Dec 30, 2024

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Voluntary Democracy – Part 3

Iain Davis

In Part 1, I suggested a new sociopolitical model I called Voluntary Democracy. In Part 2, I expanded upon the idea, suggesting a stateless jurisdiction where people manage their own affairs but are governed by the rule of law—by justice.

Statists think all law is created by man and therefore all law exists only because humanity enforces it upon society. But it is very easy to “debunk” statists’ notion of “law.”

Prior to any “laws” written by any human being, humanity already understood the difference between right and wrong. They knew that theft, for example, is wrong. Otherwise, how could they have eventually written rules on tablets and scrolls declaring theft to be a wrongful act—a crime?

Humanity’s conception of rightful and wrongful acts sprang from within. Such morality was spontaneous—natural—and preceded any and all written laws. It is logically impossible for the inverse to be true, despite what statists say.

Legal Dictionary provides a reasonable definition of Natural Law as:

The belief that certain laws of morality are inherent by human nature, reason, or religious belief, and that they are ethically binding on humanity. [. . .] Natural Law is a philosophy that is based on the idea that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are universal concepts, as mankind finds certain things to be useful and good, and other things to be bad, destructive, or evil. This means that what constitutes ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is the same for everyone, and this concept is expressed as ‘morality.’ As an example of natural law, it is universally accepted that to kill someone is wrong, and that to punish someone for killing that person is right, and even necessary.

Furthermore, notes the dictionary:

To solve an ethical dilemma using natural law, the basic belief that everyone is naturally entitled to live their own lives must be considered and respected. From there, natural law theorists determine what an innocent life is, and what elements comprise the life of an ‘unjust aggressor.

In other words, because Natural Law inherently exists in us and has always applied to all mankind, it therefore predates man-made law.

Thus, in a voluntary democracy, voluntaryists would naturally want to study Natural Law—the science of justice—and make moral judgments accordingly in the Volcourts.

We previously noted that so-called “representative democracies” resolve into kakistocracies that serve the interests of oligarchs and not of the people. It is important to appreciate that “representative democracy” is not “democracy.” From Aristotle onward, observant citizens in have criticised the failings of “representative democracy” and its tendency to facilitate oligarchies. To reiterate, “representative democracy” is not “democracy.”

“Democracy” means only and exclusively the rule of law administered through trial by jury. It has nothing to do with choosing leaders, with expressing the will of the majority, or with exercising any political power—political authority.

For the reasons we are about to discuss, a Voluntary Democracy could be neither a kakistocracy nor a kleptocracy. Oligarchs could not exploit a voluntary democratic jurisdiction. They would have neither the means nor the opportunity to do so.

In recent years, some seeking to “improve” representative democracy have advocated devolution and sortition chambers—citizen assemblies. They say this move would make representative democracy more inclusive and responsive. This promoted model of citizen sortition is, in part, a PR exercise to reinvigorate statists’ flagging faith in representative democracy. It is just another form of pernicious statism.

Oligarchs are backing calls for citizen assemblies because, by exploiting the communitarian concept of civil society, citizen assemblies would facilitate the current sociopolitical transition to stakeholder capitalism. While citizen assemblies may be formed using sortition, commitment to any kind of alleged democratic values ends there.

Stakeholder capitalism is the fusion, within the all-encompassing state, of the public and private sectors. Hitherto, this fusion was known as fascism. As with fascism, the envisaged sortition chambers would be intended to further dilute what little oversight representative democracy supposedly affords citizens and give oligarchs more, not less, political power. Stakeholder capitalism—genuine fascism—is being sold to statists as communitarian civil society.

Sortition simply means to “draw by lot.” Unfortunately, because sortition is automatically associated with oligarchs’ fascistic civil society project, many people erroneously reject sortition out of hand and overlook its potential benefits.

The Evil That Statists Do

There are billions of statists in the world.

Statists all share the same faith in the state. They have all been educated to swallow a single belief system—the need for government—based on one political philosophy.

Despite the fact that their statist beliefs have been entirely inculcated through conditioning and are not, in any sense, innate, statists insist that no other belief system is viable and that human beings could not possibly form a functioning society without abiding by the tenets of statism.

Statists advocate different models of their one political philosophy. Some favour capitalism, others socialism, etc., but it always amounts to the same thing. Statists believe in obedience to political authority and insist that government—in some form or another—is an inescapable necessity.

All statists think it is morally acceptable for a government to initiate the use of force—threats, menaces, physical violence—to make people obey “authority” of some kind. They argue that acquiescence to authority is the only way to provide a reasonably fair system of reward and punishment.

In fact, statists consider violent oppression crucial. They have been convinced that without such submission, chaos would reign. What they don’t seem to realize is that their faith in statism consequently compels them to commit immoral acts supposedly to prevent or suppress chaos, and it is this that causes evil to proliferate.

Of course, statists don’t see it that way. They regard the product of statism not as evil but as beneficial to society. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

Consider: statists are guilty of all crimes against humanity. Statists perpetrate every holocaust. All genocides and democides are committed by statists.

Only statists enforce—and bow to—the oligarchs’ rules. Only statists beat, rob, coerce, impoverish, dispossess, and incarcerate their fellow humans unjustly.

Statists have no faith in humanity—and none in themselves. They believe we are all too stupid, violent, and ignorant to survive if we don’t obey the alleged authority of oligarchs. For the statist, it is as if oligarchs aren’t part of humanity but rather are “special” in some way—a different species, perhaps.

The truth is: Oligarchs are human beings, exactly the same as the rest of us.

And yet statists seriously believe, contrary to all evidence, that most human beings are incapable of managing their own affairs. Strangely enough, they simultaneously assert that a tiny cadre of human beings at the top are “superior” and can somehow control everything on behalf of the billions “beneath” them.

Statists not only irrationally proclaim that this nonsensical, self-contradictory sociopolitical system is possible but also declare that it is the only “sensible” and “practical” way to order any large society.

