A voluntary society, voluntary community or voluntary city is a term used in
right-libertarianism
Right-libertarianism,Rothbard, Murray (1 March 1971)"The Left and Right Within Libertarianism" ''WIN: Peace and Freedom Through Nonviolent Action''. 7 (4): 6–10. Retrieved 14 January 2020.Goodway, David (2006). '' Anarchist Seeds Beneath the ...
to describe an entity in which all property (including streets, parks, etc.) and all services (including courts, police, etc.) are provided through what the proponents of the term call "voluntary means" and in which they include private or cooperative ownership.
In a "voluntary society", as described by David Beito, Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok, the notion of something being "privately" or "cooperatively" owned would be "radically different" from "monopolistic privatization with state subsidies", or "monopolistic control of public resources by the state", respectively. Instead, courts might be replaced with dispute resolution organizations; police with volunteer-based community defense organizations or private security agencies and crime insurers; transportation authorities with community road associations and rail counterparts; etc. These services were the subject of the book, ''
The Voluntary City
''The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society'' is an Independent Institute-published book, edited by David T. Beito, about communities with voluntary society, private provision of municipal services. Contributors include Stephen Davi ...
'', which dealt with them chapter-by-chapter.
Anarcho-capitalist
Anarcho-capitalism (or, colloquially, ancap) is an anti-statist, libertarian, and anti-political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enfo ...
s view "voluntary societies" as the solution to the conflict between those who favor government allowing behaviors and arrangements such as non-violent drug use, free stores, sexual liberation, voluntary communal sharing, etc., and those who favor government restrictions on such activities. Those who want to live under a certain code of conduct can move to a community that supports and protects it. Anarcho-capitalists such as Stefan Molyneux believe that in a "voluntary society", dispute resolution organizations and pollution insurance companies would prevent problems such as pollution.
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a libertarian nonprofit think tank headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, United States. It is named after the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973).
It ...
, Slightly amended by the author, June 2004.
* Georg Glasze, Chris Webster, Klaus Frantz ''Private Cities''
Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...