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The logical starting-point would be John Locke, after which Lysander Spooner, Leo Tolstoy, Henry Thoreau, David and Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek. There are probably more, but these are excellent starting-points to an understanding of market anarchy. There's also a similar vein of thought in authors such as Ayn Rand (although she doesn't follow her train of thought to its logical conclusion), Proudhon, Kropotkin, Jefferson, J. S. Mill, Adam Smith and so forth although none of these writers are/were market anarchists.

It's morally right to break an unjust law. To argue otherwise means that you advocate punishing people such as Oskar Schindler, Benjamin Franklin, Wat Tyler, or Mahatma Gandhi. Is that what you are saying? I'd take the position that any law that comes from the state is unjust, for the simple reason that they have no right to pass it. The political class don't have the right to expropriate my property or my money, conscript me into their army, trespass on my premises, beat me, rape my wife, burn my house down or any of the other things that all governments do in the name of "law". Democracy is no justification. Whatever the majority thinks, it has no place violating the rights of the minority, whether that be in taxation, gun ownership, drug use, thought and speech, religion and so forth. Furthermore, democracy is an art of compromise. The only way you can get somebody in Parliament who fully agrees with everything you do is to run for office yourself. I think it was Groucho Marx who said that anyone capable of winning public office is definitely unworthy of the job, and that's true. Running for office is the art of selling oneself to the public and requires ruthlessness, demagoguery and so forth in great quantities - traits that are highly undesireable in political leaders. What a person buys with his own money and does to his own body is his own business. I own myself and I own my body. To say that the state has the power to tell a person what he may spend his money on and do with his body is to tell him that he does not own his money or his body, that he is a slave. Those in favour of drug laws are advocating slavery, pure and simple. If you don't believe that, I invite you to come up with a definition of drug laws that doesn't revolve around the idea that you have the right to tell another what he may do with his own body, or to put it another way, that you are the master and he, the slave.

I'm just curious about how Maplesyrup plans to enforce this. For those whose net worth is over $300,000, will you just send a demand in the mail? What about those who say, "Screw that, I worked hard for what I have and I'm not handing it over to the government" and toss the letter in the trash? Will you try to imprison them? What if they announce that they plan to resist arrest? Maybe some might declare that their property belongs to them, not the state, and that they intend to defend it, with force if necessary - that any government agents who trespass upon their property with the intent of stealing will be met with force. What then? You'd have to kill them. So it can be seen that government demands and plans are empty without the use of violence, including the power and will to murder citizens. Unless the government was willing to use force against you up to and including killing you, nobody would listen to their demands. So, what Maplesyrup has proposed is that the state steal vast amounts of property backed by the threat of violence and murder. I'm sure Stalin would be proud of you, but I think Layton should probably sue you for defamation by inferring that he would be involved in such a monstrous plan.

This falls down on two counts. Firstly, if you are saying that Marxism can only survive if buoyed up by foreign capitalist nations, then Marxism is flawed and will never work. Secondly, the International Trade Commission found that lifting the embargo would have a minimal impact on the Cuban economy. Consider further that Castro really doesn't want the ban to be lifted. If it goes, he loses his scapegoat and a key method of control over his people. Remember 1984? Everything bad is the fault of Oceania/Eastasia. Ah. So you are saying the state can do good by refraining from stealing from people? Wow. Given all the people I haven't stolen from, I must be like Mother Theresa by now. My place in heaven is assured. You should know that all that a government has to offer is violence and coersion, and ultimately, all that a government can do is to kill you. I am just wondering what virtue you feel is so great that it is worth stealing, imprisoning and killing for?

