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Could a voluntary state exist in a free society?
Could a voluntary state exist in a free society? I envision something like an association fee that would pay for all sorts of things the state does through taxation as it exists now. Maybe you receive an id card that gives you have access to all the benefits of opting in. If you become disenfranchised with it, then you simply opt out and stop paying the fees. Such a world would be nice, #amiright?
Yeah I definitely agree with that. I would love to see markets function and flourish with various competing and voluntary services, from police to regulatory agencies, rather than the current government monopolies.
If it’s voluntary, in what sense is it a state? If it’s not suppressing competition violently, it’s just a big club.
What Matt Gilliland said. Also, here is Max Weber on what a state is:
Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that ‘territory’ is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence. (Politics as a Vocation)
Separately, consider that the wealth we enjoy in a modern economy is due to the division of labor. How many entrepreneurs specialize in building roads and teaching Latin? I’m not saying that there couldn’t or wouldn’t be such prodigies in a free society who could run a large firm that specializes in roads, education, security, arbitration, utilities, etc., but to expect this to be commonplace is a bit of a stretch of the imagination. Some organizations today offer special deals for members that include a wide variety of services. Maybe something like that would be more common.
I could imagine a voluntary organisation controlling, say, a city, where you would sign a contract to live in the city. You would then maybe have a say in the decisions by taking part in assemblies etc., maybe by way of a vote. This could easily be mistaken for a state, since the contract could include a clause concerning the legitimate use of force in case of breach of contract. In order for free competition to arise, so that you could opt out and choose to live in another city, I guess that we would need a pretty large geographical area being anarchist, in order to have a lot of different cities to choose from. If tomorrow Copenhagen were to become anarchist, but the rest of Denmark remained the same, it could be quite difficult to opt out if the city ended up with a shitty voluntary contract. This is why, hopefully, the rise of the freedom movement is a worldwide phenomenon.
It would be interesting to see if the formation of a voluntary state (oxymoron?) would stay voluntary for long. If the spirit of non-aggression and the history of its opposite remained central to society, it might hold for a time. I think the problem lies in the Tragedy of the Commons; even voluntary polities will attract those who would seek to exploit its budget. If the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, what will limit this new state?
Each society within the multiplicity of societies that make up human civilization can reflect the will of the people in that society. Depending on the definition used for “State” it may not be compatible with voluntarism. Government which is part of natural order is compatible with voluntarism and even then there will be variations, a spectrum of degrees of government. The societies that prosper will be emulated voluntarily.
