All attempts to get rid of Governments by violence have hitherto, always and everywhere, resulted only in this: that in place of the deposed Governments new ones established themselves, often more cruel than those they replaced. … As long as any violence designed to compel some people to do the will of others exists, there will be slavery. All the attempts to abolish slavery by violence are like extinguishing fire with fire, stopping water with water, or filling up one hole by digging another.
—Leo Tolstoy, The Slavery of Our Times, 1900
We want a world of peace. We want a world in which our consent is respected.
And yet, if we attempt to impose such a world, we will be no better than those who daily violate our consent and bathe our planet in endless war. To continue Tolstoy's analogies with a popular modern version, it's like trying to end cannibalism by eating cannibals.
We have to do better. Somehow, some way, we must.
As we have been discussing [parts 1, 2, 3, 4], the world we want to create is one in which people, polities, and private agencies can live together in a condition of consensual order and relative peace. To facilitate the development and maintenance of such a condition, we have proposed creating a model agreement called the Common Respect Protocol (CRP).
Temptations
Such matters are easier said than done, however. As Thomas Sowell, the greatest living philosopher-economist, has repeatedly instructed us, “There are no solutions—only tradeoffs.” In crafting the CRP, we must accept trade-offs. And we must be careful about certain temptations, each of which carries a trade-off.
We will be tempted, for example, to require that the internal policies of polities enshrine a respect for consent. But how far can we go down that road before we alienate many polities and thus sacrifice any hope that they will at least respect consent at their borders—specifically in terms of AFFILIATION and EXIT?
We will be tempted toward complexity—to cover every base. And yet in terms of getting broad-based buy-in, simplicity will be our best bet.
And then there is the biggest, and perhaps most frustrating, tradeoff of all. Because
Such an order must never be imposed,
Revolutions continue the cycle of violence, replacing one coercive system with another,
Our efforts will be opposed by those who wish to maintain their power over us,
Our efforts will be opposed by some of our fellows, out of fear and millennia of indoctrination,
… we must rely solely on persuasion. This means the project will take far longer than we would like. Perhaps even several generations. That tradeoff is a tough pill to swallow.
That does not mean, however, that we give up in despair. We must not merely sit back, complain, and wait for generations unborn to do our work for us.
Someone has to get the project started. Someone must plant trees in whose shade they know they will not sit.
This world is coming. But only because we act now to set the process in motion.
The Common Respect Protocol, Part 2
In our last installment, we discussed what such an agreement should not do. Now, as the rubber meets the road, we must figure out what it should do. What elements are absolutely required? What can we forgo in order to keep the CRP as simple as possible? Let us think it through together.
The CRP must be voluntary.
We have already discussed this, both implicitly and explicitly. Consensual order does not exist if we force it on anyone. And the truth is, we do not need to. The evidence of human history is in: A free, open, competitive market works best, and not just for shoes and restaurants.
Think of how much better governments would be if they had to compete for your business rather than simply holding you in their thrall, as they do now. When you have to persuade someone, the incentives push you to provide the best service at the lowest price. You do better when you make other people's lives better.
By contrast, because government officials have no competition and can coerce at will, they have less incentive to strive for excellence. They get your “business” either way. Their primary incentive is to remain in power and increase the amount they extract by force. Government officials’ incentives, in other words, are perverse.
In a polycentric consensual order, people will no longer be forced to submit to any one government. They can pick and choose how, where, and by whom they are governed. They will even be free to choose nothing at all. In other words, there will be competition. Polities and market agencies will have to demonstrate value and attract customers.
This same principle applies to the CRP. We need to produce something attractive and invite participation.
Empowering authorities and then demanding compliance is the old way. How's that been working out for our species so far?
The CRP must attempt to foster a condition of peace.
A condition of consensual order cannot exist if there are regular trespasses against person, property, or liberty, and neither can a condition of peace. The overlap between consensual order and peace isn't total, but it's close enough. Peace is necessary. Peace is desirable.
The CRP must protect the RIGHT of EXIT.
It is tempting to have the CRP enshrine all the jurisdictional rights: to ESTABLISH, AFFILIATE with, and EXIT from polities; to SECEDE from involuntary governance; or to REMAIN ungoverned and keep one's property independent of any jurisdiction. Ultimately, a condition of consensual order shines brightest when all of these are respected.
But when it comes to dealing with private polities (and any remaining involuntary governments), how far can we go? We must not, for example, demand liberal norms from an Amish enclave or a micro-monarchy. To do so would violate the fundamental nature of a consensual order.
On the other hand, it will be hard to maintain such an order without at least some respect for these rights. Somehow, we must find a balance—some way of respecting internal self-determination while also requesting a measure of respect at our many borders.
Initial agreements and the disposition of property
These jurisdictional rights are very important in the world of today—a world in which almost every square inch of land is controlled by one involuntary government or another. But as the jurisdictional ecology becomes more polycentric, the ground changes, at least somewhat.
Let's unpack this carefully.
The rights to ESTABLISH and AFFILIATE are essential to the creation of the many independent polities we expect to see in a polycentric future. A consensual order depends on people being able to form their own polities and experiments in social organization, and to freely affiliate with the experiments of others on mutually agreeable terms. Consent is the soil from which these polities spring.
Yet some people will form, or choose to be a part of, polities that won't be internally liberal. This creates a tension.