Oligarchs prosper by exploiting us. But they can only do so while statists continue to comply. The truth is, the oligarchs and the kakistocrats who serve them can’t really control anything or anyone. They don’t rule in the interests of anyone except themselves. The only way oligarchs can maintain the self-aggrandising charade of their so-called authority is by convincing statists to comply with their diktats and to participate in their harebrained schemes.

That’s why oligarchs are obsessed with controlling information and censoring dissent. They expend enormous resources developing ever-more-advanced methods of social engineering and manipulation. They use propaganda, deception, and every manner of violence imaginable to control statists and cultivate their compliance.

That said, there is a mutually beneficial relationship between tyrants and statists to a degree. In exchange for a life of servitude, statists can shirk the moral responsibility they would otherwise have to shoulder if they wanted to live as free, sovereign human beings.

Children are taught to obey authority for good reason. They aren’t capable of understanding the world around them. A child is not aware of potential risks and lacks the knowledge to make rational, moral decisions. Obeying the authority of caring adults is a matter of survival for a child.

Statists view the oligarch-controlled state as their parent—a responsible if sometimes abusive carer or nanny. By blindly obeying the fake authority of the nanny state, statists absolve themselves of any personal moral duty to live in peace, to cause neither harm nor loss, to live honourably and to serve justice. The statist is a child who never grew up.

Instead of taking responsibility for their actions and actively contributing to a community’s peaceful coexistence by upholding justice, statists rely upon the state to make all the difficult decisions for them. All statists believe, as long as they are good and do as they are told, the state will protect them from other statists and reward them for their good behaviour. Thus, law-abiding statists feel comfortable amusing themselves to death while they watch the world burn.

Rather than take initiative, statists seek permission from authority figures and believe that complying with them is to act responsibly. This learned helplessness leaves statists unable to control their own actions or behaviour. Even if statists recognise that something they are ordered to do is morally reprehensible, they nonetheless feel obliged to do it. The result is always to cause harm or inflict loss—the enactment of evil.

At its best, the state enforces rules that may occasionally benefit some people, but only as long as they also benefit (or at least don’t damage) the interests of oligarchs who own the state. If rules don’t profit the oligarchs, they are ignored, changed, or more likely never decreed in the first place.

At its worse, the state impoverishes its citizens: think endemic poverty, taxes, fines, penalties, licenses, asset forfeitures, etc. It also attacks and often imprisons whoever dares challenge it. It kills whistleblowers and engages in wholesale slaughter. It orchestrates coups, overthrows duly elected leaders, and starts wars. It initiates society-wide financial and economic collapses. It forces millions to live in fear—almost always to serve the interests of oligarchs.

Yet, despite all this miserable oppression, statists still think that reflexively following orders somehow serves the “greater good.” As is often pointed out by statist “reformers”—who are perhaps the most deluded of all statists—it is never the politicians and billionaire oligarchs who stand on the barricades of the revolution or on the front line in wars; oligarchs don’t suffer when the economy collapses. Perhaps if the so-called “elite” had some skin in the game, humanity would suffer fewer horrors, the “reformers” argue.

Maybe so. But, though they order statists to perpetrate evil acts, ultimately oligarchs are not responsible for the killing and maiming, the incarceration and impoverishment, the stealing and starvation. All that senseless violence and criminality is committed by statists following orders. Obedient statists, not the braggart billionaires, are responsible for the evil that states do.

The obvious solution is for statists to take responsibility for their own actions and stop perpetrating (or allowing) evil acts simply because someone told them to. Unfortunately, though, when presented with this observation, the statists are so brainwashed they offer all kinds of convoluted excuses to try to justify their own appalling, immoral behaviour.

Statists, are indoctrinated to believe in what they call “the protection of the state.” Without government, they are told, the only law of any consequence would be the law of the jungle: “might is right.” Preposterously, statists fear that, absent the state, the most violent would simply rule by force.

Of course, the state—which statists consider their best protection against the “might is right” injustice—ruthlessly rules using absolute force. It is only the state that has a monopoly on violence. Only state enforcers are authorized to kill, beat and imprison us with impunity. Only the administrators of the state can embezzle our wealth, seize our property, and force us to comply with its rules.

Statists certainly have good reason to fear other statists. At any moment, a gang of statists could rise to power and cause horrendous harm or inflict terrible losses on any other gang of statists—or on anyone else, for that matter.

Statists call the violent, aggressive behaviour and criminality they regularly indulge in “human nature.” Consequently, in the circular reasoning of the statist, the so-called “protection of the state” is required, they argue, for the very reason that people are irrational, immoral statists!

However, it is not “human nature” to firebomb children in refugee camps or to jail people for saying something considered offensive. Nor is it inevitable that one band of humans is bound to enslave another. Nor is it inescapable that one faction will attack another unless ordered not to.

Humans are the apex predator on the planet. We are all capable, to a greater or lesser extent, of causing harm or loss to others.

We are motivated by self-interest born from our survival instinct. That said, as empathetic spiritual beings, we are also capable of selfless compassion. For the voluntaryist, humans’ position as the most dangerous animal on the planet implies a custodial responsibility to protect all life, not simply consume or destroy it.

Our bipedal motion and opposable thumbs provide us with some physical advantages but, in contrast to our prey, we are physically weak and often comparatively poorly adapted to natural habitats. Yet we are the apex predator in all.

Our advantage, then, is a set of traits and abilities that many nonhuman sentient creatures possess but none utilise in combination to the extent that we do. We think critically, solve problems, use tools and work collaboratively to overcome difficulty and adversity.

Long before anyone wrongly believed they were born to be the “subjects” of monarchies, humans were cooperating with one another to achieve collective goals. Cooperation is part of human nature. We have never needed to obey state authority in order to cooperate with one another in our collective self-interest.

The state is the ultimate force in any society dominated by statists. Absurdly, statists insist the state is essential to protect them from themselves and their statist neighbours.