I think it's an equally plausible analysis that the diaspora was able to prosper away from the violence and corruption of the Somali state. You could say that Somali wealth fled overseas and returned after the advent of anarchy. I don't see how that can be true. How could one or a few uncharitable people can cause the collapse of the whole concept of charity? There are plenty of people now who don't give to the seeing-eye dogs foundation and wouldn't give if they were asked, yet that doesn't stop that charity receiving more than enough money from those who are charitable. Consider also that coercive charity, no matter how noble its cause, is robbery. Taking the rightful possessions of people away without their consent is a crime. It doesn't really matter where those possessions wind up. As Huxley said, the means become part of the ends. Evil means to good ends twist those ends to evil. Furthermore, no act committed under duress has any moral value. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor by means of violent expropriation makes everybody in the chain immoral. The rich had no chance to show their charity and good spirit, they can show no morality by being robbed. Those who took from them are thieves, they are immoral since they took what was not theirs by force or threat thereof. Those who received are immoral because they benefited from ill-gotten gains, profiting from that which they did not earn and do not deserve. The market. Recall your von Mises. Riches come from trade, and those who trade must satisfy the market if they are to stay in business. If the market demands justice and fair dealings, then justice and fair dealings it will have. All business wants the mass market, so it will deliver what the masses want. Nobody gets rich from a niche market, at least, not nearly as rich as those who sell to the masses. No. How can it if there's no state? Once again, the market. I'm sure you envision clashes between armed mobs, but let's remember that that is generally the privy of states. Take Waco as an example. Of course, one mob wore "FBI" logos, but that doesn't change either the method or the outcome. It has never happened and will never happen. The one thing you can say about the rich is that they are greedy, if they weren't, they wouldn't be rich. Their greed will ultimately prevent them from forming any kind of cartel. The best that can happen between competitors is an uneasy truce, but everybody in such a truce is just waiting for a chance to stab his competition in the back, and watching for signs that his competition may be preparing to stab him. So, we're back to this - again. The worst outcome you can see for anarchy is the re-emergence of a state, therefore, you prescribe a state to protect us from a state. You didn't answer my second point about that. What is the difference between the state and the Mafia protection racket who says to its protectees, "you are free to leave at any time, of course?" Why should citizens be obliged to flee their lives, their friends, their homes, their country in order to have liberty? I have read such things before. Generally, they suffer from one of two flaws. The first is that they don't know enough about libertarianism. The first of your citations is an example of that. Nozick may be a libertarian of sorts (technically, a minarchist) but he was not the only one, and shortcomings or omissions in his theories have been addressed by other libertarian thinkers. The second flaw is using faulty logic or simply being wrong about basic facts. Your second example displays this. For instance, the author alleges that the free market cannot be free because of the constraints placed upon it of fair dealing. He has confused "liberty" with "license". It is called a free market, not a licentious market, so it is incorrect to criticise it for not allowing license. Furthermore, he believes that rules of good conduct must be imposed upon a free market by an outside force. This is also incorrect, as van Mises and others have shown, the market imposes these rules upon itself. He also claims that the free market must have coercion to function, which he feels is a self-contradiction within libertarianism, however, he obviously has not read enough libertarian theory to know that it has been proposed to do away with coercion altogether, even in the punishment of crimes, by several libertarian thinkers, in plausible ways. I could go on, however, you did not write these critiques and so I would be addressing my complaints to the wrong man.

Sorry Blackdog, I almost forgot to address this point: You infer that society creates an environment in which we can prosper, so we owe society. Fine. But the identification of state with society is a massive lie. What is society? It's the 30-odd million people in Canada. You might even say there are multiple societies - the Chinese immigrant community in BC, or even the differences between outlook and values of Albertans, Ontarians and Quebecers. You are society. I am society. The state is not society. It is a few hundred politicians who have arbitrary power over society, power that ultimately rests on the power to kill, power enforced by the state's ancillary branches of law enforcement and the justice system. Why power to kill? If a citizen insists on resisting the decrees of the state, the only ultimate recourse the state has to enforce its power is to kill him. John Singer of Utah was shot dead by law enforcement officials in 1979 after several years of fighting with the justice system, who insisted that he stop homeschooling his children. Singer committed no acts of aggression to any other individual, but was determined to protect his rights, by force if necessary. This being the case, the justice system was forced either to back down or to kill him. So perhaps we do owe a debt to society. But the state is not society and has no business pretending to be society in order to appropriate for itself what is owed to society. Goods and services are a conjunction of three components. Firstly, labour. Secondly, material resources. Thirdly, ideas. If the owner of each component is being rewarded the state has no claim to reward for any component. To illustrate, a factory line worker contributes labour. The wholesaler is the supplier of raw materials, like rolled steel, glass, plastic etc. The designer of the product is the source of the ideas. If all three are being paid for their services in mutual agreement, what business does the state have appropriating any of it?

