The Euphemism of Libertarianism

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.
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Selected content picked by the editor of Everything-Voluntary.com.