The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States

By Peter B. Bos

This book describes why the politically democratic state is a mythical and illegitimate concept that does not and cannot work and why, without the corrective market feedback of profits and losses, this unstable, unmanageable, inefficient and authoritative social organization will cause its own demise. The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States maps out an alternative path leading to a new contractual social organization based upon individual sovereignty and freedom. Under this natural government of decentralized economic democracy, individuals vote with their money ballot for the products and services they want, including protection and jurisprudence. The Road to Freedom constitutes an evolutionary continuation of the principles of individual sovereignty and freedom underlying the American Revolution, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, leading to worldwide peace and prosperity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483431451

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THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

And The Demise Of Nation States

PETER B. BOS

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The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States

Copyright © 2015 Peter B. Bos.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is private property. Readers are welcome to read and to make use of its contents. However, any intellectual use requires credit to the author, and any commercial application of the ideas and innovations described herein will require his permission and potential negotiation with him.

The book must be copyrighted, or it must be placed in that twilight realm where ownership is in doubt. Regrettably, the only way the author or the publisher can designate this book as private property is through the government copyright office. Perhaps in some future and more enlightened time, authors and publishers may find another way to designate their efforts as private property without invoking the coercive powers of the State. Essentially, any good insurance company or other free-market establishment could perform the same chore. Since none of these exists, and since it is deemed advisable to designate this book as private property, the author and the publisher have no other choice.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3144-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3146-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3145-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015907765

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 09/01/2015

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

Part I – INDIVIDUAL MAN

1 – Individual Man And Philosophy

2 – Ethics And The Road To Freedom

3 – Ethics And Social Organization

4 – How Do You Know You Are On The Right Road?

PART II – SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

5 – The Road To Freedom – Where We Have Been

6 – Freedom

7 – Social Organization History And Evolution

8 – Human Progress And Innovation

9 – Profit And Loss – The Natural Regulator

10 – Forms Of Social Organization – State And Government

11 – Current Political And Social Organization

12 – The Myth Of The Need For The State

13 – Proprietary Versus Political Management

14 – The Fallacy Of Central Planning

15 – Representative State Governance Does Not Work

PART III – THE FOUNDATION OF FREEDOM

16 – Major Advances In The Volitional Social Sciences

17– Natural Government

18 – Capitalism

19 – Socialism

20 – The Role Of Capitalism In The Personal Enterprise System

21 – Man’s Material Welfare Under Capitalism

22 – Economics

23 – Classical Liberals’ Greatest Fallacy

PART IV – THE DEMISE OF NATION STATES

24 – The Rise Of Nation States

25 – Why The State Does Not And Cannot Work

26 – The Regressive Progressive Doctrine

27 – Current Political Economic And Monetary System Problems

28 – Worldwide Turning Point

29 – Worldwide Power Shift

30 – The Financial Cliff And Tipping Point

31 – The Demise Of Nation States

PART V – THE CORNERSTONES OF THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

Cornerstone One – Contractual Proprietary Government

32 – Proprietary Protection Of Life And Property

Cornerstone Two – Individual Sovereign Money Issuance

33 – The Concept And Evolution Of Money

34 – Individual Sovereign Money And Credit

35 – Individual Sovereign Money And Credit Implementation

Cornerstone Three – Voluntary Compliance Jurisprudence

36 – Jurisprudence And Law

37 – Justice And Law

38 – Market Theory Of Crime

39 – Voluntary Compliance Jurisprudence

40 – Jurisprudence Under Freedom

Cornerstone Four – Proprietary Undivided Ownership, Development, And Management Of Real Property And Community Services

41 – The Enterprise Of Community

42 – Environmental And Social Implications Of Administering Land As Productive Capital

Cornerstone Five – Education Under Freedom

43 – Noncompulsory Competitive Education

44 – Who Needs The State?