Contrary to their assertions, statists have not created order. They have allowed the chaos of “might is right” to flourish and it is solely through the unquestioning obedience of statists that we suffer the tyranny of oligarchs

The State vs Voluntary Democratic Jurisdictions: Political Philosophy

Statists who object to stateless or voluntary societies argue from the position of statism. They are apparently unable, or perhaps reluctant, to envisage a society with no state—no government. They cannot picture people inclined to the freedom of voluntaryism, as opposed to the oppression of statism.

Statism is a choice. It is the adoption of a political philosophy that oligarchs train the vast majority of human beings to accept. The state exists only because people are conditioned to obediently serve it.

In order for a voluntary democratic jurisdiction to replace the state, all that would be required, ultimately, would be for people to choose voluntary democracy instead of statism. The adoption of a voluntaryist political and moral philosophy by the majority would end the state. To reiterate, widespread adoption of a voluntaryist philosophy would end the state!

The revolution that would have to take place to reach that point is, first and foremost, a revolution of the mind.

In a voluntary democracy, the primary objective of education would be to prepare children to become adult citizens capable of serving in the Volexec, the Volegis and the Volcourts. Out of sheer necessity, voluntaryist adults would have to accept vastly more social responsibility than statists ever could. Preparing children to become free, sovereign human beings would be a pressing responsibility for all voluntaryist adults.

Teaching children how to think critically rather than what to think would be the focus. Self-reliance and independence would be extolled, an inquiring mind encouraged, and a thorough appreciation of grammar, logic, and rhetoric afforded to every child. Unquestioning obedience to authority would be highlighted as appallingly immoral and a dangerous folly.

Voluntaryists reject political authority. They believe obedience is a failing, not a virtue. They take personal responsibility for their every action and their every behaviour. There’s no way that statists or oligarch-puppetted kakistocrats could order a voluntaryist to kill or steal. Voluntaryists do not blindly obey authority and will not cause harm or loss to another just because some “leader” told them to.

This is not to say voluntaryists reject leadership. In a voluntary democracy, leaders would still emerge. Those with the best ideas could still inspire others. A priori and a posteriori knowledge would be the bedrock of a voluntary democracy. In a voluntary democracy, however, it would not be possible for any leader to exert any alleged authority to dictate. People would follow the guidance of leaders voluntarily, but no group, no matter what they believed, would have access to any social mechanism that would enable them to rule any other group or, indeed, any individual who chose not to follow.

Statists, though, reject the idea that the basis of voluntaryists’ actions is morality. Why? Because statists deny that humans are capable of taking full responsibility for themselves and their community. Again, why? Because that’s what statists have been taught.

Statists maintain that people are essentially beasts whose pursuit of base self-interest inevitably leads to chaos, disorder and violence. According to statists, humans can only escape hellish disarray if they fear punishment or expect reward from their superiors. The irony is almost comical.

The very same statists fail to recognise, that just like some domesticated animals, they have been trained for millennia. Statists are conditioned to follow oligarchs’ fear- or reward-based commands. It is their own statist beliefs, nothing more, that binds them, either wittingly or unwittingly, to the service of evil, like well trained attack dogs.

Whether statists want to believe it or not, the excuse of “I was just following orders” holds no sway with a voluntaryist. The voluntaryist knows that it is obedience to authority that leads to holocausts. Such unquestioning capitulation would be considered morally repugnant in a voluntary democracy.

In a voluntary democracy, a justice system that functions for the benefit of all would be a prerequisite for peace. Without peace, no one in a voluntary democracy can expect to thrive. To sustain peace, a radically different sociopolitical environment would have to exist and a radically different political philosophy would be required. That philosophy is voluntary democracy.

Dealing with Violence in a Voluntary Democracy

In a voluntary democracy, anyone who initiates the use of force to harm or cause loss to anyone else would be held personally responsible for their individual actions. No matter whose uniform the culprit wore or what justification was offered, the Volcourts would seek to restore justice in every case.

Attacking a town or city would have direct consequences for whoever caused the harm—not necessarily for the person who gave the order to cause that harm. That’s because saying aloud that you think war should be waged or even issuing orders to wage war is not to cause immediate harm or loss. But following those orders—for instance, flying bombers that hit children asleep in their beds—is to cause of harm, suffering, and loss. The compliant bomber pilot, not the insane order-giver, would be held personally responsible and found guilty of mass murder in a voluntary democracy.

State “laws” banning gun ownership certainly wouldn’t exist in a voluntary democracy. Owning a gun causes no harm or loss. Initiating the use of force with that gun or robbing someone at gunpoint would cause harm or loss. So, the decisions of the Volcourts would impact a citizen only if their gun caused harm or loss.

Volcourt justice would defend the inalienable—or unalienable—right of every sovereign individual to do all that is right. A righteous act would be defined as any action that does not cause unjust harm or loss to any other.

Founded on the non-aggression principle (NAP)—which statists often confuse with pacifism—people living in a voluntary democratic jurisdiction would have the just, inalienable right to defend themselves and their property, using minimum force. It would be for the Volcourts to judge whether minimum force was used justly.

In short, without a state to “protect” someone from themselves or others, the social imperative in a voluntary democracy would be to live in peace, respect everyone’s rights, and act honourably in keeping all contracts. Voluntaryists could either live in abject misery and chaos by stealing, raping, murdering and pillaging or they could self-organise and choose not to.

Without the state, the only protection the people would have from constant upheaval and disorder would be shared responsibility. It would be in everyone’s self-interest to maintain justice. Every voluntaryist citizen would be intellectually and emotionally equipped to serve justice. Given that there will always be those who seek to use force to get what they want, the overwhelming majority who want to live in peace and prosperity would simply not allow the violent aggressors in their midst to get away with immoral behaviour. Instead, they would defend themselves and their families.

The statist argument that this suggests Wild West justice that would inevitably devolve into running gun battles makes no sense, especially in a voluntary democracy, where exercising the rule of law—maintaining justice via the Volcourts—would be a critical concern shared by all and an avenue open to all. Every citizen would be capable of delivering justice in the Volcourts. In a moment, we’ll discuss the methods they could employ to physically protect themselves from criminals.

