Dr. Walter Block argues for the privatization of roads at The Voluntaryism Conference, citing safety improvements and efficiency through competition. He highlights the staggering road fatality statistic of 40,000 annually, attributing it to government mismanagement. Block proposes market-driven solutions to common concerns, suggesting privatization leads to innovations that improve road safety and reduce traffic congestion.

The Art of Liberty Foundation reported generous donations, including $4,800 and a stocked RV, to assist families affected by Hurricane Helene. A community effort, spearheaded by Christpoint Church and TLC Community Center, has donated 62 RVs and numerous relief items. Local volunteers provide essential services amidst governmental shortcomings.

The Free State Project in New Hampshire aims to create a society free from traditional government control, with over 6,200 members actively promoting political independence and libertarian values. The initiative fosters a unique “laboratory-of-liberty” environment, demonstrating that prosperity can exist without governmental authority, while building political networks and community ties.

A Sample Chapter from My Upcoming Book: Voluntaryism – How the Only “ISM” Fair for Everyone Would Lead to Harmony, Prosperity and Good Karma for All! Etienne Note: With our IndieGoGo campaign for Voluntaryism ending in Five (5) days, I am releasing a sample chapter and a progress report on how the book is progressing. My goal is to finish up by late January. I am behind because I have kept up publishing the Daily News and Five Meme Friday but I am contemplating taking a break to devote myself 100% to the book. In our weekly Five Meme Friday newsletter, I am going to drop a few of the dozens of memes and visualizations that we have either created from scratch, pro-modified, or recreated to get the high resolution we need for the book. In the chapter below, you can get a feel for a series of chapters where we deal with the specific “hard questions” of how the free market and REAL freedom would deliver better outcomes than monopoly “government” in Healthcare, Roads and Highways, Policing, Primary Education, and National Defense in some specific examples of chapters that have already been completed. Each of these chapters follow the same format: Introduction to the issue, How the “Government” Ruins It, The Voluntaryist and Free Market Alternatives, Voluntaryism in Action (how the free market is already providing better alternatives), Transition Strategies, FAQs, and Resources for a Deeper DiveThe 2025 128GB Liberator Flash Drive (Coming Soon!) It features the companion material for Voluntaryism, including videos, books in PDF, visualizations, and memes from the book! Sneak peak in the free Dropbox version HERE. The book is backed up by both a dedicated video channel on Odysee AND the upcoming upgraded version of our Liberator Flash Drive which will be expanded to 128GBs to include the companion material from the book. We could use a “Heavy Hitter” to get us over the goal line. If you are interested in having a BIG IMPACT, I can share additional chapters and explain the uses and proceeds of the raise. Drop me an email at Etienne(You Know)ArtOfLiberty.orgYou can download the entire chapter in PDF to check out the look/feel of the book. Just click the image below or HERE.Without “Government” What Would We Do About Healthcare?A sample chapter from Etienne de la Boetie2’s upcoming book: Voluntaryism – How the Only “ISM” Fair for Everyone Leads to Harmony, Prosperity, and Good Karma for All! At the risk of making an absolutist statement, everyone wants good health and some assurance that when they come down with some sort of imbalance or dis-ease, they (or their loved ones) will have access to the care they need. Unfortunately, much like every other area of the human experience, our desire for survival has been co-opted by the State, supposedly for our own protection, but in ways that ultimately harm the population as a whole and make health care more expensive than it should be.Instead of an open, competitive, free market in healthcare where competition between providers and multiple schools of medical thought compete to see who can produce the best outcomes for patients, we have a strictly controlled market of endless regulations that favor established players. Instead of competing schools of medical thought, we have a government-granted monopoly for allopathic drug-based medicine and mandatory vaccines that have been linked to neurological issues and life-long negative health outcomes.Health CareIn our book “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! we make the case that “government” is best considered a technique for robbing and controlling populations. Whether you believe that or not, join in a little thought experiment: If that is the case, then, of course, the “government” would have little incentive to have their tax-slave populations be healthy and have clear thinking. If the population at large feels like crap and is unhealthy, they are less likely to revolt and are more likely to be immobile on the couch and easily swayed by political propaganda.Etienne Note: In the physical book, you can click on the QR code with your phone to open supporting multimedia. In the ePub and PDF you can click on the play button, which, in this case, screen-pops a short 5:25 video on the death of lodge practice from our video channel of companion media. Everything works, so give it a try! Regardless of your opinion on why the government is specifically adopting policies that promote dis-ease, the government’s policies are definitely increasing the cost of healthcare, reducing availability, stifling market innovations, and producing negative health outcomes. Here are some specific examples:Monopoly “Government” MedicineMany people are surprised to learn that there are many different schools of medical thought vs. the monopoly AMA system that has been enshrined by law into American medicine. These include:• Functional Medicine – A medical practice or treatments that focus on optimal functioning of the body and its organs, usually involving systems of holistic or alternative medicine.• Naturopathic Medicine – A system of medicine that emphasizes natural remedies and the elimination of toxins and optimum nutrition to help the body heal itself.• Orthomolecular Medicine – When the body is in dis-ease, eliminate toxins, optimize nutrition through vitamin supplementation and let the body heal itself.These systems compete with the AMA’s monopoly flavor:Allopathic Medicine – A school of medical thought attempting to rebrand itself as “Evidence-Based Medicine” but also known as Western Medicine, Modern Medicine, and Rockefeller Medicine. Allopathic Medicine is essentially focused on treating patients with vaccines, chemotherapy, surgeries, and patented drugs vs. treating the root cause of disease, which is frequently the result of poor nutrition, sugar, and toxins in the food supply, and the harmful effects of allopathic medicine’s chemotherapy, vaccines, and drugs.As a matter of fact, under our current allopathic medicine monopoly, the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease and cancer, is Iatrogenesis, or death by medical error.In a free market, we would have a competition between these schools of medical thought to see which one produces better health outcomes for patients, but crony interests behind patented drug-based medicine, led by the Rockefeller family, lobbied, and likely bribed, the “government” to give the American Medical Association (AMA) a monopoly on the licensure of physicians, the accreditation of medical schools, the ability to prescribe, and the ability to be reimbursed by Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance.In addition to pushing aside what this author believes to be less-harmful and better ways of treating dis-ease, the monopoly drives costs through the roof by artificially limiting the number of doctors, mandating doctor visits and prescriptions for commonly used drugs and antibiotics, imposing a myriad of regulations on building and running hospitals, and dozens of other “government” interventions that drive up the cost of healthcare.According to a 2007 study by McKinsey & Company, physician compensation bumps up healthcare spending in America by $58 billion annually, on average, because U.S. doctors make twice as much as their OECD peers.Making matters worse, the government’s ridiculous court system throws out the notion of “Buyer Beware” with unbelievable judgments against physicians, many of them deserving of blame, but the judgments raise insurance costs for all doctors, and costs are passed on to consumers. This has spawned a dynamic known as “defensive medicine” where doctors order the maximum number of tests and procedures in an attempt to insulate themselves from malpractice claims.One final example of government policy ruining healthcare: In the 1970s, when the government imposed wage and price controls to combat the inflation caused by their own monopoly government money, businesses that couldn’t raise wages began competing with non-cash benefits like healthcare, and “first dollar” health insurance plans became the norm. While this benefit is great for those individuals whose companies still provide that level of coverage, it has somewhat crippled customer scrutiny of the doctor’s and hospital’s charges since customers aren’t actually paying the bill.Government Food – Another “weapon of war” in this battle for good health and nutrition is diet – you really are what you eat. For a large part of human evolution, humans only had access to real foods found in nature. This has changed entirely within the past 100 years with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, which has brought forth a tidal wave of processed, refined carbohydrates, meat and dairy adulterated with antibiotics and hormones, toxic herbicides like glyphosate and atrazine, and foods engineered with chemicals like glutamates and/or sugar/salt – the combination of which hacks the brain’s satiety signals, leading to overeating and metabolic issues, and setting the stage for all sorts of dis-ease.Of course, this radical shift in the human diet was heavily influenced by the U.S. federal government. First off, Big Agriculture (“Big Ag”) is a product of government intervention, notably corn, meat, dairy and soybean subsidies that favored and subsidized largescale corporate farmers over family farms. The U.S government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables. It has been estimated that a $5 Big Mac would cost $12 if the retail price included hidden expenses that meat producers offload onto society, including the socialization of the healthcare costs of people who choose to eat poorly at the expense of those who eat healthy diets in moderation. These subsidies enabled politically-connected food producers willing to suck off the tit of the taxpayer, to overtake the food supply with genetically-modified crops that are resistant to the chemical poisons they are using in agriculture; this corruption also tarnished the entire food supply with toxic vegetable seed oils — think canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, etc. Until 100 or so years ago, we consumed about 3% of our diet in these polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs), but today, that number is closer to 20%.Government Water – Most counties in the U.S. suffer under regulations that mandate that fluoridation chemicals be added to the water supply ostensibly to prevent cavities even though 98% of Western Europe has rejected the practice. The substance used the most is a toxic slurry of chemicals known as fluorosilicic acid, which is usually the unfiltered toxic waste byproduct of the aluminum and phosphate fertilizer industries. The Fluoride Action Network has organized thousands of doctors, scientists, chemists, and environmental toxicologists into a campaign to end the practice because it lowers IQ in children by around 7 IQ points and causes other health issues ranging from kidney disease to gastrointestinal effects. Here is a brief summary from the organization’s website on just the neurological impact: “As of June 18th 2022, a total of 85 human studies have investigated the relationship between fluoride and human intelligence. Of these investigations, 76 studies have reported that elevated fluoride exposure is associated with reduced IQ in humans. The studies which reported an association of reduced IQ with exposure to fluoride, are based on IQ/cognitive examinations of 28,234 children (73 studies) and 689 adults (3 studies).”These are the results for public tap water in Quincy, Illinois, near Chicago. But enter ANY zip code in the Environmental Working Group’s Tap Water Database and the results are horrifying.Mandatory Vaccines – The U.S. Government currently recommends a total of 76-80 doses of 18 vaccines for kids 0-18, which State health departments then mandate into law. These vaccines are legally classified as “unavoidably unsafe.” A study done for the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care System from 2007-2010 estimated that the government’s reporting system for deaths and adverse events from vaccines only captures 1% of all vaccine injuries.Note: This Slide References This Study and This Study. There have been a few studies that compared unvaccinated vs. vaccinated populations, notable the 2007 Generation Rescue survey of 11,000+ households in Cal-Oregon and the 2019-2020 Pilot Survey of Unvaccinated Americans by The Control Group Project. The Generation Rescue survey found: Vaccinated boys were 155% more likely to have a neurological disorder (RR 2.55) -Vaccinated boys were 224% more likely to have ADHD (RR 3.24) -Vaccinated boys were 61% more likely to have autism (RR 1.61)The Control Group Survey found that certain chronic health conditions such as asthma and diabetes, that affect roughly 10% of the vaccinated population, are virtually non-existent in the unvaccinated population. Summary Slides Here. Regulations and Cost – The U.S. government intervenes in the healthcare economy on almost every front from regulations around the construction of hospitals to which Doctors can prescribe and be reimbursed by Medicare, Medicaid and insurance. As a result, healthcare is more inefficient and more expensive than ever before, leading to the clamoring by some for the U.S. “government” to adopt a single-payer healthcare system, modeled after some socialist European “states” which we cover below in the FAQ sectionLicensure, Prescriptions and Intellectual Property – At an institutional level, in concert with the scam of higher level indoctrination (“college”), the “government” artificially limits the supply of doctors by requiring them to complete expensive, mandatory programs at “licensed” and “approved” medical schools. And naturally, the number of individuals able and willing to jump through the monopoly AMA hoops to become a doctor, as well as the exorbitant cost and time required, all but ensures doctor shortages and higher prices. Of course, we aren’t arguing that doctors shouldn’t get training, but rather that the free market (the sum of all voluntary human interaction) is far better suited to deliver beneficial (and cost-effective) results than an inflexible “State” mandated monopoly. Another scam that raises costs for everyone is prescription medicine. The requirement of prescriptions is another way for drug companies to charge higher prices by artificially limiting the supply and requiring prescriptions for innocuous things, like diabetes test strips or insulin syringes and supplies. These requirements force individuals to pay for a doctor’s visit, driving costs higher for everyone.The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective pioneered DIY Pharmaceuticals with their EpiPencil Recipe, where anyone can make their own EpiPencil for around $30 vs. $300The final government intervention is intellectual property, which we cover in more detail in another chapter, but suffice to say that intellectual property drives up the cost of routine medicines. A couple of well-known examples: The manufacturer of EpiPens, Mylan, led by the daughter of a US Senator, raised the price from $57 to $300 in 2016, a 500% increase since 2009. In 2015, a former hedge fund manager bought Daraprim, a 62-year old malaria drug, and raised the price by 5,000% from $13.50 a pill to $750. Eli Lilly’s Humalog insulin first entered the market at $20/vial in 1996; a single vial rose to $332 in 2019, a 1000% increase, despite the formula remaining exactly the same. The price came down in 2023 to $66 when insulin makers fell under a Medicaid rebate scheme enforced by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act and would have had to pay hundreds of millions. Government Sponsored Euthanasia – Because organized crime “governments” over-promise what can reasonably be delivered, they frequently face shortfalls in what they have allocated for healthcare and are forced to ration care or even promote euthanasia as the socialist governments of the UK and Canada are openly doing.When Euthanasia Becomes Public Policy – Euthanasia in Socialist Canada has Expanded from 1,018 Cases Per Year to 13,241 per Year in 2022 A recent example of this would be the case of Alfie Evans from the United Kingdom. Alfie was an infant boy with a rare neurodegenerative disorder, requiring him to be on life support. At the end of 2017, however, the High Court in London ruled to remove the parental rights of Alfie’s parents and required the hospital to remove the infant’s ventilator, quickly leading to his death. Reasonable people can disagree on what they would do in such a situation or on the quality of Alfie’s life, but one point remains clear: the free market provides choice, whereas the “State” provides dictates. Another example from the UK, during “The Covid,” the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) issued a directive requiring them to discharge all patients deemed to not require a hospital bed, forcing thousands of patients into care homes. Essentially, simultaneously, the NHS buys a two-year supply of Midazolam, a commonly used sedative drug in palliative care for dying patients in the United Kingdom and for euthanasia. The drug is also used in the United States for lethal injections. The NHS will also buy additional stocks of Midazolam from the French. Over the previous five years, about 15,000 prescriptions for Midazolam to be used outside of hospital had been written each month in England. In April of 2020, 38,582 prescriptions were made – more than twice the February figure leading to widespread deaths that were then blamed on “Covid”. The Voluntaryist & Free Market AlternativesOne of the attributes that define voluntaryist solutions vs. the top-down authoritarian plans of socialism and “government” is that voluntaryists are not promising or seeking to achieve utopia. Rather, we are cognizant of the market forces that allow the best and most creative and innovative solutions to bubble to the surface.A Free Market in Medicine – The easiest solution is a free market in medicine where different schools of medical thought could compete to see which school produced better health outcomes. Without accreditation, we could eliminate the physician shortage and lower both medical school costs and physician salaries. Without Intellectual Property, we could reduce drug costs and without FDA regulations we could reduce the cost that is required to develop new drugs and bring them to market. Without mandatory vaccines, we could reduce the neurological issues and illnesses associated with vaccines while simultaneously reducing the costs associated with the mandatory vaccines themselves and the payments made to damaged children and grieving parents through the government’s secret vaccine court.Mutual Aid Societies – Covered in more detail in the chapter Social Security, Charity and Helping the Poor but deserving of a mention here, Mutual Aid Societies, called friendly societies in the UK and Fraternal orders or lodges in the US, have been providing health insurance and death benefits prior to the revolutionary war. Participants pay a monthly contribution similar to the