you had proof that your tv was stolen by this man, would rule in your favor and would seek to get your tv back with a private service. This is how certain disputes could be solved in a voluntary society free of the State. The best arbiters would be chosen by consumers who would be able to choose the arbiters that best fit their ideas. Just like most of the laws we have that protect property are based on natural rights arose natural rights would MOST LIKLEY arise in a free market since most people would believe in such things as pointed out by St. Thomas Aquinas here http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/natlaw.html