NEWS/ARTICLES

As mentioned in the Tax = Theft chapter, the social programs that exist today are not inherently immoral with regards to the services they provide.
The immorality and criminality comes from the way they are funded, with the use of state violence facilitating outright theft.

That being said there is not just many virtuous services provided by them but also many vitally important services that virtually all of us want or need.

More and more people are realising that, not only do we not need the free market for every part of our life but, if enough of us can join together in mutual cooperation we can circumvent it to the point that we may not need it at all and societies envisaged by the Free World Charter, where money and even trade are replaced by voluntary cooperation, and basic needs are met in a self sustaining manner, can become potential realities.
But only on a voluntary basis can such programs be moral and only on that basis can they be truly successful on their own pure and true merit.

Whether you wish to live in a society of socialised programs or embrace a free market free from all forms of collectivism or live your life with any variety of combinations of the two, or even embrace other ways of life that bare no resemblance to any on offer, in a free society the choice is literally yours.
But the phrase “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” has real relevance when it comes to discarding socialism in its current form.

The state violence inherent in modern day socialism and socialism in general, as it is defined by most people, is the central reason for its immorality.
When you take away the initiation of force, when you remove the state violence that facilitates it and recreate socialism into a voluntary incarnation then it becomes a viable ethos that can inspire novel solutions where alternatives, like the market model businesses, fail.

Some would argue that socialism is defined by the use of state violence and force, and as such voluntary socialism is a contradiction in terms. But, like with the voluntary alternative to tax and government, the name is unimportant, only the content is what matters.
So assuming that socialism can be redefined to exist with out force, or simply reincarnated in a new name that fits its new non violent nature, the basic ethos of community and shared responsibility that attracts people to socialism is not without its value and if it can be separated from its violent associations and government connections it may offer us a good model for a voluntary incarnation of itself.
If socialism is defined too definitively by the use of force to retain its name after such alteration, then its name can be discarded and replaced by something new, that takes the virtues of cooperation and social contribution but discards the immorality of force, coercion and state violence.
Ultimately the name is unimportant, the content is what matters.
For the sake of maintaining the virtues of community and voluntary collectivism that supporters of socialism preach when defending their choice of alliegance, the term Voluntary Socialism seems an acceptable term, at least for the context of this article, which defines the critical distinction that separates it from traditional socialism with the use of the word "voluntary".

The key is the choice, not just from a moral point of view but for greater efficacy as well.
Social programs that require voluntary support will have to be effective and of value to remain in existence.
But, unlike the capitalist businesses, a collective set up like this would not have monetary incentives to rip people off as "the people" are at both ends of this business model, being both the customer and (for want of a better description) the business owners.
If contributions to such services and social programs are voluntary then value must be provided or else contributions will be withheld or diverted to more efficient and deserving schemes. Bloated and corrupted bureaucracies will be a thing of the past.
Whereas programs that feed off stolen money that people are forced to contribute have virtually no incentive to provide value for money or satisfactory efficacy.

Take, for example, the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK.
After it is improved and put into a more sustainable condition, it’s likely place would be either in the hands of a giant collective made up of everyone who wants to keep the NHS in place or under a democratically controlled organisation that represents all the citizens (as modern governments pretend to do) and funded through the regulated market.
If the will of the people decided to fund it through the regulation fees applied to the regulated market (a voluntary, non violent version of duty taxes) then that is an option that can be agreed ahead of time or installed at any point, though retaining the NHS would be preferable to creating it from scratch so such a decision would be better made ahead of time.
Regardless of whether it is part of a separate collective or under the democratic representatives that are funded by the regulated market, replacing the immoral and violent taxation, as the means of funding it, with this voluntary collective system, the NHS could shed all the waste created by the bureaucracy that saturates its current form.
It could retain the spending power of a giant organisation but instead of funnelling the savings into profits, as would be the likely scenario in standard business models, they would simply be represented in the low cost, efficiency and efficacy demonstrated by the organisation.
Such a system has great appeal when it discards the profit motive of traditional capitalism and the inherent corruption of traditional socialism and instead becomes something that is more true to the spirit of such a program. Where providing a community driven safety net for the sick is the achievable purpose.

Of course theory does not always work so smoothly in practice but it is not hard to see how the opportunity to enhance every aspect of the NHS, including the cost, efficiency and overall efficacy, as well as the ability to provide free care to those in need, is actually increased dramatically through these fundamental changes.
And this is just one of many options and examples that can address something as specific as health care.
If people are concerned that charity like contributions would be insufficient to sustain a free to use nationwide health service then they may democratically decide that the regulated market should fund it. Either way the voluntary nature is the compelling factor.