I am offering you three choices: first, that all forcible expropriation of property, including taxes, is theft. Second, that forcible expropriation of property, including taxes, is not theft when done by the state. Thirdly, a compromise - some expropriations are theft, some are not. I don't think it's safe to say that at all. Firstly, the biggest encumbrance to the generation of wealth is the state. Remove it, and riches and prosperity for all are guaranteed. Look again at Somalia. Since their casting off of government, their wealth creation has been outstanding. It is unfair to say that Somalia is poorer than Canada, because Somalia started in 1993 with a condition of great poverty and civil strife. That does not, however, detract from their great rate of increase in wealth creation. Secondly, you assume that people are not in the slightest way inclined to charity or community spirit. The empirical evidence shows the opposite. You can see this in the philanthropic tendencies of the rich, the existence of so many private charities in our own society (with no assistance from government save tax-exempt status), even in the willingness of a sizeable proportion of the electorate to vote for political parties that favour wealth redistribution and welfare. The American Seeing-Eye Dogs foundation, for instance, receives more money each year than it requires to perform its services. I have seen studies by economists that show, even when there is no compulsion, charitable giving is prevalent. The Bishop's Storehouse of the Mormons is a good example of noncoercive welfare. It is also very probable that organisations such as the historical fraternal insurance groups would arise to fill the "welfare gap". Up until recently, many North Carolina fire departments were wholly voluntary, which is another example of private citizens stepping forward to provide a needed community good or service. In fact, when taxes are relaxed, charity increases. Without any taxes at all, it is fair to assume that charity will increase to the point of being able to cover those who cannot afford for themselves, and that itself is a segment of the population that will increasingly shrink over time as the libertarian state becomes more prosperous. Regarding the power of the rich to circumvent law, you should note that this happens today because the rich are able to lobby government to do their bidding. With no government, the rich are forced to lobby the public directly, through doing that which the public approves of. You also assume that the rich have a vast amount of power. Firstly, the truly rich are not very numerous. A rich man might gather a private army, but it's almost certain that a citizen militia would be able to eliminate it. Secondly, a rich man who pursues a quest for power is not only a threat to the commoners, but to other rich men. In such a circumstance it is certain that not only the average citizens but the rest of the rich would also ally against this man. There is the problem of cartels being formed, but this has always been kept in check in the free market by the pendulum swinging between short-term and long-term greed. Cartels serve long-term greed, but as they begin to form the balance shifts back to short-term greed (look at the East India Company) and they collapse again. In a hotel I can leave whenever I wish. What if I cannot afford a ticket to Somalia? Will the state buy one for me? There is no difference. I'm still waiting for a definition of taxation that doesn't define theft. You quoted Locke and alluded to the state as a provider of services. However, we have no choice in whether or not we want these services, we must pay for them. The state in this regard is absolutely no different from a Mafia protection racket. And the Mafia, too, could say "You are not a prisoner, nor are you being held for ransom... you are free to [leave] anytime you so desire." But does the (presumed) ability of the victims of the Mafia protection racket to flee for another town or province reduce the extent of the Mafia crime at all?

So are you saying that moral authority rests with the state? That the state can create morality and make things ethical if it chooses? There are three choices. 1) There is some notion of "higher" ethics which everyone is beholden to, no matter if they are state or individual. The state is equally wrong to break these ethics as an individual would be. 2) The state is the sole source of ethics. It can say what is right and wrong and anything it does is automatically moral, even though it may outlaw the same acts in the citizenry. 3) Something in between. The state may do some things that are considered crimes in private life, but not others. Which is your personal philosophy, Blackdog? It might seem that I am ducking the question, but I am not. I agree with the first case, and depending on your answer it will probably transpire that we are coming at the issue from different viewpoints. I view theft as a crime, whether perpetrated by individuals or by state, whereas you do not, or so it would seem. But this is why I want to clarify it with you. As Thoreau said, when men are ready for it, they'll get it.

Alright, the thieves (taxmen) get rewarded and the citizens get stolen from. Hey, meaningless brutal death can strike in Canada too. Didn't you read the examples? Moreover, poverty is responsible for a lot of that. In a much richer nation, with a tradition of individual rights based upon the Scottish enlightenment, Locke and so forth, rather than a clan-based society, the problems would be far less.

With restrictions? What right does the state have restricting a citizen's right to defend himself? For another example, every Canadian citizen pays taxes. Taxes are theft. If you disagree, give me an accurate definition of taxation that doesn't also describe theft, high-minded or otherwise. Here are some articles on modern-day Somalia. The Answer for Africa The article admits that all is not well in Somalia. However, it does make the crucial caveat that Somalia is doing much better than many of it's international-aid-receiving neighbours, for instance. Is Somalia a Model? Somalia and Anarchy History includes many examples of successful anarchist states. The Anglo-Saxon borh, which I repeatedly mention and which nobody seems to have heard of, is one such example. The Icelandic Althingi is another. Anarchist Icelandic society existed for longer than the USA has, and was only destroyed by Norwegian invasion. An "understanding of human nature" should tell you that humans are social creatures that co-operate as a rule. Division of labour is present in all societies. So, the biggest problem you can see with abolishing government is that government might re-appear? And thus, you want to retain government to protect us from government? How ironic. The fact is that in a free market nobody reaches that critical mass necessary for absolute power. The only monopolies that have existed were granted by the state, which was able to do so because it in turn monopolised power. If there is no monopoly of power, there is no backer for further monopoly, and monopoly cannot exist again. A thousand years ago it would be difficult to imagine that around 60% of the world's population would live in democratic nations, too. But it did happen. It will take time and effort to achieve liberty, but the prize is well worth the investment.

