The Voluntaryist Handbook: A Collection of Essays, Excerpts, and Quotes

ISBN: 1733647392

Author: Knight, Keith

Condition: New

There exist two blatant contradictions which roughly ninety-nine percent ofintellectuals, journalists, and voters erroneously believe.On the one hand, they say that the free market must be regulated inorder to prevent monopolies. It is assumed that these monopolies wouldhave such great power over the market that their customers would beforced to settle for products far more expensive than, and inferior to, thosethat would be offered under competitive market conditions. On the otherhand, these intellectuals, journalists, and voters explicitly advocate that onegroup (government) monopolize the money supply, policing, courts,taxation, legislation, compulsory education, and a myriad of other thingsthat we may consider to be vitally important.Second, the vast majority of people recognize the moral legitimacy of thebiblical commandments Thou Shalt Not Steal and Thou Shalt NotMurder. Yet, when it comes to the practices of taxation and war, theseprinciples are blatantly disregarded by almost everyone. If taxation is nottheft, why can only governments do such a thing? Why not simply allow allorganizations, companies, clubs, churches, or individuals to issue taxes?It should therefore come as no surprise that governments are infamousfor delivering poor quality. Imagine a restaurant where you had to payregardless of whether they brought food to your table.Likewise, war is simply a euphemism for theft-funded mass murder, ablatant crime that we would never dismiss if non-government actors were toengage in it.What if justice required us not to have double standards? This bookseeks to dispel the belief that morality applies differently to governmentemployees. If it is immoral for me to do something - say, conscript peopleto perform labor against their will - how can I justifiably vote for arepresentative to do such a thing on my behalf?Many real criticisms apply to the free market: greed, envy, dog-eat-dogmentalities, short-sightedness, etc. The problem with all of those criticismsis that they apply many times over to the state, since, by definition, the statedoes not face competition and one cannot opt out of funding it. While voluntarilyfunded competing organizations may have shortcomings, they are preferableto the coercively funded monopolies of the state.The following collection of essays, excerpts, and quotes has given me theintellectual capacity to stop hating people based on arbitrary differences andto focus on what really matters. Should I achieve my ends in life violentlywith threats, or voluntarily with persuasion?The corporate press will explicitly seek to divide people of goodwillbased on gender, income, race, nationality, and any numerous otherinterchangeable sources of division to suit their agenda. No longer shouldwe tolerate such an obvious scam.These passages, which can be read in any order, are what convinced meto abandon statism and embrace voluntaryism.