@thesotiris 27 March 2025 more from that month

Free Markets = Peace: Competition, Incentive, and Humility

When you are **more valuable to others as an empowered trading partner than as a conquered slave**, you guarantee peace as much as possible with him and with every other individual or group. Let’s see how this works. Humans are driven by self-interest. This is neither good nor bad; it is what it is. Those who pretend to be self-sacrificial altruists are selling you something or they love playing the role of the victim - victimhood comes with the privilege of sympathy from pity. Here’s an example. I see a girl scouts’ lemonade stand in my residential area where no other vendors exist. Convenient, right? So, driven by my self-interest, I decide I want some lemonade. That’s value for me in that place and time. Now, I have two options: I can choose to take that value by voluntarily trading with the sellers (in this case, lemonade for some money). Or, I can take the lemonade by force, without giving any value in return. I have the means to steal the lemonade and get away with it: I’m strong, I can run fast, and there aren’t many ways I can be identified and get a knock on my door (in that instant at least). It’s not like the girl scouts will chase me and beat me up. But why on earth would I do that? If I forcefully take what they sell, then I damage their business. The girls will likely stop selling that amazing homemade lemonade conveniently when and where I want it. Or, next time, they’ll have their dads with them with their baseball bats, which again means I won’t have the privilege of buying lemonade. I’ll probably get my skull cracked if I ever walk down that street again. So, it is in my best interest to trade value for value rather than take it by force. Only a complete idiot would steal. Only someone with skewed self-interest would damage his credibility as well as the economy in which he lives - all for a small short-lived short-sighted gain. Yes, some people are completely irrational and are driven by insanity rather than self-interest. Others are just too dumb to know what their best interest is. And other people just want to dominate and to burn every lemonade stand to the ground, even if it means hurting themselves in the process. But how many are these people, and are they enough to dictate how we organise our societies? Are they the ones who get to decide whether we allow free markets or we relinquish our freedoms to an interventionist monopolising centrally coercive government? Really? We relinquish our freedoms by submitting to the whims of the insane? Besides, for those irrationally violent people, that’s what dads with baseball bats are for. Who said communities can’t band together to protect themselves? Who says we can’t have better fairer laws without government? The only thing disallowing or overregulating our ability to meaningfully protect ourselves (to the point of essentially forbidding it) is the state itself. We deserve better protection than a government monopoly on unmotivated, ineffective, corrupt, and brutalising policing. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/punishing-criminals-in-the-absence https://sotiris.substack.com/p/laws-without-government

