Agorist Thesis #1

1. Trade that is unregulated, untaxed, and unmonitored is the natural right of all human beings.

This thesis is pretty straightword, now let me sell my case to you.

Taxation is forcing people to spend money on goods or services they wouldn't do voluntarily.  Taxation is bad economically, because it distorts the profit/loss signals the market provides - causing you to not know if your resources are being used wisely or not.  Also, by taking away part of what I earn, it is less incentive for me to earn more - especially if there's different tax brackets.


I often hear arguments from those promoting the legalization of marijuana say 'hey, we should tax it to pay for healthcare and stuff!'.  I support legalizing marijuana 100%.  But I do not support coercing businesses into paying for services involuntarily, just because of the product they're selling. There is nothing wrong with a business donating to hospitals and charities voluntarily, forcing a business to do this is immoral.

One way I could see this working is that if there's a public demand for it, a business might say 'hey! we're donating x% of our profits to the local children's hospital!', and people might chose that business over another one for that reason.

In today's growing surveylance/police state, oversight is becoming another concern.  Individuals have a right to have their trade be as private or as public as they want. But forcing them to be more public than they want to over a trade (whether it be medicine, sex, food, ect) is wrong.

Everyone has a natural right to have their trade be unregulated, untaxed, and unmonitored.  This doesn't mean you *can't* voluntarily have your goods/services be regulated by a 3rd party, but it does means that you have a right to opt out of anything (eg: omish people should be able to sell milk that doesn't have any labels on it).

Let's say you own a restaurant in a free market.  After a rise of food poisoning (for whatever reason), a business that regutes restaraunts was created, and because consumers found the service valuable, it received donations from individuals allowing it to financially sound.

This agency would require permission from individual restaraunts before inspecting them.  Restaraunts that failed to pass inspection wouldn't be closed, but would gain bad marks from the inspection agency and the more creditable the agency was, the more damage it would do to that restaraunt's business.

Let's say that a very nice restaraunt *did* get bad marks from the certain free market food and safety agency.  You know the owner, and he claims it's because the agency inspector was dishonest about his business.  Since this is a free market and not a government monopoly on regulations, you can still enjoy the restaraunt, - and consumers can say that the opinion of that regulation agency isn't creditable - therefore that agency would most likely lose a lot of business, and would lose influence on the market.

It is impossible to tell if this situation would happen in a free market, because goods and services would be provided according to what people need and want.  For example, with technological advances, you can check out restarants and other businesses online to see what hundreds of other customers think of them.

Questions and comments are appreciated! If you have any, please leave them in the comments section below.

Agorist Theses originally from An Agorist Manifesto by Kyle Bennett.