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There are countless stories of Canadians being killed and terrorised because Canadians are prevented from owning and using firearms in their own defence, for example. In August 1996, a woman was killed and her husband seriously injured by a bear in Kluane Park. No firearms are allowed in the park - firearms which would have saved a life. In April 1995, two men named Wes Young and Santo Michelin stopped on Highway 117 to assist at the scene of a single-car accident. Both were shot in the head and killed without provocation. On July 14, 1995, Ida Rudy, an 82-year-old widow, was beaten to death in her bed with a hammer and a lead pipe. On June 27, 1994, 80-year-old "Peggy" MacDonald was brutally killed in her home by intruders. There are many more such cases. In all these cases, however, these people were denied the right to defend themselves by the Canadian Government. In the case of the aged and infirm, or people fighting off bears, only firearms can be an adequate protection - and Canada has made it clear that firearms are not to be tolerated. Firearm laws mean that any firearm could not possibly be used for self-defence. They cannot be carried, cannot be stored loaded, cannot be left out of a locked gun cabinet, and so forth. Modern-day Somalia is an example of an anarchist state. Somalia is more peaceful and prosperous without government than it ever has been with any centralised government. Somalia still has problems, but none of them can be chalked up to lack of central authority. And what do you base this upon? Who said the laws concern only the protection of private property? There are many libertarian law proposals. Any, all or none of them can be valid, since libertarianism favours polycentric law. The one key tenet that all libertarians value is the non-aggression principle, which is: No individual may initiate the use of force or aggress against another individual or his property. The concept behind libertarian law is that justice is a commodity, which is consumed like any other. Right now, the state has a monopoly on justice, and what is called "theft" in private practice can be legitimised by the state as "taxation", what is called "slavery" in private practice can be legitimised as "conscription", and so forth. Basically, the problem with a state monopoly of justice is that the state itself will become a criminal, and the government in Canada is the biggest criminal organisation in the country. If the free market is applied to justice, the predictable outcome is - as with every other commodity opened to free trade - that the best justice will be provided at least cost. Private security forces will compete based upon strength of protection and competitive pricing and private courts will compete based upon impartiality, fairness and competitive pricing.

The US and the UN are chasing an impossible pipe-dream. Central government is never going to be in the best interests of the Iraqi people. The main problem in Iraq is that the people are tribal. In a democratic system, people will vote along tribal lines because tribal ethics require it. All a particular clan has to do is put forward a candidate, and the members of that clan can all be expected to support him. What this means is that the most populous clan will win every election. This is a problem because tribal ethics also demand that tribal members further the interests of their tribe, even at the expense of others. What this means is that the newly elected tribal government will use the awesome power of central government to further their own tribal interests at the expense of others. This might mean extra taxes for other tribes, the exclusion of other tribes from civil service positions, punitive business legislation designed to force the businesses of other clans from the marketplace, and it might even go so far as ethnic cleansing and genocide. Saddam Hussein was an example of how far this can go. Saddam's government was essentially a tribal government of a few Tikriti families, using great violence and brutality to further their own interests at the expense of other Iraqis - thousands tortured and executed while Saddam and his henchmen built palaces. Religious persecution also factors into this. Saddam was a Sunni, and he used his position of power to brutalize Shi'ite Muslims. Similarly, whatever the religious faith of the elected clan, we can expect that clan to make law and use the power of government to further their own sect at the expense of others. A Sunni government could well be expected to grant government favour to Sunni mosques and clerics, and might levy dhimmi against Shi'ites and other religious faiths. It might even go so far as to outlaw them. Democracy has not produced violence and oppression on such a massive scale in Western societies because those societies are not organised on the basis of tribal and clan allegiance. The largest unit of kinship in Western society is generally the nuclear family, and the nearer branches of the extended family. But the Arab culture and society is not the same, and to pretend it is will only lead to further bloodshed and suffering. The folly of the US administration and of the UN is to believe that Arabs will cast off their millenia-old culture and society and adopt a Western one that, by all accounts, they despise. Questions of whether they should or should not are irrelevant, the fact is that they won't, and any enterprise made on the assumption that they will is doomed to failure.

