Voluntary and Coercive Relations in Society. An Outline

The article elaborates on two kinds of relations between people that seem crucial to understanding what is the real nature of processes going on in society. First, each of the relations is characterized with cybernetic nomenclature. Then the relations are compared and their intrinsic properties are showed. The last section pictures their consequences for shaping the contemporary society.

For the state is by definition a system of oppression and bondage and dependence of man on man.And if someone says that difference makes here the will of voters announced in democracy once in several years, then I'll respond that for the structure there is no difference whatsoever: the point is not who governs, but that he governs.1

Introduction
The subject of the article is the analysis of voluntary and coercive relations that exist between people in society.Section 1 characterizes both types of relations, section 2 elaborates on their genesis and dependence and section 3 gives a perspective on their evolution.The article is ended with conclusive overview.
The article is written from cybernetic perspective. 2We also refer in it to various sciences (including biology, anthropology, economy and game theory) using methodological apparatus prima facie different than systemic which is stricte cybernetic tool.
From the cybernetics point of view, each human is a relatively isolated complex system. 3Due to its biological structure it recognizes the environment via cognitive representations which are the environment's homomorphic (not isomorphic, in mathematical sense) mapping in the nervous system; this means that there is no mutual equivalence between the representations and the environment.Because of this, the model of the world on which human beings operate is in fact only an incomplete mapping of the full energetic connections in the environment.This in turn results in human knowledge being subjective and tacit and in consequence people's values preference being also subjective and tacit.
Such characterized humans interact with each other in various relations (which are always energo-material interactions which means that there is always energy flow between them).Those relations can be classified considering people's volitionality 4 to comprise them as: voluntary and coercive.This classification includes every kind of relations between people that are the expression of their will (or the lack of will) at the moment of partaking in it.

Voluntary and coercive relations
Voluntary relations are that kind of where both participants (in case of two-person relations) agree to comprise a relation and they can break it by mutual agreement.An example of voluntary relation is exchange of goods and services.In that case each participant resigns form something he or she possesses (some goods), or something he or she disposes of (time, skills), in favour of something he or she needs, and what can be brought by the other side of the relation.Ceteris paribus both sides gain. 5istorically significant example of this kind of relations were the interactions between bourgoise and workers in the XIX th century e. g. in English manufactures system (it is to some extent a canonic example as England of that time was the birthpoint of industrial revolution). 6An example of such relations in present are all market transactions of which we are one side e. g. when we go shopping or conclude 4 Volitionality is what encompasses people's decisions and choices. 5Situation when two people decide to fight with each other cannot be seen as coercive, because there's no force used in decision-making (exactly the opposite was in case of Gladiators' fights -they were slaves).Also in a case when a lifeguard rescues a drowning person, he sometimes drowns him/her a little bit (on purpose, in order to stop him/her struggling and let the lifeguard to do the job) there's no coercion because the drowning person is in a very specific situation of life threat and panic and the lifeguard ceteris paribus keeps the agreement that binds him (if we are talking about guarded swimming pool or swimming area); both sides would probably come to terms with each other if they had time and occasion to do so. 6"The salient fact, and one which most writers fail to stress, is that, in so far as the work people then had a "choice of alternative benefits", they chose the conditions which the reformers condemned.Not only did higher wages cause them to prefer factory work to other occupations, but, as some of the reformers admitted, when one factory reduced its hours, it would tend to lose its operatives as they would transfer their services to establishments where they could earn more" (W.H. Hutt, "The Factory System of the Early Nineteenth Century", in Capitalism and Historians, F. A. Hayek (ed.),London and New York, Routledge Kegan & Paul, 2010 [1954], p. 182).See also R. Hessen, "The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children", in A. Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,  New York, A Signet Book, 1967, pp.110-117; T. S. Ashton, "The Standard of Life of the Workers in England, 1790-1830", in Capitalism and..., op.cit., pp.127-159; C. Nardinelli, Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living, retrieved 28 June 2016 from: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/IndustrialRevolutionandtheStandardofLiving.html; S. Richman, "What Laissez Faire?", in G. Chartier, Ch.W. Johnson (eds.),Markets not capitalism: Individualist Anarchism against Bosses, Inequality,  Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty, London-New York-Port Watson, Minor Compositions, 2011,  pp.124-126; R. T. Long, How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis, in ibidem, pp.315-318.an agreement with a cellphone company.Majority of this kind of relations, both in past and in present, relies on verbal agreement and trust.Even conflicts that may result from them are often solved in the way of voluntary negotiations without public courts. 7n turn, the coercive relations are those where one side extorts from the other side taking part in the relation under the threat of using force (specific informational interaction) or by using force (energetic interaction).The side being extorted has no right to disobey because the extorting side's views are being imposed on him/ her by force.In consequence there's always some kind of coercive apparatus associated with that kind of relations that fulfils the will to use force.For instance, in the simplest case of an assault the person who expresses the will to do so will be at the same time the executor; but often, those roles are separated.In coercive relations, there is not only lack of cooperation present, there is conflict and the situation when one person ceteris paribus gains at the expense of the other person (see footnote 5).
