Voluntary relationships are the foundation of free society, but few people completely understand how this works.
Building a House
When I was a kid, there were these two identical (except for the color) houses right next door to each other in an area of town not known for its ticky-tacky boxes. One of the “old timers” explained that there were two men, friends, who bought ajoining lots and built each other’s house. One of them was a better carpenter and the other was better at masonary, plumbing and electrical. They reasoned they could build two houses of better quality by using the principle of “division of labor.” Each could exercise his specialties on both houses. By concentrating on their skills and trading their excess labor they were both about to get a better house out of the deal.
This is how the free market works. I do what I’m good at and sell books to you. You do what you’re good at and sell shoes to me. The guy down the block does what he’s good at and fixes our plumbing. He hires the woman around the block to repair his car. This symphony of voluntaryism creates a healthy society where we all do what we’re good at while others pay for the benefit of our skills, which provides us the money to pay for the benefit of their skills.
Cooperation is willingly undertaken because each of the parties to the deal expects the deal to be to our advantage. We enter the deal for a selfish interest, and it works to our mutual advantage.
Are we good so far? Good!
That system of cooperation worked really well back in colonial days when there were few people in society, but society is so much larger today and therefore more complicated. Voluntary cooperation couldn’t possibly work today.
Thus claims those who prefer authority to win out over liberty. I have a Facebook friend from England who frequently makes these assertions on my “liberty” conversations.
Why doesn’t voluntary cooperation work in modern society? Because someone thinks it won’t. How do you know if you haven’t tried it? What if someone did try it?
A couple of years ago we had an insane winter storm. Fairbanks gets a medium amount of snow — about 5-7 feet a winter. It’s usually fluffy and easy to deal with so long as you get it before it gets hardened by a cold snap. But this freak winter storm rolled in. First, it snowed about two feet on Christmas Eve. Then it rained (something it doesn’t do very often in the winter here) on Christmas Day. Then it snowed another several inches on Boxing Day. Then it dropped to -35’F, turning everything into concrete.
It was Icepocalypse! What were we going to do?
It warmed up for New Years and I went out to shovel my driveway. It was really hard. The first three inches were frozen hard as a rock and the layers below that were full of water. My neighbor’s 11-year-old offered to help. I offered him hot chocolate and brownies. He’s a hard worker and so am I. By the end of the afternoon, I could get my car out of the driveway and walk into the house. Yay!
A neighbor decided to make some money toward paying his truck payment. He drove from house to house offering to plow their driveway for money. He charged a modest fee. Soon he had several months of truck payments in his wallet.
Nobody forced anyone to do anything. My next-door neighbor was more than willing to exchange some money to have this man plow the ice-concrete from her driveway and he was more than willing to do it for her an exchange for some money.
Voluntary relationship working well.
Now I do have a neighbor who feels this man was taking advantage of people.
He should have done it for free. He owns that expensive truck. He can afford it.
He did not plow her driveway. Her money was more important to the potential free-rider than her back or a clear driveway and the plowman felt the wear-and-tear on his truck was worth the money she didn’t pay him. They voluntarily chose not to cooperate.
Except she didn’t feel it was voluntary. She wanted to force him to plow her driveway for free. I don’t think she quite understands the meaning of “voluntary.”
Society doesn’t have to destroy liberty
A lot of people, like my British friend, will insist that you can’t have liberty in built-up areas because society is too complicated so someone must be in charge. But I point out that as soon as you put someone in charge, they start making rules at least half the society doesn’t like. She says, “That’s the risk of society, that it threatens liberty, but that’s a good thing, because liberty is like toddlers running with scissors.” I disagree. While society does involve a threat to liberty, it is not required to destroy it. But first we must be aware of the threat, so we can deal with it properly.
Human beings love the idea of coercing others and laying claim to the product of their labor while insisting they themselves should be free from coercion and need the product of their own labor unmolested by their neighbors. Worse, some of them are like my real-life neighbor, who defines “voluntary” as you doing something for her for “free”.
If we don’t understand what liberty really entails, we humans will prove ourselves to be all too human.
This is why the Founders insisted they needed to form a government. But can that government protect our liberties?
Lela Markham is an Alaska-based novelist and commentator. Check out her books, some of which deal with liberty themes. If you don’t get an immediate response to a comment this week, it might be because she’s traveling. She promises to get back to everyone when she has internet.
Liberty and Free Association! Wonderful principles that often serve to save us from really bad ideas imposed from above.