Eureka, please take the time to inform yourself before you shoot your mouth off. You are contributing nothing. Drugs are inanimate objects and cannot coerce or force anything. They cannot commit violence. The addiction to drugs has to start with a conscious decision, to take the first pill, shot or snort. Guns don't kill people and drugs don't create addictions. Guns just facilitate the killing of people and drugs facilitate addiction. But humans are reasoning creatures and are ultimately responsible for what they do. I tell you what, I'll give you some links. Start here. Read the essays by Friedman and Kaplan, they are very good and explain it better than I have either the time or ability to do here. I believe you have an enquiring mind and I know you'll understand them. If you have questions after reading them, perhaps we can start from there. But I'm afraid my posts here would be fragments of a big picture which has already been painted by others. I would be doing you a disservice if I were not to show you the big picture from where I draw my fragments. Yes, in a society where people have the right to defend themselves and their property against violence individuals who choose to live a life of violence against their fellow citizens will almost certainly meet a violent and early death. So be it. This is what they have chosen for themselves. As of right now, citizens do not have the right to defend themselves. If you kill an intruder, you are guilty of a crime and plenty of people have gone to jail for it. Under our current laws innocents are suffering more than criminals. Nobody is being threatened with death. That's the beauty of it. All the individuals who refuse to deal with Bob are doing is asserting their right to freedom and property. Nobody passed a law saying "nobody may deal with Bob", it is just a series of private citizens making choices about their transactions. Then the court will have to find a solution that fits both Bob and Jack's family. If Bob cannot offer anything that is to the satisfaction of the mediators, then Bob's life as a citizen will effectively be over - much as a life-sentence-serving prisoner's is. The difference is that, in my example, all sides consented to it. Good for Bob. Let those who reject a peaceful society go and create their own. We'll see how far they get. Of course, if they're willing to pay their debts and live peacefully they are welcome to return. Well, as property rights mean that everybody can own firearms, they'll have to hope they don't run into the highly trained and heavily armed private security forces when they do so. Once again, look at Equifax. Credit agencies have jurisdiction from coast to coast and even internationally. Look at the small print on your bank statement, your visa statement, store credit cards - everything. Did anybody put a gun to your head and force you to open these accounts? Is anything but your own habits as a consumer forcing you to keep them open? There are plenty of people who exist outside the system, it isn't compulsory. Of course, those people who exist outside the system have to live with the consequences - paying cash for everything, never getting credit, and so forth. But they can choose that if they want. In my town just last year, a cop ran a red light without his siren on and killed a young mother. He was never held accountable. No, because you can have as many legal systems as courts. All you are doing is letting consumers of the commodity of law and justice decide what law and justice they prefer and how much. It is far more democratic than our present system, as the free market is already. What about those who were drafted against their will by a government they never voted for? And if he cannot, he must suffer their brutality with a smile on his face? An molecule is the smallest object that a substance can be broken down into without losing its properties. Individuals are like molecules. A state is not a molecule any more than a pig of iron or a glass of water. The only people with the resources to own and use an ICBM in the libertarian society would be corporations, and they couldn't use them because the negative publicity would drive them out of business. I believe that democratic means cannot work. The state is a flawed idea. All states involve one group of people being enslaved to the will of others. In a monarchy, everyone is enslaved to the monarch, in a democracy, the minority is enslaved to the will of the majority. Anarcho-capitalism holds that nobody need be enslaved to anybody, and that everybody be free to act according to his own will alone. I believe that the state can do no better at providing security than the free market. Given that, what do we need the state for? I don't think moral legitimacy rests with the majority at all. What about when the majority favoured segregation? The denial of rights to women, to blacks or to Jews? What about now, when it seems that the majority favour denying private citizens their Lockean property rights?