In a voluntary democracy, it would be virtually impossible for a demagogue to order followers to do anything that causes harm. For a start, the population from which a demagogue might hope to attract acolytes would be philosophically and morally resistant to following orders or causing harm or loss.

Let’s assume, however, that a wannabe dictator did manage to lure some fringe maniacs onboard and successfully ordered them to initiate violence. They would be confronted by potential “victims,” armed not only with guns but also with the inalienable right to use those weapons in self-defence.

No matter how fervent the band of zealots might be, they would be hugely outnumbered by armed people motivated by their survival instinct and by the urgent need to protect their families. Aggressors who survived could expect to be held personally liable for any harm they caused. They could also expect that their leader, having urged them to sacrifice themselves for the cause, wouldn’t be held liable to the same extent.

The immoral fool who ordered their followers to commit violent crimes, but did not participate in the criminal acts they inspired, would probably be held responsible for incitement, depending on the circumstances. But Volcourts, familiar with the science of justice, would not view the idiot leader the primary culprit. It would be their obedient followers, those who directly caused harm, who would bear the weight of guilt and be punished accordingly.

People currently go to war for one reason only: they are statists who follow orders. In a voluntary democracy, a would-be authoritarian would find themselves ignored and alone, howling at the moon.

Freed from the suicidal statist delusion of obeying authority, the citizens of the voluntary democratic jurisdiction would not take up arms at the behest of lunatics. If perchance they did, they would be held personally accountable. Knowing that, they would not only remain morally opposed to the notion of following “orders,” rejecting demagoguery would be a matter of self-preservation. Too much would be lost and nothing gained from immoral obedience.

No thanks.

The State vs Voluntary Democratic Jurisdictions: Funding

Representative democratic states extract wealth from people by using threats and menaces. These take the form of income taxes, national insurance, inflation, VAT and other so-called “duties.” Estimates vary from state to state, but, broadly speaking, between 45% and 50% or more of our money is seized by the state, threatening to initiate force for non-compliance.

Most statists dutifully acquiesce to being robbed—even to the point of convincing themselves that what they “owe” is voluntary. They persuade themselves that the state spends the product of their labour on essential services and infrastructure such as hospitals, airports, roads, sanitation, and the like. Even “defence” spending is generally welcomed by statists.

In a voluntary democracy the people would choose what to collectively fund. Waging aggressive wars of conquest would not garner much support. What makes statist think that voluntaryists wouldn’t pay for essential services and for needed infrastructure but would pay for wholesale slaughter? Who would want to voluntarily live in deprivation and start wars?

Despite being robbed blind by the state, even in representative democracies people give generously for what they consider “good causes.” In a voluntary democracy, the list of good causes would expand considerably.

Good causes for a community living in a voluntary democracy would include hospitals, roads and bridges, sanitation, and more. Without taxation—theft—people would have relatively more income. Even more importantly, voluntaryists would accept that they are each personally responsible for their community and the environment they live in. If the community needed potholes repaired, only the community could and should fix them. Why would voluntaryists choose to travel on bumpy, tire-destroying roads?

Statists currently tolerate the money pit of so-called public procurement. If there is a more corrupt enterprise, I am not aware of one. The statists pay their taxes and complain bitterly as they watch their money vanish, absorbed by a never-ending succession of brown envelope deals that only “planning departments” oversee.

In a voluntary democracy, contractors would bid for vital repair and maintenance contracts, just as they do today. Unlike a “representative democracy,” however, any contractor who took the money, delivered nothing, then asked for more would go out of business pretty quickly. There would be no public-private partnerships upon which the corrupt could depend.

The Volexecs and Voleges—at both the macro and micro jurisdictional level—would identify a need, invite contract bids, calculate costs and seek funding from voluntaryists. The voluntary community would have the choice to finance service and maintenance contracts directly—or not. The latter choice would mean having to accept the resultant deprivation.

Acting honourably in all contracts would be a foundational principle of a voluntary community. Real competition between contractors would exist. Competing on bids and skills and intangibles (such as showing up on time) would raise standards and deliver better value for the money—well beyond the realistic expectations of statists.

A voluntary democracy couldn’t eliminate crime. The statists’ insistence that voluntaryists anticipate constructing a Utopia is a straw man argument that statists deploy to defend their indefensible and ongoing immorality.

It is, however, logical to assume that crime would be considerably reduced in a voluntary democracy. Not least of all by eliminating all the crimes committed by statists.

A community of voluntaryist citizens would be free to contract private security firms to protect their lives and their property if they wished. A voluntary community might consider it another “good cause” to purchase the services of security provider.

Now, let’s contrast the non-mandatory security services market in a voluntary democracy with the current model of state “law enforcement.”

State law enforcement officers—exemplary statists—enforce all the rules set by kakistocrats at the behest of oligarchs. The rules that are of any value, such as the rule that one shouldn’t murder people, are commensurate with Natural Law and the associated NAP.

Criminals don’t believe they need to, or choose not to, abide by natural laws. Voluntaryists understand that everyone does, and would judge criminals accordingly in the Volcourts. No Voluntaryist needs a state to define “the law” for them. All voluntaryists would be intimately familiar with the science of justice.

Beyond rules that are based in Natural Law, nearly all other “laws” enforced by the state’s “officers” are wholly unjust and would not be tolerated in a voluntary democracy. For example, arresting and imprisoning someone for saying something others found offensive would be completely anathema in a voluntary democracy. Being offended isn’t to suffer any kind of legitimate harm or loss, and causing offence isn’t to genuinely harm or inflict real loss on anyone.

More often than not, state enforcement officers can rely on the state’s judiciary to protect them when they act unjustly or commit a crime against individual citizens or against the citizenry collectively. If a state enforcer kills someone being held in custody . . . or is corrupt and doesn’t investigate a crime . . . gives false evidence to frame the innocent . . . or beats someone up for voicing protest, then it’s a good bet that the state will protect them. These enforcers are themselves largely above the “law.” They frequently serve and deliver injustice.