If/when we overthrow the rule of insanity and reclaim from the governments that which they have stolen from the people we can elevate all the social programs we want to retain and help them realise their proposed mandates.

Just by working with what we have, we could and should be able to transform all the current social programs into tremendously enhanced versions of their former selves (in many cases becoming unrecognisable).
Those that cannot be transformed into fully self sufficient programs can be enhanced to levels of efficiency that elevate their value to a point that it seems beyond question for most that such programs are both required and desired, and failure to support them would become increasingly unlikely.
It would be down to the will of the people, whether through private voluntary donations or through the democratically driven support of the regulated market, to decide how we facilitate such programs.

We want a safety net, then lets make a real one. Not by stealing and not in a farcical and inefficient, as well immoral, manner.
Let’s make a real safety net that gains the support it needs by demonstrating its worth, and lets motivate some efficiency by having the safety nets be made by those who want them in place, not those who want to exploit the need for them.

One thing the socialist does have over the capitalist, at least when taken at face value, is that the ethos of caring for people, working together and providing the assistance and help that socialism at least preaches, is a far more morally rich and socially responsible ethos than the everyman for his/her self ethos of capitalism.
Of course supporters of capitalism will point out that such help would be better achieved through charities and that the individual liberty granted by the free market in no way discourages charitable works and contributions. But regardless of how misguided they may be, many supporters of socialism have a genuine concern for the underprivileged, the poor, the elderly, the sick and disabled and other wise vulnerable individuals.

Within the paradigm of state violence and taxation where voluntary alternatives are not even considered as an option, utilising the ill-gotten funds of tax revenue for welfare programs certainly appears, on the face of it at least, preferable to many of the alternative ways in which "public" money is spent.
Many socialist do not necessarily agree with state violence, taxation, etc. At least not when such a question is put to them in that context. But rather their allegiance to socialist ideals is more about the rationale that decides that, if we must have taxation and government control it should at least serve the public interest and should at least go towards supporting the community (as opposed to the other interests it so often serves).
When you look at it in that context it is far more understandable why so many support socialism in one form or another. Because within the paradigm of state control a system that provides and funds social programs (regardless of inefficiency) that serve the people directly has an obvious moral advantage over the private interests it so often serves instead.
Of course when the theft that provides the funds is not up for debate then the socialist ideals of how to spend this ill-gotten money appears far more moral, as socialism generally demands that such funds are delegated to serve the people, rather than private, or worse corporate, interests.

However socialism in its current incarnation destroys any virtue it claims to promote, and puts itself lower than even the most cold and heartless of free market idealism, simply by embracing state violence as its fundamental, almost defining, means.

Though many supporters of socialism are well intended with their concern for those that could be exploited or simply left behind and abandoned by a purely capitalist society, they are often horribly misguided in their faith that socialism manifested as an expansion of government power is the way to help people.
In addition to this, there often appears to be a wilful blindness, among supporters of socialism, regarding the counter productive aspects of state run social programs.

Regardless of how misguided their faith in socialism (as it exists today) is, there is nothing wrong with the desire to help those in need.
Even a free society, that is governed by the Non Aggression Principle, cannot just pull the ladder out from under people (so to speak), as such an act would be an act of aggression that causes harm or loss (therefore a criminal act).
The problem is that such an ethos is not actually practiced in any modern day socialist programs, often problems and injustices are actually exasperated by such programs, with any chance of virtue severely undermined by the use of force that facilitates them.

Remove state violence, remove force and coercion and then the tyranny of standard socialism can be replaced with the humanity and community spirit of voluntary socialism.
Helping people through choice is not just morally superior to forcing people’s support but it is infinitely more efficient.
Who do you think will help you the best if and when you need such help? Someone who wants to actually give you the help you need or someone who is either forced to help you or, potentially even worse, actually wants to profit from your situation by exploiting your needs for their own ends?

Do you want to be helped by someone who is forced to help you against their personal choice, or even by someone who is looking to profit in some way from helping you? Or is it better that assistance comes from a sincere and voluntary source that’s only interest and motivation is to provide you with the help you need in the most efficient manner possible? Someone who's goal is to solve the problem in question, not sustain such problems so that they can profit from the manufactured need it creates. 