Why? The libertarian movement has many answers to this question. Almost all hinge upon private property rights, including the right to defend one's property against the initiation of force with force. I take the stand that any force is wrong. Retaliation is wrong, punishment is wrong and the only judgement that should be meted out to a criminal should be that which the criminal himself agrees to. Let's take an example. Jack is murdered. Jack's life insurance company hires a private detective to find out who killed Jack, since a murderer may strike again and it makes more financial sense to hire a PI than to pay out multi-million dollar claims. In all likelihood, multiple insurance companies would co-ordinate, even if the victim were not their client, it's possible the next victim would be. The PI finds that the murder was committed by a man named Bob. This information is made very public. Bob is fired from his job since his employer doesn't wish it to be known that he employs murderers. Bob now has no source of income (no welfare in a libertarian state). Bob's creditors will claim their debts, nobody wants to be seen to be doing business with a murderer. Bob will be refused service in stores. Bob's face will be plastered everywhere, even if he tries to beg, very few would give him anything, most people would give him a wide berth with their hands on their holsters. Now Bob has three options. He can starve to death, he can flee into the wilderness with the other violent criminals (probably meaning an early and violent death) or he can submit to arbitration in a court agreed upon by Bob, Jack's insurance company and Jack's family. The court has a good business incentive to be impartial, who would give their business to a biased and bribeable court? If Bob submits to the judgement of the court, it can be publicised that Bob did so and paid his debt to his victims, and while his life will never be the same it would probably return to some sense of normalcy. If Bob doesn't, he is reduced to the first two choices again: starve, or exile. For a current example, look at Equifax. It is not the government, has nothing to do with government and is an entirely private affair. Equifax cannot throw you in jail or conduct any other kind of violence against you, nevertheless, if you break Equifax's rules they can make your life a living hell (as many have found, to their cost). They can make it extraordinarily difficult to get credit or conduct any business and can even make holding down a decent job an impossibility. But they will never use violence. Yes, they have, repeatedly. Read up on David Friedman, for one example. There are many anarchist schools of thought on the dispensation of justice, in fact, as the major problem confronting anarchy it is probably the most-discussed subject amongst anarchist intellectuals. The police force does what private detectives and security guards do, except that the police are not accountable to the people they protect. The courts do what private arbitrators do, except that the courts do not have any incentive to hand down fair and just punishments. If you are saying that it is alright to brutalise some people if the majority go along with it, I have to reply that this would make you a supporter of slavery, the holocaust, and segregation, amongst other atrocities. I don't think you are. I urge you to reconsider your position and think along more consistent lines. What if the citizen did not vote into power the party that sent him to war on pain of imprisonment or death? In that case, his conscription was performed entirely against his will. Using violence and coersion against those who do not give their consent is evil, plain and simple. If there had not been a WWI, there would not have been a WWII. If there had not been a Franco-Prussian War, there would not have been a WWI. If there had not been the wars of German unification, there would not have been a Franco-Prussian war. You are missing the big picture. States are responsible for wars and wars breed further wars. The problem was not Hitler, or anyone else for that matter, the problem is the concentration of power in a single institution with a monopoly over violence and the "right" to initiate aggression against its own people and against foreigners. Well, that is not going to happen, so let's look at realistic options. You're absolutely right. It's far better to limit ICBM ownership to political elites who are not accountable to the citizenry and don't particularly care about their welfare. I'm sorry, I think you'll find free enterprise was responsible for all of that. Why would terrorists target a libertarian state? The state has no army to conduct gunboat diplomacy and does business on a strictly voluntary basis. If anybody objects, all they have to do is ignore them. No stealth bombers will be sent, and the worst that may happen is that they might get the occasional phone call asking if they are interested in doing some trade yet. That's why anarchists such as myself usually term ourselves "libertarians" or "anarcho-capitalists", to distinguish ourselves from that which holds anarchy as an end unto itself. I put it to you that the state has no more power to stop such individuals than private security forces would. The state did not stop Timothy McVeigh, the USS Cole, 9/11, or any other myriad terrorist incidents. Private security forces stood an equally good chance of stopping McVeigh's truck or refusing to allow Arabs with box-cutters aboard an airliner.

It depends upon how you define "law". If you and I come to a private agreement on something, if you call that "law" then you are correct. However, if you define "law" as a set of binding rules coming from a central authority, I am correct. A contract does not have to stand on external law, it can be legally self-sufficient. This is why contracts have penalty clauses and so forth. They stipulate their own penalties without there being the need for external breach-of-contract laws. And yet you cannot give me an example. I know that you said "prudential insurance regulation", but that's not enough. I could say, "freedom from arbitrary power" - are you converted to libertarianism now? Alright, I did, and I still draw exactly the same conclusion. I don't see anything in the Visa system that necessitates a state. Well, for one example, violators can be expelled from the visa system. A bank who loses the privilege of issuing Visa cards or a consumer who has his Visa accounts closed and his cards confiscated are both losing something substantial. In a private court. You really walked into that one. Then you didn't read the quotations of yourself saying it, did you? Then give me an example. I categorically reject all your insufficient statements like "insurance", I demand a real, concrete example. This is untrue. Consider the example of the Anglo-Saxon bohr, or the period of Massachusetts history when it went entirely without government. What about being imposed by private courts and arbitration? I'm in favour of that. I'm just not in favour of an omnipotent state meddling in everything.

