26A027 Association by Jim Davies, 7/7/2026

By natural right, anyone can do anything he or she likes. That's freedom.

Therefore, the one thing nobody can rightfully do is to over-rule what anyone else likes to do; initiating force is the only unacceptable conduct in a free society. Notice: this is not a separate rule or principle but is required by the first line above, following from it directly.

So, one of the infinitude of things we're rightfully free to do is to join with others in some venture; to associate. A club, a sports team, a church, a charity, a business company... anything, so long always that it assumes no right of action not possessed by its members individually; for none of them can pass to the group a right that he does not himself possess. So, it can not over-rule non-members' wishes, as in the preceding paragraph.

Associating can be informal and oral, though the more members involved, the greater the need for the group to have a written understanding of what it's for and what actions it means to take. That's common sense, to prevent or limit confusion. All that is easy to understand and very simple.

To associate in any way that does involve imposing rule on non-members would therefore violate their self-ownership right. It's incompatible with freedom. Yet government, or a State, does exactly that, 24/7. To "govern" is to over-rule, to employ force.

Therefore, nobody has a right to associate in the form of a government. Therefore, no state has any right to exist.

And yet, as we saw in last week's ZGBlog, that's exactly what America's founders did; they formed an association called the United States Government, equipped it solemnly with a Seal and detailed Charter and armed agents to compel non-members to pay all its expenses, and failed to disassociate the smaller ruling associations of the existing 13 ex-colonies. They flagrantly violated the Self Ownership Axiom (SOA), grossly exceeding their own rights, yet falsely called the result a "free" country.

The 8-billion strong human race is now enmeshed in about 200 such states, each of them busy violating the SOA. The drag on all human progress has been incalulably massive, ever since they first appeared, some 10,000 years ago; my Denial of Liberty gives some idea of the wreckage so far caused by this gross contradiction, by which basic human nature is prevented from operating.

Interference in ordinary marketplace exchanges (wages for work, money for purchases...) has for all that time made those transactions suboptimal. We wish to do it on those terms, but government commands that we do it on these terms. So each party gets less satisfaction than he would otherwise have done. So growth is less; not (say) 5% a year, it's only 3%.

Doesn't sound much? - check the math. Over just a single century, 5% a year multiplies wealth (1.05^100 =) 131 times; but 3% raises it only 19 times, or seven times less. Over 10,000 years - 100 centuries - the difference has so many zeros, it would need a whole paragraph to show them.

That's the material cost of letting government exist. But the monotonous record of government conduct shows that they wage war on each other, with attendant killing, maiming and ruination. To put it mildly, that devastates the whole quality of life.

These costs of allowing governments to go on existing, daily violating the SOA, is monstrous. I can't overstate the vital importance of bringing this era to an end. It's not just a nice-to-have, or a Quixotic dream; it's a fundamental, urgent need. The question is not whether to do it, but how.

The "How?" is to consider on what government depends for existence, then take it away. It's not voting, for vote counts can be (and are!) fabricated and elections can be (and have been) simply canceled. Elections help fool people into supposing government is valid, but are not a critical dependency.

I thought for quite a while that taxes were essential, but they are not; "money" can be (and now is) conjured up by command of the ruler; it's called "fiat" money, Latin for "create."

Labor, on the other hand, is something without which government is powerless. It consists only of people who will work for it. True, AI will replace human beings for an increasing number of its jobs (what a dreadful prospect!) but still it depends on an irreducable core; generals and grunts. Take away the grunts, and it will implode like a busted balloon.