I believe that to choose life is a sacred decision, imparting moral, normative force on the entirety of one’s interactions with the world. I believe that once such a choice is made through voluntary or instinctual means, every rational being has absolute and inalienable ownership over their body. I believe that such ownership of one’s body and control of one’s life imparts ownership to that being of the fruits of their labor to the same degree as the ownership of the self. The fruits of that labor are, however, alienable and rational beings may increase the value of their possessions through exchange and gift. As such, every rational being has the right to defend their person and property from invasion by every other being that would aggress against their ownership as expressed by control over such person or property.
This universal ethic applies to all rational beings, even those who would claim a supposed right to govern by divine power, social necessity, or fallacious social contracts. No rational being may steal, murder, injure, defraud, or otherwise misappropriate the property of another according to any design other than that of the owner himself. The only just use of force is in proportional response to force.
As such, no one may use force to “make others moral” or to affect economic interactions except in so far as one is protecting the property rights upon which such a system is based.
These are neither consequentialist premises nor conclusions. They are moral conclusions based on the moral worth inherent in life and the decision to pursue it when combined with objective properties of nature – to borrow a memorable phrase, the furniture of the world.
These are the contours of justice, within which, the best practices for life may be crowd sourced, and experimented, and stumbled upon. These are the metaphorical walls within which peace may be achieved.
This moral prescription may not be consequentialist, but the descriptive observations of value-free Austrian Economics support the prosperous consequences achieved when it is the system to which one adheres in the political realm as well as the business and personal realm.
Because this is what I am convinced of, I am a voluntarist. An anarchist. A sovereign individual.
That does not, however, mean that I can survive on my own, and I have chosen life. Life is better when shared, and we can produce more when working together as a melodic symphony of moving parts.
And so I can say, I am a voluntarist and I’d like to know how you’d like to know what we can do to benefit one another.
Because this life that you continue to choose does not have to be a zero sum game.