Your response can be summed up thus: "I think you're wrong. I have no evidence or sources but I seem to remember reading some newspapers that said you were wrong. I also feel that economists are all wrong in their definition of "commodity". I don't have any credentials or experience in economics, but I still think that I know more about economics than Nobel laureate economists." Can you give me a single good reason why I should respond to your empty waffling?

Then follow this link. Why don't you ask the users of the 407 ETR? Healthcare is a commodity. A commodity is any good or service that has value. I'd ask you to back that up, but it's Eureka, who never backs anything up and never has any facts behind his arguments. Why bother? The Canadian association of cardiologists complains that American heart attack sufferers have shorter life expectancies and lower quality of life in Canada than in the US. The Canadian council of radiology urges all patients to go to the US, wherever possible, because Canadian radiology is in such a poor state. There's more. Once again, there's no point asking you to back up your claims, you won't. Tell me, how is your car? Do you hand-crank it? Does it make 30hp with 5mpg? What about your TV? Is it a goldfish-bowl tube with rabbit-ear antennae that you bought 2 years ago? What about the computer you're using? Is it no more powerful than home computers 20 years ago? I mention these examples because they show how the free market works. A new product is introduced and over time, the quality increases and the price decreases until everybody has one, and a good one, too. 97% of poor people in America have a TV, and about 75% of poor people have a car. 30% have more than one. Your car is a massive improvement on the kind of car only the very rich could afford 50 years ago. Your TV probably uses technology that only NASA could afford 30 years ago. Your computer has more processing power than any mainframe of 20 years ago. So it will go with private healthcare. What is expensive now will come down in price and go up in quality. Under a private system we will all have top-quality and dirt-cheap healthcare in 20-30 years time. With public healthcare, we'll either have very little healthcare at all of much the same quality we have today, or we'll all be paying 80% income tax rates to be able to have what a free market would have delivered to us at one-hundredth the cost.

I think you have that backwards. It looks scary and dangerous on TV, but in reality it was a period of unprecedented economic growth and stability. You should also note that when US government power was at its lowest ebb - 1840 to 1860 - American economic growth was at its fastest. Your examples are not good examples of anarchy. What each has done is to suddenly remove a massive and powerful state and replace it with nothing. This is like removing the lid from a boiling saucepan, of course, it boils over and makes a mess. Government is a very pervasive thing and must be removed and excised carefully. If that is done, it will work. Take an analogy. If you have acute appendicitis, and I decide to use a steak knife and perform an appendectomy on my kitchen table, as a result of which you die (since I have no surgical training or equipment), does that mean that the whole idea of therapeutic appendectomy is wrong? Or does it just mean that I did not perform it well? This is not true. There have been plenty of cases where there has been no organisation with a monopoly on violence and where further chaos and violence have not resulted. The example I gave before was of Massachusetts, when the congress dissolved itself. There was no rioting or violence, in fact, the average Massachusetts citizen could not tell the difference between when he had government and when he did not. Let's look at what the Canadian government did during the World Wars. It rounded up able-bodied young men and told them that they were going to a far-away land to fight and quite possibly be greviously wounded or killed. Should they refuse, they would be imprisoned, hanged or shot as cowards or traitors. That is brutal slavery, any way you look at it. As regarding the "state that was worse than our own", that may be so, but it certainly was no worse than our allies. Hohenzollern Germany was a more enlightened and progressive state than Czarist Russia, and Hitler's Germany was less brutal and murderous than Stalin's USSR. This is not true. Earlier cultures had no centralised authority, they only had mediators. For an example of this, recall the Anglo-Saxon bohr, where law and justice were entirely dispensed by private individuals without any concept of "state". There are two massive flaws in this statement. First of all, the modern state has given rise to far, far more violence than tribal wars ever could have. The wars that modern states have fought have killed tens of millions and almost brought the human race to the brink of extinction at several times. I defy you to find me a tribal war with a death toll in the millions. Secondly, a tribal government is a government. Your example is of "government vs. government" and not "government vs. no government."