PART VI – THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

45 – The Rise And Demise Of Nation States

46 – The Tipping Point And Potential Turning Point

47 – The Road To Freedom – Free-Trade Zones And Free-Trade Cities

48 – A Global Hub-And-Spoke Network Of Free-Trade Cities And Communities

49 – Free-Trade Cities And Communities Organization

50 – Characteristics And Benefits Of A Global Network Of Free-Trade Cities And Communities

51 – Natural Developments Of Worldwide Free-Trade Cities

52 – Summary

CLOSING STATEMENT

EPILOGUE

APPENDICES

Appendix A – The Dutch Republic (1581–1672)

Appendix B – The Noble Savage

Appendix C – I, Pencil

Appendix D – Consumer Price Index And Oil Prices Regression Analyses

Appendix E – Maria Montessori And The Montessori Method

Appendix F – World Population Projection

Appendix G – Logistic Growth And Singularity

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chronological

Alphabetical

GLOSSARY

Philosophy And Science

Jurisprudence

Money And Credit

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1 – Social Organization History and Evolution

Figure 2 – Moore’s Law

Figure 3 – Social Organization, Technological and Biological Progress

Figure 4 – Creativity Energy and Average Individual Life Span

Figure 5 – The Political Spectrum Revisited

Figure 6 – United States Federal Budget Growth

Figure 7 – United States Federal Debt Growth

Figure 8 – Dollar’s Value before and after the 1913 Federal Reserve Act

Figure 9 – Projected Power Shift (Logarithmic and Linear Scale, Respectively)

Figure 10 – Projected Rate of Decline of Coercive Power

Figure 11 – Evolution of Money from Simple to Multilateral Split Barter

Figure 12 – Individual Sovereign Virtual Money Issue and Retirement

Figure 13 – Relationship between Private Money Issue, Credit Rating, Credit Issuing Company, and Insurance

Figure 14 – Jurisprudence, Personal Credit, Private Money Issue, and Insurance Interrelationship

Figure 15 – Hub-and-Spoke Network of Free-Trade Cities and Communities

Figure 16 – Global Network of Free-Trade Cities and Communities

Figure D-1 – Consumer Price Index

Figure D-2 – US Crude Oil Prices in Constant 2010 Dollars

Figure F-1 – World Population and Rate of Growth Projection

Figure G-1 – Scientific, Biological and Social Organization Growth Projection

Table 1 – Historic Steps in Human Development

Table 2 – Money Acceptance Requirements

Table 3 – Projected Representative World Population Distribution (circa 2100)

This book is

dedicated to my dear departed foster parents,

Helen Treyz-Smith and Harold Smith,

whose memory I carry with me every day of my life.

Their compassion and love represent the true spirit of America.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their Security.

United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

PREFACE

T his book represents a paradigm shift in thinking about the social organization of men, one which will serve all the traditional purposes of the state while bringing individual sovereignty and freedom to people worldwide. This book describes why the state is a mythical and illegitimate concept that does not and cannot work and why, without the corrective feedback of profits and losses under free-market competition, this unstable, unmanageable, and highly inefficient bureaucratic organization will produce its own demise.

For thousands of years coercive organizations, including city states, theocracies, empires, monarchies, dictatorships, and nation states, have subjugated human beings. Currently, the alleged protection of individual life and property is usurped by monopolistic nation states whose social organization ranges from dictatorships to elected parliamentary or political democracies. In the latter case, individuals are provided limited choices regarding their social organization and the political representatives to whom fiduciary power is entrusted through elections every number of years. Once elected, these representatives are given the authority to enact laws, rules and regulations prescribing constituents how to behave and to which obedience is coercively enforced. In the former case, even the elective choices are usurped by the state. Regardless of the state’s specific form, an ever-encroaching bureaucracy with highly centralized management not subject to competitive market feedback increasingly usurps individual freedom of action and property rights.

In contrast with the state, imagine a social organization based on the economic democracy of the free market where individuals vote with their money ballots on every issue of interest to them each time they make a purchase or enter into a contract with whom and whenever they choose. Imagine a world where the protection of life and property is competitively provided through voluntary subscription to insurance and to private security organizations. These organizations actually have a proprietary interest in your life and property, because if you suffered damage to either, they would lose money. Imagine a world without coercive laws, rules, regulations, taxes and authoritative political bureaucracies, a world without national debts, a world in which individuals can contract for their own personal protection against major and minor catastrophes and can obtain restitution for transgressions committed against them. Imagine a world with a system of jurisprudence based upon customary law, with focus on the prevention of injustice and upon contractual exchange of property with voluntary compliance arbitration for restitution of transgressions, a system self-enforced by reciprocity and by social or economic sanctions, without the need for jails.

