eKourier July 2015

NEV’S NOTES

Nevs Notes... SELF OWNERSHIP - THE VERY IDEA!

Nev enjoyed expressing his ideas in this section of the Kourier. These little gems have been appreciated by many in KSS. We will continue to publish his ideas that we have in stock. Enjoy!

Isn’t this just too extreme? Shouldn’t there be a little window of opportunity to regulate, to coerce, to tax — just a bit? Well, no! Once you start on this slippery slope, where does it lead? If you concede 1% of your personal sovereignty, your self-ownership, from then on it is just a question of degree. And if it is The State to whom you concede your sovereignty, then it is just a matter of time before The State becomes part owner of you. The Communist State required 100% conces- sion of self-ownership to itself. The advocates of self Ownership include John Locke — “every man has a property in his own person” — and Henry David Thoreau who saw in full self-ownership his idea of Utopia. Murray Rothbard asserted that 100 percent self-ownership is the only moral and natural ethic. Hans-Hermann Hoppe states that self-ownership is axiomatic — that to assert otherwise is itself an expression of self-ownership. Clearly self-ownership sits in the individ- ualist-anarchist, the libertarian camp, and that we each have a moral and natural Right to be the exclusive controller of our own body and life, and the products thereof. September 28th, 2011

‘ The term “self ownership” implies the idea that each of us owns ourselves, our life, and no one else has a claim over us such as “national interest” or by an Act of Parliament that decrees that self-ownership be suspended in this Special Situation. It is rather outrageous, isn’t it, to assert the right of complete self-ownership, of total individual freedom and responsi- bility? Who ever heard of such a thing? we choose not to do, or not to do what we choose to do. This would include Conscription to go to war. Conscription is slavery. And of course the raising of taxes to prosecute a war is theft. In a truly free society, self-ownership is unequivocal. Voluntarism is supreme. Force, fraud and coercion cannot be sanitised or justified under any guise

The term “self-ownership” implies the idea that each of us owns ourselves, our life, and no one else has a claim over us. Such an assertion and concept is embraced in the American Declara- tion of Independence, that revolutionary document, which declares people be free for “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. No King, no State, no Government no group or Church may have a claim on us without our consent. Our life and what we do with our life is ours to choose. No one else can live our life for us; we are each responsible for our lives, and this implies the product of our lives. What we earn, what we save, what we trade, is ours to keep or to spend as we choose. The above may sound rather innocuous, but there are deep implications. For example, with self-ownership if what we earn or find or trade or invent is ours and ours only, then no other party has a right to claim it or part of it. This includes a state or king or government. Hence, no tax. If a group or body or government coerces us to pay a levy, a fee, a tax to which we do not voluntarily consent, then it is theft, the same as if a gang of robbers threatened to take our property.

‘

And no one else can force us to do what

19 Kennards Kourier July 2015