government’s mandatory workers compensation insurance today, but the workers have a competitive market of mutual aid societies to choose from. These flourished in the early 20th century and still exist today in various flavors. Famous examples include Masons, Knights of Columbus, Foresters, Odd Fellows, Woodmen, Workmen, Sons of Italy, Scots’ Charitable Society, Rebekahs, Moose, Elks, Mosaic Templars of America, Eagles, and Hibernians. Briefly defined, mutual aid societies were voluntary, community organizations formed to provide mutual aid, health care, insurance, and otherwise assistance to individuals in their respective communities. The mutual aid societies frequently employed a full-time doctor to care for their members, known as lodge practice.The Serradifalco Mutual Aid Society in a picture taken in Buffalo, NY on June 8th 1930 during the Great DepressionIn David Beito’s article Lodge Doctors and the Poor, he gives some examples of the system:In 1915, for example, Dr. S.S. Goldwater, Health Commissioner of New York City, went so far as to assert that in many communities it had become “the chosen or established method of dealing with sickness among the relatively poor.” In the Lower East Side of New York City, he noted, 500 physicians catered to Jewish societies alone. Among blacks in New Orleans there were over 600 fraternal societies with lodge practice during the 1920s. Nationally, the two leading providers of lodge practice among native whites were the Foresters and the Fraternal Order of Eagles. By 1910, both organizations had over 2,000 doctors under contract to look after the medical needs of about 600,000 members.Lodge doctors flourished until the 1910s, when non-lodge doctors launched an all-out war against lodge practice which was hurting their business. Throughout the country, medical associations imposed a range of sanctions against lodge doctors, including expulsion from the association and denial of hospital facilities. In certain instances, campaigns were organized to deny patient care, even in emergencies, to members of offending lodges. Mutual aid societies could flourish again today, and using computers, software, internet connectivity, and payment processing would be even easier to set up and manage at a greater scale than in the past.Genuine Charity – Individuals tend to be giving in nature, and many strongly dislike seeing their fellow man hurting, impoverished, or homeless — as an item of proof, in 2019 alone, “Americans” donated ~$427 billion to charity even after the theft of inflation and confiscatory taxation. So, when the welfare state didn’t exist and people were in need, communities, individuals and religious organizations often stepped in to fill the gap, and without the coercion inherent in state-sponsored schemes. In the modern day, many voluntaryists have their own “mutual aid societies,” coordinated mostly by the Internet and social media including both co-authors of this article who are in separate mutual aid societies (Caledonia and P.A.Z.NIA) where we have both provided aid to members in need.Wealthy = Healthy – There are a lot of reasons why wealthier people live longer and have higher quality of life. A study on cardiovascular disease published in JAMA found: “Altogether, an increase in wealth was associated with protection against cardiovascular diseases and a decrease in wealth was associated with cardiovascular risk.” “Decreases in wealth are associated with more stress, fewer healthy behaviors, and less leisure time, all of which are associated with poorer cardiovascular health,” said Andrew Sumarsono at the University of Texas Southwestern’s Division of Hospital Medicine.By getting rid of the government’s confiscatory taxation and inflationary money system while simultaneously freeing the economy from monopoly privileges, the malinvestment of government spending, and bureaucratic regulations to name but a few policies that stifle economic growth, we could unleash an economic renaissance that would lift all boats. A wealthier population would be less stressed, have more leisure time, and could afford healthier, organic food and better health care from a greater universe of providers. Finally, a competitive job market where employers would have to compete with new market entrants would drive up wages and cover more people with better health insurance while higher disposable income would make more money available for charity that would be better targeted by individual donors “on-the-ground” in their communities vs. the inefficient criminal middleman of Washington DC.Voluntaryism In ActionOne huge benefit of the Information Age is the proliferation of information. No matter what the subject, the motivated, self-directed learner can take their education into their own hands. And, just as bitcoin enables the individual to be his/her own bank, technology and information today enable the individual to be their own doctor/ pharmacist! While that is certainly a positive, these solutions were, of course, necessitated by “government” intervention in the first place.Etienne Note: This QR code and clickable image play a 32-minute video on the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, which has all-inclusive, transparent pricing on every surgery they provide. Free Market Medical Services – The Surgery Center of Oklahoma is the best-known example of free market medical services in the United States. In business since 1997, the 35,000+ square foot, physician-owned surgical center has become a national model for posting transparent all-inclusive prices for surgeries on-line where prospective clients can find the total cost of a procedure including the surgeon, anesthesiology, follow up costs and facility fee. The center has raised prices only one-time since 1997 to reflect inflation and boasts the lowest infection rate in the nation 0.00% vs. a national average of 2.6%.DIY Pharmaceuticals and DIY Dental Care – The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective (FTVC) was founded as a response to the fascist, socialist nature of the current American healthcare system. They gained notoriety in 2016 when they released the plans to their $30, do-it-yourself, EpiPencil, after the EpiPen’s manufacturer Mylan raised the price from $50 to $318, virtually overnight. The FTVC’s current projects include the Apothecary Microlab, a 3D-printed lab that is capable of synthesizing specific medications, such as Naloxone (used to reverse opiate overdoses) and pyrimethamine (an HIV/AIDS medication). They also provide the instructions for creating a nano silver fluoride tooth seal.All type 1 diabetics require insulin to live, and thankfully, the Open Insulin Project, a group of Bay Area biohackers, is aiming to provide them with a potential option: make your own. At the time this book goes to press, they have figured out the process to produce small amounts of insulin, but it’s still early on. Sydney, Australia, grammar students under University guidance have shown how simple it is to make a version of the life-saving medicine Daraprim, mentioned above, for $2 a pill after it rose 5000 percent in a single year from $13.50 to $750 a pill.Direct Primary Care – Due to the sheer difficulty of complying with suffocating regulations, many doctors are ridding their clinics of health insurance altogether by switching over to Direct Primary Care. That is, they charge a monthly fee, rather than accepting health insurance, and patients just come in when they need to be seen.Health Sharing Cooperatives – Another similar market alternative that’s seen popularity is “health sharing” “insurance” cooperatives; these not-for-profit, often religious organizations are sometimes the only affordable option for individuals, as health insurance premiums continue to skyrocket. One way to understand health sharing is as a legal loophole; these organizations use different verbiage and terminology (i.e. deductible vs. personal responsibility) to avoid the regulatory burdens associated with traditional health insurance.Crowdhealth has both fiat and bitcoin options — probably one of the only ways you can pay your health “insurance” with bitcoin. Members pay a monthly fee, and then when in need, members work with Crowdhealth to negotiate cheaper prices than what would be offered through traditional health insurance. Then, Crowdhealth puts out a donation request for the member-in-need. Crowdhealth, as of this writing, has a 4.7 star (out of 5) rating on Trustpilot with 176 reviews as another example of how the market provides a way of evaluating healthcare options.Health Savings Accounts – Health savings accounts (HSA) are a market-based solution to the “first-dollar” third-payer insurance where the customer, the patient, has no incentive to scrutinize the costs. With an HSA, an employer purchases a lower cost policy, albeit with a higher deductible and then gives the employee part of the savings as a cash contribution into a tax-free health savings account that can be used to pay for qualified medical expenses including the higher-cost deductible, glasses, contact lenses, prescriptions, etc. The patient is now a customer again with an incentive to get the best price as the employer’s yearly contribution, and any contributions that the employee makes, rolls over and continues to build in the tax-deferred account. You can even pay for non-qualified expenses, but you will need to pay regular income taxes on those withdrawals – the 20% federal tax penalty will not apply if you are at least age 65. You can also use an HSA to pay with pre-tax dollars for qualified long-term care insurance premiums.Transition StrategiesDaniel Dennett famously said: “There’s simply no polite way to tell people they have dedicated their lives to an illusion” and it is truly tragic that so many people have become reliant on Medicare and Medicaid for their healthcare. Unfortunately, as knowledge of the illegitimacy and criminality of “government” become widely understood, and more and more people quit paying their “taxes” (theft), these systems are going to collapse. On a personal level, your strongest strategy is to get yourself into the best possible physical health by eliminating the toxins in processed foods and “public” water. Begin exercising regularly, getting plenty of sunshine and fresh air, meditating, and developing a positive outlook on life so you aren’t reliant on the monopoly healthcare system. Do-it-yourself. Be your own expert. Don’t trust, verify.On the national and State level, our strongest strategy is to deregulate healthcare as widely as possible.Suffice it to say, if a market demand for a good/service exists in society, some entrepreneur (or multiple entrepreneurs!) will rise to the occasion and fill the need in the market, especially if it’s something as important and fundamental as human health. With deregulation and de-monopolization of the healthcare system we could bring back mutual aid societies and lodge practice, see lower-cost, free-market hospitals and surgeries similar to the Surgery Center of Oklahoma flourish, reduce the costs of medications by eliminating prescription requirements and intellectual property, and have more cost-effective medical education available by eliminating accreditation requirements which would produce more doctors without the allopathic medical biases of the monopoly system. Finally, getting rid of vaccine mandates would reduce the long-term health and neurological issues associated with vaccines.Healthcare FAQsWithout “Government” How Could We Guarantee That Everyone Would Be Taken Care Of? Wouldn’t Universal Healthcare Be Better?One of the biggest differences between voluntaryists and socialists is that voluntaryists aren’t promising utopia. We are simply advocating freedom and explaining how the free market delivers better outcomes than centrally-planned “government” schemes based on extortion. Yes, “governments” have created a variety of healthcare systems in a variety of countries that are, in some cases, providing universal healthcare to all of their citizens, BUT all of these systems are built on indoctrination and extortion, and many, like the U.S. system, have long-term insolvency issues. Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal are examples where the “government” was forced to cut and/or ration care dramatically and/or raise copayments. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said it best: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”Health, biology, and physiology are huge, complex subjects that people study for their entire lives. How on earth could I find truth in these areas, and begin to come up with my own solutions without AMA-accredited “Doctors”? First, you aren’t going to be on the journey alone! The U.S is replete with private, third-party groups that evaluate and certify professionals, products, and even foodstuffs. Some of these include: The Non-GMO Project – Certifying products as non-GMO after the government’s agencies refused to Underwriters Laboratories – Certifying electrical equipment for the insurance industry and Consumer Reports that tests and reviews various products. There is no reason to assume that because the AMA loses its monopoly that new organizations wouldn’t pop up to rate individual physicians and schools of medical thought. There are already eight websites that rate physicians and four that rate hospitals which are probably providing more valuable information than whether a particular Doctor earned a degree from a monopoly AMA medical school.Resources for a Deeper DiveArticles: Lodge Doctors and the Poor by David Beito From Fraternal Mutual Aid to Welfare State – A Review of David Beito’s From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-19674 by James C. WilsonAudio: Sheldon Richman discusses the history of Mutual Aid Societies and their impact on 19th century society The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective with Dr. Michael Laufer – The Vonu PodcastVideos: The Surgery Center of Oklahoma – Free Market Provider with Transparent All-Inclusive Pricing and How Government “Solved” the Health Care Crisis – The Death of Lodge PracticeBooks: From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 by David T. 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Nope… We Don’t Need “Government” for Law or Law Enforcement Either… Another Episode from Liberty on the Rocks – Sedona – The Voluntaryism Conference In this insightful episode from Liberty on the Rocks – Sedona – The Voluntaryism Conference, economist and law professor David Friedman challenges the idea that law and law enforcement must be government functions. Drawing on historical examples, including feud law in medieval Iceland and present-day private legal systems in rural California, David discusses how societies can effectively self-regulate and enforce justice without central authorities. He explains key concepts such as feud law, where compensation and deterrence replace punitive government measures, and shares unique models like Somalia’s pre-government legal structures and the potential of modern technologies to create contract enforcement and private arbitration. David also introduces the concept of competitive “rights enforcement agencies” in a future stateless society, where individuals could choose the agency that best aligns with their values and needs. This market-driven legal system, he argues, would foster fairer, more responsive laws and minimize conflict. Exploring practical examples of private law and governance, this episode invites listeners to envision a society where law is shaped not by central authorities but by voluntary, market-based mechanisms!Full TranscriptDavid Friedman: “Most modern people take it for granted that law and law enforcement are essential government functions. However, I am going to argue that this is not true. Historically, this has not been the case, and I will be discussing the past of private law, which I call feud law, and then move on to the elements of private law enforcement that exist in modern societies or could exist shortly. Finally, I’ll talk about the institutions I’ve imagined, which, as I later discovered, are a modern version of institutions that have existed. These institutions could be used to create an entirely stateless society.But let me start with the past because that’s what I’ve learned about most recently. By the time I finished writing my most recent book, I concluded that when I wrote my first book 50 years ago, I was essentially reinventing the wheel. In other words, I was trying to imagine how a society could function without government-enforced law, and there were, in fact, real-world examples from the past of societies that worked this way.The basic logic of feud law is this: If you wrong me, I will harm you unless you compensate me. For this to be a workable system, it must solve four key problems:Ensuring justice: There must be a way to ensure that I can only force you to compensate me if you’ve harmed me. This is about distinguishing law enforcement from extortion. The mechanism here is one where right makes might — it’s practical to threaten you if you’ve harmed me, but not if you haven’t.Commitment mechanism: I need to ensure that when I say you’ve harmed me, I will follow through on my threat if you don’t compensate me. This means having a way to make me carry out my threat of harm if you refuse to comply.Protection for the weak: What if I don’t have the resources to harm you? In the past, this meant having the social or physical backing to enforce my rights. How are weaker members of society protected in such a system?Ending the feud: If I think you’ve wronged me and you disagree, refusing to compensate me, and we start injuring each other in retaliation, how do we stop this cycle? There needs to be a way to terminate this back-and-forth chain of violence.Real legal systems in the past have all of these problems. One example is the legal system of Saga-period Iceland. Iceland was settled around 870 by Norsemen, who established a unique legal system. I could give a whole talk on that system, but the key point here is that it had courts but no government law enforcement.Here’s how it worked: There was a single court system, but once a verdict was delivered, it was up to the individuals to enforce it. What made it possible to do this was that if the court ruled that you owed me damages and refused to pay, I could return to the court and have you outlawed. Once someone was declared an outlaw, it became legal to kill them, and illegal to defend them. If your friends tried to fight mine, every time someone on my side was hurt, it would result in another legal case against your side. However, if your people got hurt, that was your problem — they were breaking the law.It is legal to kill an outlaw. It is illegal to defend an outlaw. So, if your friends try to fight mine, every time someone on my side gets hurt, it results in another legal case against the people on your side. However, if your people get hurt, that’s their problem — they’re breaking the law. This was one example of a system we know about.More generally, for a feud system to work, there needs to be a mechanism so that all the interested third parties in society — the people around you — can recognize whether what you’re doing is, in fact, law enforcement or extortion. The court system is one way to establish this. In a small enough society, there’s an existing feud system. For example, in England, the Romanchol, the largest Romani group, follows such a system. In this society, if I believe you’ve wronged me, I might threaten to beat you up unless you make it right. Both of us know that the community is small enough that people will be able to tell whether you’ve wronged me or not.However, in a larger society, you need something more organized. A relevant example is Somalia, which had a system similar to the Icelandic one, but this system was only terminated about 50 years ago when the modern state of Somalia was created by England and Italy. Before that, Somalia was largely a stateless society, and the people had mechanisms for creating courts that would be recognized for any dispute. Once a court made a ruling, the verdict was generally accepted by society.There are various ways in which this problem can