Imagine a world with noncompulsory lifelong education offered by the best educators, as determined by the marketplace, using the latest communication technologies at competitively low cost. Imagine a world where you can enjoy the benefits of your labor and investments without seeing their value diminished through inflation resulting from the printing of fiat money and from confiscation by taxes. Imagine a world with inherent and continuous built-in checks and balances provided by the competitive market. Imagine a world with a social organization based upon contract rather than privilege for the few. Imagine a world without arbitrary national borders, tariffs, or other trade restrictions that inhibit the free exchange of goods and services between people worldwide, thereby eliminating frictions and wars. Imagine a world with unlimited opportunity, individual sovereignty, and total freedom. Imagine a world without the violence of the state and between nation states.

This is not a utopian dream. Such a world is not only possible, but its basic structure and institutions already exist. The services for protection of life and property against catastrophic risks are currently already provided by proprietary organizations through voluntary subscription to internationally well-developed insurance and private security organizations. For almost everyone desiring the protection of their life or property, when presented the choice between indifferent state monopolies and a natural government with a proprietary interest in individual life and property, the choice should be obvious. The proprietary organizations and technologies for establishing and extending credit already exist that will facilitate the issuing of private cyberspace virtual money worldwide, backed by producers of goods and services and not by central bank fiat.

A system of jurisprudence based upon reciprocal customary law for compliance with contracts and for the settlement of disputes through voluntary compliance arbitration has been well established internationally for centuries. The proprietary management of community development with undivided ownership, integrated public services, and private security is well developed in large shopping malls, cruise ships, large hotel complexes, and resorts such as Disney World. The current technological advances in computer and communications technologies can provide lifelong education offered by the best educators in the world at extremely low cost.

This world is the road not yet taken, because we have been sidetracked by a belief in and consent to the mythical centralized authoritative social organization called the state, which is an agency of coercion founded upon false promises of providing protection by a self-serving and power-hungry political class.

In essence, this book, The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States, represents a continuation of the principles of individual sovereignty and freedom underlying the American Revolution and its Declaration of Independence, which led to the demise of the monarchial states. As the chapters describing the cornerstones for building the road to freedom will show, all traditional government services can be provided more efficiently in the free market by decentralized proprietary organizations guided by profit- and-loss feedback. These cornerstones comprise alternative and new developments in the protection of life and property, the private issue of virtual money, voluntary compliance jurisprudence, proprietary management of community development and public services, and noncompulsory competitive education.

These cornerstones are the fundamental building blocks for implementing the road to freedom, and are firmly based upon the ideas and innovations of a large number of illustrious contributors to the social sciences, especially those in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century. Therefore, all the required philosophical concepts are currently well developed, and all the organizations and technologies necessary for implementing a natural government, based upon proprietary management, already exist in the marketplace. All that we need is the conviction, motivation, and courage to make a paradigm shift toward achieving this alternative, non-coercive, proprietary natural government of economic democracy.

The successful implementation of the cornerstones of the road to freedom will be facilitated by the opportunities that will present themselves from the imminent demise of the nation states. The economic and social disruption associated with their demise will provide incentives and opportunities for negotiating the establishment of autonomous free-trade zones either through purchase, long-term lease, or secession. These autonomous free trade zones will facilitate development of a decentralized worldwide hub-and-spoke network of autonomous proprietary free trade cities and communities throughout the world. Autonomy of these proprietary free trade cities and communities is necessary for unobstructed cyberspace issuance of private, sovereign virtual money and will provide for undivided ownership and proprietary administration of community development and integrated public services.

These and the other cornerstones, including contractual private insurance protection of life and property, voluntary compliance jurisprudence, and noncompulsory education, will displace all of the authoritative bureaucratic functions traditionally associated with the state. This natural government represented by a personal enterprise system of free trade is a worldwide concept. Without nation states, there will be no political borders and associated territorial disputes and wars. This decentralized global social organization will bring unimagined prosperity, good will, and peace for all people in the world through free trade and personal enterprise. Full implementation of the cornerstones is only now made feasible by its symbiotic confluence with the physical sciences developments in computer and communications technologies during the past two decades. These opportunities are projected to present themselves in the near future based upon the rapidly accelerating speed of communications and the inevitable demise of the nation states.

