[extropy-chat] Anarchy!

[Technotranscendence]

Libertarians, in the sense of people who embrace the noninitiation of force principle, come in two flavors: anarchist and minarchist.  Your position is simply the libertarian minarchist one.  Not to start up a long debate on the issue, but my view is that minarchism -- a government limited to protecting individual negative rights, which is what I think you have in mind -- is not possible.  Once there is a government in place, it will, I fear soon become non-libertarian.  Why?  Well, it will have to be the strongest agent in its area of operations and will have no legitimate competition.  (If it's not the strongest in its area, then whatever is stronger will, sooner or later, overcome it.  At that point, it will not longer be a government -- and people will question whether it was a government in the first place.  If it has legitimate competitors, likewise, it's not really a government.)  It will have little need to adhere to libertarian principles under those conditions -- save the fear of rebellion or of invasion.  Since those two possibilities are usually unlikely, I doubt any minarchy will stay minarchist.

Regards,

Dan
  From: Russell Wallace 
  To: ExI chat list 
  Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 8:23 AM
  Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Anarchy!


  On 4/20/07, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

    A different question: is here anyone who *isn't* an anarchist?
    ;)


  Heh.

  I'm a small-L libertarian; I believe central government is needed to keep the peace and enforce contracts, I just don't think it should go much beyond that. 

  I vaguely remember there was a survey on something like this awhile back, though not the details.
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