be solved. The next issue is commitment mechanisms. How do we ensure that my threat is truly believable, that I won’t just back down when you say, “If you try to get me, I’ll get you back”?This concept is hardwired into us. People sometimes argue that property is a modern invention, but in fact, property predates our species. In other species, this behavior is known as territorial behavior. There are a variety of species, mostly birds and fish, that exhibit a similar pattern: an individual marks a territory that it claims as its own. When another member of its species and gender enters this territory, the defender will fight. The intensity of the fight increases the further the trespasser enters the territory. Though a fight to the death usually results in a loss for both sides, once it’s clear that the defender is committed to protecting the territory, the trespasser generally backs down — unless they are much stronger.This is a form of property, albeit a very primitive one. There’s no way to buy or sell it, but the property rights are enforced through a commitment strategy, not by a state. This kind of behavior predates our species.The human version of this commitment mechanism can be observed in myself. If I bump my head, my first reaction is rage. My initial thought is that someone has attacked me, and I feel the urge to retaliate. It’s a hardwired response in human beings — something many of us have observed in ourselves. In that case, however, it makes no sense, but the pattern is there.The only person who’s injured me is myself, if I bump my head against something. Yet, it’s our natural reaction to feel a strong urge to retaliate when someone hurts us. Human beings are, in a sense, hardwired so that when someone injures us, we instinctively feel a desire to get back at them. But there are other ways to enforce the commitment strategy.If I threaten to harm you unless you compensate me, and then I back down, I’ve essentially marked myself as a vulnerable target — someone who can be stolen from, trespassed upon, or wronged without consequence. What I want, instead, is the reputation of someone who is not a safe target; someone who will take action if you violate my rights. Status plays a crucial role here. Human beings care deeply about status, and no one wants to be seen as weak or a pushover.One of the challenges in this system is that we need a commitment strategy that survives beyond death. Without this, the obvious counter-move for the person I’m threatening is to say, “If you’re going to harm me, I’ll kill you first.” The Icelandic solution to this problem was that if you kill me, my heirs inherit my claim against you. Not only do my kin inherit my original claim, but they also inherit the right to seek justice for my death. This gives my relatives an incentive to carry out my threat even if I’m no longer around to do so.The next challenge is how to protect the weak. My favorite solution to this problem is the Icelandic solution, which is why I argue that the American legal system is about a thousand years behind the cutting edge of legal technology. In Icelandic law, tort claims were marketable and transferable.I am an elderly man with only one son, and someone takes his life.Now, I have a claim for several hundred ounces of silver as compensation for the killing of my son. All right? In this system, there is no criminal law as we understand it, because there is no state to enforce it. Everything operates as tort law.However, I know that if I try to go to the court and enforce my claim, I’ll likely get beaten up along the way, because I have no one to fight for me. My neighbor, on the other hand, has four strong sons who spent their youth as Vikings, along with plenty of friends, relatives, and allies.So, I transfer my claim to him.He collects the claim, and if I’m lucky, he pays me back half of the silver he’s collected. But even if he doesn’t pay me anything, the critical point is that someone who kills my son will still have to pay a Wehrgeld — a fine of several hundred ounces of silver. This means that my rights, and those of my son, are protected by deterrence, regardless of whether I receive the compensation. Whether or not I get compensated likely depends on how difficult it is for my neighbor to collect the payment.Now, Somalia had a somewhat different system. They had what was sometimes called the DIA-paying group — a coalition of people, usually relatives but not always, who had an agreement or contract to support one another. If any member of the group was injured, the others would help him recover the damage payment. Similarly, if a member had to pay damages, the others would contribute their share. This arrangement provided a preexisting coalition of support, ensuring that group members had people willing to fight for them.The final problem is terminating a feud. Suppose I believe you wronged me, and you believe you didn’t. You demand compensation, I refuse. You harm me, and now I demand compensation. You refuse. How do we stop this endless cycle of retaliation?One solution, used in both Iceland and Somalia — despite being separated by about 1,000 years — was to have a court. Both parties would agree to take the matter to a court respected by their neighbors. If the court ruled in my favor, you could accept the decision without losing face, since it was based on an impartial ruling. Conversely, if the court ruled in your favor, I could similarly accept the outcome without appearing weak.Another solution found in the Icelandic sagas is the use of an arbitrator. This involves selecting an individual who is both powerful and respected, and having them rule on your dispute. Both sides agree to this arrangement because each side believes they are in the right. If the arbitrator rules in your favor, two things happen:I now have a valid excuse for backing down because a neutral party has ruled against me.If I choose not to back down, the arbitrator will have joined your alliance, making it even harder for me to win since they are a powerful and influential individual.These are some of the ways in which real societies have successfully enforced law privately. This isn’t to say that these systems are universally better than modern government systems, but they do demonstrate that it is possible for private institutions to take over the most central function of government: law enforcement.Now, let’s look at a modern example. In Shasta County, California — a couple of hours from where I live — there exists a form of private law. Robert Ellickson, a Yale professor, became interested in this phenomenon for reasons I won’t delve into now (that would be a separate talk). He concluded that the community operates on a system of privately enforced norms, which, in certain contexts, override California state law.These norms are primarily centered around neighborly behavior. For example, if your cattle stray onto my field, trampling and eating my vegetables, the norm dictates that a “good neighbor” would recognize their mistake and voluntarily help me replant the damage. If you fail to do so, I could spread the word about your behavior. The social consequences might include your wife no longer being invited to bridge parties or your kids struggling to find playmates.Of course, if you’re especially tough, perhaps without a wife or kids, and indifferent to what others think of you, these social pressures might not work.Eventually, if your cattle strayed onto my field a third time, I would open the gate, drive your cattle a few miles away from your farm, and leave them there for you to find and recover. What’s interesting about this system of norms is that it allows me to make it difficult for you to locate your cattle but does not allow me to convert one of your cows into hamburger.This is significant because, in a rural area, I presumably have the skills to butcher animals, and turning a cow into beef would seem like a much more attractive punishment from my perspective — I would gain the value of the cow. However, the system forbids this because if I profit by enforcing my rights, I cannot be trusted to enforce them only when they are genuinely violated.This issue highlights one of the problems in our modern legal system: if I can profit from suing you, it creates an incentive for me to pursue lawsuits even when you haven’t actually violated my rights, provided I have a reasonable chance of persuading the court otherwise. While this may not be a solvable problem, it’s a challenge inherent to systems that allow monetary compensation for rights violations.This is an example of a private legal system — though we don’t call it “law,” we call it “norms.” It functions as a legal system because it includes rules, consequences for breaking those rules, and mechanisms for enforcement. Robert Ellickson documented several cases where the legal solution to a problem existed under California law but wasn’t used.Why? Because one of the norms of neighborly behavior in the community is that neighbors don’t sue neighbors. The social and relational costs of using the court system outweighed the potential benefits for the people involved.Beyond this, there are other innovative ideas for private legal systems. One example, which does not yet exist but could in the near future, is the concept of seasteading. My son, Patry, has been working on this project, which involves developing technology for floating housing — essentially large rafts.What can you do with these rafts? You tow a group of them together to form a village. If this village is located outside the territorial waters of any country, it can create its own laws. If it’s within territorial waters, the village could negotiate with nearby countries to compete for the right to host it, allowing the village to make its own laws in exchange for economic benefits.In that case, the village might have to pay something. But regardless, you end up with a situation of competitive governance.In my first book, written long before the concept of seasteading was conceived, I sketched a world where people were perfectly mobile. I imagined a scenario where the newspapers announce a war between France and England, and the next day the sun rises on an empty landscape. Everyone has left for safer places, leaving behind only a few war reporters and generals.Seasteading, in essence, argues that this kind of mobility could become a reality if people were sufficiently mobile and could, metaphorically, take their houses with them. If your village passes laws you dislike, you could call up a tugboat company, have them tow your floating home out of that village, and join another community with laws more aligned with your preferences. It’s a very intriguing idea.The underlying principle of seasteading is that we should focus less on debating what the law should be and more on creating mechanisms that generate good laws. The proposed technology of floating housing enables exactly that by allowing for dynamic movement and self-selection of communities.A less extreme but related concept that is already happening is the idea of charter cities. In this model, entrepreneurs persuade the government of a relatively poor country to grant them control over a piece of underutilized or low-value territory, allowing them to set their own civil laws within that area. This creates, in effect, a pocket of governance based on systems like American or British common law within a country such as Venezuela.If successful, these charter cities can attract people who want to live there, start businesses, and build thriving communities.Interestingly, the precedent for this approach was inadvertently set by communist China. One of the pivotal steps in China’s transition from being fully socialist to its current model — pretending to be socialist — was the creation of special economic zones. These zones allowed capitalist practices within designated areas, facilitating China’s economic transformation over the last 20 to 30 years.The original theory, as far as I can tell, was that the Chinese leadership realized that the United States must know something they didn’t. After Mao’s death, the communist leaders were able to travel abroad, and what did they discover? They discovered that their country, which they had believed had the best economic system in the world, was actually dirt poor.In fact, a deputy vice chairman of China visited England and made an eye-opening discovery: a trash collector in England was earning twice his own income. This led him to report that England would be the perfect communist economy—if only it had a communist party running it.So, what did they do? One of the strategies they implemented was to figure out what the capitalists knew by creating isolated capitalist enclaves within China. In these enclaves, foreign companies could make deals, engage in trade, and carry out all the “evil capitalist” activities. These enclaves were placed in areas that were considered unimportant, where the experiment would have minimal impact.One of these areas was a village that now has a population of six million people. Over time, the exception became the rule. It became clear that these capitalist enclaves were working. In the 20 years following Mao’s death, China’s per capita income increased about 20-fold. This is a very striking case of economic transformation.Unfortunately, the key figure responsible for this economic breakthrough is no longer alive, and his successors don’t seem to have as clear an understanding of how to continue improving China.Currently, there are examples of common law zones in places like the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, and Honduras. These are attempts to create mini versions of Hong Kong—small areas with systems that are closer to free-market economies because they tend to work better. However, the challenge with these efforts is how to prevent governments from eventually expropriating the wealth and resources these zones create. This is currently a point of contention in Honduras, with ongoing litigation over the Prospera project.There’s another aspect of private law in the modern system, which comes into play with the competition among states for corporate law. For example, many corporations are chartered in Delaware, not by accident. This choice means their legal disputes will be settled under Delaware’s laws. Delaware benefits from this setup by collecting fees from corporations, which makes it an example of a competing legal system where states vie to attract businesses by offering favorable legal frameworks for contracts and disputes.This idea of legal competition isn’t new. In medieval Islam, there were four distinct Sunni schools of law. If a person signed a contract in a court governed by one of those schools—say, a Maliki court—the contract would be interpreted under Maliki law. So, within one society, you had multiple legal systems coexisting. This tradition largely ended with the rise of the Ottoman Empire.If you think about all of this, a compelling idea emerges: if migration becomes sufficiently easy, governments might become little more than landlords. They would no longer have the power to impose laws universally; instead, they’d be forced to create rules that people want to live under. Governments would still control land, which is valuable in itself, and they could collect some revenue from that, but not as much as they would from the ability to dictate laws.You could imagine a gradual shift in the world—a transition from states to anarchy, with people not even noticing when the change happens.For those of you familiar with science fiction, Snow Crash offers a fictional portrayal of a society that functions in a state of anarchy, yet still contains individuals who believe they are part of the government, even if they aren’t actively doing anything.Let me now move on to what I consider my favorite example of modern anarchy that is gradually unfolding: anarchy in cyberspace. Many of you may be aware of public key cryptography, which has been around for some time. It’s the technology that allows individuals to send messages to one another in a way that no third party can read. Though we’re not quite perfect at it yet, it is already practical to make payments and perform transactions that third parties cannot observe.Additionally, there are mechanisms for enforcing contracts through reputation systems. Here’s how it works: I can sign a contract with you online, we agree on an arbitrator, and both of us digitally sign the contract. Our identities are defined by a public key and a private key. I only have the private key, while everyone else in the world has the public key. You can use my public key to encrypt messages that only I can read, and you can also use it to verify my digital signature, confirming that I wrote a message.I won’t go into the full details of the technology here, but the core point is that it is technologically feasible for online transactions to be entirely private.There are also mechanisms, some of which are already in use, to enforce contracts in this system. One of the most widely recognized examples is eBay. When you make a transaction through eBay, both parties can report to eBay and others whether the other party actually followed through on their promises. Buyers and sellers are then able to check each other’s reputations; if someone has a low rating, you might choose not to deal with them. This is a simple but powerful form of reputational enforcement. The technology behind this can be used in various ways to support contract enforcement, but I’ll leave that for another discussion.However, there are some disadvantages to this system. Specifically, once you have a fully private online space with public key encryption, it’s possible for criminal organizations to operate with a brand-name reputation. In my book Future Imperfect, I outline a business plan for a fictional “Murder Incorporated,” where criminals could use these technologies to establish a reputation for services like contract killings, all while ensuring that customers can reach them without the FBI intercepting their communications. Payments could be arranged securely, and the criminals could build a solid reputation in a manner that avoids typical law enforcement risks.This presents a double-edged sword. While it allows for decentralized enforcement and privacy, it also means that such systems can be abused. Moreover, it creates environments where online transactions are uncontrolled, and, importantly, untaxable—because you can’t tax what you can’t observe.I would argue that this is a system that is gradually developing, though not yet in the fully realized form that I’ve imagined. Let me now return to my original idea for how a modern society could function with entirely private law and law enforcement. In this system, each individual is a customer of a rights enforcement agency, and they have the freedom to choose which agency to engage with. Additionally, they can switch agencies if they wish. These rights enforcement agencies would sell two core services: protecting your rights and settling disputes.An obvious issue arises, however—one that becomes clear to most people within about 30 seconds of hearing the idea: What happens when customers of two different rights enforcement agencies have a conflict? Let’s consider a scenario: I come home to find that my television is missing. The video camera, which my rights enforcement agency kindly installed in my living room, shows you walking out the door with my television set.My rights enforcement agency then contacts you and asks, “Please return Mr. Friedman’s television set, and would you mind paying us $20 for the time and trouble involved in retrieving it?” But you, of course, respond, “I don’t know Mr. Friedman. I never took his television.””I don’t know his television set. I’ve got a nice one—a friend gave it to me, and it’s none of your business who the friend is. I have my own privacy.”You, of course, don’t back down. My rights enforcement agency then responds, “We’re sorry you feel that way. If you’re not willing to submit this to a court, four tough guys will show up at your door tomorrow to retrieve the television set.”Now, you retaliate: “Well, if that happens, I’ll contact my rights enforcement agency. They’ll send six tough guys