10 Reasons Why Voluntary is Good and Coercive is Bad

1. Competitive incentives, which drive down prices and increase quality, can flourish only where property rights are respected and political barriers to entry are non-existent.

2. Ditto for the culture of low time preference, which encourages saving necessary to undertake and carry through sustainable capital investments, which increase the marginal productivity of labor.

3. Ditto for the existence of the market price system, which allows for comparing the profits and losses of engaging in any given business activity, thus enabling the rational allocation of resources from the point of view of consumer sovereignty.

4. Ditto for the existence of a horizontally integrated entrepreneurial system composed of a multitude of independent decision-making units, which allows for very quick and efficient transmission of information relating to specific circumstances of time and place.

5. Every voluntary transaction is necessarily a positive-sum game (both parties gain), while every coercive transaction is at best a zero-sum game (the coerced loses what the coercer gains).

6. It is not just the case that, unlike peaceful agents, coercive monopolies can flourish without producing any goods desired by the consuming public. In fact, they often flourish in proportion to the amount of "bads" they produce, since these provide them with endless justifications for ever further expropriations and intrusions.

7. Every act of coercion involves an implicit recognition on the part of the coercer that he enjoys the same right to free action that he denies to the coerced, thus generating a performative contradiction.

8. Only voluntary actions have moral worth, since every act of coercion reduces the coerced to a tool or a means. Thus, for instance, coercive redistribution of resources is completely bereft of charitable qualities.

9. Voluntary giving creates a culture of benevolence and gratitude. Coercive taking creates a culture of parasitism and resentment.

10. Coercivism is predicated on the threat of involuntary pain, which is an intrinsically undesirable sensation.