09 June 2014
"Freedom ain't free ya know!?"

 

Well, actually it is.  The price of freedom is nil.  There is no cost to freedom…until someone else rejects logic and reasoning in favor of initiating coercion and violence against another outside the realm of self defense.

 

This is an artificial inflation of the cost of freedom that otherwise wouldn't exist.  When individual A decides he wants to have what another individual B has two options are presented.  The worst that may come if individual B rejects a trade or a charitable act with individual A is that individual A will be disappointed and will need to find another individual with whatever he desires to acquire.  When the answer of 'no' is peacefully accepted both parties are able to move on seek out additional voluntary and peaceful interactions with others to gain from.

 

However, if individual A decides to initiate violence against individual B without suffering any unwarranted aggression from individual B then an entire unnecessary controversy is created.  This reckless violence leads to the artificial shortages of real wealth that can directly satisfy the four basics of life; sustenance, shelter, security, and happiness.

 

The first negative effect of initiating unwarranted violence is that of a decline in security.  People will become far less secure in their abilities to initiate voluntary and peaceful interactions with others, such as trades for goods, services, and ideas; real wealth in other words.  This insecurity to initiate voluntary interactions with others stifles liberty; the pursuit of wealth to satisfy the four basics of life and improve upon life's quality.  If people fear initiating voluntary interactions with others ideas will be limited and the growth of unnecessary stereotypes will form.

 

While this fear won't stifle trade and voluntary interactions with others entirely or in large part always it will give very good reason to shift some of their focus on producing real wealth that doesn't promote the maintenance and improvement of the quality of life peacefully.  Said differently, people will shift some of their time, intellect, and labor to acquire weapons to defend themselves against others whom are shorted sighted and do not recognize that more people in their world translates to more minds with the ability to solve naturally occurring problems.

 

By shifting our time, intellect, and labor to the potential destruction of human life instead of the fostering and improvement of human life by creating real wealth we are slowing down our collective progress on our march to ever greater prosperity.  Do not mistake this to mean that I am suggesting that we rid ourselves of weapons.  Absolutely not!

 

Bad people will always exist because of a variety of reasons.  People often lose their ability to reason with others because of emotional rampages, misguided or blatantly false information, and faulty logic rooted in ugly collectivism.  These are just three of the main culprits for why people initiate violence against others outside of the realm of self defense.

 

Logic and reasoning teaches that more critically thinking minds are the solution the natural dangers we face from the earth and the rest of our universe.  Through the teaching of nonaggression, voluntaryism, and critical thinking we can do more than leave a better world for our children; we can leave better children for our world.

 

We can leave a world where freedom is much less expensive for our children.

 

By teaching learning these things and subsequently teaching our children these things we will be teaching that government is unnecessary.  We will be teaching that government is the threat and later the initiation of violence against others in a specific geographical location to coerce specific behavior, to coerce compliance.  That is the initiation of coercion and violence outside of the realm of self defense.  That is why freedom on the global scale is not free.

 

There is no logical reason why freedom shouldn't be free.

 

-JLD

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