Those who desire to trade freedom for security deserve neither.

Yet a world with all freedom and no security would suck. No law, no police, no military. Jungle rules - survival of the strongest.

There's a reasonable balance to be struck. That's essentially the tradeoff we make with the state - trade some freedom for some security.

Jungle rules is not pure freedom. You need both freedom to and freedom from. The balance is struck when no ones actions impinge on another’s person or property without consent. The best form of that is an agreement between the involved parties to act respectfully. The worst is abdicating all of your responsibility to big brother.

You don't achieve freedom from without security. They're one and the same.

There are different ways to provide security when it’s needed but most of what you would consider the benefits of security have more to do with everyone voluntarily obeying a set of written and unwritten rules. That’s easy to see if you ask why crime rates vary by geographic location. The same law should apply everywhere and for any given city you have the same police force so why do some areas have high crime while others have low?

I’m not sure I agree with that. In the 21st century, at least in the US, most adults have access to firearms for self defense. There is no such thing as “survival of the strongest” when everyone is on an equal playing field and has the capability to defend themselves.

Personally, I view the opposite as closer to Law of the Jungle, that is our current system of policing that gives a small fraction of society access to self defense but denying it to the rest of the group.

Law of the jungle implies lawlessness. How are you going to “self-defend” with your firearms against the random gangs or warlords in your neighborhood? You will join them or perish.

In a world with firearms it can mean survival of the best shot, the owner of the best weapons, or more likely the wealthy with their own militia. This is all in the absence of a state providing security. This happened many times in history, particularly the feudal era where feudal lords acted like a mini state, and often pledged allegiance to a larger state with a king.

>There is no such thing as “survival of the strongest” when everyone is on an equal playing field and has the capability to defend themselves.

well originally of course it was survival of the most fit (assuming we derive our aphorisms from evolution here), that can mean smartest, fastest etc.

There is no such thing as a level playing field, Harrison Bergeron has not been implemented.