to stop your four tough guys from taking my television.” This escalates into a war between our agencies. This is Ayn Rand’s classic response, where individuals and agencies resort to force to resolve disputes.But this approach doesn’t make a lot of sense. After all, wars are costly, and profit-driven businesses aren’t in the business of fighting wars over property. Instead, a more sensible solution would be for the two rights enforcement agencies to recognize that their customers may occasionally clash and agree, in advance, on a private court system whose verdicts they will both respect.Once such a court system is established, they could resolve the dispute by agreeing that, if the court rules against one of their customers, they won’t protect them. After all, there’s no reason to defend a stolen television. Additionally, the losing party would be required to pay a small damage fee for the trouble they caused by falsely accusing the other of theft.Now, the question you should be asking is: What enforces this contract? We have a contract between two agencies agreeing to abide by a court decision, but in this world, there’s no government. So, there’s no higher authority to enforce the contract.What there is, however, is the discipline of constant dealings — the fact that these agencies are repeat players. Each enforcement agency knows that if it refuses to honor the court’s decision when its customer loses, the other agency will reciprocate. This would lead to a cycle of refusals, escalating into conflict, and eventually, war. And as we’ve established, war is costly. Most customers don’t want their front lawns turned into free-fire zones.If an agency refuses to follow the court’s decision, its customers will flock to a competing agency that values arbitration over war. So, the mechanism that enforces these contracts is competition. Agencies know that a failure to abide by the court’s ruling means losing customers to more reliable competitors. In essence, it’s a system of peaceful law enforcement without government intervention.The next question I’ve brushed over is: Where do the laws come from? What determines what laws exist in this system? The answer is that the arbitration agency is essentially selling its services to the rights enforcement agency. In turn, the rights enforcement agency is selling its customers a package, which includes the legal rules and arbitration services it uses.So, the rights enforcement agency will consider which arbitration agency to use based on which legal rules will generate the most value for its customers. The arbitration agency, in turn, will be motivated to determine which rules it can offer to attract more business.To illustrate this, imagine a scenario where the customers of one arbitration agency — let’s say they’re from a pacifist community — all disapprove of capital punishment.In this scenario, the customers of one arbitration agency might come from a pacifist community that opposes capital punishment, while another agency’s customers — perhaps from a different region, like Tucson — are people who want to ensure that anyone who kills them is hanged. These agencies may serve similar communities, but they might cater to different preferences or even different legal rules depending on regional values.Now, let’s say the Tucson-based agency does a little market research. They find that if they can guarantee that their customers will never face capital punishment in disputes with people from other areas, they can make an extra million dollars a year because their customers greatly value this rule. Meanwhile, another agency discovers that they can only earn half a million dollars from offering capital punishment protections.To resolve this, the Tucson agency might bargain with the other agency, offering them something they want — perhaps a financial incentive or agreements on how to handle other disputes. The Tucson agency, for example, might care deeply about rules protecting their annual gem show, one of the largest in the world. Whatever the exact terms of the agreement, both agencies engage in bargaining to create a set of rules that maximizes the welfare of their customers, based on how much customers are willing to pay for the benefits those rules bring.This system of bargaining and negotiation essentially creates a market for law. Each agency is motivated to optimize its legal rules based on customer demand, ensuring that laws reflect what people actually want.From my standpoint, this is the core argument for the superiority of the system I’m recommending. I see that I’m running low on time—about five minutes left, right? So, instead of going into other topics I had planned to cover, which include some of the flaws of this system (discussed in several chapters of the third edition of my book The Machinery of Freedom), I’d rather leave time for questions.In that book, I explore how the system might break down, under what circumstances it could fail, and how the legal rules it generates won’t be perfect. Markets don’t function perfectly, but they tend to be better than the alternatives. However, I’d prefer to focus on your questions now rather than delving into theoretical issues.About David FriedmanDavid D. Friedman is an academic economist with a doctorate in physics, retired from 23 years of teaching in a law school. His first book, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, was published in 1973 and includes a description of how a society with property rights and without government might function. There, as elsewhere, he offers a consequentialist defense of libertarianism.His most recent non-fiction book is Legal Systems Very Different from Ours, covering systems from Periclean Athens through modern Amish and Romany. He is also the author of three novels, one commercially published and two self-published, and, with his wife, a self-published medieval and renaissance cookbook and a larger self-published book related to their hobby of historical recreation. Most of his writing, including full text of most of his nonfiction books, can be found on his web page: www.daviddfriedman.com. His current work is available at David Friedman’s SubstackIdeas about a wide variety of subjectsAbout Liberty on the Rocks Conference & The Art of Liberty FoundationIs the biggest secret in American/ international politics that “government” is illegitimate, immoral and completely unnecessary? Voluntaryism, REAL Freedom, is the only moral political philosophy on the market. Every other political “ISM” including socialism, communism and constitutional republicanism, has a ruling class that has rights that you don’t have, an illogical exception from morality, and “voting” is so easily rigged by monopoly media, moneyed interests, and the organized crime “government” itself counting the votes with unauditable black box voting machines and mail-in ballots that it is, frankly, a joke to think your vote matters or will even be counted.The Art of Liberty Foundation, a start-up public policy organization exposing the illegitimacy and criminality of “government” from a principled voluntaryist perspective, is also educating the public on the 2nd biggest secret: We don’t really need “Government”! In a Voluntaryist world of REAL freedom, all the legitimate, non-redistributive services provided by monopoly “government” would be better provided by the free market, mutual aid societies, armed protective service companies, arbitration providers, insurance companies, non-profits and genuine charities. The world would be much more harmonious and prosperous under REAL freedom! This year’s Liberty on the Rocks conference brought together some of the most respected economists, legal experts, political philosophers and academics to explain spontaneous order and how the free market would better provide everything from roads to military defense to air traffic control without the waste, fraud, abuse and extortion of monopoly “government.”Go paid at the $5 a month level, and we will send you both the PDF and e-Pub versions of “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! and a coupon code for 10% off anything in the Government-Scam.com/Store.Go paid at the $50 a year level, and we will send you a free paperback edition of Etienne’s book “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! OR a 64GB Liberator flash drive if you live in the US. If you are international, we will give you a $10 credit towards shipping if you agree to pay the remainder.Support us at the $250 Founding Member Level and get a signed high-resolution hardcover of “Government” + Liberator flash drive + Larken Rose’s The Most Dangerous Superstition + Art of Liberty Foundation Stickers delivered anywhere in the world. Our only option for signed copies besides catching Etienne @ an event.

How Occupied presents factual information wrapped in poo to discredit the factual information Controlled opposition Stew Peters and Jeff Berwick are “chumping” their audiences again, this time with a documentary on the Zionist occupation of the U.S. “government,” which is a real thing, while completely discrediting the information by wrapping it in poo. It is the same formula that Stew used to discredit factual information about the deaths caused by the Covid “vaccines” in his “documentary” Died Suddenly, whose expose The Died Suddenly Documentary – Understanding the Scam & Fact Check, is one of the top 10 most popular articles on this substack. Here is your guide to understanding what is “true vs. poo” in Occupied and how the inter-generational organized crime system controls the opposition by leading it themselves. Controlled Opposition voice Jeff Berwick features prominently in the documentary and Stew Peters will be attending Anarchapulco which we will cover in this article as well. If you haven’t yet seen the documentary and feel compelled to see it, then here is a link to watch for free so you don’t have to give these grifters a nickelFirst, the documentary, like rat poison, is overwhelmingly good food… otherwise, the rats wouldn’t consume it. It is bringing the uncomfortable truth of how a foreign interest has seized the “government” of the US BUT doing it in a way that will discredit the information with liberals, women, non-Christians and intellectuals and have your friends think you are an anti-semite and Nazi for mentioning it. I found myself agreeing with 99% of the first 65% of the film. Here is a fact check and breakdown of what is correct before we get into the scam and the grift. What the Film Got RightThe Israeli Genocide of the Palestinians – Yes! The “Government” of Israel is waging a complete and undeniable Genocide against the Palestinian people, and a significant portion of the Israeli people, the US State Department, the Executive Branch, DoD, the American arms industry, and monopoly media propagandists in controlled opposition media operations are absolutely complicit in their participation, collaboation or silence!Israel’s Role in the False Flag Attacks of September 11th, 2001 – The Israeli intelligence service and pro-Zionist American citizens and dual-citizenship Israelis were definitely participants in the false flag attacks of 9-11, and the film does an excellent job of putting together the pieces. We stack up even more evidence in our uncensorable flash drive of freedom, The Liberator, and make it available for free in This Dropbox. Trump has actually received over $100,000,000 from Zionist Interests, with Miriam Adelson’s donation totaling $100,000,000 alone in 2024The Organized Crime “Government” of Israel is Bribing and Installing US Politicians into the Organized Crime US “Government” Who Have Transferred $100 Billion to Israel – True! The organization Track AIPAC documents one single pro-Zionist organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle to elect hundreds of pro-Israel politicians who then vote for billions of dollars of “aid” sent to Israel each year. The Dangerous Scams and Grifts of OccupiedSo, with all this good information… what is the scam? What is the grift? The film appears to be designed to blunt legitimate criticism and exposition of the crimes of the Israeli and US Government by wrapping those crimes in poo and using subtle techniques to discredit the information with liberals, intellectuals, women and non-Christians. The film “steals the oxygen” of other more accurate expositions, positions controlled opposition MainStream Alternative Media(MAM) operations like Stew Peters and Jeff Berwick as leaders of the opposition while discrediting their followers who promote the film or ideas presented in the film like “Hitler was Good” and “It is the Jews” (vs. Inter-generational organized crime centered around banking and central banking some of whom are Jewish.) The Specifics of the Poo and ScamDeclaration of the US as a Christian Country – The first words of the film are a declaration that “As Christians in a Christian country, we have the right to be at minimum agnostic about the leadership being all Jewish” Boom! The filmmakers just offended 30% of the potential audience who are not Christian or are irreligious right out of the gate in a way that won’t be noticed by the majority of Christian viewers. The Ridiculousness of (Some) of the “Experts” Being Presented – If you were trying to make a serious exposition about inter-generational organized crime’s control of the “government” and media, would you have Bozo the Clown and Bernie Madoff as your experts? While I don’t know the backgrounds of many of the featured experts, here are three who I am familiar with: Dan Bilzerian is currently being sued for, among other things, trying to throw a porn “actress” off a roof during a photo shoot for Hustler Magazine, where he missed, and she broke her foot… AND kicking another woman in the face at a nightclub. Dan Bilzerian – While Dan Bilzerian is entertaining, he is a clown, proven liar, misogynist, and fraudster whose legal issues include wasting $50 million in investor money through extravagant and fraudulent spending while running IGNITE and unpaid rent at multiple properties. Suppose the opening comment offended 30% of the potential audience. You can be sure that a similar number of intelligent women familiar with his objectification of women and background were scratching their heads and discounting much of the message the same as if it was being delivered by an actual clown in pancake makeup and a red rubber nose. Jeff Berwick – A serial con artist who we believe is being used by the intelligence agencies to “steer and smear” the voluntaryist and peaceful anarchist movement through the Anarchapulco conference. Check out our multi-part investigation of Berwick starting with the summary article: Chumped: The Unfortunate Truth About Anarchapulco and HBO’s Series: The Anarchists, which details multiple scams where Berwick has been accused of defrauding investors in the Galts Gulch Chile scheme, selling foreign passports that were never delivered or refunded, and promoting a $700MM Ponzi scheme called Bitclub in addition to other crypto scams and pump and dumps at his Anarchapulco conference. In addition to this film, his latest scam is selling a $10,000 medical device that he claims delivers “God Energy” from what appears to be a plastic toolbox, some wires and light bulbs. Stew Peters – Similar to Berwick, Stew Peters is another disreputable figure given a well-financed media operation. Where Berwick attempts to “Smear and Steer” voluntaryists and political anarchists, Peters does the exact same thing with MAGA conservatives. Here is an excerpt on Stew from our investigation into his last scam documentary: The Died Suddenly Documentary – Understanding the Scam & Fact Checka. “Government” is Legitimate – This is a critique from the voluntaryist perspective that “Government” has been the Biggest Scam in History… It is the indoctrinated worldview that keeps everyone trapped in the easily rigged poker game of elections and voting… Stew is 100% on “Team Government” I.E. covering the “news” from the standpoint that the “government” is legitimate, desirable and necessary and everyone needs to “vote harder” for the red team and everything will be fine.b. Statism – Statism is the secret pseudo-religion that the “government” slips to kids in their mandatory “government” schools, scouting programs and military/police training. From the little American flag pin on his lapel to posing for promotional photos in front of giant American flags, Stew has bought into (and is selling!) the scam of statism to the patriot and conservative faithful. It is a way of leading the indoctrinated around by the nose and he is working it!c. Fake left right paradigm – Because Stew is openly Republican the important message of Died Suddenly (and Occupied!) will be discounted by a large section of the population trapped in the fake left-right paradigm… by design…d. Well-funded media operation – Coming out of Red Voice Media, another well-funded media operation keeping their viewers in the fake left-right paradigm to spinning off his own Stew Peters Network with a half-dozen off-shoot shows. With expensive sets, producers, writers, technical sophistication, teleprompters, and social media it smells heavily of organized crime government’s effort to dominate the airwaves with slick, “government is legitimate” media being steered from the top.e. Watch the Water, Stew’s previous documentary effort – Stew was involved in producing and heavily pushing a ridiculous theory that there was snake venom in the Covid vaccine and the water supply. Similar to Jeff Berwick pushing Flat Earth and the Shemitah, the goal is to get baby-truthers or gullible members of the liberty movement to pass along obvious falsehoods to shoot their credibility with their friends and family. “Oh, Bob… He believes they are putting snake venom in the water supply and 9-11 was an inside job…” I.E. if the organized crime media operation can get someone to latch onto and promote a ridicules theory like snake venom or the Shemitah then it will tend to tar by association other truthful information that person may be promoting about 9-11 or Covid “vaccines” deaths and adverse events.It was “The Jews” (vs. Inter-generational organized crime centered around banking and central banking some of whom are Jewish) – This was the most dangerous and scummy scam of the whole package: Repeatedly blaming “The Jews” for the actions of a specific identifiable group that makes up less than 1% of the Jewish population and may not even really be Jewish (although they are hiding within, tricking, and using specific aspects of the Jewish community and their engineered and created “State of Israel” as a base of operations). If this were a serious exposition of the power system that is robbing the US and Israeli populations, it would best be described as inter-generational organized crime centered around banking and central banking that is using fractional reserve banking and “government” to rob and control populations. Casting blame on the entire Jewish population of the world is designed to offend every person of goodwill with Jewish friends and relatives who understand for a fact that the vast, overwhelming number of Jews don’t have anything to do with banking, central banking, media, electronic spying/eavesdropping(Talpiot Program) or cultural debasement(pornography). Yes, in the United States and other Western countries, a small percentage of the Jewish population are Jewish supremacists and Talmudic Jews, very similar to the way a small percentage of the population are white supremacists or a small percentage of the Christian population are Amish. According to a survey conducted in 2020 by Pew Research, about 10% of American Jews who only make up 2% of the population of the US as a whole, are Orthodox Jews, which is the sect of Judaism associated with the Talmud, about 17% are conservative where an inestimable percentage would read or follow the Talmud, the overwhelming majority of US Jews are Reform (37%) and/or unaffiliated(30%) where the overwhelming majority of either of those groups do not read or support the Talmud or Jewish supremacist thought. Yes, many US Jews are being tricked into political Zionism, the same way American Christians are tricked into Statism and blindly following the US “government.”

