There are so many logical flaws to statism, so I will try to just focus on the most obvious one. And here it is: Statists argue that government is necessary because people cannot be trusted without it. If this is true, then it means that human beings are capable of or prone to corruption, violence, and deceit. I have no disagreement with that premise. The problem with statism is that it makes the nonsensical, magical leap that because of these tendencies, people should be ruled by...wait for it...other people! In other words, government is the "answer" to the human tendency to rob, injure, kill, or whatever violation of others' rights you can imagine. However, the statist logic makes the supreme error that the most ambitious, power-hungry, corrupt individuals will not have anything to do with the government - a monopoly on the initiation of the use of force in a given area. Witness the results - even in the United States, where a relatively enlightened group of people got together and devised a very sophisticated system of checks and balances in order to establish a limited republic (following the even more limited Articles of Confederation, which lasted even less time before a power grab took place), you get, within just a few generations, a corrupt, imperialistic, thieving, murderous state which long ago began violating its own rules. The libertarian doesn't believe that human beings have a different nature without the state - but rather the consequences to violations of property rights (including one's body) would be handled much better by voluntary relationships, with the competition of the free market providing all services needed and bound only by that which defines our character and nature. Moreover, one does not solve the problem of violence with the initiation of violence.
The issue of how much government should exist and what forms of government should exist, is complicated due to the fact that IMHO, what sort of government is necessary (if any) depends on cultural norms/influences. I.e. Anarchy wouldn't work for a bunch of retarded morons, and yet it might work amongst a group of well-meaning conservatives. Frankly.
Ah, my friend, I was waiting for the "Somalia maneuver." There are a number of points to address about Somalia. First and foremost, it is less of a stateless condition, but rather multiple states in the form of warlords. However, I will grant that it is a failed state. Yet, when you compare Somalia under a failed state/warlord control (since the fall of the communist regime), Somalia has fared much better. There have been a number of improvements, and it stands up quite well against surrounding nations, which also suffer from grinding poverty and other problems of the legacy of European colonialism. Here is a link to a site where you can download a PDF of an excellent paper written by an economics professor at University of West Virginia: http://www.cfr.org/somalia/better-off-stateless-somalia-before-after-government-collapse/p10120 This article examines a number of variables of Somali social welfare and compares it to its past with a centralized state as well as its neighbors. Also, I take the view that if a truly voluntaryist society will ever be achieved, it will be through social evolution, not taking down a government and hoping that one doesn't get formed in its absence. Somalia is, in many regards, a pre-enlightenment society without cultural development of property rights as we know it. Nevertheless, the Somalis are far better off than they were under the brutal communist regime, and there is a substantial argument to make that it is doing better than its neighbors who have centralized states.
So if someone claims something, and someone else says that the first claim is invalid, how is this resolved voluntarily?
As far as property (outside of one's body) goes, I and most free-market capitalists would say that one doesn't justly own it until they transform it via their own actions.
The closest thing to Anarchism was the Free Territory in Ucraine and the Revolutionary Spain and it was pleasant. Anarchism works. Well, anarchocommunism, more specifically is the only anarchism that can work. Somalia is chaos not Anarchism. Don't confuse things.
Mmmm... yeah. What do you think grows like weeds in the fertile soil that is left behind when you remove a strong central government?
So if someone claims a natural resource ... say, an oasis in the desert ... and establishes themselves as the owners by transforming the landscape somehow ... what happens when they want to charge money (or something) for access to water, and everyone else in the desert refuses to acknowledge their ownership of the water?
There was a period in the early U.S. 1810 to about 1850 where a number of groups formed to try out all sorts of utopian ways of living together, and as long as they did not interfere with other people, they were pretty much left alone by state and federal government. The Shaker's, the Oneida colony, the Fabian Socialists, etc.. They all failed to survive, usually they lasted for a decade or two, but eventually the ripped themselves apart from internal breakdown due to disputes between factions. The bottom line is that people have disputes, many such disputes are not amenable to mutual negotiation. Many such disputes are too complicated and involved to lend themselves to a mutually agreeable settlement. Many such disputes also can result in a lot of anger and hurt, such feelings can easily lead to violence or revenge. The famous feud between the Hatfield's and McCoy's is instructive. We have two families living in an area where the Law, either state or federal had little sway. They got into a dispute in which theye both believed they were in the right. After a lot of killing by both sides and a hanging, the dispute eventually came to an end whenl the killing reached a point that it became a problem that both the State and Federal Governments were forced to intervene. Had the State and Federal governments not intervened, who knows how long the feud would have gone on if those Governments not intervened. If the Golden Rule were hardwired into every individual, we would not need government, but it is not, and as long as this is so, we will have need of finding a way to agree to govern ourselves and a means of delegating the use of force. To fail to do so reduces us to the law of the Jungle, survival of the fittest by tooth and claw.