The statist—the person who places the state above citizens’ rights, their own included—can do virtually nothing about the state’s corrupt or oppressive law enforcement. The statist might appeal to the state’s judiciary in the distant hope that the state might rule against its own enforcers, but it rarely does. Consequently, injustice at the hands of the state is rife, and the statist is forced to pay the costs of their own oppression through taxation—that is, theft.

By contrast, in a voluntary democracy, security firms would bid for contracts to uphold the rule of law administered by the Volcourts. They would provide services that protect and defend the community from anyone (internal or external) seeking to cause harm or loss. In a competitive free market of security providers, the firms that serve the community most effectively—by demonstrating the best detection rates, for example—and offer best value for the money would succeed. Those that had a reputation for allowing lawlessness to predominate would not be in business for long.

Unlike the statist, the voluntaryist could choose which security provider to employ. A voluntary community could not be forced to continue paying for poor-quality services or have to put up with rampant crime, as statists do today. Voluntaryists could terminate a contract at any time and employ a better provider. The bottom line: In a free market of security service providers, costs would fall and standards would rise.

A voluntary democracy could not afford to passively sit by allowing people to go around committing murders or stealing others property. Leaving aside any moral objections, pragmatic self-interest would rule out this possibility.

All Volcourts would necessarily provide “free” justice for all. Indeed, voluntarily funding of the Volexec, the Volegis, and the Volcourts would be the most vital of all “good causes.” It would be the primary means by which the people could live in peace and by which their communities could prosper without the tyrannical oppression of a state authority or the chaos of lawlessness.

The Volexec, Volegis, and Volcourts vital purpose would be to restore justice where injustice had occurred. For example, if a drug company produced products, falsely claimed they were “safe and effective,” and then coerced people to take them without affording people the opportunity to give their informed consent, the Volexec and the Volegis may well legislate—effectively set regulations—to stop this violent injustice from ever occurring again.

No Volcourt would be likely to annul such regulatory “legislation.” Any case precedent set by a Volcourt that did annul would almost certainly be overturned by other Volcourts. Any corporation that ignored the effective “safety guidance” set by the Volexec and the Volegis would be held responsible by the Volcourts for causing harm and loss—an injustice.

People already harmed by the unjust activities of a pharmaceutical company would have equal and free access to the Volcourts at the point of need. Either collectively or as individuals, in Volcourts across the jurisdiction, they could claim compensation from the corporate culprit. If convinced by the evidence to find in favour of the claimants, the Volcourt jury would decide what reparations the pharmaceutical corporation should make to the claimants and what punishment, if any, it should face in each and every case.

Of course, the drugmaker would be at liberty defend itself. But, like everyone else, it would be no more than a single juridical person. It would have neither more nor fewer rights than the claimant(s). All Volcourt juries would be randomly selected by sortition in Volcourts across the jurisdiction, any one of which could try the juridical corporate person as an equal, sovereign individual.

It certainly would not be in the corporate interest to cause harm or loss. Without the protection of state partnerships or state regulation, unscrupulous corporate conduct would lead to significant losses. Corporations could still profit, but only by providing safe goods and services to meet demand in the cattalaxy of voluntaryists.

The justice market would be unrecognisable from the one statists are presently forced to tolerate. In a voluntary democracy, a single, maximum fee, payable to legal firms and set by the Volexec and the Volegis, would make sense. We might envisage a sliding-fee scale based on the complexity of the case.

As the Volcourts would serve the people, the vast majority of Volcourt cases would be presented by the people seeking reparations for injustice—predominantly from each other. Maintaining justice would be the main objective of the population. In terms of the number of persons, the general population would create a legal market that dwarfed the market formed by the relatively tiny number of corporate juridical persons.

Individual law firms could accept additional payment from engaged parties if they chose to, but this wouldn’t make much difference to the judgments issued by the Volcourts. The Volcourt juries formed by voluntaryists would be more astute, better able to think critically, more conversant with Natural Law (the science of justice), and harder to bamboozle with jargon than statists. Legalese would be eradicated by public demand.

In the free market of the voluntary legal system, any law firm thought to be engaged in shady deals or attempting to coerce the Volcourts would risk market disapproval. Since legal firms would profit from the volume of cases they were able to manage, risking damage to their own reputation would be a massive commercial gamble.

It would be impossible for the pharmaceutical company in our above example to rig juries or corrupt judges—judges would not exist in a Volcourt. Nor could it buy the most expensive lawyers in the hope of swaying the Volcourt jury. There would be virtually no incentive for lawyers to seek profit by attracting “lucrative” clients nor any benefit for the wealthy to engage in futile attempts to buy justice.

In a voluntary democracy, there would be no welfare state. That said, voluntaryist citizens could not afford to let resentment borne of inequality of opportunity or impoverishment to fester. Without the so-called protection of the state, a disgruntled, armed underclass with little or nothing to lose and no means of redress would present a huge threat to social cohesion. It would therefore be in everyone’s interests, rich and poor alike, to ensure that needs were met and grievances addressed peacefully.

Equally, without a welfare state to rely on, there would be no motive to malinger nor any financial disincentive to remunerated employment. With no tax system, jobs would be higher-paying. And with no possible exploitation by oligarchs—we’ll get to this in a moment—wealth distribution would markedly improve.

Statists don’t take any responsibility for poverty or for inequality of opportunity. They claim they pay taxes to the state so that it will address these social problems for them. Consequently, poverty and inequality of opportunity persist on a horrendous scale. So-called trickle-down economics is a perverse myth that oligarchs peddle in order to transfer wealth to themselves at everyone else’s expense. Statists wholeheartedly support this criminality and injustice.

With the Volexec, Volegis and Volcourts drawn by random sortition of the population—who would serve on a temporary basis—these institutions in aggregate would represent a cross-section of the population. If a class structure endured, all classes would proportionately contribute to decision-making. Therefore, the deliberation of the Volexec and the Volegis would address the concerns of the population as a whole. Debates would not be skewed by either wealth or any one interest group.

Voluntaryists consider the notion of “political authority” by the state to be illogical, unjust, and violence-inducing. Just as virtually no one believes the earth is flat today, so practically no one in a voluntary democracy would believe statism had any legitimacy. The attempted imposition of “political authority” would be firmly eschewed by the population in a voluntary democracy.

