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<DIV><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Regards,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Dan</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=russell.wallace@gmail.com
href="mailto:russell.wallace@gmail.com">Russell Wallace</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">ExI chat list</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, April 20, 2007 8:23
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [extropy-chat]
Anarchy!</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>On 4/20/07, <B class=gmail_sendername>Eugen Leitl</B> <<A
href="mailto:eugen@leitl.org">eugen@leitl.org</A>> wrote:
<DIV><SPAN class=gmail_quote></SPAN>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid"><BR>A
different question: is here anyone who *isn't* an
anarchist?<BR>;)<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR>Heh.<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>I
vaguely remember there was a survey on something like this awhile back, though
not the details.</BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>