“Life, liberty, and property” is the lifeblood of libertarian philosophy. Nearly all who argue for a voluntarist state argue that at the center of such a society is a solid foundation of rights, specifically property rights. It is not clear where exactly these rights come from and this often a state of contention for many. But whether they come from a higher power, are self-evident, or stem from a particular philosophy, they are generally held equally among everybody, are inalienable, and allow for order in society. At the core, there is the right to self-ownership. Simply put, you own your own body, no one else can claim ownership over you, and you are free to make your own decisions, so long as you don’t violate the self-ownership of others. From this springs a wealth of complex concepts, such as the freedom to consume the food or drugs you wish, the freedom to defend yourself against unwarranted attacks, and the right to have personal control of various items and property. The right to a fair trial can also be lumped in, as well as the freedom to practice your own religion. All of these concepts are known as negative rights, which generally require no action against others to exist. This is opposed to positive rights, such as the right to food, housing, and medical care which requires that the negative rights of other be violated. Nearly all of these negative rights (and possibly some positive ones) are guaranteed to citizens of the US by the Constitution and its associated amendments.

You might be asking why I just made you read a large paragraph of concepts that you may mostly know already. The answer is that not all of these rights can cohabitate in absolute forms, because they would tread upon the rights of others. Perhaps some rights might have a higher ‘ranking’ than others and even in our current system, some rights take precedence over others in certain situations. For example, you might decide to protest against a fast food chain that gives money to anti-gay groups. In order to do so effectively, you decided to get a group of friends and stand in front of the door of the restaurant and chant negative slogans about that chain and be generally disruptive. The manger then comes out and informs you that the restaurant owner wishes you to vacate the property because of how disruptive you and your friends are being. Being the good libertarian you are and recognizing the right of the owner to allow whom and what he wishes on his property and you politely move next to the public road by the restaurant to continue the protest. After a day of protesting near the public road, you return home with your friends, probably to quietly read some economics together. Legally in our current system, the restaurant is in the right to ask you to leave its property and to use slowly escalating force by proxy in order to remove you from the property. This is fair, and most interpretations of natural and property rights would agree with the handling of the situation.

The right to free speech bows to the right to property in this case.
What would happen in this situation in a voluntarist society? Of course, there may be no need for fast food chains in such an advanced society, and if they exist, they may not contribute money to anti-gay groups because of market forces. For the sake of argument, let’s say that such a chain does exist. The circumstances again lead to the manger asking you to vacate the premises. You oblige as before. Believe it or not, this time a private company (gasp!) builds and maintains the space-age super roads that lead to the restaurant. So you decide to move next to the road just as before to continue the protest. Things might just as well turn out as before, where you and your friends retire quietly to read some Rothbard or Hayek. But since there is no First Amendment guarantee on public property as before, any number of other possible outcomes exist. Perhaps some of the road company’s patrons complain about the ruckus through their wireless video chat to customer service from their hover cars. Some road crew tough men arrive and quickly escort you off the scene, violently or otherwise. Or maybe you signed an agreement to use the road system this company operates, which has a strict no-protesting clause. Perhaps there are no restrictions on protest on the road, but maybe in order to be under protection from the local security firm, you signed an agreement to not riot or protest in the areas they patrol. You may be forced to forfeit service or even be punished for violating the signed contract. You might be lead into going home early because of property rights or prior arrangements.

Any number of similar situations can arise in such a society and already do even in ours. Malls are notorious for throwing out rowdy teenagers disrupting normal shoppers. Concealing and carrying a firearm or other ‘weapon’ might also be grounds for removal or even lawsuit from private malls and other businesses. Legally in many states, one has the right to carry concealed firearms stemming from the Second Amendment in most public spaces. Most interpretations of self-ownership can be expanding to the right to self-defense from harm, including carrying weapons on oneself. In our country currently, many businesses already have signs posted that explicitly prohibit firearms or other weapons on the premises. What if this doesn’t change? It could be reasonable to assume that many private property owners in a voluntarist society might demand you to not carry weapons on their land. It might end up that the majority of land owners prohibit firearms and you may not be able to practically carry a firearm with you for most places you might need to travel.

