Things like protecting weaker parties through a court system, providing national infrastructure for the economic prosperity of everyone (as opposed to private infrastructure for the prosperity of few), national defense, food and water regulation, base level research and development, protection from criminals, corporate regulation, are only a few that immediately come to mind.

This is a system for facilitating voluntary transactions between individuals. That should not frighten you.

Should we still not be frightened (or at least concerned) if what's being transacted is child slaves, or kidnapping/murder for hire, or guns for the mafia? There are a number of very unhealthy things which can fall under "voluntary transactions between individuals"

I'm not making an argument against anonymous marketplaces by any means, just against the idea that black markets are necessarily benign by definition, because they exist outside the reach of the state.

Those transactions are still going to have "meatspace" components which are, and will remain, the weak point that law enforcement will target.

Tor and bitcoin already exist, if mobs want to use those systems, they already can. The utility in systems like SR is reputation management and connection discovery. In other words, this system would really be nothing more than a craigslist that doesn't claim to take down ads for hookers. It shouldn't frighten you.

No, you should be frightened by the fact that governments, being monopolies, tend to create less economically efficient products (including laws) than competitive markets, so if you assume that societies are better off if they have legal systems which prevent slavery/kidnapping/etc., competitive markets will be more likely to produce those legal systems than governments.

Unfortunately, if the new generation of Silk Road type platform proves effective and resilient, I think that any large scale crime syndicate or trafficker with the wherewithal to pay is going to start running their own.

And granted, it may just be an arbitrary level of abstraction to say the state is necessarily any more just in generating or enforcing laws than a third-party entity, but I do believe that in the case of decentralized black markets, something other than the markets themselves are going to need to act in that stead, because there would otherwise be a conflict of interest in trying to rein in illegal activity in communities whose entire purpose is profiting from illegal activity.

Though I suppose there might be precedent, for the sake of the self-preservation of the whole, for an Anonymous-like group to step in and keep the real scum at bay.

Which might bring everything back full circle, either the Feds get called or vigilantes.

And there also is a number of unhealthy uses of cars, like using it to transport yourself right after robbing a bank. Should we ban cars?

Anything that can be used for the good, can be used for the bad as well. That shouldn't however mean that that thing should not be produced/sold/used.

No, but I believe the state has a legitimate interest in regulating their sale and use.

But i'm not talking about guns in the abstract. I'm talking about the purposes that organizations involved in a black market gun trade would likely be putting them to. Collectors of firearms are not going to be using Silk Road 2. People who just want something to protect their home aren't likely going to be using it, either. The issue is the degree to which a black market, by virtue of it's purpose to evade law enforcement, would be used to facilitate criminal activity.

Or to extend your example further, no, we shouldn't ban cars, but we have every right to shut down chop shops.

Luckily, very few - if any - libertarians ever make such a claim. If anything, you're probably either misunderstanding what they're saying, or simply engaging in hyperbole to the point of, essentially, setting up a strawman.

Libertarians acknowledge that the govt sometimes does things that are, in some sense, "good". We just happen to consider that irrelevant, since "good" which requires violating the NIF principle is not justified in our worldview. And/or, some Libertarians will also argue that for almost every value of X, where X = "something the State does", that X either isn't actually needed at all, or would be provided more efficiently by a non-State mechanism.

I see it like this: a few like minded people want to trade things that many high minded people would rather not exist or don't want to be openly sold (whichever you prefer) without having boot clodding storm troopers kick down your door and take away your ability to pursue life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This is just a simple progression/evolution of the black market.

Just wondering. Why do you think forcing companies into complying with some regulation is necessarily a good thing?

If the customers care about this kind of safety, the producers will voluntarily comply with some private standards and will pass some private certification to attract customers.

So that is definitely not a valid reason of where government is needed. It can be done without the govt and without coercion.

(I could expand on every point you consider to be a good reason for existence of the state if you wish.)

Consumers cannot necessary demand something if they're not aware of it (ie: EPA testing water supply for contaminants, USDA testing meat supply for salmonella). It's taken decades of pushing for the populace to get basic things like the Clean Food & Water Act(s) passed and be able to eat/drink/consume products being able to know what the ingredients are and not (for the most part) getting sick from doing so.

Regulation needs to and should exist for basic human services of life.

A good friend of mine is an anarcho-capitalist and while he is overall a very technical, very logical, and generally smart person, neither of us have managed to convince the other that their view-point is flawed. It's rather frustrating.

So if you piss off "the corporation", you have their private militia come after you. Then their courts sentence you to death, or slave labor. How is this anarchistic? Seems pretty top-down to me. Just because a company is running things doesn't mean it's not a government.

I just don't really understand libertarianism, I guess. It makes sense if you're filthy rich, but otherwise you'd just go from being middle class to a peasant with no rights almost instantly. Are all libertarians filthy rich and just very vocal (there seem to be a lot of them), delusional, misinformed, or am I missing some large part of the theory behind it?

