[ExI] Is there a potential libertarianism / democracy tension?

[Amon Zero]

On 27 September 2011 19:21, Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Knowing many actual minarchists, I'm not so sure. Minarchists -- people who
> believe in a libertarian state (an oxymoron by my reckoning) -- are often
> the most vehements critics of anarchism in any form, including market
> anarchism. Granted, some minarchists do, no doubt, become anarchists;
> probably most market anarchists went through an evolution from minarchist to
> anarchist. But that most market anarchists were once minarchists doesn't
> mean most minarchists will become anarchists.
>


I found this interesting - Just for the record, it was the other way around
for me. I started out as a teenage anarchist, with an educated understanding
of anarchism, but a pretty half-baked understanding of AnCap. As time went
by I decided there was need for some kind of State to handle certain
functions I see as essential or even laudable for the government to handle,
and so figured that made me a Minarchist.

That would almost certainly be the point at which I was no longer a
libertarian according to the non-coercion principle, but I don't remember
anyone pointing this out to me at the time. That leaves me in what currently
seems a strange no-man's-land, in which I personally advocate government
with a strictly bounded jurisdiction, but it seems cannot accurately call
myself a Minarchist, and even less so a libertarian.

- A
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