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 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 government 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
Australia those countries have incredible economic freedoms they're in
the top 10 for economic freedom and 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 like annual survey about people's
happiness and people report that they are happier in those countries and 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 and both
of those types of freedoms civil liberties as well as economic freedoms
both instances where we live by the mantra that we should interact
peacefully and voluntarily and 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 as well in Canadian
founders of Canada especially former Prime Minister wilfred laurier they
believed that our interactions ought to be voluntary and 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 and 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 and my
family escaped Poland when I was six years old and we declared refugee status
in Germany and 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 and 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
gonna I'm a green card holder in the United States so I've immigrated so much
I basically can sitter myself a person who is just an
immigrant right I'm I don't I mean I do feel a strong kinship with Canada when
people ask me who I am I say you know I'm Peter and I am Canadian nevertheless
I also feel kinship with people who are stuck in situations through no fault of
their own that they want to get out of not just for their own sake but for
their family's sake as well that was true of my mother and my father they
didn't really want to leave Poland things were fine for them in Poland but
they thought about myself and they thought about my sister and they thought
that like we need to get out of Poland we need to move to a country that is a
free country a country that is open to immigrants a country that is open to
refugees and we chose Canada for that reason get smarter faster with new
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