Consent is Crucial

There are two principles between which there can be no compromise: liberty and coercion.
-Frederic Bastiat

Without mutual consent, voluntaryism is impossible. It gives legitimacy to human interactions.

Consent is magical. It turns stealing into sharing, slavery into service, extortion into charity, exploitation into cooperation, and rape into loving intimacy.

When individuals disregard consent and choose to use threats and violence, they become aggressors and agents of control. They sever human connections and prove they are not worthy of the greater knowledge and power of higher consciousness.

There is only one valid reason for using force to act against the will of other people: defense against aggression.

It has been said that organizational legitimacy stems from the “consent of the governed”. Taken literally, this is a true principle. It naturally implies the right of individuals to refuse their consent to participate (disobey “authority”), or to withdraw their consent to participate (secede). However, this is not the case with government, as they employ a twisted version of the principle based on manufactured, ill-informed consent of some of the neighbors of the governed. Contrary to what collectivists may claim, there is no so-called “social contract” that binds everyone to submit to violation of their unalienable rights under natural law.

Rather than resort to threats and violence against peaceful people, civilized people use persuasion to build relationships and cooperate to improve their lives.