Episode 3 – Etienne de la Boetie2 Addresses Liberty on the Rocks – Sedona – The Voluntaryism ConferenceIn his speech: How the Free Market Provides Public Goods for Free without the Waste, Fraud, Abuse and Extortion of Monopoly “Government,” Art of Liberty Foundation founder Etienne de la Boetie2 explores how a free market can efficiently provide the services typically handled by the government, but without the downsides of waste, fraud, abuse, and extortion. Highlighting the principles of voluntaryism, Etienne explains how spontaneous order, competition, and the invisible hand of the market allow for innovation, cost reduction, and quality improvement in goods and services. He offers examples, from private companies offering security, fire protection, and air traffic control to community-driven efforts like mutual aid societies and grassroots environmental cleanup projects. Etienne argues that REAL freedom, unencumbered by coercive state systems, leads to economic and social benefits, enabling people to thrive through voluntary cooperation. He concludes by sharing practical tips on supporting local economies, engaging in counter-economics, and preparing for economic uncertainty, all while promoting his upcoming book: Voluntaryism – How the Only “ISM” Fair For Everyone Leads to Harmony, Prosperity and Good Karma for All! – Available for Pre-Order at Voluntaryism-Book.orgFull Transcript & SlidesMy name is Etienne De La Boetie2, and I’m the founder of the Art of Liberty Foundation.And here at Liberty on the Rocks – Sedona – The Voluntarism Conference, what we’re really out to kind of explain today is how the free market is able to deliver all of the legitimate services that government does without the waste, fraud, abuse, and extortion.And so the title of my talk today is how the free market mechanisms deliver public goods for free without the waste, fraud, abuse, and extortion of the state.Some of these we’ve already touched on briefly, but I’m just going to go down a short list of the basics of free market economics for those who may not be familiar.The first one is spontaneous order, which we’ve already talked about, but it’s really the idea that the world is a self-organizing place that produces spontaneous order. That order emerges out of disorder, and things come together on their own without the need for central hierarchical control, without the need for a ministry of toothbrushes or a ministry of doing things that the government shouldn’t be doing at all.Another of these concepts in economics is called “The Invisible Hand”. The invisible hand, there’s a short quote from Adam Smith: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own self-interest”.One of the nice things about voluntaryism, or I like to call it REAL freedom. By the way, when I sign books and I write REAL freedom, I use all capital letters, I bold it, I italicize it, and I underline it just to denote that I’m not talking about the fake freedom that is offered in the government school system but REAL freedom, one of the really nice things, one of the magical things, one of the kind of the good news messages that REAL freedom “produces the goods”.REAL freedom enables people to come together peacefully and collaborate over great distances in different countries with different goals. Just because they want to improve their own personal lot in life, they want to have better things for their family and their kids, they are going to provide services to humanity.And that is the dynamic that makes millions of New Yorkers wake up to fresh bagels, or makes milk available in different places that don’t have dairy herds or any of the other luxuries and necessities of life.They’re not being provided because the brewer, the butcher, or the baker loves you. They just love themselves, and they serve humanity by providing these things, and they get compensated through market mechanisms. That doesn’t mean that they get to fleece you, because there’s another concept in economics called “Market Competition” where there are other people that have the freedom to offer the same services and the same products in the marketplace, and this dynamic of market competition will balance, for the most part, will balance this desire to charge the maximum amount you can with the fact that somebody can get it elsewhere for less.That mechanism keeps the price of gas roughly the market rate across different gas stations or the price of French fries roughly the same across other restaurants and fast food places.Now, there’s something called the “Price Mechanism”. The price mechanism in economics is the idea that setting prices in the marketplace provides information to other market participants so that they can adjust their own pricing accordingly and that society can value different production inputs and maximize where those productive inputs need to go based on this price mechanism.Now, one example that comes up a lot is when plywood goes stratospheric in Florida right before the hurricane, everybody gets mad and claim: “they’re price gouging! They’re ripping off the people that need plywood!” But no, what’s happening is the market is sending a price signal to the rest of the states around Florida that: Florida needs plywood! And it needs it quick. And there’s money to be made to get it there! And the people that get the plywood are grateful to have the plywood versus those that didn’t. And that price mechanism sets off a chain reaction that doesn’t require anybody in Washington, D.C., to lift a finger. The market is doing it by itself. And plywood is being rushed to Florida to help save businesses that would otherwise be destroyed.Capital Formation is the idea that entrepreneurs that understand their market and understand their business and understand their little part in the economic food chain are really the best people to be able to invest their capital in understanding that particular business or that particular market segment. Those people who have the expertise are the ones who should invest in green technologies, not bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.Another one that’s one of my favorites is called the Discipline of Constant Dealings. The Discipline of Constant Dealings is the idea that the merchant in the marketplace even though he could cheat, even though the dairy farmer could take a hose and put it into his dairy tank and be making more milk, or the gas station owner could calibrate his pump. He could be ripping you off and only giving you maybe 0.85 part of a gallon instead of the full gallon of gas. But the discipline of constant dealings means that these merchants, for the most part, there are exceptions, of course. Unfortunately, the lack of morality in the government school produces people willing to lie, cheat and steal and do things that I don’t think that to this degree, I don’t think you’d have if it wasn’t for this. But for the most part, no merchant will risk their profitable business by ripping off the customer, getting caught in the marketplace, and having that knowledge go through the rest of society that this guy is cheating.He’s not giving me the full gallon of gas. He’s not giving me the full gallon of milk. And so that’s known as the discipline of constant dealings.Then, there are Innovations and Productivity Improvements that reduce the cost of the luxuries and the necessities of life. And this is one of the biggest things that most people don’t understand.One of my running jokes is I’ll ask people, “Have y’all seen the new $50 bill?” And people go, “No, I didn’t know there’s a new $50 bill.” And I’ll take out a $100.” Then everybody laughs.Why are we losing the purchasing power of our money? It’s almost like somebody’s stealing the value out of our money, isn’t it? That is a crooked monetary system. It’s known as fractional reserve banking. The banks are allowed to create money out of thin air even though it’s inflationary, even though it’s stealing the value out of everybody else’s money, even though it’s good for the banks and bad for the rest of society when absent that monetary system.Innovations and productivity improvements should reduce the cost of the goods and the services that you buy because innovation and productivity improvements are reducing the cost of either manufacturing goods or distributing goods.The company Smart Green Shipping recently partnered with the University of Southampton to test out its 20-meter-tall (65.6-foot-tall) FastRig wing-sailOne of my favorite examples is global shipping. A company makes a giant sail that they put on ocean-going ships. It’s controlled by a computer, and it catches the wind and turns an oil tanker or a cargo ship essentially into a sail-assisted vessel. Pyxis Ocean sailing through the English Channel from Spain to Amsterdam, March 2024 using 123 foot “Wind Wings” to reduce fuel consumption on average 3.3 tons of fuel each day. Somebody thought it up, and now you can install it on a ship that didn’t used to have a sail, to reduce the amount of fuel required on a transatlantic voyage. And then shippers are going to get it there cheaper. So they’re going to offer a discount in the market. And that discount in the market is ultimately going to make it down to the individual consumer and the cost of goods and services that you buy.And that’s the dynamic that we should be having in society. Everything should be getting cheaper, but instead everything is getting more expensive because we’re being robbed by the banks at the top of the food chain as they steal the value out of the money that we earn and save.Now, at the same time that the free market and REAL freedom—remember, REAL freedom—REAL is capitalized, it’s bolded, it’s italicized, and it’s underlined. At the same time that it should be making us wealthier and wealthier, there are a number of other competing dynamics in economics that are making us poorer. William Henry Harrison had a quote: “I believe that all measures of the government are dictated to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.”Maybe it’s economic warfare that’s being waged against us. Maybe the lockdowns behind the COVID weren’t for our own good. Maybe they were waging a kind of economic warfare against independent producers and independent businesses, family restaurants, family hotels, and family coffee shops because they didn’t want people to have independent wealth. They don’t want you to be self-sufficient.It’s easier to game the system because they can invest, they can take this fractional reserve capital, and they can invest in chain restaurants, and chain coffee shops, and chain hotels from behind the scenes, while the government puts all their competition out of business, and they had unlimited banker capital to be able to weather the storm, where the independents and the mom-and-pops, they didn’t have it.And so, some of these other things that make everybody poor:Government-Enforced Monopolies. The post office is an excellent example. When I’ve done mailings in the past, in the place where the postage stamp is, I’ll actually go back and I’ll put $0.10 with a line struck through it, $0.15 with a line struck through it, $0.22, $0.24, and then whatever the current postage is, because the cost of postage is going up, it’s outseeding inflation. It’s outstripping inflation. And guess what? If others could deliver the mail, they would—if there wasn’t a government gun to their head saying, “You can’t deliver the mail.”There should be a poster right here, okay, with the Art of Liberty Foundation logo on it. We unfortunately sent it through the Postal Service.Their next day air thing, I’m dead serious, I swear to you, I swear to you, it was supposed, instead, like my assistant didn’t understand that if it absolutely positively has to get there overnight, you don’t get it to the U.S. Postal Service, but we paid for it to be next day aired here yesterday, and it’s not here, and that’s why there’s nothing there.That monopoly dynamic makes everybody poor, and the government inserts monopolies all over society. While other railroads around the world are beginning to deploy trains that travel FASTER than planes, “government” – owned Amtrak loses so much money that in many years it would be cheaper to close it down and buy every single passenger an economy-class plane ticket! Amtrak is another example of a government monopoly. The FAA, which I’ll get to in a minute, is another example of a government monopoly. All of these are making everybody poorer than they should be.Economic Misallocation is the idea that when the government invests, whether the government is investing in green technologies or the government is investing in subsidizing certain companies at the expense of others, that money would be better allocated by individual entrepreneurs in the marketplace who understand their businesses so that they can reduce the cost of the luxuries and necessities of life. And every time the government invests a dollar, it’s stealing value from an entrepreneur who would have spent it better to produce something of value that society wants.Warfare and weapon systems are probably the best-known example of this. You know, every time a cruise missile rocks an empty valley in Afghanistan or Iraq or Ukraine, somebody just made a quarter of a million dollars, quarter of a million dollars, quarter of a million dollars, quarter of a million dollars. And literally, the value and the wealth of society are being wasted and destroyed through trillions of dollars of unnecessary wars waged on lies and manufactured intelligence.And now we know that’s true. We know that there weren’t destroyers attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Even the government admits that a lot of these wars were based on lies.Subsidies – Every time that the government takes money from everyone and invests it in a subsidy or subsidizes—whether it’s an agricultural subsidy, whether it’s an ethanol subsidy, whether it’s you name it—they’re taking money and they’re subsidizing typically inefficient producers in the marketplace at the expense of the efficient producers in the marketplace. And you’re going to end up paying higher costs in addition to the taxes you’re paying.Price and Capital Controls – When the government says, you know, when they say, “Oh, we need to have rent control in New York City to keep apartments inexpensive for the people that want them,” the people that want them cheer and go, “Oh, that’s great,” even though that’s going to destroy the incentive for entrepreneurs that provide housing, low-income housing, and other kinds of housing, to invest in those properties or to build new properties. That’s stealing value from the owners of the properties, and it’s creating unintended consequences that are bad for the average consumer. Javier Milei in Argentina just removed rent control in a big segment of society, and they’ve seen prices drop across the board. Not in every single case, but essentially across the board, removing these price controls leads to better outcomes.Central Planning – Government is famous for central planning. You’re going to see James Corbett take that apart in his presentation: An Announcement from the Ministry of Toothbrushes so that I won’t talk too much about that now. Inflationary Monopoly Money – we’ve already talked about. The fact that the money is losing value destroys the ability of society to save and have investments for new businesses, for your kids to be able to take a year or two off college and pursue whatever they want to pursue.Tariffs and Trade Barriers – Tariffs, government says, “Oh, well, we’re not going to tax you for that. We’re just going to put a tariff on goods coming from across the seas,” as if you’re not going to pay that in higher prices for the goods that you want to buy from across the seas. It’s absolutely ridiculous. They’re taking the money, spending it how they want in Washington, DC, and claiming to offer you a benefit. And they’re benefiting, in many cases, inefficient producers at the expense of more efficient producers. Import-export quotas, bailouts, and subsidies for failing businesses, these are just a few. We mentioned spontaneous order. Voluntaryism, not only does it work and deliver the goods, but it’s around you all the time. It’s already working. You’re already seeing it. You’re already seeing it in the marketplace. I’m using this exploded cell phone, this picture of this exploded cell phone here to make the point that a cell phone isn’t really just made by one company. It’s made by hundreds, if not thousands of different companies around the world doing everything from mining materials in Africa and Australia and other countries for the raw goods and the components, the lithium for the batteries, the glass for the screen, the software that powers the device. There might be thousands of companies involved in creating individual applications. The people that make the wireless transceivers, the people that make the plastic. There’s no central planning involved in this. These are all people who just want to have a better life for themselves and their family. They’re innovating in their own individual niche, and they all come together completely spontaneously. There’s no violence involved. There are no threats. There’s nothing of that nature.And my other favorite example of this is the grocery store. The grocery store is coordinating the activities of millions and millions and millions of people around the world that have no top-down centralized planning at all to ensure that you get avocados in January and strawberries in February in a complex global supply chain that also includes, you know, retailing, merchandising, advertising, making the products look attractive and the packaging look good. And so it really, it really is all around us today. And there’s no reason in the world that these things can’t apply to the goods and the services that government provides to make them better, faster, and cheaper, just like they do for the grocery store, just like they do for cell phones, just like they do for automobiles, just like they do for Hollywood films, just like they do for bookstores, airlines, you name it.Thank you, thank you, thank you.Now, I want to give you some examples of grassroots spontaneous order, where it’s routinely producing what we would commonly think of as public goods. Now, I don’t have it on this slide, but I’m going to tell you. A couple of years ago, I was in a Tough Mudder race with my son there.And one of the guys, we had a team of a group of friends.And one of the guys on the team was a venture capitalist that built bridges. And he told me like, we’re talking about it and everything. And he was telling us the background of how they work. Okay. They go out and they find a place where you’ve got to drive, where there’s a whole bunch of traffic and a whole bunch of people that would have to drive an hour or two hours out of their way to get from point A to point B. And they invest their own money, and