Voluntary Governance: A Roadmap

This book is a treatise on the achievement of voluntary governance – rendered in the metaphor of the map of a road trip: where we’ve been, where we are, what lies upon the road ahead. It provides a systematic treatment of the principles, foundations and resulting conclusions, for a theory and practice of voluntary governance. The world of voluntary governance is one in which all human relationships – of association, exchange or otherwise – are based upon voluntary commitment. Since no one is forced to act contrary to his will, so, obviously no one can require another to act thus. So, as humans tend to live together, thus tend to need some institutions for decision and rule making to establish the terms of living together, freedom must apply to these practices too. This is not a world without governance, but one in which all governance is undertaken voluntarily.

The treatise traces the route of voluntary governance through its initial emergence in the discovery of the benefits of trade among our hunter-gatherer ancestors. It examines the rollback of freedom with the rise of the state and its various self-justifying guises, since the agricultural revolution right up to the present. An objective vantage point for assessing those developments is established through the theoretical grounding of human freedom in natural and customary law and the philosophy of human action. Responses to all the standard obfuscations that glorify and gloss over the coercive character of the state and the misguided vilification of markets are systematically delineated. The treatise concludes with some insights into vital practical considerations of how best to move toward a world free of coercion and violence, founded on voluntary association and mutually beneficial exchange.