Historic examples of coercive relations in society were the feudal relations of the early Middle Ages based on the assumption that the entire land within certain borders (fields, woods, waters etc.) belonged to the overlord.For instance in early Piast dynasty epoch on Polish grounds the land-use by the overlords was done by creating the estates gathering slaves as well as collecting benefits for the prince from the "free people" (that is non-slaves) that made use of the ruler's ownership. 8The funds obtained from the impositions were used by the overlord to support two groups of loyalty: the executive Druzhina (literally fellowship; the coercion apparatus fulfilling the lord's will) and administration indispensable to governance (controlling and informing the population).It should be noted that knights based their existence not only on salary for the fellowship services (i.e. imposing the obedience), but also on participating in war expeditions and robbery (which was de facto spreading violence).In peace periods the burden of providing the livelihood to the Druzhina fell to the controlled populace.9 In feudal system, comprising voluntary relations was very limited.In other words, if someone wanted to provide others with goods and services e. g. by making pots or clothing he was forced to get the permission from the administration -in this particular case craftsmen's guilds that were the only organisation authorised to produce and sell goods. 10The guilds decided who may produce what, where, how much and even how.The guilds' monopoly was guaranteed by the ruler and executed by the Druzhina (and its local extension -Komes and the borough crew).Thus in the legal sphere created arbitrarily by the ruler and his allies everyone who belonged to the grey market (e.g. independent producers, travelling merchants) was fought against as "bunglers". 11he origins of both types of relations are the same: people are open thermodynamic systems and in order to survive they have to source energy form environment.The letter is unpleasant place to live because its resources (crucial for surviving) are limited and rare. 12Moreover the environment itself resists to human beings (by enslaved and deported, not infrequently castrated and sold to western Europe (or to Asia and Africa).Vol. 13, 2001, pp.177-191; T. Lewicki, "Osadnictwo słowiańskie i niewolnicy słowiańscy w krajach muzułmańskich według średniowiecznych pisarzy arabskich" [Slavonic Settlement and Slavonic Slaves in Muslim Countries According to Medieval Arabic Writers], in Przegląd Historyczny, vol. 43, no. 3(4), 1952, pp. 473-491. 10 As for the polish areas first mentions of guilds as already formed organisations come from the XIVth century.
11 Overlord arranged the fellowship in the strategic towns of the conquered land.KAW, 1990 [1937].
12 "The […] fact is that there exist some things which are sufficiently scarce that they cannot be used by everyone as much as each would like.We cannot all have everything we want.Therefore, in any society, there must be some way od deciding who gets to use what when.You and I cannot simultaneusly drive the same car to our different homes" (D.Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom.Guide to a Radical Capitalism, La Salle, Illinois, Open Court, 1989 [1970], p. 4).means of energetic resistance and informative/cognitive resistance). 13In addition the relation between human being and the environment gets more complicated by the fact that people have complex and individualized hierarchy of needs,14 which is observed even among moderately homogeneous reference groups, and in the end leads to the fact "that different people pursue different ends". 15n this sense, the pursuit of sourcing energy and survival (both individual and species) is causa causarum of cooperation and conflict.