they build a bridge, and they figure out, would the customer pay $5, $10, whatever it is, to save themselves an hour to two hours of time in the hassle of getting from pointThe Wayne Six Toll Bridge is a privately owned suspension bridge over the Ohio River on the Golding Street Extension between Newell, West Virginia and East Liverpool, Ohio, United States. It carries two lanes of roadway and a pedestrian path along the west side. The toll is $1 for vehicles and $0.05 for pedestrians.A lot of people believe bridges wouldn’t get built if the government wasn’t doing it. Oh, yes, they would! And not only will they get built, but there’s a profit motive that encourages the venture capitalists that build bridges to go out and find these places before the other venture capitalists build bridges, find them, and they go do it first. And so that’s already going on, and it’s being done for you, for free. The venture capitalist doesn’t care about you, he just wants to make money, but you get to save an hour, two hours of your life in exchange for $5. That in a world where our money wasn’t being stolen, the value of our money would be like, $5, $10, whatever it is. And so that’s going on.Underwriters Laboratories certifies electronic equipment for safety for insurance companies. That’s not a government operation. The Ocean Clean Up Project’s Interceptor is stationed at the mouth of polluting rivers to ensure that plastic never makes it into the ocean in the first place.The Ocean Cleanup Project is removing plastic from the rivers and the oceans. The Non-GMO Project is certifying non-GMO ingredients where the government wouldn’t. So we had a market failure where there’s already an FDA that’s already supposed to be protecting you from things like GMO, but through something called regulatory capture, which is the well-understood economic idea that the agencies in Washington, D.C. are captured by the companies they regulate, and there’s a revolving door of people going from the GMO industry, from Monsanto. Michael Taylor is the textbook example, where there’s a guy going from Monsanto in and out of the FDA every couple of years, sometimes he’s working for Monsanto, sometimes he’s working for the FDA. And so we had a quote-unquote “market failure” (Really “government failure”). And then the market came in and solved the problem and now I don’t buy grains if it doesn’t say the Non-GMO Project! The government supposedly is supposed to be protecting us from that. But instead, we had to have to have a private company step forward.Consumer Reports tests and reviews just about everything. And I’m going to get into the North Maine woods here in a second. But a lot of people don’t know this.A Rural Metro Fire Department There’s already private firefighters. There’s a company called Rural Metro Fire that provides private fire protection, EMS, rescue, and medical vehicle accidents, even wildlife fire protection in rural areas all across the country is provided by a private company. It doesn’t have to be the government. It’s already being done. Detroit Threat Management is Providing Police Services in DetroitThere’s a company in Detroit called Detroit Threat Management that provides cost-effective armed protective services in Detroit where the monopoly police are notoriously inefficient and corrupt. So the government is doing such a poor job, not just in Detroit.Right now, I’m a little nomadic. I’m living in Memphis, Tennessee right now. And I promise you, in every single business, there is private security in every single parking lot, in every single shopping center, in almost every single business. The police department is so inefficient and corrupt that the government has to buy additional security, in addition to what you’re being taxed for—the security that you don’t want. Even though you’re being taxed and robbed for the security that’s not doing such a good job, you’ve got to buy additional security. Why don’t we just all buy the security ourselves and get them like right out of the thing because we’re having to do it anyway? Now, Nav Canada, I’m going to talk about in a bit. Kiva provides crowdsourced loans to entrepreneurs, the same as the Small Business Administration. You can loan as little as $25 to an entrepreneur, when they pay you back you can loan again! Nav Canada… Well, surely we’ve got to have the FAA, or planes would just be dropping out of the sky, and they’d be running into each other. Canada privatized air traffic control in 1996 through a sale to a privately owned NAV Canada. They have 1,900 air traffic controllers, 650 flight service specialists, 700 technologists, software developers, whatever. They’re doing 12 million aircraft movements a year. They’ve got 40,000 customers, pilots, private plane owners, things like that. They’re covering 18 million square kilometers. They’ve got 42 control towers and seven area control sites. We don’t need the government to do anything… even the most complicated, wide-scale things. It’s the second-largest air navigation provider in the world by traffic volume.This is one of my favorites. Well, surely if we didn’t have national parks and state parks, then the developers would just… we would just have everything paved, and it would just be garbage and wasted. There’s a place in Canada called the North Maine Woods. It’s 3.5 million acres of privately protected forest in Maine. It is twice the size of Massachusetts. It is made up of conservation areas where people have donated money to have areas privately protected. It’s mostly the timber companies, there are private landowners, and they’ve put the stewardship of the land into a nonprofit called the North Maine Woods. It’s providing all of the amenities you would expect from a national park or a state park. You can go hiking, you can go camping, you can go four-wheeling, snowmobiling, hunting. It’s got all that at comparable prices.It’s not that volutaryism is some kind of pie-in-the-sky idea. All of this is being done today. Most people just never know it because, as I mentioned in the opening, they don’t want you to know about it. Google and Facebook wouldn’t sell us advertising for this conference because they don’t want you to know that this is going on. Mutual Aid Societies – This is really, really fascinating. Mutual aid societies. In this country, before the government got itself into the cash welfare business—really kind of in the 20s and 30s—there were dozens of individual mutual aid societies that provided many of the exact same benefits as government welfare: unemployment insurance, disability insurance, health insurance. There was a thing called “lodge practice” that has been stamped out by the AMA. The AMA literally did away with lodge practice because it was impacting the amount of money that doctors could make.And so they didn’t like that at all.So they did away with what was known as lodge practice. But these mutual aid societies would all pool their resources, they would hire their own doctors, and they would split the cost of the doctor across everybody in the mutual aid society. And you would go see the Mutual Aid Society doctor and he would be on call for you. Back then, they used to have house calls, and the doctor would come to you, and it was a better quality of medical care because the doctor’s interest was aligned with your interest as a member of the Mutual Aid Society. The doctor was a member of the Mutual Aid Society. And that’s not what we have right now with government run healthcare. And get this, you ready for this? The mutual aid societies competed with each other. They competed with each other to who would provide better benefits for their members because they wanted you part of the Elks. They didn’t want you in the Rotary Club’s Mutual Aid Society. They wanted you to be part of the Elks. And so they’re going to compete on who would offer better benefits.Now, back to the Sedona example.And so to get people here, we advertised in the Red Rock News. I subscribed to their email newsletter to ensure the ads were going out as we expected. And I get a story that Sedona had just opened up eight pickleball courts at a cost of $1.6 million. And I couldn’t believe it. So, I didn’t cherry-pick this. I didn’t go out and find the cheapest pickleball court. I just called the only guy I know who has a privately run pickleball court. And it’s a place in, in Memphis, Tennessee, in a kind of an affluent neighborhood.It’s called Willow Grove Farm Pickleball Paradise.So I call and ask, “Hey, what did you pay to create Pickleball Paradise?” And it is a paradise. It is beautiful. It’s nestled in the woods. They have six outdoor courts. They’re building five climate-controlled indoor courts. He has horses and mules that will just come up to you at the fence and let you pet them. He has dozens of varieties of exotic chickens that roam the ground that look absolutely like a paradise. The cost of constructing his six outdoor courts, including the lighting, the fence, and two bathrooms, was less than $100,000. He is currently building five more indoor courts, four full-size courts and one little mini “singles court.” I don’t play a lot of pickleball, but evidently, there’s a smaller court called a single court. He will pay $325,000 to $350,000 for five more indoor courts. He charges $5 to play all day long. Okay. You can come and go all day for five bucks. If you buy a monthly or yearly plan, it gets even cheaper than that. He’ll let you play for free if you can’t afford it. Chilled bottled water is just a dollar. Okay. So where’s this $1.6 million going? I emailed the head of Sedona Parks and Rec two days ago. And I left a message saying: “Hey, I’m an investigative journalist. I’m trying to figure out where this $1.6 million went.”He has not gotten back to me. [Etienne Note: The head of Parks & Rec did finally get back to me, and I requested and received copies of the bids and budget, and it is filled with outrageous expenditures like $2500 to remove a post AND $800 to test the lights. $102,000 was spent on the demolition of an existing ball field (Which was ridiculous as well), so the final cost for the courts was only $1.5 Millionish. I actually interviewed the city employees involved with the project. They were embarrassingly clueless about the immorality of robbing average people to overspend/waste a million dollars on eight Pickleball courts… Article on the investigation coming soon!]I mentioned that we’re having a conference today, and he has not gotten back to me, but I did some math. The average pickleball paddle is eight ounces. If you had four paddles for each court, all made out of solid gold that would only be $710,000. So, the guy in Memphis built more courts. Eleven courts versus eight, better courts, five indoor courts for less than $500,000. Where is all of this money going in Sedona? The other point that I want to make about this is that the guy who built these courts in Memphis, Tennessee, is providing the exact same service that the government is providing. He’s providing the community pickleball courts, but he’s doing it without a gun. He’s doing it without stealing and robbing and extortion and coercion, and he’s achieving a better result that is cooler, way cooler.Okay, then, what the city of Sedona is providing, I assure you, is not too different from what we can create ourselves. And, you know, I wanted to just have some solutions—just like I like throwing in solutions and everything. What I like to do is find others and everybody that came from afar, I’m so glad that you’re here. I know that a lot of people don’t realize there are so many other people, amazingly cool, amazingly beautiful people that believe the exact same thing, that don’t want to use extortion, aren’t advocating for the use of extortion or violence on their neighbor through the political process, don’t want to vote to rob them, don’t want to participate in rigged elections. There are many, many others. Find them, get organized. There’s power in numbers, and you become part of the safety net.This is a picture of the Porcupine Freedom Festival in New Hampshire, one of the largest and oldest freedom gatherings. There’s a video that I don’t have time to play, but these are two tax collectors that showed up a couple of years ago at the Free State Project’s Porcupine Freedom Festival and tried to collect the meals tax (theft) at the Festival. They were mocked. They were made fun of. They were driven off. And the taxman has never been back to the Porcupine Freedom Festival. And that is really the power of numbers. And so that’s why you got to get organized.I recommend, like, I’m worried about government money. So, I always encourage people to get prepared for a dollar devaluation or collapse. My favorite thing to do is just pay in cash. It saves the local merchant 1.5% to 2.5%. It starves the bank for 1.5% to 2.5%. It allows independent mom-and-pop businesses to pocket the cash versus getting robbed by the government in taxation. And then you and the merchant have more cash on hand in the event of a bank holiday.I encourage diversification into non-dollar-denominated assets like goldbacks, silver, and crypto. I was watching last night, and people were doing transactions in crypto for a variety of goods and services. And somebody was offering silver as well. And so it’s happening all around you.Engage in counter-economics. Regarding counter-economics, maybe Derek Brose is going to talk about this a little bit. But anything that you do that shifts something done in the state’s purview into the private is good for freedom and bad for the tyranny of the state. Private market associations, there are all kinds of different things that allow you to do that.Don’t pay taxes. Work off the books. Shop at the farmer’s market and pay cash. Shop local versus Amazon and the chain stores. Growing your own food is like printing your own money. Use credit unions versus the market banks.The one thing I’ll say is I’ve got all of this coming out in a book that should be released in early November. We’re doing an Indiegogo campaign for that book right now. We’re raising $25,000 to get a low-cost initial print run and a marketing campaign behind the book, and so far in a couple of days, we’ve raised $1,471 $2726 from 29 62 backers, or 5% 10% of our goal.So, if you wanted to participate in that and you’d like to pre-order a copy of that book, it’s at voluntaryism-book.com. We’ve got some great perks for people that can help us get this book into the marketplace.And with that, I will leave you. As I mentioned, I am the founder of the Art of Liberty Foundation. We’re a startup public policy organization. We’re looking at problems and trying to solve socioeconomic issues from a principled, voluntarist standpoint. We’re trying to be a voluntarist think tank and bring the message of many of these speakers, amplify it, and get it out to all corners of the world.That is the end of my talk, and I thank you for your kind attention.About the SpeakerEtienne de la Boetie2 is the founder of the Art of Liberty Foundation, a startup public policy foundation exposing the illegitimacy and criminality of “government” from a principled voluntaryist perspective. He is the author of “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! – How Inter-Generational Organized Crime Runs the “Government,” Media and Academia – available at Government-Scam.com and Voluntaryism – How the Only “ISM” Fair for Everyone Leads to Harmony, Prosperity and Good Karma for All – available at Voluntaryism-Book.org.He organizes the Liberty on the Rocks – International Voluntaryism Conference each fall in Sedona that brings together voluntaryists from around the world at Sedona.ArtOfLiberty.org. He publishes the Daily News from the Art of Liberty Foundation at DailyNewsFromAoLF.Substack.com and Five Meme Friday, a weekly survey of the best of the alternative media at ArtOfLiberty.org/Subscribe and all his original writings and research can be found at ArtOfLiberty.Substack.com and ArtOfLiberty.orgAbout Liberty on the Rocks Conference & The Art of Liberty FoundationIs the biggest secret in American/ international politics that “government” is illegitimate, immoral and completely unnecessary? Voluntaryism, REAL Freedom, is the only moral political philosophy on the market. Every other political “ISM” including socialism, communism and constitutional republicanism has a ruling class that has rights that you don’t have, an illogical exception from morality, and “voting” is so easily rigged by monopoly media, moneyed interests, and the organized crime “government” itself counting the votes with unauditable black box voting machines and mail in ballots that it is, frankly, a joke to think your vote maters or will even be countedThe Art of Liberty Foundation, a start up public policy organization exposing the illegitimacy and criminality of “government” from a principled voluntaryist perspective, is also educating the public on the 2nd biggest secret: We don’t really need “Government”! In a Voluntaryist world of REAL freedom, all the legitimate, non-redistributive services provided by monopoly “government” would be better provided by the free market, mutual aid societies, armed protective service companies, arbitration providers, insurance companies, non-profits and genuine charities. The world would be much more harmonious and prosperous under REAL freedom! This year’s Liberty on the Rocks conference brought together some of the most respected economists, legal experts, political philosophers and academics to explain spontaneous order and how the free market would better provide everything from roads to military defense to air traffic control without the waste, fraud, abuse and extortion of monopoly “government.”If You Like Liberty on the Rocks, You are Going To LOVE: Voluntaryism – The Book! Go paid at the $5 a month level, and we will send you both the PDF and e-Pub versions of “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! and a coupon code for 10% off anything in the Government-Scam.com/Store.Go paid at the $50 a year level, and we will send you a free paperback edition of Etienne’s book “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! OR a 64GB Liberator flash drive if you live in the US. If you are international, we will give you a $10 credit towards shipping if you agree to pay the remainder.Support us at the $250 Founding Member Level and get a signed high-resolution hardcover of “Government” + Liberator flash drive + Larken Rose’s The Most Dangerous Superstition + Art of Liberty Foundation Stickers delivered anywhere in the world. Our only option for signed copies besides catching Etienne @ an event.The Art of Liberty Foundation – Important News is a reader-supported publication. 