Freedom First, Then Morality
A sequel to How We Lost Our Moral Agency—And How To Reclaim It, this essay explains how the right to exit creates the foundation for moral society, accountable governance, and the restoration of human agency.
Introduction: The Illusion of Moral Authority
Most people want a moral society. Few are willing to admit what it requires.
We imagine that morality can be legislated, that virtue can be outsourced, that justice can be achieved by voting harder or by forfeiting more power to the central, federal government, but this is a dangerous illusion. Coercion may produce obedience, but it cannot produce morality. A coerced action is not a moral action. If we do good only because we fear punishment, we have not acted morally; we have simply obeyed.
This is the central failure of the modern world: we have built systems that demand conformity at the expense of conscience. We have created a political order that strips individuals of the very agency they need to behave morally, and then we wonder why morality has disappeared.
If we want a moral world, we must begin by permitting morality to exist. And morality can only exist where free will exists—where individuals are allowed to choose how to live, who to cooperate with, and which systems to join or reject. A society that coerces its citizens to participate in society subjugates them and is immoral, and in doing so saps the possibility of morality from its subjects. Participation in society must be chosen. The power to exit is the prerequisite of moral action.
This essay explores, practically, how the right to exit can be reclaimed, and what such a world might look like once we have reclaimed it. It is not a utopia, nor is it a call for chaos or the abolition of rules. It is a vision of society rooted in consent rather than coercion, where governments exist only with the ongoing permission of those they claim to serve, and where men choose where and to whom their productive efforts go. In such a world, moral behavior is built from the ground up, through voluntary cooperation, mutual trust, and the freedom to walk away from societies that no longer deserve our loyalty.
The Prerequisite of Moral Action
Morality is not primarily about outcomes, it is about agency. A moral action is not simply “the right thing done.” It is the right thing done because it is right, by someone who had the freedom to do otherwise. Without that freedom, morality is nullified. A coerced virtue is no virtue at all.
And yet, while morality is rooted in freedom, its fruit is trust and cooperation. Moral actions build relationships, secure promises, and allow peace to scale. But only chosen actions do this. We do not trust a man because he obeys under threat; we trust him because he had the power to harm us and chose not to. That is what makes moral action powerful: it is freely given, and therefore meaningful.
A society that wishes to be moral must begin by permitting moral choice. And that means allowing people the freedom to be wrong.
But the problem runs deeper than coercion. It’s not just that the state enforces morality—it defines it. It decides, on our behalf, what is right and wrong, and then punishes deviation. In doing so, the state becomes an agent in its own right, when it was meant to be an extension of man. It steals moral agency from individuals to sustain its own, and it subjugates us in the process.
But morality, by its nature, can never be dictated. Individuals must freely adopt and live it. The state may reflect the values of a moral people, but it cannot impose those values without corrupting them. Morality is not a legal category. It is a personal responsibility.
We talk about property as land or money, but the first and most sacred form of property is agency: the power to choose. When a system robs us of that power, it steals our liberty, so also our ability to act morally. Coercion is theft of the self, and that makes the restoration of personal agency not just a political cause, but a moral imperative.
This idea is so basic, yet so fundamental. We have been taught the opposite: that good behavior must be engineered through law, surveillance, and control. That people cannot be trusted with freedom because they will abuse it. So we build systems that simulate morality; we extract compliance through threat and then pretend it is moral progress. But a prison is not a monastery, and a society of obedience is not a society of virtue, it is a hollow performance.
And even if we don’t care about genuine moral agency, even if all we want are good outcomes, a voluntary system still outperforms a coercive one because the incentives of a decentralized society are aligned with natural law. It is in everyone’s long-term interest to build trust, keep promises, and punish exploitation. In such a system, even strategic actors behave morally because the natural game exists around morality and reputation, so behaving morally is the winning strategy.