Voluntary relations vs. coercive relations
History of development of human societies is from the very beginning a compilation of the two distinguished kinds of relations.Both clearly "transcend" human species.Aggressive behaviour that corresponds directly to the coercive relations is explicit feature of nature.Relatively high aggression level in humans seems to be an intrinsic feature of human nature, and this is evident from comparative perspective. 16On the other hand, it is not difficult to find in nature examples of complex social orders where activity of individual organisms relies on voluntary relations.In bee or termite communities the mutual communication occurs without central control unit.Ants do not have government that orders them to behave in a certain way and, despite of that, their self-organising dispersed community works pretty well based on mutual direct interactions and solves problems for more than 100 million years. 17Also, in the Neanderthal communities from Middle Palaeolithic (300 thousand to 40 thousand years ago) we find elements of voluntary cooperation. 18t should be noted that from the economic point of view voluntary relations are sine qua non condition of coercive relations.This statement will be more comprehensible when we look at the confluence of the two types of relations, in light of the concept of property.As a source, there are only natural kinds: simple natural kinds (substances like gold which consists of atoms having 79 protons in its nucleus) and complex systems composed of simple natural kinds and intermediate systems (e. g. organic compounds) in various combinations, e. g. human.Thus before one makes (de facto processes) anything, one has to possess something in the first place.Human can possess something that: (a) belonged to nobody before, and was found, (b) he made himself (form natural kinds) or in cooperation, (c) he got in exchange for something else (market exchange transaction that is not a fraud).
From this perspective, coercive relations are perforce based on voluntary relations, as no thing can be taken away from somebody, who has not found that thing, has not made that thing or has not exchanged that thing.The work of creator precedes the need of beneficiary.
Cooperation is rooted in voluntary relations.They are connected to the division of labour in society thanks to which our civilization exists and survives.On the contrary, violence is used by those, who do not want to take part in the anarchy of production (voluntary relations and spontaneous orders based on them) and prefer to live at the expense of those who do.Coercive relations allow certain groups of people to realize their consumptive needs (from the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy), and mental needs (dreams, concepts, desires, ambitions) at the expense of those who are the modes of the anarchy of production (see footnote 14).

Evolution of voluntary and coercive relations
Primary feudal relations went through institutional changes e. g. to the form of absolute monarchy (France, Spain) constitutional monarchy (England) or szlachta (nobility) democracy (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).However from the social cybernetics point of view, until the Industrial Revolution, that form of ruling had nearly the same energo-material constitution (sub-systems and their bindings) as its be interpreted as the beginning of the division of labour.It required "adequate level of organisation and more advanced system of communication (language)" (J.K. Kozłowski, "Człowiek neandertalski i odrębność rozwoju kulturowego w środkowym paleolicie" [Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and the distinctiveness of cultural development in Middle Palaeolithic], in idem (ed.), Encyklopedia historyczna świata, Tom I. Prehistoria, Kraków, Agencja Publicystyczno-Wydawnicza Opres, 1999, p. 52).medieval prototype.Generally speaking it was a socio-economic system based on forcibly executed privileges for closed social groups which membership was granted due to birth and was inherited. 19The rise of sub-systems rooted in coercive relations was largely motivated by interest of people clinging the power (that is the appropriate energetic and informative means) which allowed them to impose their convictions on others.Over the ages the representatives of all sub-systems creating the government (strict political elite, army and administration) did things in the first place to improve their wealth, and then to consolidate it to their heirs. 