The Volexecs and Volegis would have no “political authority” to impose anything on anyone. Legislation would effectively become recommendations designed to address shared problems or identified injustice. If groups or individuals chose to ignore or act against those recommendations, it would be up to the Volcourts across the jurisdiction to judge if their actions were just or not.

Therefore, unlike the common experience of the oppressed in representative democracies, a voluntary democracy would enable all communities—regardless of any structural inequalities that might persist—to have free and equal access to collective decision-making. Volexecs and Voleges would essentially establish procedural frameworks to tackle unmet needs, mitigate unjust inequality of opportunity, and promote social harmony.

Spontaneous order would emerge as a result. Underpinned by a moral commitment, spontaneous order would benefit all socioeconomic percentiles of the population who could trade and exchange freely in the cattalaxy without any force being initiated by them or against them.

Just as the free market in a voluntary democratic jurisdiction would enable construction companies, private security contractors, and legal firms, etc., to bid for contracts, so social enterprises would bid to provide community services. From healthcare to employment support services to housing support, voluntaryists would be motivated both by their duty to serve justice and by self-interest to fund these “good causes.” It is likely that professional standards would also rise in the social enterprise sector.

Oligarchs and their puppet kakistocrats raid pension funds in order to finance whatever they want. Thus, in the representative democratic system enabled by statists, private pension funds are currently serving as cash troughs for the state and its corporate partners. The so-called state pension—forcibly extracted through theft—ensures that pensioner poverty remains common.

Without a welfare state, though, a competitive private pension fund market would be far more resistant to plunder. Every voluntaryist would view their own pension fund as a “very good cause.”

State “law” enforcement

Voluntary Democracy: An End to Oligarchy

When it comes to taxation, statists are generally unenthusiastic at the thought of their money being used to slaughter children or being siphoned off to pay for highly dubious social engineering projects, which appear to profit no one but corporate criminals. Unfortunately for disgruntled statists, who can only obey state authority, they can’t imagine any possible alternative. So they meekly continue to pay for the injustice they often morally oppose as individuals but collectively continue to fund for the “common good.”

Some statists become deeply upset when they realise the state is run by oligarchs who use debt as a tool to transfer wealth from the people into their own pockets. A statist minority becomes furious, in fact, when they realise that servicing the debt owed to oligarchs is actually where their tax money goes. They learn that all the things they thought they were paying for are instead funded by state “borrowing,” which exclusively enriches oligarchs by repaying them with interest.

Only a small proportion of statists grasp—becoming apoplectic with rage—that oligarchs create money as fairy dust out of the ether and that so-called “borrowing” is actually the creation of oligarch-controlled fiat currency, which only exists because it is a debt owed to oligarchs. This state-decreed magical power to create money out of nothing, exclusively reserved for oligarchs, is the reason oligarchs are so enamoured with representative democracy. To protect their scam, oligarchs have managed to convince every statist to view the state that exploits them as a Catch-22.

All oligarchs are obscenely wealthy, but wealth alone doesn’t make them oligarchs. By definition, an oligarch has converted immense wealth into political authority and social stature. Representative democracy creates oligarchs, who are empowered solely by statists to run the state and its “economy” in their own interests.

Statists call the issuance of debt by each nation’s central and commercial banks—owned and run by the oligarchs—a “monetary system.” That system enslaves all statists to the oligarch-controlled state.

A voluntary democracy would not have a usury-based monetary system. This avenue of oligarchic criminality and socioeconomic control would not exist in a voluntary democracy.

A voluntary democracy would operate a genuine free market catallaxy, not a regulated or controlled economy. Its monetary system would be based on the issuance of currency earned through productive work done—not debt created—as voluntaryists freely exchanged goods and services in the cattalaxy. Since credit would still be needed, a free market of voluntary credit unions would be created and would be inherently competitive, thus keeping interest rates low and inflationary pressures at bay.

Quite how the monetary system in a voluntary democracy would be managed would largely depend on the size of the jurisdictions. Assuming jurisdictions start small, a LETS system or something similar could work initially. Voluntaryists may decide to create mediums of exchange and could manage this at the micro level through the Volexec and Voleges. As with every other service sector of the cattalaxy, we might envisage minting businesses that offer currency products, where voluntaryists would be eager to keep seigniorage (the difference between the value of money and the cost to produce and distribute it) as low as possible.

This competitive minting could also serve a macro voluntary democratic jurisdiction of potentially many millions of voluntaryist citizens. The Volexec and Volegis could perhaps meet annually to decide whether any new issuance of currency is needed. As voluntaryists would be required to fund seigniorage, issuance would kept to a minimum and would be driven solely by the need to replenish stocks commensurate with the velocity of money in the cattalaxy.

Technology could also potentially assist, possibly using the blockchain to issue an inflation-resistant cryptocurrency. Voluntaryists could use the blockchain, as originally suggested by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, for this purpose.

Statists will contend that any system of credit—necessary for businesses and innovation to flourish—will simply be corrupted in a voluntary democracy by the wealthy, who will form cartels and control all investment just as they do in the state system. But, unlike state-empowered investors, in a voluntaryist economy, no credit union or commercial bank would be able to create credit as fairy dust simply “magicked” into existence. They would only be able to pool existing wealth. Investors would lose that wealth if their investment strategy flopped.

Real competition in genuine, unregulated free markets would not favour the wealthy to everyone else’s detriment. Those who sought to become oligarchs would not be able to set financial market conditions in their favour or restrict access to resources. Forming protectionist monopolies that exclude competition from entering the market would be an injustice that no Volcourt would uphold.

With money earned only by productive, commercial activity, financial obscenities such as the derivatives market would not enjoy a regulatory safety net, and investors could not call debt instruments—either government-issued or corporate-issued—”assets.” The financial markets would not be where opportunity lay. Real investment opportunities would be realised only by backing winners in the productive cattalaxy.