We must start here. If morality is the end we seek, liberty is the condition we must defend. Any system that claims to enforce morality by denying choice is not just ineffective—it is fundamentally immoral, and it undermines the very morality it claims to uphold.
The Moral Power of Exit
If moral action requires freedom, then the test of any society is whether its members can leave it.
By exit, we don’t simply mean fleeing across a border. We mean the ability to withdraw your time, energy, and value from a system that violates your conscience. Exit is the power to say: this system no longer reflects my values—I will not comply, I will not fund it, I will build something better. And to do so without permission.
Without that power, all other freedoms are illusions. A man who cannot redirect the fruits of his labor is not free. He is not a participant in society; he is property of it.
This is what makes the modern state so dangerous. Its power rests in its coercion, but even more so in its inescapability. You cannot simply opt out. You cannot keep your labor, reject its currency, or stop funding its wars. Even if you leave the country, you enter another jurisdiction with its own monopoly on violence. No matter where you go, some institution claims the right to rule you without your consent. The monopoly on violence denies you the right to build a moral world by forcing you to subsidize an immoral one.
But this is changing.
The decentralization of finance, communication, and production is weakening the monopoly. For the first time in modern history, individuals can move energy, capital, and knowledge across borders, and communities, without permission. Tools like Bitcoin don’t just enable economic freedom—they restore moral freedom. They allow you to withdraw your consent and exit. They allow you to build without having to destroy.
And this changes everything.
In a world where governments must earn your participation, where individuals can exit, build, and cooperate elsewhere, power becomes accountable again. Governance stops being absolute and becomes competitive. Institutions that behave immorally lose legitimacy, members, and resources, and institutions that behave morally by honoring agency and earning trust gain them. The state no longer stands above the people; it becomes one of the people’s tools, judged by the same standards as every other.
This is not the abolition of government. It is its moral domestication.
Anarchism is not the rejection of order—it is the rejection of involuntary rule. Government is just the formalization of agreement between men. Men establish systems to coordinate action, but this becomes a problem when these systems declare themselves immune from consent. A moral world does not forbid governments; it forbids monopolies. It refuses to let any man, or institution, claim ownership of others.
In such a world, governments may still exist, but they exist in tension with other choices. They must represent the values of their members, and provide value to their members, or they will lose them. And in a world where exit is possible, pluralism of cooperation is not a threat, it is a proof of freedom. So long as a community respects natural law—no coercion, no theft, no deception—it may structure itself however it pleases. These arrangements may be hierarchical or egalitarian, rigid or experimental, but they remain moral only if membership is voluntary.
This is not moral relativism. Morality is fixed; it is anchored in the conditions required for trust, cooperation, and choice. What is flexible is how people live within that frame. Freedom reveals diversity. And exit ensures that immoral systems cannot endure.
And if a government does act immorally, whether through theft, deception, or aggression, then the people who support it must be held accountable, too. Power without consequence ends. Participation becomes a moral act.
That is what the power to exit restores: not chaos, but conscience.
Moral Legitimacy vs Moral Sustainability
Once we reject the monopoly on violence, a pressing question follows: Who enforces moral order?
The answer is: anyone. Or everyone. Or no one, so long as participation remains voluntary.
In a moral world, enforcement is not dictated from above. It emerges from the agreements of those who choose to live together. Communities may form courts or councils, elect judges, delegate dispute resolution, or rely entirely on personal judgment, reputation, and action. These decisions are not moral or immoral in themselves. What matters is that they are chosen, not imposed.
The boundaries of a moral society are clear: no one may be forced to remain. No one may be punished for leaving. No one may have their labor or agency stolen under the guise of law.
Beyond those boundaries, societies may differ. Some may prize order and structure; others, fluidity and personal responsibility. This is not a flaw; it is freedom in action. There is no single “right” way to cooperate. What is right is that each person consents to the system they support, and retains the power to exit if that system fails them.
While moral legitimacy is a question of consent, moral sustainability is a question of virtue, and not all systems are equally virtuous.
