7 Reasons Libertarians Should Check Out Voice & Exit

You Should Check Out Voice & Exit Conference in Austin: Here’s 7 Reasons Why

By Avens O’Brien

This June 20th & 21st, a large community of innovative, creative individuals will be gathering in Austin, Texas to attend the Voice & Exit festival. Here’s seven reasons you should get your ticket, book your flight and “Exit” into the future with them.

1. It’s Actually Inspiring – Before You Even Get There!

The founders of Voice & Exit are Seth Blaustein, a filmmaker, and Max Borders, a writer and philosopher who edits The Freeman publication. They are storytellers, and as such, they know how to put together an event that weaves the participants into the story, helps them tell their own, and inspires them to activity. They’ve been releasing promotional videos leading up to the event, and every single one of them is tremendously engaging. The event this year will also be photographed by Judd Weiss, so you know the pictures coming out will be amazing.

2. It’s About Growing Ideas!

Voice & Exit started in 2013. The first one was held with ten speakers and a happy hour during SXSW. 250 people attended. Now in it’s third year, the event is held over two days: it features nine visionary speakers including Ryan Holiday, John Mackey and Jeffrey Tucker, includes interactive “unconferencing” workshops, and blooms into an inspirational party of art, music and technology. It’s tagline is “Maximize Human Flourishing”, and not only does it do that – it’s flourishing itself.

3. The Speakers Are Exciting!

This year’s conference has a full roster of impressive speakers: the entire list can be found here. This year’s attendees will see Ryan Holiday talking about personal philosophy that gives rise to human flourishing, Jamie Wheal talking about flow hacking during the Friday Mastermind, and the “Biology of Bliss” during his Seeds talk, Alex Tabarrok envisioning a world without borders, Jeffrey Tucker showing us how the peer-to-peer revolution will transform our world, and Magatte Wade showing us how entrepreneurship can be the phoenix of the third world, among many other fantastic minds.

In previous years they’ve had Dave Asprey, The Bulletproof Executive speak on biohacking and willpower, and Joe Quirk who shared the promise of seasteading last year.

4. It’s A Post Politics Environment!

Something I love to ask fellow liberty activists is “if tomorrow we won and you didn’t have to fight against state oppression anymore, where would all your energy go? What would you do next?” What I love about Voice & Exit is this is exactly what they are asking their participants, except they cut right past the “if you won” concept: you won because you’re alive, and you don’t need permission to begin living in a post-political atmosphere. V&E isn’t here to support political parties or try to work within existing systems: it’s here to talk about voluntary solutions in the world. Criticize through creating, they say.

What is so appealing about V&E is that it’s not exclusively or even specifically libertarian. It’s innovative. It can be communal, or entrepreneurial – as long as it’s voluntary. Optimism and collaboration are essential elements of Voice & Exit. Something liberty certainly needs.

5. Brings People Together for Common Purposes!

It looks like this year they’ll have such strange bedfellows as Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks and potentially Allison Holcombe of the ACLU joining together for a transpartisan conversation in one of the Sprouts Workshops on Prohibition and Overcriminalization.

Open collaboration is a necessity of Voice & Exit, bringing people of all backgrounds together to help positively create new systems, new solutions to the problems we all acknowledge.

6. It’s The Natural Evolution of Its Inspirations: Burning Man or TED but Better!

Voice & Exit’s founders won’t deny inspiration from the best parts of TED or Burning Man or early SXSW and other outside-the-box conceptual participant-driven experiences. Unlike TED, V&E isn’t afraid of fringe or contrarian ideas, and seeks to create two-way conversation/collaborations. Unlike Burning Man, V&E is far more accessible and quite a bit more curated. The result is an event-driven by voluntary solutions that inspire new ideas. The entire event is built on a transformative experience: have your mind “seeded” by speakers, “sprout” through your participation in workshops, “bloom” into your creativity, and “harvest” your ideas.

Voice & Exit is an alchemy of intellectuals, artists and doers. It’s eccentric, and requires its attendees be open and fearless in their desire to innovate, create and explore at the fringes.

The name Voice & Exit “comes from the idea of using free expression (voice) or an opt-out/opt-in dynamics (exit) to make social change.”

7. The Focus Is On Optimism & A Bright New World

Humans evolve – we’re one of the most adaptive species on the planet, and Voice & Exit is focused on our very human nature to fix our problems – it’s what has made us the dominant species on this planet. Voice & Exit embraces change for the sake of human flourishing, and celebrates choice, diversity and pluralism. As a result, all voluntary ideas are welcome, and free minds encouraged well, through events like this, can open up new paths, new concepts, and new ways to see the world and to live in it.

The obstacles to the concept of Voice & Exit can include old habits, skepticism, status quo bias, tribalism, clinging to power, and fear of change.

The balance is in what 2013’s speaker Max Marty referred to as “practical radicalism”. Promoting ideas, through practical solutions rather than utopian daydreams. This is an event for doers, for people who wish to be inspired and then actually utilize that inspiration to do and to make and create. Whether it’s seasteading, crypto-technologies, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biohacking, lifehacking, experimental community building or things we haven’t heard of yet, Voice & Exit is open to creative, non-coercive systems.

Founder Seth Blaustein states: “All of the greatest innovations and revolutions of thought have their genesis in the realm of “that’s not possible” or “that’s idealistic”. If we want to reckon with history, we have to look at the fringes to find the future. Sometimes we will find half-baked or even idiotic ideas, but amidst the noise there are gems. Our aim is to find them, shine a light on, and hopefully accelerate their legitimacy.“

Inspired yet? Get your tickets here.