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Larken Rose kicks off Liberty on the Rocks – Sedona – The Voluntaryism Conference by taking down the legitimacy of “government” We are publishing the 1st talk from Liberty on the Rocks – Sedona – the Voluntaryism Conference, with political philosopher Larken Rose setting the stage by DESTROYING the legitimacy of “government” and revealing its immorality and illogical nature. In this thought-provoking episode, political philosopher Larken Rose presents a challenge to the commonly accepted notion of government and authority. Entitled The Illegitimacy of “Government” & Rebooting Humanity, Larken’s talk explores how deeply ingrained beliefs in political authority contribute to societal problems such as war, corruption, and oppression. Through a series of hypothetical scenarios and humor, he questions the legitimacy of authority figures having “moral exemptions” that permit them to act in ways considered wrong for ordinary citizens. Larken delves into the essence of anarchism, defining it as the absence of rulers rather than the chaos often portrayed by monopoly media. He argues for a society where individuals govern themselves, advocating a simple yet radical principle: if an action is wrong for an individual, it is equally wrong to ask others, including government, to do it. This episode is a compelling call for personal responsibility and voluntary cooperation as foundations for a just and peaceful world.New to the Series? Check out the Introduction Here: Do We Really Need “Government”? – What is Voluntaryism? – Introduction – Liberty on the Rocks – Sedona – The Voluntaryism ConferenceFull TranscriptLarken Rose: All righty, who here is to blame for the problems of the world? I mean, in this room. Okay, at least you admit it. Most people in this country and around the world are well aware that humanity has some pretty dang serious problems. Corruption and war and financial problems and crime and violence and all sorts of not-so-fun things. Almost none of those people think that their own belief system is the cause of it, or even contributing in any way. But if we have those problems, and we do, and nobody thinks that their beliefs are part of the problem, some of those people must be wrong. But there seems to be an almost universal assumption that people who mean well and people who are trying to be good and do the right thing and trying to make the world better. Well, they can’t possibly be part of the problem, but they absolutely are. Almost all of them. Now, it’s not because they’re malicious or evil or trying to ruin the world, but it’s because they believe things that were pounded through their heads over and over and over again, manipulated into their thought patterns without even noticing, like Etienne was mentioning, and it vastly influences how they behave and what they think and how they talk and how they act. And very few people bother to question such things or even notice them as beliefs. They just think, oh, I just see reality as it is. And they don’t get how much their perception of reality has absolutely nothing to do with reality. The title of this talk is Rebooting Humanity. Instead of assuming that things should mostly be the way they are with a little bit of reform that politicians love to talk about and tinkering here and there, let’s do a thought experiment here starting from scratch to consider some very fundamental principles and concepts. Now, you can’t really examine society without examining the strange beast that is politics. Political power and legal systems and government. But who isn’t sick of the inane, constant political rhetoric by now? Well, we’re going to keep things very simple and literal here because the most political discussion is a steaming stew of dishonest euphemisms and vague fluff, and emotional noise topped off with a pile of absolute bullcrap.“If elected, I will enact a policy of diverse opportunity and progressive equality by way of growth and compassionate assistance.” Okay. What does that actually literally mean?I’m going to take these people’s money and give it to those people. So those people vote for me.So we’re going to actually be literal today. We’re not going to go into the fluff. We’re going to directly, specifically, and accurately describe reality. And we’re not going to be bickering over which politicians we think are slightly less slimy than the other politicians. We’re going to go back to basics and look at some principles.So here’s the thought experiment. I want you all to imagine that we’re forming our own little town somewhere. It’s just us. Now we’re going to throw in a couple hundred other people because it’s going to be a pretty small town if we don’t. So we’ll just throw in a couple hundred other people that we don’t know. And we’re all gonna be just plunked down in the woods somewhere. We’re being pioneers and building a new little society from scratch.Now, I’m sure we have people with different views, different interests, and even different values to some extent, as well as different skills and knowledge. So we’ll probably find ways to barter and trade, organize and cooperate, work together, and so forth. Now, not everybody is competent, and not everybody is honest, and not everybody is nice. Present company, except I’m sure we’re all nice, but some of those 200 hypothetical people I came up with might be nasty. And I’m not sure we can trust them. The fact that they don’t exist, never mind. So we also might have to figure out how to deal with nasty people along the way.But I don’t want to just babble about what I think our little new society should do because I won’t be in charge of it. I’m not the emperor of this new little colony. I’m just me, and you’re just you. So I will put a bunch of this in the form of questions for you to consider.Let’s start with a few basic suggestions and ideas, and you let me know by a show of hands which ones you favor.Okay, so the first possible suggestion is: There we are in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, with no roads and no any of that. First suggestion, everybody scatter, everybody just run off into the woods in different directions, every man for himself.Okay, who’s in favor of that?Okay, who thinks that idea is pretty stupid?Okay, next possible plan: we all violently attack and rob each other, and whoever ends up alive and with the most stuff wins.Who likes that plan?You’re laughing at my brilliant plans.Who thinks that plan would be immoral and moronic?Yay.Next possible plan: instead of individuals fighting each other, let’s divide into two big groups. Maybe we’ll just split down the aisle here, and then the two groups can try to kill each other and dominate each other.All in favor of that plan?You’re no fun.Okay, how about this plan? Somebody comes up with a central master plan and then forces everyone else to go along with it and violently punishes anybody who disobeys.All in favor?Oh, man. What if you get to be the one who comes up with the master plan and forces it on everybody else? Who here wants to be the one? We got one aspiring tyrant, okay.Okay, now, this last suggestion might sound a little crazy and fringe, but here goes. What if each individual is in charge of himself and each individual gets to decide for himself which projects he wants to be involved in and who he wants to work with and who he wants to trade with and interact with.So, individuals might voluntarily form groups, big or small, to accomplish certain things, but each individual gets to decide for himself which things he’s gonna be a part of.All in favor? Ah, a bunch of extremists!Now, it’s weird because I’ve asked these answers to everyone in the same way. Liberals, conservatives, people who don’t care about politics at all, people from different countries. It’s almost as if freedom and peaceful coexistence is what people want.Well, if pretty much everyone wants that, why don’t we have that?Alright, you crazy kooks with your silly childish desires for peace and voluntary cooperation. I’ll give you a master plan that’ll definitely change your mind. So here is my four-point master plan for our new little colony. It’s genius, and I’m sure you’ll all eagerly and happily agree to it.First, first of my four-point plan, from now on, I’m allowed to do evil stuff. All the stuff that we would all normally recognize as wrong and immoral—fraud, theft, assault, murder, things like that. That’ll still be bad if any of you do it, but you’ll give me permission to do those things, and it won’t even be bad when I do them. So the first part of my plan is I get a blanket exemption from basic morality applying to me.The second part of my plan is that you all have to do whatever I say, and I’ll have enforcers whose job it is to beat up anybody who disobeys me.Now the third point of my plan is very important. I don’t want you obeying me just because you’re scared of my enforcers. I want you scared of them too. I’m gonna need each one of you to really and truly believe that you are morally obligated to obey my every whim and that disobeying isn’t just dangerous, it’s actually wrong—that it’s a sin and makes you a bad person if you don’t obey me.Now, the fourth and final point of my genius plan is that I get to change my mind whenever I want. I make up new commands and demands whenever I feel like it and change the rules whenever I want to. And whenever I do, you all have to accept that morality itself changes.If my rule said you’re allowed to do something yesterday, and I changed it, now you’re not allowed to do it today, that means you’re a good person yesterday if you do it, and then you’re a bad person today if you do it—because my will is morality. It defines right and wrong, because I changed my mind.And in case you were wondering, I can make different rules for different people, and different rules for different places, different rules for different times. I can basically do whatever the hell I want. And if you don’t like it, your only proper and civilized recourse in our new society is to pitifully beg me to change the rules that you don’t like. And if I don’t change them to what you want, and I pretty much never will, well, sucks to be you. You’ll obey, and you’ll like it.All in favor of my four-point plan? Come on, just give me unlimited power over everyone, and I will be your savior.No takers?Now, I trust that everyone watching at home immediately recognized that my proposed plan is laughably stupid and, in fact, downright demented and insane. Hopefully, you also knew that I was kidding. But here is where things might get a little bit uncomfortable for some people because leaving our hypothetical new society and getting back to the real world here, if you vote for any political candidate or party, if you believe in and support any government of any size, of any type—democracy, constitutional republic, monarchy, whatever—then you already have given your blessing to exactly the plan that I just described.Now, that’s not an exaggeration, and it’s not hyperbole. It’s literally true, but I expect exactly no one who wants “government” to actually believe me yet.So again, we’ll keep things simple, literal, and direct and see what the reality of political authority actually is, point by point, like my plan. Now, the first part of my totally bonkers plan was that I should get an exemption from morality and I should be allowed to do bad things, so much so that they’re not even bad if I do them. Still bad if anybody else does them, but come on, that’s certainly not what government is, is it? Well, let’s see.There you are, a mere human being, and you don’t have the right to rob people and beat people up and murder and things like that. Those things are wrong. Now, you do have the moral right to voluntarily organize and cooperate with people and trade with people. In fact, I think most of us would agree that you even have the right to use physical force against other people if that’s necessary to protect an innocent person from an attacker. In other words, it’s bad if you violently attack people, but if you use force to stop an attacker, that can be justified.Yes, I realize this is very basic and obvious, and I’m describing things that most eight-year-olds understand. So let’s bundle all those things that you, as a mere mortal human being, would be morally justified in doing, and we’re gonna call that “good stuff.” It’s okay to do good stuff. Let me know if this deep philosophical explanation is too complex for you. It’s okay to do good stuff.Now, as a mere peasant, you do not have the right to rob your neighbor or violently control his decisions and choices. You can’t, for example, impose and collect a tax from other people on your own. That’s extortion if you do it, and that’s bad. As another example, you don’t get to use threats of violence to tell other people what they can eat or drink or smoke or sell or buy or build or live in, who they can trade with, and so on and so forth forever. That would be violent thuggery if you do it. It’s legislation and regulation if the government does it.Now, here’s the uncomfortable part, even though it’s painfully obvious. If you and me and every other mere mortal on the planet have the right to do good stuff, and some special people like politicians, tax collectors, law enforcers, and other government employees have the right to do some stuff that you and I don’t have the right to do, that means that those people are allowed to do stuff outside of the category of good stuff, also known as bad stuff.So yes, “government,” by its very nature, is the thing that supposedly has societal permission to commit evil. That is the fundamental nature of what government and political power are. When those people do it, it’s fine, legitimate, and necessary. When you do it, it’s bad. Because you see, those people have an exemption from morality. Hmm, that’s just like the first point of my completely bonkers plan.Now, you can bicker that, well, they can’t just do whatever they want. They’re only allowed to do certain evil stuff. Okay, that doesn’t really change the underlying principle and how bonkers it is to think that some people should be allowed to do evil. Whether people like hearing this or not, to believe in government of any size, any type, automatically and necessarily means that believing that people in government have an exemption from basic morality and are allowed to do evil. So much so that it’s not even evil anymore when they do it.The vast majority of people, whether they’ve ever looked at it that way or not, believe exactly that. They believe that some people, those in authority, have an exemption from morality to one degree or another. And that’s absolutely insane and also horribly dangerous and destructive, as several hundred million people murdered by their own governments in the last hundred years kind of demonstrates.Now, I’m going to bundle together the next two points of my bonkers plan: that I get to boss you around and have my enforcers beat you up if you disobey, and two, you can’t just disobey out of fear. You have to feel like I have the right to control you and that you are obligated to obey me.As it happens, that is quite literally what the word “authority” means. Authority does not mean the ability to control somebody by force. Most of us have, if you have a gun, yeah, I can make this person do things, but that’s bad. Authority means the right, the moral right to control people, not just the ability. So if you believe in political authority at all, regardless of type or size, then you have to believe that certain people have the right to do immoral stuff and control people, and that it’s immoral for people to disobey them.I mean, you wouldn’t want to be one of those despicable lawbreakers, would you? That isn’t just dangerous, it’s bad, right? Obeying the law is good, disobeying is bad. How many zillion times have we all heard that?Okay, well, what is… It isn’t just don’t rob people and don’t murder people.Well, law is how the duly elected congressional representatives enact the will of the people by way of the law.No, as I said, we’re not going to do the bullcrap euphemisms and vague rhetoric. What literally is this thing called law?Now, there are laws of physics and stuff. We’re not talking about that. That’s actual physical reality. Law is commands—commands backed by threats of violence. A bunch of politicians did some rituals, put some words on paper, declared it to be law, and then they send violent armed enforcers after anyone who’s caught disobeying. That is the obvious, literal, undeniable reality.But even just phrasing it honestly and literally makes a lot of people uncomfortable. That’s because when the reality of the situation is clearly expressed, everyone can see the obvious evil and insanity of it, which is why they have to talk about all the fluff. And just like you all saw the insanity when that was part of my brilliant plan for our new colony, everybody who hears it described literally goes, “Oh, that’s not what I want.”Why do you keep voting for it?The difference is anybody who hears me suggest it knows that I’m kidding. I hope. But the vast majority of human beings on this planet have been indoctrinated from birth to believe that when the exact same thing is done by way of longstanding, official, traditional political rituals, that it must be legitimate. It must be righteous. It must be sane. It must be necessary. It’s not.Now, the fourth and final point. The fourth and final point of my bonkers plan is that I get to change my mind whenever I want. And when my rules change, morality changes with it. That’s how powerful I am. Even if my commands and demands are arbitrary and constantly changing, and different at different times and in different places and for different people, you are always bad if you disobey me. And you are always deserving of whatever punishment me and my enforcers dish out if you disobey. That was my plan, okay?How does that compare to government?In this country, in the beginning, drinking alcohol was legal. Then alcohol prohibition happened, and it became illegal—against the law. Then later, it became legal again. Therefore, to believe that obeying the law is a moral imperative, you have to believe that morality changes when the politician’s scribbles change. You’re a perfectly fine, upstanding citizen one day, but then—Even though you didn’t change anything about what you were doing—the next day, you’re an immoral, despicable criminal because some new law was passed. Some new substance was outlawed. Some new firearm restriction was enacted. Some new random, obscure regulation change that you didn’t even know about happened relating to your field of work.So you accidentally and unknowingly became a bad person.By doing the same stuff you’ve done for years after some new arbitrary crap was spewed out by some bureaucratic parasite you’ve never heard of. And we’re supposed to believe that this is a legitimate and sane way to view reality? To believe that right and wrong can change based on the whims of corrupt political parasites?So, of course, I trust all of you. Every night, read the Code of Federal Regulations before you go to bed. It’s