Classical liberalism #7: What authority should government have over our actions? | Peter Jaworski

Voluntary action is about peaceful interrelationships between persons. There's a broader question about voluntary action which has to do with whether or not all of our actions are voluntary. Other related questions, for example, if I'm in the middle of a hurricane and the hurricane forces me to go somewhere, then in a sense my actions are not voluntary; they are forced.

Plenty of classical liberals have opinions about whether or not we have free will or whether or not our actions are predetermined by other facts. Nevertheless, when classical liberals talk about voluntary action, they're talking about interpersonal relationships. They're talking about the authority and legitimacy of governments everywhere to be able to make people do what they don't want to do.

Voluntary action says that the scope of legitimate government authority is extremely narrow. We should maximize, or at least try to have as much as possible, voluntary interactions with people, and that applies to government just as surely as it applies to what we do with our friends and our neighbors.

It's worth looking at the countries around the world that are considered the freest. So I'm thinking about countries like Norway, countries like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Those countries have incredible economic freedoms; they're in the top 10 for economic freedom.

You'll notice that those countries do better with respect to wealth, with respect to health, even with respect to self-reported happiness scores. They do this annual survey about people's happiness, and people report that they are happier in those countries. Not only are those countries more economically free than some of the other countries in the world, they also have greater civil liberties as well.

Both of those types of freedoms—civil liberties as well as economic freedoms—are both instances where we live by the mantra that we should interact peacefully and voluntarily, without making people do what they don't want to do. I think that makes people better off.

The founders of the United States Constitution and the founders of Canada, especially former Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, believed that our interactions ought to be voluntary. That means significant restrictions on what the government is permitted to do.

One thing that's controversial at the moment, but is less controversial amongst classical liberals, is the extent to which governments can restrict who may emigrate and who may leave. Immigration is the subject of a lot of controversy. But for classical liberals, the question that they ask is: What right does a government have to stop somebody who would like to move from one country to another?

Especially if there's someone in the immigrating country, in the home country, that would like to extend an olive branch or would like to ask that person to come into that country. Immigration is a sensitive topic, and not all classical liberals agree with one another on this issue.

But just as we don't have a right to tell our neighbors that they can't go, that they can't move to another house, or that they can't move from one state to another, or one province to another, so too does the government fail to have the right to prevent people from coming here if they so choose.

Take me as an example. I was born in Poland. It was communist Poland, so they didn't take voluntary action very seriously at all. My family escaped Poland when I was six years old, and we declared refugee status in Germany.

As soon as we arrived in Germany, and as soon as our refugee application was accepted, we filed paperwork to move to a free country. And a free country is, of course, oh pause, Canada! Yes, you got it right, that's right! We wanted to move to Canada. It took Canada three years to process our request for immigration, and then finally we were permitted to move to Canada.

So when I was nine years old, I finally got an opportunity to move to Canada. The issue of immigration is personal to me. I've had personal experiences with both being an immigrant and being a refugee. At the moment, I'm go...