disclaimer - the following is not intended as a claim of a world first philosophical breakthrough. i am sure i am not the first person to have had this realisation and hopefully i wont be the last. if some of you reading this can make any sense of the following you may well be surprised that it wasnt all immediately obvious to me. therefore i apologise for the preachy and arrogant tone.

almost as soon as ive started this blog i seem to have run out of steam. however i dont see this as a negative. i started my education in individual freedom about 8 months ago and have read thousands of words each and every day (you wouldnt believe it based on the drivel i produce here). i have finally come to a form of conclusion beyond which, for me,  further commentary or argument seems redundant. deontological objectivist ethics preclude anything other than an entirely voluntary society. coercion is completely illegitimate. this i have been aware of throughout my exploration of libertarian thought. i have become more and more convinced of the validity of this position but i have very recently experienced a kind of epiphany that has unified and clarified what i had previously thought of as two exclusive ideas.
there are two forms of liberty lovers (im trying to avoid the semantic pitfalls of the term 'libertarian'): the consequentialist and the deontological. they both tend toward the same ideas but arrive at them from different directions. consequentialists derive their libertarianism from a search for organisational forms which provide the most desirable consequences. for example they see the benefits of competitive free markets and therefore advocate the freeing of markets in the provision of everything.
deontological libertarians derive desire for individual freedom from ethics (non aggression axiom) based on objective truth (self ownership). the coercive constraint of voluntary action is illegitimate therefore there can be nothing less than a free market in the provision of everything.
i always favoured the deontological idea over the consequentialist and felt a sense of frustration that most 'libertarians' seemed to be of the consequentialist bent. this led them to consider each and every aspect of the world and argue over how it should be. the endless discussion and commentary on each and every aspect of human organisation was exhausting and seemed counter productive. i came to believe that the subjectivity of this approach was the cause of its lack of success. if the constraint of the state and expansion of individual freedom was only desirable because it gave the 'best' consequences in the view of such and such libertarians then how could they spread this view to others who disagreed based on their own subjective views of what was a desirable consequence? without any guiding principle this case by case approach seemed doomed to fail. this vulnerability to subjective differences of opinion meant that even among 'libertarians' there was very little consensus. the anarchy/minarchy debate for example was perhaps the most extreme example of such disagreement but further up the scale there would be disagreement about the legitimacy of interventionist foreign policy or state provision of safety-net healthcare. if one libertarian didnt think that anarchy was the 'best' form of society then it was fruitless hammering away on comment threads trying to sway their opinion. even attempting to discover their personal principle and appealing to it was nigh on impossible. i used to point to the present day usa and switzerland to illustrate my point that even the most carefully crafted constitution would inevitably fail to safeguard individual liberty. i never succeeded in changing a single viewpoint and often failed to even elicit any response at all. on more mainstream blogs with non-libertarian commenters any advocation of minarchist let alone anarchist solutions to whatever the issue was at hand from a consequentialist position was thwarted by the impossibility of outlining the entire socio-economic consequences of one's suggestion within the limits of that website. questions of human organisation are so fundamentally interconnected that in order to fully explain the total removal of the state from healthcare (provision, funding, and regulation) necessitated a supplementary diversion into an explanation of polycentric legal systems as egalitarian protectors of individual consumers in an environment of competing regulators. as Molyneux calls it 'the argument from effect' was difficult to say the least.
this is not to say that i wasnt a big fan of consequentialist ideas. Friedman's anarcho-capitalist masterpiece The Machinery of Freedom is written from an entirely consequentialist position. he argues the case for anarchy purely because it would provide the best consequences rather than it being ethically right. this along with austrian and classical liberal economic theory used to be my daily fare. arguments for allowing the market mechanism to solve whichever problem had reared its head in that day's blogosphere used to fill my rss reader.
i still simultaneously believed ever more strongly in the ethical case for individual freedom but found it to be no more than a coincidence that liberty happened to result in such desirable 'side effects'. that i could advocate the abolition of coercive taxation for greater personal freedom and rest easy in the knowledge that even without this extortion funding the state provision of healthcare such 'public goods' would be better in a free market was a constant source of amazement. i used to be consciously aware that this coincidence must be the most beautiful accident possible. i began to wonder that because individual freedom derriving from objective ethics could create better consequences in every single situation there must be some link. for months it was at the back of my mind unanswered.