This book provides an integration of the various innovations and contributions made to the philosophy of freedom by the preceding intellectual giants in the social sciences. These innovations established the foundation for the development of the cornerstones of the road to freedom. Implementation of these cornerstones will lead to the establishment of a decentralized worldwide hub-and-spoke network of proprietary free trade cities and communities throughout the world, which will fill the void left in social organization by the demise of the nation states. This paradigm change in social organization will be characterized by economic democracy with trade and good will among people worldwide. This change will eliminate the frictions and wars that have plagued previous centuries and will define the twenty-first century as the century of individual sovereignty, prosperity, peace, and freedom.

The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States represents a functional sequel to Friedrich Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom, which eloquently described the collectivist path leading to the demise of nation states. For those readers interested in learning more about the foundation and philosophy of freedom, the end of each part of this book and its glossary provide extensive lists of books and articles that form the underpinnings of this alternative natural government based upon individual sovereignty and total freedom.

INTRODUCTION

T he social organization of the world, and specifically of the United States of America, has come to a major crossroad, and the direction taken will have a profound impact on the future of human civilization. The choice is the road to freedom or the road to serfdom. One road leads to freedom, with continued expansion in terms of creativity, innovation, production with a rising standard of living, and the other to slavery that will take humanity back to the stagnation of the Dark Ages. This is a choice between individualism and collectivism, between individual property rights and the subordination of these rights to collective societal claims. This choice may very well determine whether the human species survives or is made extinct by nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare.

Throughout history, growth in innovation, the arts and sciences, material production, and the standard of living has taken place during the times of greatest freedom. The seventeenth-century Newtonian intellectual revolution has brought about enormous advances in the physical and biological sciences. This revolution, combined with the subsequent industrial revolution, has provided the common man in the industrialized world a standard of living unimagined even by emperors and kings prior to that time. Many of these advances have also greatly benefited the less developed parts of the world to the extent that the people in these places have had the freedom to trade with the industrialized countries.

Unfortunately, these rapid advances in the physical and biological sciences, relative to the much slower development of the social sciences and human organization, have resulted in the dichotomy of man having the potential capability of annihilating the human species by biological or nuclear warfare, while lagging the social organization to prevent this. At this critical junction in history, it is imperative that a comprehensive and integrated approach to, and understanding of, social organization be developed. This knowledge will equip man to make intelligent, moral decisions in facing this current crossroad. Integration of the various aspects of human action forms the basis for the social science of freedom.

One of the objectives of this book is to present an overview of the significant contributions made by a large number of intellectuals to the science of freedom, especially those made during the past two centuries. The next objective is to integrate these contributions and to develop the foundation for an integrated science of human social organization commensurate with individual sovereignty and freedom. The third objective is to describe the cornerstones required for creating and maintaining a durable social organization and to outline a map and compass for building the road to freedom. As this book will show, development of these cornerstones will lead to a shift in social organization from the political democracy of the coercive state to the economic democracy of contractual personal enterprise.

The first part of the book addresses the need for, and the application of, a rational code of values or ethics for guiding individual action and its impact on social organization. These ethical premises provide the basis for conduct that will have an impact on human behavior, self-esteem, and happiness. Throughout this book, life is the ultimate standard of value—the basis of all other values for guiding man’s actions. Rational and moral actions are those that enhance individual and organizational life. These actions represent a profit, whereas actions destructive to life represent a loss. This concept of profit and loss applies equally to the conduct of individuals and social organizations. It also governs the ethical premises underlying a sustainable social organization and facilitates making the rational choices required for building this organization. In addition to providing a philosophical perspective on human action, this part also describes the scientific method, the laws of logic or rational thinking, and how they validate the science of freedom.

All human interactions constitute exchanges of intellectual and material property. The former include emotional responses. These exchanges of property can occur in only two, mutually exclusive ways, either voluntarily by implicit or explicit contract or involuntarily by the use of coercion. The former exchanges are represented by the economic democracy of the free market and the latter by the political democracy of the coercive political state. A free societal structure implies that all personal interactions are reciprocal and thus profitable to all parties involved in an exchange. Coercive actions are nonreciprocal, with one party gaining at the expense of the other. This makes these actions unprofitable to the latter and therefore destructive.