20ndustrial Revolution started the new era in the possibility of making voluntary agreements.All forms of glebae ascripti disappeared, the development of capitalism put an end to the guilds.Consequently, most people's actions stopped being so remarkably dependent at the minority's decisions, as it was hitherto.For instance, as peasant initially was not an owner but "a thing supported to that ones for who he worked", 21 in capitalism he gained the opportunity to work for himself and change 19 "Two hundred years ago, before the advent of capitalism, a man's social status was fixed from the beginning to the end of his life; he inherited it from his ancestors, and it never changed.If he was born poor, he always remained poor, and if he was born rich-a lord or a duke-he kept his dukedom and the property that went with it for the rest of his life.As for manufacturing, the primitive processing industries of those days existed almost exclusively for the benefit of the wealthy.Most of the people (ninety percent or more of the European population) worked the land and did not come in contact with the city-oriented processing industries.This rigid system of feudal society prevailed in the most developed areas of Europe for many hundreds of years.However, as the rural population expanded, there developed a surplus of people on the land.For this surplus of population without inherited land or estates, there was not enough to do, nor was it possible for them to work in the processing industries; the kings of the cities denied them access.The numbers of these "outcasts" continued to grow, and still no one knew what to do with them.They were, in the full sense of the word, "proletarians", outcasts whom the government could only put into the workhouse or the poorhouse.In some sections of Europe, especially in the Netherlands and in England, they became so numerous that, by the eighteenth century, they were a real menace to the preservation of the prevailing social system" (L.von Mises, Economic Policy.Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow, Alabama, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006 [1979], pp.1-2). 20The consequence of ontological situation of an individual is that he or she may aim at satisfying his or her self-interest shown in his/her decisions and actions.Regarding the other individual he can at most negotiate the range and the goal of cooperation.Thus man aims at maximizing the subjective profit, which means that there are clearly visible irrational elements in human actions like autistic thinking (escaping from reality), ignorance (confusing the model of reality with the reality and invalid identification of casual relations), wishful thinking (confusing declarations/expectations with the real consequences of actions).Taking care of self-interest in the first place as well as its consequences for others is of natural descent.See T. Clutton-Brock, "Cooperation between non-kin in animal societies", in Nature, 462, 2009, pp. 51-57. 21 J. S. Dembowski, Rzecz krótka o Fabryce Sukienney Krakowskiey [A short thing on the cloth manufacture in Cracow], Kraków, Szkoła Główna Koronna, 1791, s. 9. his conditions -dwelling place 22 and wealth. 23Regarding the entire society, the possibility to comprise voluntary relations allowed the poorest to find a way out of poverty (see footnote 6).As Polish theoretician of civilization Feliks Koneczny noted: "individual's wealth does not come from neighbour's poverty, but is the essential initial condition to the latter's wealth (they cannot be wealthy all at once).Somebody has to grow wealthy first and give the others from his gain". 24XIX th century market order not only created the plenty of goods and services, but basically the life we know today. 25owever, contrary to to the widespread belief the era following the Industrial Revolution did not started a new way of thinking about the character of governance.Today representative democracies are -from cybernetics of governance point of view -systems with almost identical structure as patriarchal monarchies.Admittedly their motto seems different: "there is no longer a powerful king, so our representatives can now shape the legal system to benefit the public at large", 26 but 22 In reference to polish lands it looked this way: "cottages dark, cramped, low, dirty, more like a pigsty or a grave than a building for living people" (unnamed author, "Uwagi nad sposobem wydoskonalenia rolnictwa w Polsce" [Remarks on the approach to improve the agriculture in Poland], in Pamiętnik Historyczno-Polityczny przypadków, ustaw, osób, miejsc i pism wiek nasz szczególniej interesujących, P. Świtkowski (ed.), Grudzień, 1784, p. 1148). 