slowly it has dawned on me and finally i realised the link between the consequential benefits of statelessness in any given issue and the ethical imperative for statelessness.
the absolute fundamental of my beliefs is the illegitimacy of coercion. we should live in a free market anarchist society because any initiation of violence is illegitimate. i have finally realised why the removal of this aggression results in better consequences. the free market is the best mechanism for organisation not because it just is empirically but because it is voluntary. there is no coercion. suppliers must answer their customers' demands in order to gain. there can be no individual benefit without mutual exchange. the state, in whatever it does, always has coercion in its pocket. no matter whether the state uses coercion it is always there and its ill-effects always make themselves felt. state services do not have to be responsive to customer demands or react to market forces because they operate in a coercive environment. subconsciously the statist actors behave based on that underlying imbalance. coercion will always result in idiocy and thuggery. in any question regarding the state, the root cause will always be this coercion. i have read arguments from effect on so many issues now that this has become clear. even though individually these arguments may not have concluded that coercion is at fault - perhaps they concluded that economic forces compelled individuals to work in illiberal sweatshop conditions - it is further down the chain of consequences in an issue from a different argument - coercive limitation of land use inflating living costs and artificially tilting the employer/employee balance and pressure to earn - or coercive regulation limiting alternative opportunities such as self employment -  that the coercion can be found.
this enlightenment has made me realise that constant commentary on political events and socio-economic issues is perhaps redundant. as Molyneux said in reference to the 'TSA scandal' - why are you surprised? why should anyone with any awareness of the ill-effects of coercion be surprised by airport state thuggery? when the tools of coercion are so reliable and handy and yet without fail result in unwanted effects why should individualists be surprised that the state relies on their handy tools and generates ill-effects? once you have realised that coercion is the root of all that is wrong with the world and that it is objectively illegitimitate reading a dozen 'libertarian' blogs (certainly the tory-statist british 'libertarian blogosphere') all weaving well worded consequentialist critiques of todays latest invasion of individual freedom becomes tiresome.
beyond that there is as little point in exploring what is the best way to do x. i dont need to read economists arguing the best model for healthcare provision because i  know that without coercion it will be impossible not to serve the desires of the customer. therefore i dont need to guess at what a future free from coercion 'should' look like. without coercion the future will be free and just.
i dont need to read arguments against puritanical prohibitions, expansions and centralisations of state power, the insanity of war, right vs left which is best arguments, look at this politician/state program what an idiot/failure if only they had voted for/done this. none of it is necessary. as long as there is coercion power will corrupt and expand and the individual and liberty will be oppressed and cowed. no-one aware of the objective truth of self ownership should be surprised by this.


i will continue to post here though because i did not create this blog to pursue a quest for who we should vote into power or what the best economic policy is. im not goign to fall into their divide and rule trap of right vs left tribalism. im not going to try and find the answer for each and every bloody problem in the world. im not going to respond to the topic of the day either. the latest violation of freedom and good sense by the state is becoming less and less of a surprise to me no matter how egregious it may be. when one understands the mechanisms of the state - corporatism, regulatory capture and subsequent cartelisation, the industrial-military-political-propaganda complex and the indoctrinating designs of 'education', the design of legal, financial and social systems to keep you enslaved, client groups and the upward/downward redistribution of welath to the favoured and/or useful - and the single root cause - coercion - then one need no longer hold it at the forefront of thought. i am beginning to be able to let it go.
i started this blog as an outlet for my fury at the never ending shittiness of the world that i know to be the effect of social organisation being fundamentally based on coercion. when particular stories fuck me off beyond exhausted acquiescence then i will pour out my half formed thoughts here in a rambling nonsensical tirade against anything and everything. i dont expect anyone to read it and am amazed that anyone does. i think blogger fakes the stats just to keep me coming back.
im not even trying to spread the message of objective truth that each and everyone of us is sovereign. we and no other entity are owners of our being and in sole control of ourselves. the world can and must be voluntary. rather than regurgitate that simple truth time and again i will leave it to the countless others who are far more able. Mr. Molyneux is a fine example.
but rest assured that now and then the odd fuck up will continue to raise a fury in me.