A society that concentrates authority, choosing to delegate judgment, enforcement, or violence, must be careful not to drift into moral complacency. Outsourcing responsibility can make life easier, but it also weakens the individual's moral muscle. Over time, citizens may grow obedient, indifferent, or complicit, and forget that justice requires their participation, not just their taxes.
This is the virtue-based risk of centralization: that the people stop being moral agents and become determined, or passive entities.
This is also why decentralization, while more demanding, offers the greatest long-term stability. When power and moral responsibility remain distributed, individuals must exercise judgment, take action, and live by the consequences of their choices. This constant engagement with moral reality strengthens the culture over time. By contrast, centralized systems may appear more orderly in the short term, but they dull the instincts required for justice. When morality is outsourced and behavior is engineered from above, people lose the habit of discernment. They comply, but they do not choose. And eventually, this devolves from obedience to apathy, confusion, and decay. A society that forgets how to be moral cannot remain moral. Centralized virtue always erodes. But decentralized virtue regenerates—because it is lived, not imposed.
A society that retains moral authority at the individual level demands more and in doing so, preserves more. It trains its citizens to stand against wrongdoing, to act with discernment, and to bear the burden of justice in their own hands. It is harder but more resilient.
And let us be clear: the dangers of decentralization are real. People will behave immorally. Violence will occur. But this is true in every system. What matters is whether that behavior is protected by institutions—or punished by communities. In centralized states, immoral actors often use the law as their shield. In voluntary societies, they must face the people they’ve wronged.
The real threat is not disorder. It is hidden tyranny.
Today, governments steal through inflation, wage war without consent, and imprison dissenters, at times through brute force, but more effectively through the quiet machinery of economic capture. People do not rebel, not because they agree, but because they do not understand. They cannot see the theft. They do not feel the chains.
This is what exit destroys.
When people can withdraw and keep the fruits of their labor, redirect their value, and reject unjust systems without ruin, tyranny can no longer disguise itself as order. Violence becomes visible. Theft becomes traceable. And injustice becomes morally actionable.
This was one insight of the first essay: morality requires visibility. Evil must be seen to be confronted. And only when it is seen can the individual rise in moral defense.
The power to exit doesn’t just change the system. It changes the people within it.
The future is not a single model imposed on all. It is a shared foundation of natural law, above which many orders are built, each shaped by the values of those who consent to live under them.
What matters is not how justice is enforced.
What matters is that no one is forced to fund or obey a system they reject.
Forgiveness, Mercy, and the Burden of Judgment
What happens when someone breaks the moral code of a community?
This is not a question of morality, but a question of virtue. In a world where people are free to build and exit systems, the bounds of morality are clear: no coercion, no theft, no fraud. But how communities respond to wrongdoing—whether they exile, reintegrate, punish, or forgive—is not governed by moral law. It is governed by judgment, and judgment is the realm of virtue.
Some communities may adopt structured processes of restitution. Others may trust the wisdom of elders. Some may welcome back the penitent; others may not. So long as participation is voluntary, none of these choices are immoral. But they are not all equal. They carry different risks, produce different cultures, and, over time, yield different kinds of people.
Mercy is not an entitlement. It is a virtue. Like courage or prudence, it demands discernment. Forgive too quickly, and you invite exploitation. Refuse to forgive, and you may fracture what could have been healed. There is no formula for this; it is the difficult, personal burden of judgment. And it falls on everyone.
This is the challenge of a moral society: not that there are no answers, but that there are no shortcuts. No distant tribunal can decide who deserves a second chance. That responsibility belongs to the community and to the individual.
This is not relativism. The moral law remains fixed. What is flexible is how we apply our virtues within it. And it is precisely because we are free to build different communities that we will see different approaches take shape. Some will succeed. Some will fail. But all will teach.
This question, how to balance forgiveness and justice, is not the focus of this essay. But it is the burden of every free society. And it will be the subject of future work.