23The reason of people's poverty was that they worked for the ruler and did not have time and opportunity to work for themselves.This is how Józef Pawlikowski described it: "Their [peasants] all free time is taken away by the overlord, so when a peasant is supposed to work for himself, how will he get wealthy if he has no time to work for himself?[…] Maintaining property requires labour input, but man-slaves like our peasants do not wish to work because if they are not even their own masters then how they are supposed to be the owners of the land?A free man willingly makes labour input, willingly works for his own property, because he is aware of the unbreachable law that is bound to his property, and which cannot be broken by no hand except his own, a great law that is called shortly: it is mine" (J.Pawlikowski, O poddanych polskich [On Polish subjects], no publishing place, 1788, pp.28 & 57-58). 24F. Koneczny, Państwo i prawo [State and Law], Kraków, Wydawnictwo WAM, 1997, p. 25. 25 "The Industrial Revolution represented a quantum leap in the complexity of economic life.A bewildering variety of new industries and occupations arose.Production techniques became vastly more complicated as mechanization developed and spread.Mass distribution and marketing spun sprawling, intricate webs that connected producers and customers.Countless organizational innovations were devised to manage successfully the high-volume, high-speed flows of inputs and goods through the proliferating new production and distribution systems.In short, industrialization entailed a dramatic elaboration of the division of labor, the result of which was to expand the horizons of achievable prosperity beyond all prior imaginings" (B.Lindsey, Against the Dead Hand.The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2002, p. 38  Policy, 1990, p. 76.In our time we can observe a conspicuous phenomenon of rent seeking, which means that some groups of people seek such a security of their living conditions that gives them measurable benefits at the expense of the rest of society (ability to capture incomes without producing output or making a productive contribution).There are three main groups of this sort: professional politicians, administrative apparatus (bureaucracy) and "private" companies under the aegis of crony capitalism.Professional politicians do not pursuit of win in order to introduce as accurately noted Bruce L. Benson there are two problems with this argument.Firstly, when Western countries abandoned monarchy and liberalized the possibilities of voluntary interactions, they still did not rejected the idea of government itself (strict political elite, army, administration -mechanism of redistribution legitimized by law) and in consequence the coercive relations that underlie this idea (in genetic, structural and functional sense).Secondly, although collecting goods and centralization of power ("privileges") may not be what people making government declare to be their goal in the first place, these are anyway the essential consequences of partaking in the system which original goal was exactly like this. 27Whether the government producing law is a totalitarian king or a representative democracy, power is centralized and coercion is used to impose rules beneficial to some upon the rest of the population.Government is still a wealth transfer mechanism". 28Thirdly, what Benson does not mention, human as such hasn't changed -he still aims at reaching his own goals and uses weak models of reality (see footnote 20).This is why the contemporary example of coercive relations, that comes form the Middle Ages, is not the existence of regulations or taxation, but existence of the state per se. 29

Conclusions
To sum up, according to game theory, voluntary relations are undoubtedly a positive-sum game, as both sides of it gain.In other words, in case of voluntary relations, each player, who follows his own strategy, wins something, what then allows the others, who do not possess anything, or who possess little, to change their situation for better. 30Of course in capitalistic market characterised in well-developed division of labour the payoff matrix is seldom symmetric.The thing is, however, that we do not know any way to improve both players' wealth, other than voluntary relation.Any other kind of relation will lead to one side's wrong, and eventually to a conflict.A participant in voluntary relation must be aware of that asymmetry of payoff, but his gain is enough reason to comprise it.