In the case of territorial polities, some of this tension will be resolved, for better or worse, in the initial agreement by which a member joins the polity—specifically, how the agreement deals with property. If the agreement accepts that the member has allodial title to his land, we can presume the polity creators will allow him the same right they enjoyed: to disaffiliate from the existing polity and ESTABLISH something new (or to REMAIN ungoverned) on his own land.
Not all polities will do this, however.
A for-profit micronation may own all the dwellings and rent them out to consenting members.
Some polities will offer members only partial or deed-restricted ownership. Some will try usufruct arrangements.
An anarcho-monarchist community may adopt a neo-feudal approach to property.
Certain types of intentional communities and communes will attempt some sort of communal ownership.
In a truly consensual order, human creativity will flourish, and many different kinds of polities and experiments will arise. The sky's the limit. (And one day, even the sky will not stop us.)
Obviously, we want polities to afford their members the same rights that the polity creators enjoyed in creating theirs. But as long as members freely consented to AFFILIATE, we may simply have to trust that they knew what they were doing when they accepted the affiliation agreement, whatever it was.
EXIT is essential
We can, however, assume that many polities in such a polycentric world will want to nurture and maintain the condition of consensual order that enables them to coexist. This is where our common respect protocol can serve.
We cannot know, or control, what sorts of internal arrangements members may have agreed to. But there is one right that is essential to the maintenance of a general condition of consent: The right to EXIT. This bare minimum must be enshrined in the CRP.
If people are forcibly detained—treated as criminals merely for wanting to leave or disaffiliate from a polity—their initial consent becomes meaningless. EXIT is a necessary condition for consent. As such, EXIT must be protected in any agreement that is designed to preserve a consensual order.
We won't force the CRP on anyone. We can only hope that people, polities, and other entities all recognize how important EXIT truly is.
Emergency exit
"Exit and build" is now the cutting-edge trend in anarcho-libertarian circles. Many of us are talking less about reforming the old world and more about building the new. As such, there has been much discussion in recent years about the right of EXIT.
In an effort to balance this right against the sanctity of contracts, however, many add a caveat. People must be free to exit, they say, “so long as contractual obligations have been satisfied.”
I certainly understand the rationale behind such a caveat. However, as we analogized in a previous installment, we do not tell a victim of domestic violence that she may not exit the scene of her abuse until all legal matters (divorce, the house, etc.) are resolved. She leaves, and the legal matters get solved later. We might call this her right of unilateral or emergency exit.
This, I believe, must be a touchstone analogy for us. Rightful contractual obligations can follow a person, but a person mustn't be physically detained because of them.
Consent is only valid if it is revocable. As Ernst Cassirer noted in The Myth of the State (as cited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe*), irrevocable ‘consent’ would require surrendering something that cannot be surrendered:
If a man could give up his … his right to self-ownership, he would cease being a moral being. He would become a lifeless thing—and how could such a thing obligate itself—how could it make a promise or enter into a social contract? This fundamental right, the right to personality, includes in a sense all the others. … It is not subject to the freaks and fancies of single individuals and cannot, therefore, be transferred from one individual to another. … There is no pactum subjectionis, no act of submission by which man can give up the state of a free agent and enslave himself. For by such an act of renunciation he would give up that very character which constitutes his nature and essence: he would lose his humanity.
Cassirer is not making a moral judgment here; he is stating a natural fact. Individual self-ownership literally cannot be surrendered. It is yours alone, by the facts of reality.
If you are forbidden from withdrawing from an arrangement to which you previously consented—a marriage, a job, a membership—that is not consent; it is slavery. You cannot sell yourself into slavery by contract, because contracts deal in alienable property, and your self-ownership is naturally inalienable.
If EXIT depends on permission or is bound by contract, then it is not truly EXIT. The right to EXIT must thus be unilateral.
Without unilateral exit, the door is wide open to abuse:
The rules of a polity can be changed after the fact to forbid or criminalize emigration.
People might be detained in difficult or oppressive circumstances until obligations are settled.
Unaffordable exit taxes give the illusion of freedom: Sure, you can exit, but only after you pay us. (Uncle Sam, call your office.)
Here too—in the variety of perverse ways people might be held hostage—human creativity, unfortunately, knows no bounds.
Granted, these sorts of things might still happen within some polities. We cannot control everything. Then again, they also happen within countries today, so please do not argue—à la the fallacy of the brochure—that our inability to control the internal policies of others would somehow be a new problem.
A polycentric condition of consensual order will be better, but it will not be perfect. Nothing can be.
It is important to respect the self-determination of polities, and while it is a close call, I believe that the CRP must ultimately come down on the side of unilateral exit. We will ask signatories to recognize not only that EXIT is a necessary condition for genuine consent, but also that ex ante restrictions must not be placed on that right of EXIT.
Let 'em go. Solve the contractual stuff later.
Of course, to make that work, there must be a physical space into which a person may safely exit, and there must be some way to settle contractual issues. Thus, in our next installment, we will discuss inter-polity travel, arbitration, and a few final matters. After that, we will try our hand at drafting language for a real common respect protocol.
Stay tuned!
*Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. Democracy: The God That Failed: The Economics & Politics of Monarchy, Democracy & Natural Order. pg. 227
Through the power of swarm intelligence, we can make the CRP even better, so please do not hesitate to send your feedback and suggestions on this, or any installment, to chriscook@theadvocates.org.