When the Illusion Fails—Moral Residue in Immoral Systems
Even in systems built on coercion, you will still find moral people.
Families care for one another. Friends act with loyalty and trust. Neighbors lend a hand. These acts are real. They matter. They are glimpses of the moral order—still alive, still human—trying to breathe through the weight of an immoral structure.
But they are not enough. They are remnants.
These moral bonds exist in spite of an immoral system, acts grasping at what little agency we can achieve. And the moment those individuals are forced to engage with the state—whether through taxation, regulation, or obedience—they are no longer operating on voluntary moral grounds. They are navigating a game they did not design and cannot leave. Their agency is compromised. Their choices are no longer free.
A man who provides for his family while being taxed to fund a war he opposes is not free, nor is the man who opens a business while forced to follow rules that violate his conscience. These people may still act morally within their limited circles, but their engagement with the system as a whole is tainted by coercion. They are no longer moral agents in the full sense of the word.
This is the hidden cost of monopoly power. It creates a world in which the appearance of morality remains, while the reality is hollowed out. People believe they are free because they can still smile at neighbors or volunteer at church, but when it comes to the fundamental levers of survival and cooperation, they are trapped. Their labor, their wealth, and their values are directed by forces they did not consent to.
And so the illusion persists. The state parades these fragments of moral life as proof of its legitimacy, while it quietly undermines the very freedom that made them possible.
Eventually, the contradiction becomes too great. The system demands too much. The illusion fails.
And when it does, people rediscover what was always true: that moral agency begins where coercion ends, and that even in the darkest systems, there remains a seed of choice waiting to be reclaimed.
The End of Coercion, The Start of Morality
The first essay identifies the problem. This essay discusses what we can do about it.
For as long as man could read and write, he has had no real choice. You may reject the system in your mind, you may protest with your words—but to survive, to eat, to house your family, you must play the game. Your labor is taxed, your currency debased, your choices confined to a box drawn by those who rule over you. The only real way out, until very recently, was to die, or to disappear into the wilderness.
But that has changed.
The invention of Bitcoin gave us, for the first time in history, the freedom to preserve and direct the fruit of our labor toward something moral. Toward something voluntary. It is not just “money.” It is stored time. It is your energy, your effort, and your work secured in a form that cannot be confiscated, debased, or silently redirected.
It gives us back our agency, and for the first time, it makes that agency into real property. In the fiat world, your choices are rented. In this world, they are owned. Bitcoin transforms your will into durable capital that reflects both your effort and your values. And once we can preserve value outside coercive systems, we can begin living outside them too.
With fiat currency, every transaction, even the most private and peaceful one, funds a system that claims ownership over your life. With Bitcoin, that energy can be diverted. It can be saved, gifted, exchanged, and built upon outside the reach of those who do not share your values. It allows us to begin forming a moral economy, a parallel structure rooted in voluntary exchange and mutual respect.
Yes, we still live in the world. Yes, we still must use fiat to survive in many ways. But every transaction done in Bitcoin, whether its simply converting fiat to Bitcoin, or exchanging value amongst family, friends, and community, chips away at the monopoly and weakens the lie we live under. We take one step closer to a society that reflects our will rather than subjugates it.
This is how it starts: by reclaiming our energy, one choice at a time.
Not everyone will want a stateless life. Not everyone must. A proper anarchic system allows for pluralist cooperatives and accepts that some will choose hierarchy, central enforcement, and rules. What matters is that their choice no longer binds the rest of us. What matters is that they no longer get to enslave the world simply because the world has no alternative.
Now it does.
This isn’t a call to tear down the state in one final blaze. It is a call to exit peacefully—to opt out where we can, to build and live in a way that reflects our deepest values. It is a call to take back the moral burden of liberty in lived practice, and reclaim our agency.
The world we should fear is not the one in which moral agents sometimes fail. It is the one where no one is allowed to try.