Consequently, the most profitable credit unions would be those that gave needed credit to successful enterprises. Credit unions would compete with one another to invest in solid commercial ventures.

The cattalaxy of voluntaryists’ exchanging goods and services would be where fortunes could be made but also where losses could be mitigated only by competitive insurers. Entry into the marketplace could not be controlled by financial monopolies. Instead, small-to-medium-size businesses could raise capital directly from their own community or from any number of credit unions across the jurisdiction.

Because statists allow investors to control innovation, oligarchs can pick the solution they want and can strangle anything that potentially undermines their interests. They can suppress technological advances, stifle entrepreneurship, and control development. A voluntary democracy, on the other hand, would see ideas judged solely on their merit and would unleash innovation.

Via the state, oligarchs not only buy justice they also buy politicians and, through them, legislation. In the UK, for instance, oligarchs need only control a majority of the 600 parliamentarians to effectively run the entire state for their own exclusive benefit.

By contrast, the voluntaryists sitting in the Volexec and the Volegis would be drawn by random sortition of the population and would serve only on a temporary basis. This would leave the tycoon with oligarch pretensions with no way of knowing who to try to corrupt or coerce.

Even if an aspiring oligarch managed to somehow manipulate the deliberations of the Volexec or the Volegis, any Volcourt could subsequently annul unjust “legislation.” Thus, the hopeful oligarch’s efforts to control everyone and everything would be fruitless in a voluntary democracy. The social, financial, economic and political levers of control that statists hand over to oligarchs would not exist in a voluntary democracy.

Without taxation theft, public-private monopolies, or fairy dust money creation, the unjust amassing of wealth—the effective transfer of capital from the rest of the population to the oligarchs—would not exist in a voluntary democracy either. For this reason, wealth distribution would be more meritocratic and wealth inequality far less pronounced.

Most importantly, the wealthy could not transform wealth into political authority. Thus, there could be no oligarchs in a voluntary democracy.

Voluntaryists could still form special interest and lobby groups. Wealthy individuals might choose to support some groups and not others. These groups could present their issues of concern to the relevant macro or micro Volexecs for initial consideration. But deliberations of the Volexecs would always be undertaken by a random sortition of the people, and no lobby or interest group could influence that selection.

Statists will argue that selection by sortition will be corrupted. But that is because they are accustomed to corruption by the state and, indeed, expect it. Voluntaryists, not being statists, would make the protecting the random sortition of Volexec, Volegis and Volcourt participants a priority in a voluntary democracy, for all the reasons we have discussed.

The only way the wealthy could hope to sway decision-making in a voluntary democracy would be through the fairness, logic, and wisdom of their arguments. If any aspect of their proposal led to any kind of foreseeable injustice, voluntaryists—whose worldview is already the polar opposite of statists’ worldview—would be extremely unlikely to recommend those proposals to the relevant Volegis.

Similarly, the Volegis, formed by a separate, independent sortition of voluntaryist citizens, would not guide or recommend any legislation if they identified any potential injustice resulting from it. If, after all this, some wealthy individual or well-funded lobby group managed to convince the Volexec and the Volegis to advocate their proposal, then, should its adoption lead anyone to suffer any harm or loss, the adversely impacted individual or group could freely appeal to any Volcourt anywhere in the jurisdiction to annul the unjust legislation and seek any due reparations.

Cattalaxy – for example

Constructing a Voluntary Democratic Jurisdiction

In game theory, a focal point or Schelling point—a theory introduced by economist Thomas Schelling—is an organic developmental stage at which a commonly held intention or expectation becomes predominant. At that Schelling point, a majority view is spontaneously formed, and people start basing their actions on that newly shared understanding.

There is nothing organic or spontaneous about statism. It is illogical and immoral and persists only because the oligarchs who benefit from it insist that everyone believe and support the state. So diligent and determined has the oligarchy been in conditioning the masses throughout history that statism effectively achieved the Schelling point thousands of years ago.

It is perfectly possibly that voluntaryism could reach the Schelling point. If it were achieved, the state would rapidly diminish and eventually disappear into antiquity.

All statists are obedient to political authority but are even more obedient to the authority of whoever allows them some supposed freedoms. This makes sense, given that statists have been known to violently oppose authority they don’t like. If ordered to do so, statists will commit horrific acts to assert their absurd, imaginary “right” to obey a different gang of kakistocrats and oligarchs—a gang they like!

Consequently, the most successful oligarchs have encouraged statists to imagine they have free will, or “democratic rights.”

As long as their interests are being served by the state, oligarchs will allow statists some “freedoms”—or at least maintain their illusion of freedom. Real freedom, however, is to be free to do anything that is right—anything that does not cause harm or loss to another.

Statists have never had any genuine freedom. Many statists are so wedded to servitude they don’t even believe there is any such thing as freedom. Offering them a few meaningless choices is usually enough for oligarchs to retain statists’ fealty.

Despite the fact that a voluntary democracy would have all the branches of governance that statists list as prerequisites for any society to function, statists will fiercely resist attempts to establish voluntary democratic jurisdictions. Their rejection will be based on their fear of the chaos they think would result when none of the branches of a voluntary democracy initiate the use of force to control behaviour or attempt to impose political authority on anyone.

Effectively, statists contend that a stateless society would be impossible to construct because they—the statists—will always use force to crush it. Statists, compelled to follow orders, would invade, brutalise, and destroy any burgeoning voluntary democracy. Indeed, some of them openly admit that they will arrest or kill voluntaryists who try to establish a stateless society.

It certainly won’t be easy to establish a voluntary democratic jurisdiction. Statists will attack voluntary democracies when ordered to do so. But since statists are presently engaged in evil acts everywhere, carrying all of us closer to out-and-out technocratic tyranny, the last thing voluntaryists should do is retreat. Realizing that the statist status quo isn’t going to “get better,” voluntaryists’ only logical position is to actively oppose statism more than ever. Indeed, this is the only logical position for humanity.

Therefore, those of us who reject evil can most effectively resist it by maximising our independence from the state and minimising our contribution to the state. This is a way of consciously acting as voluntaryists wherever we can.

