For a long time I considered myself a voluntaryist (when I was deeply concerned with what label I wanted to use), but after some recent introspection, I started to realize that doesn't really mean a whole lot. What do I mean by that?
Voluntary is a poor ethical metric, one that is vastly less useful than consensual
Consent is defined as granting permission. According to Merriam-Webster, consent means:
- compliance in or approval of what is done or proposed by another; agreement as to action or opinion
- to give assent or approval
Speaking specifically to consent as it applies to the law, consent means "compliance in or approval of what is done or proposed by another; specifically : the voluntary agreement or acquiescence by a person of age or with requisite mental capacity who is not under duress or coercion and usually who has knowledge or understanding." Consent in terms of persons, like in sex, is literally you agreeing not to hold the party you're consenting to liable for trespass.
Voluntary, on the other hand, means acting of your own volition or free will. Again, according to Merriam-Webster voluntary is defined as:
- proceeding from the will or from one's own choice or consent
- unconstrained by interference : self-determining
- done by design or intention : intentional voluntary manslaughter
- of, relating to, subject to, or regulated by the will voluntary behavior
- having power of free choice
- provided or supported by voluntary action
- acting or done of one's own free will without valuable consideration or legal obligation
Now there are several variations on the definitions of both words, and no single definition is authoritative. Some definitions of voluntary include consent into their use of free will, where voluntary actions are by definition uncoerced. However, as this is not always the case, this leaves volunatry-ness open to interpretation and debate. The same is not true for consent. The only thing consent requires is approval. Withholding approval is synonymous with withholding consent.
Let's illustrate this with an example. A man rapes a woman at the point of a gun, and she doesn't fight off her attacker because of that threat. Under many definitions of voluntary, this would, of course, be unethical. But there is at least one definition in which neither party acted involuntarily. By contrast, there is no definition of consent in which this exchange was consensual.
In other words, all consensual actions must be voluntary, but not all voluntary actions are consensual.
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Why does this matter, you might ask? Everyone knows what voluntary means, and that means done without coercion. Well, you'd think that, but I've literally had conversations that contradict this. Case in point, if one uses voluntary, paying taxes could be argued to be voluntary, as there is no literal force being applied to you that prevents you from not paying. You're free to withhold payment, even thought the consequences could be lethal. On a technical point, this isn't incorrect; since only you have exclusive control over your body, it can be argued that any conscious action you take is, in fact, a voluntary one. As pointed out in my example above, neither party acted involuntarily; they were both in control of their bodies and acted accordingly.
Ethics are moral standards; a set of rules regarding how to determine whether an act or thing is good or bad. Ultimately, ethics are the standards we use to determine whether a violation has occurred and a victim is present. They inform whether or not restitution must be made. As such, it is extremely important to have a solid ethical foundation. Without it, there is too much room for interpretation, leaving victims without recourse and robbing people of justice.
This is the advantage that consent has over voluntary. Compliance alone is not indicative of consent, and consent can be withheld even when a party takes voluntary action to comply to the demands of another party. Since ethics ultimately is a measure of good and bad, and informs what course of action to take, consent is a vastly more useful and precise ethic than whether or not an act is voluntary.
I have a friend that switched to calling himself a "consentualist" for your reasons. I don't know though, and I still call myself a voluntaryist.
We are liberty lovers. I also call myself a #libertyprofessional. Liberty means different things to different people too. It gets tiresome trying to define the words we use though.
I often ask two questions at once: Did everyone consent and was it voluntary?
Speaking of questions, there's another one to help define who I am and the cause I'm seeking to further: How do those of us who refuse to be ruled coexist with the people who demand a ruler?
I was already following you, and I resteemed this post too!
It does get tiring trying to define words every. Single. Time. That's why I like consent. It's simple, almost universally understood, and logically it can't be argued against without destroying one's argument in the process.
Well, the short answer to your question is: you don't. Those that want a ruler are diametrically opposed to those of us who want no ruler. However, without a state, there's no reason that people can't consent to rules and regulations over their own private property to pool their resources together. Covenant communities come to mind.
And in a state there's no reason that people can't consent to rules and regulations over their own private property to pool their resources together.
However, why always the dichotomy of state vs. no state?
That's the only dichotomy that matters. An agency operating under the auspices of "the state" explicitly declares that consent is immaterial to their ends. No state, on the other hand, does not take this as the default position.
I believe it was Molinari who said:
But if you only look from the eyes of the dichotomy, you ignore the other possibilities. For example that an agency does not need to be "under" the state.
Also I don't see that declaration anywhere, sorry.
I don't understand what you mean. An agency not operating under the auspices of a state would, by definition, not be a state. Perhaps I'm not explaining it properly.
Under a state, a group of people - an agency, so to speak - exercises ultimate control of decision-making within a certain territory and supersedes any individual; they ignore consent, either implicitly or explicitly. Any other group within that territory either operates with the permission of the state government, or in spite of it. If the latter, they're still subject to the state government's influence. In other words, whether or not an agency is explicitly a state agency, they are subject to distortions to incentives created by the state.
By contrast, without a state, individuals hold ultimate decision-making authority.
Where this gets murky is the fact that individuals can transfer this authority to others in certain ways. For example, individuals can consent to forming a covenant community in which there are rules, regulations, and security provided by other individuals. However, this sphere extends only to those that have consented to it. That's where the ultimate authority lies: in those who consent.
This being the case doesn't prevent bad actors from doing bad things, but if the former is true, then individuals will violate the private property in accordance with state government rules and regulations.
Yeah man you are really philosopher, In principle I agree with you
That's not to say that voluntary isn't a useful metric. After all, for there to be consent, actions have to be voluntary. But it's too ambiguous to establish some sort of social order.
I just wanted to share this thought and hopefully get others thinking about it as well.
I'm a big fan of the term consentsualist.
I can tell XD But so am I. If you want to label yourself, that would be a good way to go. I still hold to anarchocapitalist, but any honest study of private property ethics demonstrates that consent is the ethical foundation for the ideology.
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An important point is also that consent is true for every balance of power, while voluntarily is not.
I "voluntarily" may eat this food, but I don't consent to it being so badly produced. I just have nothing else.
You're absolutely correct. That's why I've moved away from using voluntary as an ethic. Sometimes it implies consent, but sometimes it doesn't.