23A046 A Contractual Society? by Jim Davies, 11/14/2023

When the last vestige of government evaporates for want of employees (because everyone has learned its true nature and so will decline to work for it) with its pettifogging bureau-rats, arrogant cops, taxes, endless wars, libraries of laws, regulations and punishments, etc, and a Zero Government Society (ZGS) begins on what I've called E-Day, can it also rightly be called a "contractual" society?

Unambiguously, yes and no!

First the "yes" bit. For sure, it's a society in which no obligation whatever rests upon any person unless he himself has chosen to undertake it, without coercion, by what's called a "contract." There is no government and therefore no laws, so everybody's conduct is at his own discretion.

Does that mean he is free to commit murder and mayhem at will? - to treat everyone else's property as his own? Absolutely not! Why? - because no ZGS will even come into being until everyone has learned that every person owns himself, not just the one about whom that question is asked. So we can be certain that he knows that any aggression against anyone else would violate the very principle that he has embraced, and would cause his victim to demand restitution.

He will also know that if that demand were upheld by a free-market court and yet he refuses to provide it, he will be shunned. And then he will be unable to function in the ZGS - perhaps unable to eat or drink. Nobody will deal with him.

So he is completely free - but if he doesn't let everyone else enjoy the same freedom, he won't be able to enjoy it. It's vital to understand that.

He will be burdened by no obligation unless he so chooses. So he might elect to agree with an employer in need of help; he promises to provide work for one month, in exchange for a princely sum at month-end. He gets to work, trusting the contract, and the boss gathers the money together, trusting likewise that the work will be done. Each has an obligation, but only because he so chose - believing it to be in his best interest.

Similarly, an engineering company might contract to instal a turbine generator for another firm, for a mere $1.5 million, completion in 90 days. When the job is done, the payment is made - fulfilling the contract. If at the outset those terms are not acceptable to either party, no turbine and no payment.

So yes, a ZGS can certainly be called a contractual society. Every interaction among its residents will involve a contract - unless, as is common, both the quid and the quo are exchanged immediately, with no waiting. There will be tens of millions of contracts every day; some oral (eg "Meet you at Murphy's bar at 12:30") and some, more important, written.

Then the "no" bit. A silly notion is going around that a ZGS will be like a club, which you can join only if you contract with it, to keep its rules and play your part. That's fine for a chess or tennis or cookery club, a church or oddfellows society, which is small enough to have many rivals, which is easy to join or leave and which imposes no obligations on any non-member. But the ZGS will begin in a country such as what is now the USA, and may have over 300 million participants, and is very expensive to leave. No equivalence.

A come-back might be that a ZGS might be an example of Panarchy, with (eg) every other house in a row being participants, and all others staying part of a conventional State; but that's ludicrous; it could not possibly work.

Much more important yet: the ZGS will have no central "authority" such as a board of directors, with whom a membership contract might be made. That would be a government, or would fast become one, but government will have evaporated; it's a Zero Government Society. This is fundamental. You don't apply to join, you are physically "there" as always, but have undergone the education prerequisite for its existence and understand the consequences of self-ownership, and just go on living and taking care of yourself, making only such contracts with others as you (and they) find useful and profitable.

We can be certain of that, because without that understanding and the total withdrawal of labor from government that it will bring, the ZGS will not exist. So when it does exist, that understanding will be universal; and any exceptions will be readily handled by the efficient justice industry as above.

So in that sense, the ZGS is not at all a "contractual society". Same words, wholly different meaning.