Another example might be the right to do with your body as you please, as long as it does not violate the rights of others. Nearly all libertarians would support your right to consume any drugs and foods that you wish. While our current legal systems tend to prohibit the consumption of drugs, in some states the personal use of a drug such as marijuana is legal. Even now, many employers test for drug use as a pre-requirement for employment. The lease on my current apartment specifically mentions that drugs and other illegal substances are prohibited in the apartment. As a landlord, it might be in your interest to prevent the consumption of some or maybe all drugs to prevent a ‘spiral’ into poverty of your lessees so that they continue to provide the rent. This might seem like a stretch, but what if many current landlords keep their no-drug clauses in their lease agreements after a general legalization of drugs? There might even be a majority that decided to do so and with the large numbers of people who current rent their living spaces, this could mean an effective ban on drugs if the landlords choose to enforce the lease.

The right against search and seizure is theoretically ‘guaranteed’ currently under the Fourth Amendment, so that the police or government may not randomly search and enter your house without a probable cause. Any interpretation of property rights would extend support to this concept as well, perhaps even going farther than the Constitution currently does. But what if you rent your current apartment? I know that my lease as well as other’s allows the landlord to enter whenever they please, since they own the property. What if the lease prohibits drugs or possibly weapons? Since the landlord is allowed to enter whenever he/she wishes and discovers a gun or a pot plant he might be able to evict the tenant. This sounds like an unreasonable search and seizure, but in reality, it is not. If landlords keep leases as restrictive as they are currently, many people will be have been voluntarily deprived of some very important liberties.

Perhaps in the scenario at the beginning, instead of having a physical protest you decide to organize on social media to raise awareness. Even today, net neutrality has been struck down in court and perhaps there’s nothing exactly wrong with that. After all, the internet service providers own the wires and cables that the internet at large rides along before reaching the customer. Though they have every right to censor or throttle internet traffic, libertarians and others would prefer that this not be the case. If a free market exists though, then demand for free internet could be met, through more scrupulous cable companies, VPN, etc. But what if land lords choose a cheaper or less scrupulous cable company to provide internet to the building? What if a city state collectively agrees to restricted information? It might sound farfetched, but plenty of people are willing to restrict their freedom and limit their options for the appearance of safety and the watchful eye of big brother. This city state might have enough other benefits that it again might be advantageous enough for some to sacrifice a few liberties for greater prosperity.

If people are to be as secure in their property as possible, it would seem that ability to allow whom and what you wish on your own land is essential. It is possible to temper this right, as is already done in our current legal system, but it would seem we would agree to the extent that ownership of property trumps many of the ‘lesser’ rights. I would agree that the possibility of competing legal systems and contracts is likely, if not a certainty and market forces should keep these undesirable agreements to a minimum. It would be foolish to assume that any of these situations could NOT occur. They most certainly do already and I see no reason that they could not occur in a voluntarist society. I think that the reason so many of our rights and liberties today are being eroded is for safety. Most people value safety and prosperity in their life more than they do drugs and guns and some would gladly give up liberty in order to achieve at least the appearance of safety. It’s hard to not see the majority of people freely giving up many of these rights so that their landlords can ‘protect’ them from the pot heads next door or the gun nut down the hall. At least in a voluntarist society, you can choose to not forfeit rights such as these for housing. Your average risk adverse citizen however, might demand that the roads have slower speed limits and that firearms be prohibited while they’re shopping at the local mall or eating a burger at a local fast food joint. They might even want an Orwellian surveillance society so they can feel secure and safe in life. The fact that the majority will want these things might mean that many companies are willing to sacrifice the odd-liberty loving customer for the greater number of patrons’ peace of mind. In order for market forces to solve some of these problems, there must be a demand for freer and less burdensome agreements which may not be adequately supplied for just a few of the liberty minded. Unless the massive addiction to safety that our current society has is overcome, even a voluntarist system cannot save us completely from the greater demands of the public. It could be that for such a system to come into place, a more free and liberty thinking people will need to be the majority. But even with a significant minority, in order for liberty minded people to enter possibly great amounts of land, they must be willing to sacrifice a great many rights, such as speech, degrees of self-defense, possibly even religion. If it is very advantageous to live in such a place otherwise, you might even need to be prepared to give up the use of drugs or search and seizure to do so.

It’s important to start discussion and provoke thought about possible ‘flaws’ in our ideals. I also feel that it is very important to flesh out all ideas and to continue thinking about any system that we might advocate for and that we must accept certain possible realities that be might be inseparable from the basic philosophy of voluntarism or voluntarist principals. These scenarios seem likely to occur in my mind and although I am a proponent of voluntarism, we should not forget that society and government are separate entities. If the majority of society is still quite full of people who value safety over liberty, we will be relegated to the edges of their cities and to the outskirts just as we are today.