Oh, I love this post. Thank you, Dan. Your previous post started what turned into a multi-hour conversation with my business partner who didn't like the "cake" example you linked to, but otherwise agreed with your post. I tried (and failed) to explain to him the use of violence to enforce our social ideals on non-violent people is never justified. I'm curious where this post will lead our discussion. :)
Some of my favorite nuggets:
The only non-violent society that will have staying power is the one that can be born under oppression and through its own strength overthrow that oppression while adhering to its own principles.
The key to decentralizing power is to decentralize control over reputation.
It is the overly specific laws that allow individuals in power to abuse the masses and prevent individuals from making more decentralized judgments.
There very suggestion that violence be initiated against someone is a threat to such a society. Such an individual could not be trusted.
Control over the reputation system of society is absolute power.
So good. :) As for taking practical steps to bring about a voluntary world, I had an idea I'd like your opinion on. As much as Anarchists like to say, "I don't know" when asked how something will be accomplished without government, I think it might be beneficial to at least start thinking seriously about the services people do want. What about a crowd-sourced, decentralized approach to figuring out solutions? We could take the federal budget, as an example, and go through it line by line, explaining in a shared spreadsheet document how we as voluntaryists would provide (or eliminate with justification) those services via non-violent means.
Anyone interested? Instead of each line item having one or two non-violent solutions, we could probably come up with 20 at least. Every time a Statist says, "But without government, how would we...?" we can point them to the line item they care most about along with many peaceful solutions.