A free social organization implies that individuals can pursue their personal self-interest and happiness without the sacrifice of others. Reciprocity is the essence of all ethical or moral conduct and contract. Contractual or voluntary reciprocal actions in social organizations enhance an individual’s life by providing a net gain or profit to all parties. This constitutes rational and moral conduct. Such a condition is not only desirable but essential to society’s proper functioning and survival.

The coercive conduct of the monopolistic political state is destructive to life and property and is irrational and immoral. Any social organization based upon coercion is unstable and is sowing the seeds of its own demise. Throughout recorded history, men have been ruled by coercive social organizations, comprised of a lethal combination of force, represented by tribal chiefs, emperors, kings, and political authority, and by faith, represented by witch doctors and organized religion. These coercive social organizations have been the cause of all human suffering, destitution, conflicts, violence, and wars.

The remaining parts of this book will provide the foundation and cornerstones for the establishment of a free, rational, and moral social organization with proprietary natural government for the protection of individual life and property, as an alternative to the violence inherent in the coercive state. These parts will describe the development of unhampered personal enterprise markets with insurance protection of life and property, private issue of cyberspace virtual individual sovereign money, jurisprudence based upon voluntary compliance and customary law, proprietarily managed community development and public services, and competitive lifelong private education.

These proprietary services, which represent an evolutionary and ideological revolution, are the cornerstones for building a free society. Freedom is the societal condition wherein each individual has full control of his or her property, meaning full control of his or her life, intellectual property or ideas, and material property. The opposite of freedom is slavery. Natural resources, such as land, water, and air, become property only through their use by man of these resources.

To date, there has never been total individual freedom. There have been a few periods throughout recorded history when individuals have achieved relatively greater freedom. Each such period can readily be identified by its associated explosive growth in the arts, the sciences, and prosperity through commerce. Most of our current achievements date back to the Renaissance. This period of enlightenment spawned the Newtonian scientific revolution, which gave rise to the industrial revolution and to the American Revolution, with its Declaration of Independence based upon individual sovereignty. Each of these revolutions saw periods of increased individual freedom and associated improvements in welfare, peace, and prosperity. The greatest gain in freedom came during the period immediately after the American Revolution. Each period of freedom resulted when people gained their independence from the state and ended with the reemergence of another state.

Where are we now? Societal conditions in the world range from partial freedom to abject slavery. The political spectrum is represented by various forms of collectivism, ranging from socialism to fascism, with limited freedom for the individual. Within this spectrum of collectivism, individual rights and freedom are subordinated to the needs and requirements of the collective, represented by a coercive political state.

Given the disastrous road to serfdom taken by all nation states, including the United States, it is imperative that people must consider making a paradigm change in social organization and abolishing the current political form of state government. The Declaration of Independence says that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The alternative to the state, as described in this book, is a societal structure based on individualism under which all people have full control of their property and the protection of property is contractual and commensurate with individual property rights. History has demonstrated that freedom will foster good will through free global trade and exchange. This will result in worldwide peace and individual freedom, explosive growth in the arts and the sciences, and the commensurate well-being of people throughout the world.

The demise of the coercive nation states will offer an opportunity for the establishment of a social organization based upon personal enterprise and proprietary management of all services traditionally provided by the state. Just as Thomas Paine, the ideological founder of the American Revolution, declared that we do not need a monarch to protect us, this integrated approach to individual sovereignty and freedom will show that individuals and their social organization do not need the state. This book will further show that the state, even when limited in power by a written constitution, is an illegitimate concept detrimental to freedom and to human welfare.

The integration of the contributions to the volitional social sciences listed in the bibliography will establish the foundation for a free and prosperous world based upon the natural government of economic democracy, absent of the coercive political state. This ideological revolution, with its associated explosive growth in the global production and trade of goods and services, will result in unprecedented worldwide individual freedom, prosperity, welfare, and happiness while maintaining the delicate balance between man and his environment.

The road to freedom is an extension of the American Revolution and its principles as espoused in the Declaration of Independence. This change in social organization, based upon individual sovereignty and freedom, represents an ideological revolution. Such a revolution is in sharp contrast with the violent overthrows of previous states, each of which in turn was supplanted with another and frequently more coercive state.

