Liberty and Freedom are concepts that have been given a lot of attention over the history of mankind yet never really achieved.
There has always been a struggle between one’s desire do be free and other’s desire to control.
The cause of liberty and freedom is often the loser in these struggles. Oppression and tyranny has reigned supreme all over the globe.
Even in the United States of America, a country which was founded on many core concepts of liberty and freedom has succumbed to the dark side of oppression and tyranny over the years.
Throughout history people have tried to think of different ways to organize a society, with varying degrees of success.
As a people we’ve had a lot of ‘isms thrust upon us. Everything from tribalism, feudalism, socialism, communism, capitalism, and others. Each of these ideologies have their strengths and weakness.
One thing is fairly evident. Every one of these ideologies have resulted in the deaths and misery of an uncountable number of people throughout history.
From my research, I believe I’ve found the right ‘ism, that if applied properly would put an end to unnecessary suffering and bring about prosperity for everybody. (Sounds too good to be true, huh?)
That system of belief is Voluntaryism (my preferred designation). Other names for it are Anarchism or Libertarianism. There can be differences between these monikers but for the most part they’re synonymous.
Awesome, I’ve found the solution to all of our troubles! All we have to do is start living by the principals of voluntaryism and we’ll have our utopia!
Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Voluntarism requires voluntary cooperation between people, and therefore one cannot force another on to be a voluntaryist.
Damn it, that complicates things. How can one convince everyone else to be voluntaryists?
People have been trying to do this for many decades now and haven’t made much headway. Most people are happy to be controlled and happy to be the beneficiaries of the control of others.
Even if you had the opportunity to change the system to a voluntaryist one overnight it would be irresponsible to do as such a drastic change would inevitably result in casualties.
Maybe you could try to gather a bunch of like minded people to all move to one geographic location to enact a great voluntaryist experiment. This would be wonderful and there are people right now trying to accomplish such a thing. Unfortunately there are tremendous costs and roadblocks involved that make this option extremely difficult to say the least. If only there was a way to do this without such costliness and obstacles.
I believe that experements in voluntaryism need to be conducted. I believe it is irresponsible to conduct these on the general public. I also believe that it’s borderline irresponsible to conduct these experiments even with volunteers. Yet I also believe that these experiments are necessary to work out aspects of voluntaryism, “find and fix the bugs” as it were. How can we conduct these experiments in a responsible, moral and ethical manner?
My answer, Libreterra!
The idea of Libreterra came to me as I was playing open world video games like, Skyrim, Conan Exiles, and Ark. These games are beautiful recreations of the world that can become incredibly immersive.
What if you gathered a group of skilled video game modders and took a game like Ark. Then modified it to add the infrastructure needed to implement principals laid out in a book like “For a New Liberty” by Murray M Rothbard.
Then allowed a bunch of people who all agreed on those principals to “play” in the Libreterra world. Simulating as much as possible what it would be like to actually live in a voluntaryist society.
The “game” could be used to learn about ways to handle many often brought up problems like m’roads.
If the voluntaryist systems actually work, the “game” could be used to educate the general public and hopefully win them over to the cause of liberty.
It could be further used as an example to others on how they could implement these principals in their actual lives and maybe, just maybe we could begin a transition from a top down controlling society to a bottom up voluntary society.
The greatest upside is that if it doesn’t work then no one needs to suffer or die. You could just reset and try again.
Further Reading:
- Objectives – The Objectives for Libreterra
- FAQ – Libreterra Frequently Asked Questions