No, actually anarchist communism is impossible. It relies upon making all men equal, but all men are not equal, and the only way you can force equality is through violence, and violence on that scale necessitates a state. This is why communism is always brought about through despotism. You must be joking. The state has been the biggest perpetrator of those crimes in human history! In the 20th Century, the biggest cause of unnatural death was state-sanctioned murder, even more than war. I believe about 180,000,000 people were murdered by their government in the 20th Century, and that's a middle-of-the-road estimate. It could be a lot higher, since records on these atrocities are notoriously unreliable. Based upon the track record of government I am certain that a society without a state would be the most peaceful in human history. Democratic government reflects the desires of the people. Democratic governments have denied rights to women, blacks and Jews, have executed innocents, interred people based upon race or birthplace, fought wars of aggression and conquest, and so forth. Yes, people are capable of evil, but government absolutely will not and cannot prevent this. In fact, in a situation where the populace is inclined to evil, government will almost certainly make it worse.

The same reason why socialism is still popular. If you promise people the impossible, they won't necessarily realise it is impossible. Of course, when you yourself realise it is impossible you'll run into problems - as Canadian healthcare has - and then the people will start to wonder why you promised the impossible in the first place, and grow restless and upset - as the Canadian people are. No, actually Canadians have inadvertently said "yes" to that "decent coverage only for the wealthy" system. Canadian healthcare is lousy. Those who have money go south of the border and pay for "decent coverage." What we have done is, basically, outsource our healthcare. I thought you didn't like outsourcing, Maplesyrup? The consumer is not the litmus test of logic. I don't know who told you that, but they were wrong.

No, because it's a priori knowledge. You might as well do a study on whether the sun rises in the morning. A free market basically means that the consumers get what they want. The company that offers X better or cheaper or better and cheaper will get the business and the profit motive allows the consumer to reign supreme, to decide which products they like and which they do not and to decide what they want to buy and how much they want to pay for it. Publicly funded healthcare cannot succeed because lowering the price increases demand, and an infinitely low price (i.e. free) will produce infinite demand, therefore, you will always have more patients than you can satisfy. Furthermore, even if the healthcare system was not in the mess that it is in now, the fact remains that under a state-run system it is the government, not the patients, who gets to decide what is important in terms of healthcare provision. For example, governments are likely to waste a lot of resources treating the "disease of the month" or a politically important disease that can be used as an electoral platform when the vast majority of healthcare consumers may well prefer treatment of more prevalent diseases such as heart disease and cancer. To summarise, state-run healthcare amounts to "you'll get whatever healthcare quality and quantity we decide you are entitled to, and we will pay ourselves whatever we think is appropriate for providing this service." Free-market healthcare amounts to "make it known what healthcare you want, the quality that you demand, and how much you want to pay, and it will happen." What a ridiculous thing to say. You take the worst excesses of businessmen and say that because of this, all business must be kept on a "short leash." So here's my riposte, which is your argument with different terminology: "Government probably should be allowed to exist, but because of the slaughter and warmongering factors (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc) it needs to be kept on a very short leash by our citizens." Of course, I don't grant that government should be allowed to exist at all, but I merely wrote that to show you the utter folly of your argument.

This is untrue. Think of America up to 1780 or so - government was so infinitesimal that the Massachusetts congress actually dissolved itself at one point due to lack of interest and the British colonial government merely placed taxes on trade without performing any other governmental functions (apart from those necessary to levy the taxes). There was peace, order, trade and very healthy economic growth without government in any form we'd recognise it today. This is also untrue. I'm talking about libertarianism, or anarcho-capitalism if you prefer that label. It has been widely discussed in the works of Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Lysander Spooner, Henry Thoreau and so forth. Anarchism is absolutely not a socialist philosophy in and of itself, any more than statism is automatically bound up with socialism or conservatism. I submit to you that if a monopoly over anything is bad, how can one group's monopoly over law, justice and violence be good? Not at all. Everybody is entitled to dissent, and so long as they initiate no violence they can do what they want.

Who says law and order must come from a monopolistic state? I'm not arguing for chaos, but for the abolition of arbitrary power backed by violence.

Anyone who asks for your vote is not worthy of it. What a politician on the campaign trail is doing, is asking you to grant him arbitrary power over you, to make you his slave, in effect - that you will do his bidding under threat of retaliation by his agents (police, judges, etc). Now, the terms of your enslavement may be laid out in advance, but what if he decides to change them after you sign, like McGuinty did? Moreover, since a 100% win is impossible, a politician is also asking for your help in granting him arbitrary power over people who completely reject him and his policies, to forcibly enslave them, if you will. And yes, you can vote him out of office next time, but firstly, what if everyone else votes against you and your slavery continues against your will? Secondly, is four years of slavery acceptable if a lifetime is not?