The only way I could ever see the phasing of government out working successfully is in a shared economy (anarcho-communism). Not that I think human nature would ever permit a system like this until tens of thousands of years of psychological/spiritual evolution take place, but I think at the time humans are able to self-organize in every sense there will no longer be the need for personal possessions. Oddly enough, we would be a lot like ants.

Check your assumptions. Corporations are a legal fiction created by the State and would not even exist in a purely anarcho-capitalist society.

The intention of the law to "meet a need or solve a problem" doesn't necessarily reflect the actual behavior of the law. Adopting this mindset can also bring the attitude of "we need a law to protect children" while packing the "Protect Children Act" full of special interest material.

I would personally disagree with the assertion that the majority of laws solve a problem or result in a net meeting of needs.

This is very true, but it doesn't represent the views of all libertarians or even all anarcho-capitalists. For a much better approach to anarcho-capitalism—one that focuses primarily on economics and not on morality—check out David Friedman's writings and talks. Here's a basic introduction to his proposal of a polycentric legal system where the market produces all goods and services including law, law enforcement, arbitration (courts), and even national defense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o. Along with Murray Rothbard's primarily moral/ethical/legal arguments (which seem slightly more prominent, and seem to be the ones you've encountered), Friedman's economic arguments make up the main "branches of anarcho-capitalism."

I don't know any libertarians or ancaps who insist that the non-aggression principle solves anything, much less everything. What we say is that it's simply the ethically Right Thing To Do, and that if "solving" a problem requires violating the NAF, then it's better left unsolved, even if there are negative consequences.

The idea that libertarians believe in some kind of "libertopia" is one of the most persistent, while completely unfounded and mistaken, myths that exists about libertarians. It's the libertarians who, more than any other group, take reality into account by acknowledging that we can't engineer a "perfect" society by using force against one another.

Libertarianism has pathologies at the edges? Big deal, so does every system that has ever been proposed as an alternative.

I doubt anyone reasonable even claims that a perfect society is possible - someone will always feel wronged regardless of their circumstance. I don't think it's unfair to say that the main function of a society is to reduce the likelihood that a person of said society gets wronged. Which brings the question of how does a society do that without enforcement of laws? If we accept the NAP is a law, who reprimands those who break it? Who actually defines what it is in the first place? Undoubtedly there are many different interpretations of it and it's not possible to achieve a feeling of fairness in a society if not everyone agrees on its basic structure and laws. If you feel like these are too basic of questions, feel free to link me to what you would consider a definitive explanation.

For me, it all basically reduces to the idea that Bastiat articulated, that "government is just the collective extension to our individual right to self defense". So even as a radical individualist anarchist / anarcho-capitalist, I can still see a role for something like "government", but only if it's use of force is restricted to defensive use, and it respects the idea that "if an individual doesn't have permission to do something, then multiple individuals don't have permission to either".

IOW, voluntarily organized collectives, assembled for mutual defense, OR individuals acting in self-defense, are how the NAP would be "enforced".

But again, there's no "perfect" political system, IMO. Conflicts could still arise, but I don't think institutionalizing the use of force is a good approach.

I do think that automated systems that don't require bureaucratic governance are a good idea, so I'm particularly annoyed by projects like this because it can create a negative public image. You can apply the concepts much more proactively.

This is bullshit. You definitely didn't live under corrupt south america regimes. Or in Soviet Union. Or in Belarus (author's location AFAICS).

If the law is very bad (e.g. death penalty for homosexuality), then it's not people who are wrong when they're breaking it.

Do you think it is proper to still practice obedience to the rulers in this case?

What is different in the case of anonymous voluntary exchange? Sure, they can outlaw clapping. Or breathing. Or being over 1m tall. Or anything. But just the fact that these people might tell you "breathing is bad" or "being 1m+ is terrible" does not make it actually this way.

You should read the news more often: Government shutdown for no valid reason, Wall Street corruption going unpunished and ongoing (those weren't the last financial scandals), the approval rate of Congress nearing the bottom, one could write a book about how the government has stopped representing the People...

> as is publicly condoning breaking the law in reaction

_Peaceful_ civil disobedience campaigns played a large role in the Civil Rights movement and helped raise awareness leading to (in the US, at least) the Civil Rights Act - thereby reinforcing equal protections and voting rights.

The intent is important; and the NONVIOLENT aspect is especially important. But civil disobedience isn't always necessarily a bad thing. Nor is it always a childish suggestion.

Did I ask the state to provide me with all these "benefits" in exchange for being enslaved and having guns and threats at me? If the government thinks I need its X, Y, and Z services, or whatever and uses it as a basis for theft, is it any good?

Is it different from, say, me saying that apples are good for you, therefore I can point a gun at you, violently take your money and buy you a fucking apple? You know, because it's good for you! No? Surely I am benefiting you in this case so you have to shut up and blindly obey.

Every single thing that the government does can be not only just provided, but provided more efficiently (and also more morally) on a free market.

African Americans during the civil rights movement benefited from government (roads, etc.) and also used very public law-breaking as a fundamental tactic.

[0] you can find an epub with a simple google search, or listen to this talk by the author, who unfortunately has a thick korean accent: http://youtu.be/whVf5tuVbus?#t=4m

Edit: correction