Socialist are right not to trust the free market to take care of people and the distrust of capitalism and the fear of the greed and corruption it breeds is well founded and understandable. The free market has no inherent provisions for taking care of people and only concerns itself with the virtue of freedom. 
But that does not excuse theft and violence.
If I have doubt that people would volunteer to donate for a worthy cause I am collecting for, such doubt does not give me the moral right to rob those people for donations I suspect they would not give voluntarily.
That is basically the ethos behind taxation to fund social programs.
It is an admission, or declaration, that the social programs would not survive if people had any choice about funding them. 
Taxation as a means of funds is essentially saying that only by force and theft can we make these programs work.

Socialists of today need to realise that governments and corporations are so intertwined and fundamentally united that asking either one to remove the threat of the other is insane.
Corporations only exist because of the government and the control they exert over governments is so widely acknowledged, as such a well known truth, it is almost cliché.
Governments create corporations and corporations end up owning the government.

So neither one is an alternative to the other as they are interconnected. Both have a very unconvincing claim of accountability, but both claims are exposed as fraudulent and false on closer inspection.

Just as the free market idealists need to understand that an uneven ground has already been created and a lot of damage has already been done, to the point that the free market alone is no longer the solution (if it ever was), socialists also need to understand that the moral high ground they claim, with their talk of helping people, vanishes from under them when they need to use theft and violence, particularly state violence, to achieve this so called help.
Also the corruptions that ravage the free market are able to proliferate even more so in government programs as criminals are more attracted to stolen money when it has already been stolen.
Capitalists may exploit but socialists outright steal. So choosing between capitalism and socialism is like choosing between being conned or robbed.
The potential freedom of the free market is undermined by state interference which perverts and corrupts the playing field, making it so obviously uneven that capitalism itself becomes associated with greed, suffering and exploitation.

Either way you lose and you have no real recourse when the power of the government, or the corporation, that has wronged you is beyond your ability to challenge. 
There is no true accountability to either entities and the two are essentially intertwined in their unholy marriage.

The sad thing about modern society is rather than taking the proclaimed love of liberty from the free market idealism and then taking the sense of community and helping people from the socialist idealism and combining those virtues, we instead live in a society that almost exclusively embraces only the immoralities and insanities of both sides (occasionally preaching the original motivations to justify themselves to their misguided following).
This socialist-capitalist hybrid we apparently have at present has taken the insanity from both sides and discarded any potential virtues of either.

We have the lack of care and responsibility associated with capitalism without the liberty it preaches. We don’t have the security that socialism promises, or the equality, but we have the oppression and control. We need to reverse this.

Take the liberty and freedom that allows for a free market, that facilitates free trade, but make sure that consistency of freedom, liberty and Non Aggression runs through all areas. Because freedom and liberty must be absolute to be true and, no matter how much wealth one can accumulate, money must never be allowed to buy the power to overrule people’s basic right of freedom, otherwise a corporation could simply buy its way into power as the replacement government.

We must discard the authoritarian conservatism that has managed to take shelter under the right wing (an ironic twist considering the proclaimed promotion of liberty the free market is supposed to represent) and never allow wealth to circumvent common law or override the basic rights we demand for ourselves.
There are valid points and genuine logic lurking among the right wing ideals that can be embraced as soon as such virtues are separated from the contradictions, insanities and criminalities that also saturate the right wing ethos.
The same general assessment can be made of the left wing where the professed devotion to human rights, equality and freedom is contradicted and undermined by the violent oppression of government rule. 

So lets also take the community and collectivism of socialist idealism, the desire to help and take care of those who need such assistance, and the compassion for each other. Because united we can be greater than the sum of our parts and community spirit and unity really can make us stronger, when it is volunteered rather than forced.
But throw away the theft, the initiation of force and general oppression. Throw away the tyranny that is always utilised in socialist programs.
Remove the state violence of the government and become a true collective of voluntary supporters. A real community, not just a system of oppression and slavery.

Socialism as it currently stands is inherently immoral and will remain so unless it becomes voluntary.
No matter the cause, theft is not justified as a moral virtue.
So instead of tarnishing good causes with the theft of taxation and the force of state violence (not to mention the corruption such immorality breeds) lets facilitate them with the same virtues and morality that motivates so many people to support such causes.

Capitalism is potentially dangerous unless it is bound by common law or the Non Aggression Principle, where the power of money is not allowed to overrule the basic right to freedom.
No matter how rightfully acquired someone’s wealth is, no amount of money can buy the right to rule over other people.
So the socialist is not completely without good intentions and virtuous ideals, nor is their inherent distrust of capitalism, as it is practiced today, without reason. They just need to realise that socialism as it exists today is fundamentally flawed by its defining connection to government power and state violence, and any virtue associated with the desire to help those in need is compromised by the use of force to facilitate such endeavours.

So lets discard what is wrong, keep what is right, and build a new society that more resembles sanity.

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