*“When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”* *- Frédéric Bastiat* The machinery of a free market unhindered by interventionism always tends to balance the economy. A balanced economy (without or with negligible supply/demand discrepancies) has no persistent unemployment, and no excess resources in the hands of people who never earned those resources (as is the case of the state). Vibrant **free markets mean that we all value each other more as trading partners rather than as submitted, conquered, and battered slaves**. We are also endowed with the **humility** of knowing that others can offer similar value to what we offer, and we are not entitled to anyone buying what we sell. Thus our only option is to be gracious and to keep improving our value offering to the world. Free markets lead to efficiency, prosperity, and maximal output. Any forceful intervention in markets is a wrench in the machine, which suppresses the economy and creates monopolies. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-objections-against-statelessness-4 When you are not allowed to trade with someone, or when trading with him becomes extremely difficult, then you can’t get any value from each other, even if you are willing to trade for it. So, the only value you can get from him is to conquer him. This would destroy his ability to produce value, but you can at least seize the scraps from his destroyed resources. Restrictions of trade bring war, and free markets bring peace. Where there is vibrant free trade, it is extremely difficult to have war. **Peace is simply much more profitable than war**. **Who is going to fight a war when people rely on voluntary trade with those they are called to fight against?** However, when regions become protectionist or isolationist, they then cease to be valuable to others as trade partners. So, the only value they represent is that of a conquered slave. In this case, war becomes more profitable than peace. If you offer no potential value proposition to people, then the only value they can take from you is the little they get from your reluctant submission. So, by not making yourself valuable to others as an empowered trading partner, you become more valuable as a crushed defeated opponent. By not seeking to trade, you incentivise and invite violence against you. So **it is up to you to make peace profitable**. Simply being passively peaceful is not enough. You need to offer a value proposition and present a potential win-win scenario where you can trade meaningful value for value with others. **The value they get from you from voluntary transactions must be greater than any value they’d get from looting your resources after destroying your ability to offer value**. This guarantees peace better than any army. Historically, it’s the smallest countries without armies, but with a great value offering, that keep thriving and staying peaceful. Look at Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Luxemburg, Iceland, Hong Kong, Saint Kitts, and even Taiwan - despite China’s theatrics and implied threats of invasion. No one can afford to disrupt Taiwanese tech exports. Taiwan’s rivals get more value from Taiwan by trading with it than they would by conquering it and destroying its ability to offer value. To sum up, **peace comes when people face competition, which grants them the gift of humility of knowing they are not alone in the world, and that they need to earn what they want**. **Without entitlement to monopolies, people have the incentive to work towards what they want by humbly trading value for value**. Yes, even in a free competitive market, there are still people who don’t get it, people who don’t understand **incentive as the greatest and most predictable driver of human behavior**. But they are not even close to being a significant minority, nor do they get to dictate how we run our societies. In other words, **just because some people are insane doesn’t mean we have to make all of society insane to accommodate them**. Just because free markets don’t work for a small minority of insane antisocials doesn’t mean we should disrupt free markets, plant a coercive centralised government, and thus make a zombified economy that works only for the few pulling the strings. **You can’t fight insanity with insanity**. Voluntaryism is the key to saving the human species. The barbarity of coercive centralised government (the state) is becoming an existential threat to all humanity, especially given the advancements in technology and means of mass destruction. Barbarian god-complex psychopaths with nuclear weapons, media propaganda, and mass surveillance capabilities are likely to find a way to destroy everything. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-voluntaryism https://sotiris.substack.com/p/a-threat-based-civilisation-is-not https://sotiris.substack.com/p/you-are-a-slave https://sotiris.substack.com/p/psychological-profile-of-the-ruling Peace will come only when markets are allowed to flourish free from corrupt regulations, protectionism, and government-induced monopolies and unemployment. We must value free competitive markets if we want peace and prosperity. Benefit from **the humility that competition bestows upon you, and therefore, the grounded self-growth that comes with it**. Key takeaway Do you want peace? **Make yourself more valuable as a trading partner than as a conquered slave**. If you feel threatened by individuals or by groups, make them see how **peace with you is more profitable to them than war**, even if that war proves victorious for them. Being passively peaceful is not enough. You need to act to **make peace more profitable than war** and to make others see it too. Thank you for reading. I appreciate your time. All my work here is free. Like, comment, share, or subscribe for free… or not. It’s all the same. Recommended reading ‘Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy’ by Robert P. Murphy https://mises.org/library/book/chaos-theory-two-essays-market-anarchy ‘The Market for Liberty’ by Morris and Linda Tannehill https://mises.org/library/book/market-liberty ‘Democracy: The God That Failed’ by Hans Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/democracy-god-failed ‘The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production’ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/myth-national-defense-essays-theory-and-history-security-production ‘The Private Production of Defense’ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/library/book/private-production-defense ‘The Privatization of Roads and Highways’ by Walter Block https://mises.org/library/book/privatization-roads-and-highways ‘Defending the Undefendable I & II’ by Walter Block https://mises.org/library/book/defending-undefendable ‘No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority’ by Lysander Spooner https://libertyunderattack.com/no-treason-the-constitution-of-no-authority-by-lysander-spooner/ ‘Let’s Abolish Government’ by Lysander Spooner https://mises.org/library/book/lets-abolish-government ‘Anatomy of the State’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/podcasts/anatomy-state ‘For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto ‘Power and Market: Government and the Economy’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/power-and-market-government-and-economy ‘Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market ‘The Ethics of Liberty’ by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/book/ethics-liberty ‘Human Action’ by Ludwig von Mises https://mises.org/library/book/human-action ‘The Enterprise Of Law: Justice Without The State’ by Bruce L. Benson https://archive.org/details/the-enterprise-of-law-justice-without-the-state ‘The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism’ by David Friedman http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Machinery%203rd%20Edn.pdf ‘The Most Dangerous Superstition’ by Larken Rose https://www.amazon.com/Larken-Rose-Most-Dangerous-Superstition/dp/B00N4EGD8C Essays on voluntaryism by Sotiris Rex https://sotiris.substack.com/t/voluntaryism