Nevertheless, the successful state has to tolerate minimal degrees of independence. For instance, some allow alternative arbitration services for a few communities.

In the UK, there are numerous Islamic Sharia Councils where British Muslims can settle some family-related disputes. However, because enforcing state rules through the state’s judiciary is a social control exercised by the state, Sharia Councils are not recognised as judicial courts in the UK’s “representative democracy.” That said, as long as they obey state rules, Muslims are free to abide by Sharia judgments if they wish.

Similarly, voluntaryists could initially establish Volcourts as alternative arbitration services. Attempts have already been made to reestablish Common Law Courts in the UK. Just like Sharia Councils, all that would be needed is for voluntaryists to agree to abide by the decisions of the convened voluntary citizen juries. Voluntaryists could start using Common Law Courts—or something similar—as agreed arbitration services and nascent Volcourts—perhaps to resolve contract disputes, for example.

The decisions of the these Volcourts would not carry any weight within the state’s “legal” system. But so what? It is our commitment to abide by and uphold justice that lends legal judgments real value. Thus, this voluntary arbitration system could exist in parallel with the state’s legal system.

Similar parallel systems could be created to meet other needs. Parallel food distribution services and networks, parallel currency exchange, a parallel cattalaxy—initiated through counter-economic activity—could all be constructed. Voluntaryists could self-organise to assist each other with energy independence, set up independent voluntaryist supply chains, home schools, community farms, etc. Modern communication technology could be used to enable voluntary communities to share resources and to trade with and support each other, though they may be separated geographically.

We should be under no illusions. If we want to live in peace and justice and are prepared to take the necessary moral responsibility, we will have to commit to a generational struggle. The ultimate objective would be to grow voluntary democratic jurisdictions until a Schelling point is achieved. When this occurs, voluntary democratic jurisdictions could be offered as a viable alternatives to the political state.

Oligarchs already view voluntaryism as a threat. As soon as anyone suggests any kind of independence from the state, such as potentially using renewable energy at the micro level to maximise energy independence, the state’s immediate response is to try to “regulate” it and ensure it is never independent. Wood-burning stoves, for example, would allow more people a greater degree of energy independence, which is why the state is “legislating” to make it harder for people to use wood burners.

Statists reformers constantly accuse those of us who suggest a voluntary society of being “black-pilled.” They consider the rejection of statism to be surrender because the statist reformer fantasises about making the irredeemably corrupt state serve and protect the people. Statist reformers urge us to use the state for the purpose they imagine it was intended. They picture a mythical state where oligarchs are held to account.

The state exists in order for oligarchs to appoint kakistocrats and, through them, subjugate and exploit the people. That is all the state was ever intended to be, and it is all the state will ever be. Whenever oligarchs fear losing grip on the state, they use propaganda, deception, and the sickening violence of statists to tighten their control.

So “black-pilled” are statists that they regularly vote for “the lesser of two evils.” That is to say, statists actively choose evil because they simply cannot see beyond their indoctrinated, statist delusions. When offered a stateless solution, the statist blankly insists that evil is the only possible order. There are no solutions other than the state for the statist.

Statists cannot grasp that voluntaryists see nothing of any value whatsoever in any aspect of the state. The state operates by forcing people to do as other people command. This is slavery, and it is unequivocally evil. Nothing good can ever come of it. There are no statist solutions if we want to leave in peace.

The oligarch-owned state will not allow a large parallel voluntary democratic jurisdiction to exist. That said, the oligarchies’ reluctant pretence to value what it disingenuously calls “democratic freedoms” is useful to the voluntaryist cause.

The state will have no just reason to violently crack down on peaceful people who are causing no harm or loss to anyone, who are simply trying to live responsible and “law”-abiding lives. That won’t necessarily stop the state sending statists to commit violent crimes but, in doing so, the brute force nature of the state will be revealed for all to see. The state will have to take a significant Streisand effect risk.

Of course, the state will make up so-called laws rendering voluntaryism “illegal.” But, if voluntaryists are willing to suffer and peaceably defend themselves against the travesties heaped upon them by the state, the state’s only option will be to either to expose itself for the unacceptable, violent oppressor it is or somehow try to maintain the alleged “democratic rights” it needs statists to imagine real.

Assuming oligarchs wish to conserve the facade they rely upon—and they may not—violent suppression of emerging voluntary democratic jurisdictions can be opposed by voluntaryists using the states’ own farcical “legal system.” Voluntaryist spokespeople could publicly advocate voluntaryist principles both in the state’s courts and by using whatever independent media remains. The voluntaryists could highlight the very state injustice they hold in contempt.

Either way, as long as volunataryists remain peaceful, statists will be confronted with the reality of the state they empower. Voluntaryists will have to rely upon the forbearance of moderate statists, most of whom have never thought much about their own statist beliefs. The voluntaryist can encourage statists to look themselves in the mirror. A Schelling point is possible.

Ultimately, the only way ardent statists could stop a determined push towards voluntary democracy is by establishing a total dictatorship. This is what all statists support and what all oligarchs seek. Unbelievably, this leads some statist reformers to accuse voluntaryists of assisting the construction of the dictatorship that oligarchs desire. It never occurs to such statists that all abuses of political power are only possible because they are statists.

Most statists blithely facilitate evil without once considering the horrors they are all individually responsible for. Even if they don’t directly engage in violent oppression, every statist supports evil and continues to fund evil. Statists are presently enabling oligarchs to construct a global multipolar, stakeholder capitalist Technocracy. Humanity’s digital enslavement to a permanent state of exception is imminent.

I contend, therefore, that statism is a mental disorder. Statism must be rejected. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by constructing a Voluntary Democracy.

Iain Davis is an independent journalist a researcher from the UK. You can read more of Iain’s work at his blog IainDavis.com (Formerly InThisTogether) or follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his SubStack. His book Pseudopandemic, is now available, in both in kindle and paperback, from Amazon and other sellers. You can claim a free copy of his new book “The Manchester Attack” by subscribing to his newsletter.

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