This new road to freedom is not only desirable but imperative for the general welfare and even the survival of the human race. The establishment of just one social organization with proprietarily managed government services will forever expose the myth of the need for the coercive political state. Actually, all that is necessary for this ideological revolution to occur is for people to withhold their consent to the existence of the coercive political state with its authoritative laws, regulations and rules. With the successful demonstration of only one social organization with proprietary management of all services traditionally associated with the state, people elsewhere will also see that they need only withhold their consent to the state in order for the development of worldwide natural government to occur.¹

In summary, the main objective of The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States is to describe a path that leads to the achievement of individual freedom and economic democracy in the world. The book thereby serves as a sequel to The Road to Serfdom in which Friedrich Hayek eloquently portrayed the inevitable societal deterioration into socialism and serfdom resulting from the current centralized coercive political democratic nation states.

This book would not have been possible without standing on the shoulders of the many intellectuals who have preceded me. My own contributions derive from the integration of their work, which allowed the development of the cornerstones required for constructing the road to freedom. These cornerstones are the essential elements of the natural government of personal enterprise that will render obsolete, and thus obviate, the alleged need for the existence of coercive political states. Implementation of the cornerstones is the road to freedom.

This road will lead to the establishment of a decentralized global hub-and-spoke network of proprietarily managed free-trade cities and communities, each having full autonomy. The vacuum in social organization created by the demise of nation states will facilitate the implementation of this decentralized global trading network without political borders. This change in social organization will supplant the violence of the centralized coercive political states, which are the source of all the frictions and wars that have plagued humanity throughout recorded history, with proprietary contractual government of personal enterprise, thereby fostering trade and good will among people worldwide.

PART I

INDIVIDUAL MAN

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost

I ndividual man is you and I. Each of us travels our own road in life, and the road we choose determines our destiny. The road taken is of crucial importance and determines personal happiness. Happiness is the emotional state that man experiences when he has chosen the road that says, This is worth living for. Since man has no innate guidance or instinct, how does he choose the road that will bring him happiness? An individual has the power to determine his course by acquiring the knowledge necessary to guide his actions. Alternately, he can choose to follow the road taken by others, hoping that will bring him happiness. Either way, man as a volitional being must choose a road to follow. This part of the book is about choosing a code of values that will guide man’s actions and his relationship with others, putting him on the road to freedom and happiness. ²

In this part of the book, I describe the road I have taken. Yours may be different. You are free to choose your road and to change direction when you come to a fork. In the remainder of this book, I will describe the direction in which my road is taking me. If, after reading this book, our roads converge and you decide to join me on my journey, I look forward to meeting you and to traveling the remainder of this road to freedom and happiness with you. As fellow travelers, we have the power to achieve this vision of the road to freedom together and to change the world.

The remaining parts of this book will provide the guideposts for the establishment of a free, rational, and moral social organization with natural government for protection of individual life and property without the coercion and violence of the politically democratic state. These parts will describe the discovery of the natural government of economic democracy that already resides in the personal enterprise system. This natural government already has durable proprietary organizations for protection of life and property, private issue of virtual individual sovereign money and credit, voluntary compliance jurisprudence and crime prevention based upon customary law and restitution, proprietary management of community development and public services, and competitive private education. These proprietary services comprise the cornerstones of the road to freedom that I will describe. As I will show, these cornerstones can replace all the functions traditionally ascribed to the political state and thereby lead to the achievement and maintenance of a free and prosperous social organization.

ONE

INDIVIDUAL MAN AND PHILOSOPHY

Men have no choice about the fact that they do hold a philosophy of life. Their only choice is whether they know it or not, whether their philosophy is held consciously or subconsciously, whether it is true or false.

—Ayn Rand

A ny serious investigation of social organization must begin with its basic unit, individual man. Unique in the known universe of living entities, man is a being with volitional consciousness. Individual man is the only living entity that has evolved with volition, meaning the unique ability and freedom to decide the actions necessary for survival. Whereas other animals have an innate knowledge or instinct for survival, man must choose the actions required for him to live. Man shares with other animals the ability to perceive the environment, but he does not possess the instincts for survival. Man’s volition provides the freedom to decide what actions to take in the conduct of his life. As a volitional being, man has the evolutionary benefit of being able to adapt more readily to changes in the environment. However, volition places upon man not only the requirement but the responsibility to choose his actions by thinking.

