When I started to enjoy listening to the arguments in favor of limited government, I was uncertain whether I really believed any of it. I would not have been confident in my ability to argue in favor of such positions, especially if I were asked to cite facts. I was not interested in doing extensive research just so I could have the best opinions about things I cannot change. When I began listening to anarcho-capitalists simplify these issues by saying all government force violates the non-aggression principle, it all became clear. It is wrong to murder and steal from innocent people. This is true, or at least, uncontroversial. If a proposition which follows from this true premise seems to be wrong, then the problem must be somewhere else. This may seem like rigid ideological thinking, but I have found that it forces me to think of ideas beyond the obvious which I would not have thought of otherwise. If the non-aggression principle were an excessive restriction to one’s thought and actions, no one who believes in it would have ever called himself a libertarian.
The most recent things I have been writing have been in response to objections to libertarianism and anarchism from people whom I thought should know better. I have tried to address the things these “post-libertarians” in what I have written previously, but I have realized that one of the points I have heard is the most concise explanation for the apparent problems with libertarianism. All other problems stem from libertarians’ failure to address this point. Matt Erickson says that libertarianism or anarchism has the same problem as communism because it says that people should have equal sovereignty, while communism says people should have equal wealth. If someone is able to profitably aggress against other people, then he will likely do so. If he does not, then he might do so later and profit even more after his victims have acquired even more wealth to steal. Saying that people have a negative right not to be aggressed against does not change the fact that actually stopping aggression requires positive action in the same way that producing goods, which a communist might say people are entitled to, does. There are no rights, only goods and services.
I still say this does not invalidate the non-aggression principle. It is wrong to harm or steal from innocent people, just as it is bad when people do not have enough food, water, shelter, healthcare, or any other good or service they need. In both cases, the problem and solution are the same. The problem is that the price of the desired goods is too high for people to afford. The solution is for entrepreneurs to discover and make use of the technologies, protocols, and business models which reduce those prices to ones which can be afforded. Sovereignty, meaning the ability to not be aggressed against, is a good which must be produced, sold, and bought. Proper libertarian praxis consists of actions which produce sovereignty. Anarchy is when the price of sovereignty is so low that anyone, or any small community or microstate, can afford it. The question then is how can the production of sovereignty be automated and scaled up. This is more complicated than producing material goods. Guns can be used to stop aggressors, but they can also be used to aggress. This is more complicated than making guns less expensive. If a popular movement were to successfully vote to reduce or abolish a government, that would not make the people sovereign. Doing this and nothing else might be the libertarian equivalent of a communist government providing every good.
I have written before that the insurance-based defense services imagined by anarcho-capitalists give an idea of how the right protocol or business model for this would need to work. I have written that this might help make “10,000 Lichtensteins” stable and lasting, as well as help arrive at such an arrangement. People with lower time preference and greater long-term planning abilities would sell those qualities to those with less by being paid to protect their clients’ property as if it were their own. Just as an extremely productive capitalist economy, which produces goods so cheaply even the poorest people can afford all they need, is not communism, an economy in which the price of sovereignty has been greatly lowered might not look like anarchy or liberty, as some would imagine it. Every aspect of a society and people's ways of life contribute to their ability to remain sovereign, so someone in the business producing their sovereignty would take interest in those things and decide prices accordingly. People would not simply be free to do whatever they want. Behavior which is not conducive to being sovereign would raise prices. In this way, such a service would act like a government and may effectively be the ruling body over a collection of communities and microstates in some ways, except it would be the opposite. The provider of this service would be an anti-empire. It would profit from the independence and self-sufficiency of its constituents rather than their exploitation.
I do not know if this is possible or exactly how it would work. I have wondered whether existing governments can be changed to be more like this. However, if an entrepreneur were to create such a service and start very small, it would be irrelevant what any one thinks. All that matters is whether he is successful in making it work.
I would once again like express my frustration that I am the only one saying these things. This all seems so obvious to me. I am not the smartest or most well-read person thinking about these issues. I could easily be wrong, but why wouldn’t other equally ignorant people say the same mistaken things?