only a couple hundred thousand pages to make sure you’re being a good, law-abiding citizen. And that’s just at the federal level. There’s still state and local and all sorts of… Make sure you keep up with that, because otherwise you’re a bad person if you accidentally do some random thing that doesn’t match some random rule you didn’t know existed.Also, make sure you keep up to date with all of the laws of every country, every state, every town, every county, every locality you ever pass through, since you also have to believe that morality randomly changes from place to place when you cross invisible, imaginary lines.Sure, you can be a respectable, moral person smoking marijuana here in Arizona. But if you do the exact same thing 100 miles north of here, over that magic line between Arizona and Utah, then you would be a despicable criminal and lawbreaker deserving of the violent assault and caging that will be inflicted upon you if you get caught. You horrible villain.You have to believe this if you believe in political authority. And it’s bonkers.Now, when we were imagining our new little colony in the woods, you all thought that my suggested plan, me as an all-powerful tyrant with the ability to do evil, was a stupid plan. In fact, you kind of chuckled at it, which I was a little offended by. And so would pretty much everyone else on the planet.So why, when those in government do the same thing, do most people accept it and think it’s legitimate and even essential for society?Now, for our little society in the woods, I could modify my plan slightly so I’ll let you choose between two power-happy megalomaniacs. So, you can decide which one of us you prefer, and I’ll pick the other one too and make sure he’s equally power-happy and stuff. You get to choose which one of us will violently rob and dominate you. You’re still gonna be dominated and robbed and extorted and controlled and bossed around and all that fun stuff. But hey, if you get to pick which person abuses and victimizes you, that makes it okay. Right?Again, in the setting of my plan, nobody would accept such lunacy. And yet, most of the world praises democracy as the ultimate height of civilization. As long as the human livestock is allowed to bicker over who violently subjugates and exploits them, well, that’s as good as it gets, right? We choose our abusers so that counts as being free, right? No, it doesn’t. Duh.Now, I must make a brief tangent here into the realm of human psychology, because most people, having been raised to believe in government and political authority, have been taught that good people happily and proudly pay their taxes and obey the law—including thousands of arbitrary random laws we can’t possibly keep track of. They don’t want to have to question their entire view of reality, because that’s uncomfortable. Usually, it’s not very fun. In fact, for the vast majority of people I know who are now voluntarists, myself included, it was an awkward, uncomfortable process to look at my own belief system and go, Do I really believe this?Why would I believe that?That doesn’t make any sense. It took me years to just go: That doesn’t make sense. Because when someone’s deeply indoctrinated into a belief and doesn’t even recognize that it’s a belief, it’s really uncomfortable to actually look at it.So, what some people are going to do when they hear this dangerous extremist rhetoric I’m saying up here, when I’m questioning the need for a violent parasitical ruling class—I mean, legislative representative government—their brains are going to start throwing excuses at it. They’ll try to justify why our system isn’t like what I described and how this is a free country, and the government here represents the people, serves the people, and is just doing the will of the people. And even if it kind of sucks, it’s still the best around, and all sorts of other dogmatic hogwash.So I would humbly ask anyone listening to this to try not to go into knee-jerk emotional excuse-making mode. If your beliefs about government are rational and moral, then you ought to be able to answer my silly, fringe, ignorant questions easily, right? If I was up here suggesting that two plus two equals five, you wouldn’t have to get emotional and storm out of the room. You could, I hope, calmly demonstrate my error.So, to keep things simple, let’s do this: Imagine that you get to decide your ideal government. For some reason, everyone else in the world has agreed to have you put together what you think would be the ultimate, most effective, fair, and efficient form of government. The world is counting on you to reboot humanity. All these problems we’re seeing, you can save the day by deciding what government we should have.So we don’t need to complain about what government is right now, and we don’t need to get stuck bickering over political parties and candidates. Because for this little mental exercise, you get to decide it all, all by yourself. The structure of government, the way it functions, who gets to hold various positions of power—all of that is completely up to you and only you. We’re completely overhauling society, and you get to be the political architect, the master planner, the one in charge. Anything you want.So, with that in mind, I have some questions for you about how things would be under your ideal political system and government—not under the mess we have now. Now, you don’t have to answer out loud; just think about it.Maybe you’d have your government focus on doing inherently justified stuff like organizing defense to protect the innocent from aggressors and to protect the country from scary invading armies and stuff. I mean, what could be wrong with that? So you hire and train a bunch of righteous, brave, strong people who can defend us all from the bad people. Sounds good.Okay, I have two questions. First, do you force people to fund your version of protection whether they want to or not? Because you have to admit, if your method of protecting people from thieves and robbers starts with you literally robbing them, something’s a little bit off. And that’s what every government does by way of taxation. We will protect and serve you, but first we have to take a bunch of your money and hurt you if you don’t hand it over for your protection.Isn’t that exactly what the mafia does? And they call it a protection racket. And everybody recognizes, that’s not okay. That’s not good. You’re not protecting me. You’re the thing I need protection from.My second question about your ideal government: if you’re trying to protect people, whether from armies or just local nasty people, do you allow competition? If someone else shows up offering protection services to people who want to purchase those services, and if defending people is inherently righteous and someone else can do a better job than you and your government at a lower price, are you going to send armed thugs to forcibly shut them down and stop them from doing that?Because once again, that’s just you being the mafia while pretending to protect people.Now, maybe your ideal government is also going to create lots of good things like infrastructure and roads and schools and so on. Who can object to that? How are you paying for it? Are you politely asking people to donate? Or will you be using the force of government to make people fund these plans of yours whether they want to or not?Because if you’re doing that by way of taxation, that’s not you generously giving anyone anything. That’s you spending other people’s money without their permission and then expecting them to be grateful for that. Which, by the way, is the foundation of every political campaign ever: generously giving away stolen loot. The Democrats do it, the Republicans do it, everybody does it.So, in your ideal situation, would you allow competition?Someone else shows up saying they can build a better road, train system, school, or whatever, for a better price. If enough people want to pay for that, what do you do? Does your ideal government interfere and forcibly forbid them from doing that? I could keep going, but hopefully, you understand the pattern here. Whatever you would try to use political power for, are you going to use force to make people fund it and use force to stop people from offering better services?Because if you do that, you’re just an immoral thug and an enemy of freedom and humanity, like every other government in the history of the world.Now, maybe you’ll proudly say, “No, I wouldn’t force people. I would allow people to decide if they want to fund the services I provide. And I’ll allow competition. I’m not going to be authoritarian and coerce anyone into funding it or going along with my version of what should happen. I’ll give my plans, and people can decide whether to support them or not, but I’m not going to threaten to beat them up, cage them, or take their money.”Okay, if that’s your attitude, first of all, good for you. I commend you for your moral principles and your respect for other people’s freedom. But I would, however, point out that if you do that, you aren’t describing or planning government anymore.Now you’re just doing stuff you already had the right to as a mere peasant. You’re coming up with ideas, seeing who wants to go along with them, or be involved, or help make that happen. By not forcing people to go along with your agenda, you gave away your power, and you stopped being government.Again, good for you, but that would demonstrate that your ideal preferred government is zero government and instead voluntary organization and cooperation. That happens to be mine too.Okay, brace yourself for the scary part because there’s a word for not having a violent parasitic ruling class. The word is anarchy, which literally means rule by no one. Monarchy is rule by one person, oligarchy is rule by a class of people, anarchy is rule by no one. It doesn’t mean no cooperation, it doesn’t mean everyone scatter and run off into the woods, it doesn’t mean every man for himself, it doesn’t mean no organization. It only means that nobody has special rights, nobody has an exemption from morality.In short, to be an anarchist (Voluntaryist) literally just means that I don’t think anyone should be given societal permission to be evil. That is all that it means. Why is that seen as extreme by so many people?Now, that’s definitely not what you’d think anarchism means. If you base it on how the state propagandists talk about it in the media, it’s chaos and mayhem. Hmm, who benefits from people thinking that not having a ruling class means chaos and violence and mayhem?Maybe people who want to rule you?At the beginning of this extremist rant, I assert that a whole lot of basically good people as a result of their beliefs are actually a huge part of the problem. To be blunt, the belief in authority tricks otherwise decent human beings into becoming agents of evil. And I do not use that word lightly. Back to you coming up with a master plan to impose on the world. If you really and truly believed that you had every moral right to forcibly control and extort and the rest of humanity, would you treat them as equals? No. Would you commit a bunch of immoral authoritarian oppression? Yeah. Why wouldn’t you? If you have the right to rule and everyone else has the obligation to obey you, then you don’t view them as equals. You don’t view them as free, self-owning human beings. You view them as livestock, and that’s exactly how everyone in political power necessarily views you. If someone thinks they have the right to tax you and control all sorts of decisions and behaviors, if they sought out a position of power from which they can dominate you, then they do not view you They view you as a subject. Now, we’ve been bombarded our entire lives with all manner of rhetoric and mythology designed to hide the true nature of this arrangement.We’re told that government is, oh, we as a people make the decisions. No, it isn’t. Well, it’s a body that represents us and carries out the, no, it’s not. It’s how we all get together.No, it isn’t. Setting aside the silly mythology we’re all taught to mindlessly parrot, what actually is government? This is key because once people recognize what it is, they don’t want it anymore.Government is simply a bunch of mere mortal human beings wielding political power, telling the rest of us what to do, what not to do, dictating how much money we have to give them and how much of the fruits of our labor they will allow us to keep. And if we disobey any of their arbitrary commands, they send armed enforcers after us. That’s what government actually is: a violent, immoral, parasitical ruling class.But wait, here’s the thing — the problem isn’t even the politicians, as slimy and corrupt as they are. If there was just a relatively small group of psychopaths saying, “We’re in charge,” we could all just say, “Who cares? We don’t recognize you.” They could be ignored, and life could go on. The problem isn’t that power-hungry psychopaths think they have the right to rule us; the problem is that most of us believe they have the right to rule us, and think we are obligated to obey whatever arbitrary nonsense they make up and call “law.”All of their power comes from their victims imagining them to be legitimate authority. And if you really and truly believe that government has the right to use force, why wouldn’t you ask them to go rob other people to give you free stuff? If you were to do it, it would be bad, but somehow it’s good if they do it. Why wouldn’t you ask them to do that?When people talk about political corruption, I have to chuckle. The term is redundant. There is no other kind of political action. The difference is that when someone else uses government force to serve their interests at the expense of your freedom and prosperity, you call it corruption. But if you can find a way to use government force to serve your interests at the expense of other people’s freedom and prosperity, you call it good representative government. It’s the same damn thing.The political parasites will keep us at war with each other forever until humanity figures that out and we stop asking them to rob and violently dominate our neighbors.I’m going to wrap this up with something so simple that most people will think, there has to be more to it than that. With all the convoluted, twisted, perverted political babble out there, I want to leave you with one obvious concept. Something so clear that even little children should be able to understand it, and it holds the key to rebooting humanity and instantly removing the vast majority of injustice, violence, and oppression in the world. Ready for it?This is super advanced, so pay attention: If you shouldn’t do something yourself, then don’t ask anyone else — including government — to do it for you.As basic and obvious as that sounds, and as quickly as everyone thinks, well, yeah, of course, the sad truth is that a grand total of zero voters actually abide by this. They all vote to have the government do things they know would be wrong if they did them themselves. Zero people who believe in government, of any kind or size, abide by this principle.But if humanity could actually grasp this painfully obvious idea — and then act on it — the world would be drastically different in an incredibly positive way. The vast majority of oppression would disappear. War would be over.So once again, I leave you with the ridiculously simple solution to most of humanity’s problems: If you shouldn’t do something yourself, then don’t ask anyone else, including government, to do the same thing for you.The rest of the Liberty on the Rocks – Sedona – The Voluntaryism Conference presentation are available at Sedona.ArtOfLiberty.org and https://watch.civl.com/programs/the-voluntaryism-conference-2024About Larken RoseFor decades Larken Rose has been an outspoken proponent of the principles of self-ownership, non-aggression and a stateless society. An author of several books, including “The Most Dangerous Superstition” and “The Iron Web,” and the primary screenwriter of the recently-released “Jones Plantation” film, Mr. Rose has produced hundreds of videos and articles and given dozens of talks, dissecting and exposing the irrational and destructive nature of the belief in political “authority.” Larken’s Websiteshttp://www.therosechannel.comhttp://www.youtube.com/larkenrosehttp://www.jonesplantationfilm.comAbout Liberty on the Rocks Conference & The Art of Liberty FoundationIs the biggest secret in American/ international politics that “government” is illegitimate, immoral and completely unnecessary? Voluntaryism, REAL Freedom, is the only moral political philosophy on the market. Every other political “ISM” including socialism, communism and constitutional republicanism has a ruling class that has rights that you don’t have, an illogical exception from morality, and “voting” is so easily rigged by monopoly media, moneyed interests, and the organized crime “government” itself counting the votes with unauditable black box voting machines and mail in ballots that it is, frankly, a joke to think your vote maters or will even be countedThe Art of Liberty Foundation, a start up public policy organization exposing the illegitimacy and criminality of “government” from a principled voluntaryist perspective, is also educating the public on the 2nd biggest secret: We don’t really need “Government”! In a Voluntaryist world of REAL freedom, all the legitimate, non-redistributive services provided by monopoly “government” would be better provided by the free market, mutual aid societies, armed protective service companies, arbitration providers, insurance companies, non-profits and genuine charities. The world would be much more harmonious and prosperous under REAL freedom! This year’s Liberty on the Rocks conference brought together some of the most respected economists, legal experts, political philosophers and academics to explain spontaneous order and how the free market would better provide everything from roads to military defense to air traffic control without the waste, fraud, abuse and extortion of monopoly “government.”Go paid at the $5 a month level, and we will send you both the PDF and e-Pub versions of “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! and a coupon code for 10% off anything in the Government-Scam.com/Store.Go paid at the $50 a year level, and we will send you a free paperback edition of Etienne’s book “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! OR a 64GB Liberator flash drive if you live in the US. If you are international, we will give you a $10 credit towards shipping if you agree to pay the remainder.Support us at the $250 Founding Member Level and get a signed high-resolution hardcover of “Government” + Liberator flash drive + Larken Rose’s The Most Dangerous Superstition + Art of Liberty Foundation Stickers delivered anywhere in the world. Our only option for signed copies besides catching Etienne @ an event.