Thinking is the hierarchical process of integrating perceptions into concepts, and concepts into higher concepts, thereby acquiring knowledge. As a volitional being, man has the option of choosing to think or not to think about the actions required for survival. Therefore, for man, the fundamental alternative to exist or not to exist (to survive or to become extinct) is to think or not to think. However, thinking is a process requiring effort, which many men are not willing to expend. To hold an integrated view of existence, and of man’s relationship with it, requires effort, an effort most men are not willing to expend.

In choosing conduct appropriate for living their lives, most men drift between independent thought and following the guidelines established by others. Therefore, most men are followers, accepting the philosophical premises provided by others rather than expending the time and effort to formulate their own. As Ayn Rand stated in the above quotation, regardless of conscious choice, each man needs a philosophy, a guide to action or ethics, to direct his actions as required for his survival. Whether this choice is rational or irrational depends upon whether the philosophy stems from independent thought or is merely a reflection of the common customs of the time. Fortunately, as will be described in the next chapter, during the past century, a rational philosophy and ethics—a code of values to guide man’s actions—has been developed. This code is compatible with man’s nature and requirements for survival and holds life as the standard of values, a standard man shares with all other living entities.

Although man can adapt to his environment, he cannot control much of it. Man can discover but cannot change the natural laws governing that environment, yet some men try. Even though during the past three centuries man has seen glimpses of freedom, individual man has yet to discover how to be totally free. This book addresses the meaning of, and the road leading to, attaining total individual freedom.

Why Does Man Need Philosophy?

Whether or not he acknowledges it, every man has a philosophy, meaning how he views himself in relationship to the world in which he lives. Philosophy is the science that deals with man’s relationship to existence. The goal of philosophy is to provide man with an integrated view of himself in relationship to existence, his own nature, and the world in which he lives. Most individuals hold a philosophy without being conscious of it and without integration. As Rand said, men have no choice about the fact that they hold a philosophy of life.

Ancient Greece gave birth to philosophy during what can be described as the dawn of reason. Prior to that time, any questions regarding the nature of the universe and man’s place in it had been the exclusive province of religion. This meant that ordinary men should not even entertain such questions. The diverse religions of various tribes and nations provided men with legends or mythologies, each purporting to explain the nature and the origin of the universe. This demanded of men the practice of faith, meaning acceptance without evidence of proof.

There have been only three time periods in the history of Western civilization when the predominant school of thought was a philosophy of reason. These three periods are: ancient Greece, the birthplace of reason; during the Renaissance, which saw the rebirth of reason, providing the intellectual foundation and scientific impetus for the industrial revolution, and the American Revolution with its Declaration of Independence, which defined the sovereignty of the individual. As subsequent parts of this book will explain, the evolution of the deployment of reason has increased the standard of living and brought longer lifespans that provide for an increasing period of creativity beyond the age of maturity, fueling innovation and progress.

A philosophy of reason is best summarized by the character John Galt in Atlas Shrugged,³ who said,

Existence exists, and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms, that something exists which one perceives, and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness. A consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. Before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness. Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape. These two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge, and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists, and that you know it.

TWO

ETHICS AND THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

At any time of history, the social organization and culture of a civilization is defined by the preceding philosophical ideologies.

—Ayn Rand

My Personal Road to Freedom

T his book is about an incredible journey, a journey which I personally made in my search for a better world, leading to the road to freedom. It is a journey in search of answers to many conflicting questions and propositions, which I am sure many of you have experienced at various stages and to various degrees in your life. As a child, I was taught obedience and reverence to the authority of both religion and the social organization of the political state. Each asked for sacrifices, deploying deception and violence, yet they neither answered my questions—nor provided answers to my quest for understanding why, considering their dismal records, I should obey and revere them. Rather than providing answers, their actions and pronouncements gave rise to more contradictions and questions.

I grew up in a small country, the Netherlands, which was the greatest trading power in the world for a time during the seventeenth century, a period called the Golden Age, but I never learned what made it great and why it was lost. Other than the great works of art that remained as a testament of that great era, I neither learned the reasons for the rise and fall of this period of greatness nor anything about its social organization at that time. To the contrary, the period was glossed over quickly during history classes, which instead focused on the reverence for and obedience to the royal house and to the parliamentary form of politically democratic social organization that had arisen since that era. I was never given any explanation why I should hold this reverence and loyalty, in spite of the fact that the new social structure provided neither the opportunities nor the freedom of the preceding Golden Age, but only stagnation and decline as the nation lived off the glory of its colonial trading past.

