Editor’s Pick. Written by Christopher Zimny for DailyAnarchist.com.
The libertarian world can be summed up, ultimately, as freedom from crime. Based on the principles of private property and non-aggression, many anarcho-capitalist writers propound and rework “ideal” visions of a “libertarian world”. Events and interactions in such a world usually include, for example, a free market healthcare system, unencumbered by the coercion of government, a free banking system which places the production of money and regulation of interest rates into a free market, varying forms of education that serve the specific demands of market participants, and so forth.
What must never be admitted into such a world by writers of this stripe is a coercive government, even when it is admitted that force will nevertheless exist such a world. (This is dealt with by such writers with a handy stroke of the pen: there will of course be a relative demand and consequent production of police and protection services by freely exchanging individuals). But there seems to be something slightly amiss in this idea, even perhaps at a first glance. Such writers theorize a world in which no force is used by individuals who make up a State, but wherein force is used by still other individuals, such as petty thieves or gun-wielding extortionists—aggression which is usually admitted as impossible to fully eradicate.
Read the full thing »