Coercive relations regarded in individual dimension (as a relation between e. g. ruler collecting tributes and the subject), from the game theory point of view, certainly were, initially, zero-sum games because both sides' interests were opposed (the ruler's gain was, at the same time, the subject's loss, especially in the view of limited resources and insufficient development of the anarchy of production).Today however, tax-payers often do not feel as victims because of paying taxes, 31 so in that case (after several clarifications that would have to be made) the coercive relation could even be interpreted as a positive-sum game. 3230 To put some problematicity to our point of view: analysed types of situations should be placed in a range between failures situations (when the exchange occurred, but the participant for some reason decided to get back to status quo) and fruitful situations (situations that create new conditions satisfying both sides).Any way voluntary relations assume the possibility of negotiations (see footnote 7). 31Many people claim that they pay taxes voluntarily.This statement however does not express anything and is pointless, because tax-paying has nothing to do with freedom of choice.Indirect taxes like VAT or excise tax are surely paid by everyone who consumes any buys products in government concessioned stores (that is "legal").Direct taxes imposed on income or private property the taxpayer is obliged to pay by himself.For tax avoidance results in penalties and eventually prison.Long-term penalty avoidance as well as resisting the officials who only "execute the orders" will lead to battery, abjection or simply death.The relation between the tax-payer and the democratic authority is by all means coercive. 32This issue is related to the entire spectrum of beliefs (expressed as rhetoric questions) like: "If not government, then who would build roads?", "If not government, then who would protect me from the bad guys?".These kinds of arguments can be challenged in a very simple way by asking a question in the same symmetrically general manner in light of Aztec civilization: "If not human sacrifice, then who would feed the Sun?".Just because someone doesn't see a solution is not an argument for disallowing the others the possibility to solve it.On the subject of roads: see B. Powell, Sell the Streets, retrieved 29 June 2016 from: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Powellstreets.html;K. A. Carson, The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies, retrieved 29 June 2016 from: https:// fee.org/articles/the-distorting-effects-of-transportation-subsidies; S. Ikeda, Urban Design and Social Complexity, retrieved 29 June 2016 from: https://fee.org/articles/urban-design-and-social-complexity;R. G. Holcombe, Common property in Anarcho-Capitalism, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 19, No.  2, 2006, pp.3-29.In turn, regarding the issue of individual defence (self-defence) it is worth knowing, However, considering coercive relations in individual dimension is misleading because it doesn't show the full range of energetic interactions in society.Important factor of coercive relations, which is unveiled in system's theory point of view, is the disastrous and dissipative role of administration (see footnote 26).In global perspective of game theory we can easily see that the existence of states and everything that that they carry only initially can be zero-sum games.In long term perspective they are most often negative-sum games, especially in respect to contemporary democracies.The existence of a government results in its overgrowth and consumes so much of collected funds (such centralization leads to economy collapse or war).Paradoxically, both sides of such coercive relation will lose.In other words, everyone contributes, but later, almost everybody gain from the "business" much less than the contribution they made. 33oluntary relations and cooperation are extremely important negentropic factors, because they are de facto a systemic way of input processing in the whole society, which gives the advantage in survival, in comparison to, "just", individual cognition and its consequences.Joint problem-solving based on voluntary relations is the first step to the development of cognitive division of labour i. e. producing various kinds of knowledge and various actions (socio-economic division of labour).Comprising voluntary relations leads to the creation of dispersed system of spontaneous decision-making (Cosmos type order, according to Hayek).This kind of order emerges from mutual non-violent interactions of individuals, it is not a product of intelligence, that is, it is not intentionally created according to some in advance made assumptions, or devised plan. 34It is simply extended that in Milwaukee County the average response time of the police called to a crime (mostly, brutal incidents with theoretically the highest priority) measured over the course of several years are: for burglary -52 minutes, for armed robberies -20 minutes, for sexual assaults -59 minutes, for gunfights -over one hour (see Sheriff David A Clarke Interview, retrieved 29 June 2016 from: https://vimeo.com/136379844).In contrast, the USA Department of Justice estimates, that the realistic response time of the police is around 10 minutes (see C. Bialik, "Detroit Police Response Times No Guide to Effectiveness", retrieved 29 June 2016 from: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323997004578642250518125898).But, as accurately noticed the author of the blog: http://www.hoplofobia.info/, even the idealized, proverbial "three minutes" are still far too long in the real world.The only alternative is self-defence. 33Additionally, in view of Austrian Economic School, the "government investments" made by civil servants are most often malinvestments, that is wrong investments, and that means that their outlays (costs) will not return (and, in extreme cases, will be completely wasted).See L. J. Sechrest, "Explaining Malinvestment and Overinvestment", in Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 9 (4), 2006, pp. 27-38. 34 Certain people, being a part of net of voluntary relations, may only have knowledge of the general principle of the plan's organization because, considering people's nature, they cannot know all the conditions of time and space, which constitute this kind of (or any other) spontaneous order.