From my early years, I was aware of and had read about the enormous progress made and opportunities available in the United States. Again, no explanation was given me why a country such as the United States achieved greatness, and therefore created opportunities, during its relatively short existence while my native country and others in the European continent experienced stagnation and decline, culminating in the devastation of two world wars. When the opportunity arose for me to emigrate to America, I immediately grabbed it in search of a better life.

Not long after my arrival, I realized that the United States was rapidly adopting the European political democratic model with the associated loss of freedom and decline of the social fiber and the individualism that once characterized this country. I again witnessed the reverence for, and blind obedience to, an increasingly coercive political state, caused by the false belief that it was this type of behavior that made this country the greatest world trading power. Again, I found that no one here appeared to be providing the answer to the fundamental question of what it was that made this country great and prosperous. All I saw were squabbles between political factions, which were covered at length in the press, occasional rallies by the political parties during election campaigns for their designated representatives, and conformity to the current social political structure in the teaching called political science. Just as in my childhood, the children here are taught early on to have obedience to and reverence for the authority of the politically democratic state by pledging allegiance to the state and saluting its flag, without explanation of why they should do this other than to say it was their patriotic duty.

But why was this country different and what made it great? And what is the destructive force causing its decline? Even more important, what is the cause of global conflicts between the nation states that have resulted in repeated destructive wars, where the populations of entire nations became engaged in fighting and killing one another rather than engaging in mutually beneficial cooperation and trade?

One of my first insights into, and answers for, the fundamental questions regarding why it is that certain periods and countries experienced greatness and progress, and then again regressed to stagnation, were two essay presentations by Ayn Rand, another immigrant to the United States escaping a self-destructive and repressive state, Soviet Russia. The first presentation was an essay, Faith and Force, the Destroyers of the Modern World, wherein she made the argument that the social organization and culture of a given period and place reflects the dominant philosophical beliefs and ethical values held during that time.⁴ The second was an essay, The Objectivist Ethics, describing the essential elements of her rational concept of ethics.⁵ In it, she starts by answering the questions: What is morality, or ethics? Why does man need a code of values? What are values?

These two essays started my quest for a rational world in which I would experience happiness and freedom. This is where I set out on my incredible journey, the road to freedom, which I want to share with you. In these essays, Ayn Rand describes a rational code of values to guide man’s actions, which is based upon an objective standard, the standard of life, independent of anyone’s feelings or whims. Values that are commensurate with the ultimate value of life as the standard will further one’s life, not destroy it.

In these essays, Rand also made a rational connection between the prevalent moral premises and the social organization and culture of any given era, which provided an answer to the many conflicts and contradictions between reality that I experienced and what I was taught. I was taught that making sacrifices, even of one’s own life, for the common good would bring peace and happiness, but what I experienced was death and destruction in the world in which I grew up. I have always viewed my life as a precious gift of nature, of which I am the custodian. Therefore, discovering a rational code of values to guide my choices and actions, and one which is commensurate with the purpose and enhancement of my life, was a welcome relief from the prevalent religious and political morality I was taught, each of these latter demanding that it was my moral duty to make sacrifices.

Ethics

E thics is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and the actions that determine the purpose and the course of a person’s life. A code of values for guiding man’s actions is a metaphysical necessity for man’s survival. Man, like other animals, must act in order to survive. A code defines what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. A value is what one acts to gain and/or to keep. The concept of value pertains only to living species, since life for material things is unconditional. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil. All living entities must sustain their life by self-generated action, which requires the existence of values. The course of action required for each living species is specific; what an entity is determines what it ought to do.

Man is unique in his nature in that, unlike all other living species, he is a volitional being who has no innate guidance or instinct for action. For all other living species, the choice of action is innate. In order for man to survive, it is imperative that he develops a code of values or ethics to guide his choices and actions in the face of alternatives. A rational code of values must be based upon an objective standard, one which is independent of feelings or impulse. For all living species, the ultimate value alternative is life or death. This fundamental alternative