BTW, I don’t disagree with your point about the coercive power of government but the pirate experience does have a lesson. Until each individual is meaningfully independent of means, in other words, until each person can choose meaningful to join with others or not (without the consequence being starvation and death) then coercion is impossible to avoid. Someone will always be more powerful and someone will always be weaker and the contrary to the social Darwinists the results are as much luck as skill. So until we hit Vernor Vinge levels of technology such that each person can in effect be their own nation we are stuck with coercion and a minarchy will turn into coercion just like any other government.

So to me the question is – do we accept the inevitability of coercion and try to create a society that minimizes it in a meaningful way or do we ignore it and hope it doesn’t come? A look at the history of the US in particular would be instructive here. The early United States was pretty darn close to a minarchy. Most people, most of the time, once you took three steps out of a major city (of which there were few) were more or less a law unto themselves. But quite quickly this ended (mostly, ironically enough, due to the need for enforceable property rights in the west) and the federal government came in like the right hand of G-D and smote those who didn’t fall in line. And the constitution wasn’t worth the protection of tissue paper in a storm.

Coercion is going to happen, it’s just a question of what to do about it.

Also, it is important to realize the role of charity as a safety net. It is not guaranteed, but in practice it works better than government welfare. I believe that the majority of people are charitable, so you don’t need government to tax for charitable purposes. The irony is that if most people were not charitable, then a democratic government should also not tax for charitable purpose.

I heard of those pirate organizations too, but not in great details. Calling them government is a misnomer, because you don’t choose to be governed, whereas you can choose to join a pirate organization, work in a firm with a boss or live in a condo with a condo association. The difference is that government has monopoly usage of force, such as putting you in prison for refusing to pay taxes. So government is not exposed to the important force of competition.

I personally have not made my mind up on anarchy vs. minarchy, but I do think critically about the role of government. I really try to understand why the problem cannot be solved by private individuals and, if not, why would the government do any better.

We should have lunch sometime for a stimulating discussion ;-)

As for anarchic societies, they are wonderful until something goes wrong. In the end, they all turn into governments. I just read a semi-interesting book on the economics of 18th century pirates. They had true anarchic societies that actually worked fairly well but in the end they still exercised total control over their members so the essence of real freedom was absent. In other words you, as a member of the pirate ship, freely agreed (in the vast majority of cases) to be bound by the rules of the society but in the end this still meant that the ship and its members could inflict punishments on you up to and including death. So anarchy in truth turns out to be government by another name.

As for me, I’d like a nice social democracy. Far from perfect but better than any alternatives ever tried in the real world.

For libertarians, on one end (minarchists), the answer is the minimal government is army, maybe police, maybe justice. On the other end (anarchists), the answer is no government.

The trouble is that even with a strong initial self-constraint like the 10th amendment, the federal government does not seem that constrained anymore.
Anarchists would say that any government will have a natural tendency to grow over time. I have heard pretty compelling ideas explaining how such a society would actually work.

Regarding corruption, I wonder what kind of corruption would remain if you have either of these (minimal or no government). There would still be some bad people, but competition normally penalizes it (ie. make it expensive) to be “bad”.

In terms of moving to another country, I would probably go by this index ( http://www.freetheworld.com/release.html ) of economic and political freedom. It’s no guarantee that it would last though.

There are no perfect choices of course but I’m considering Canada, Ireland and Germany. Canada achieved its independence 80 years after the US Constitution was signed. Ireland didn’t become independent until 1922. And Germany was leveled and more or less rebuilt brick by brick after World War II.

Again, each of these countries has their own problems. Canada is so tied to America that I can’t see how it can avoid getting dragged down as America goes (anyone fancy playing the equivalent role of Finland or West Germany during the cold war?). Ireland doesn’t even have legal abortion (which says a lot of things about a lot of things) and let’s not even talk about their economy. And Germany is having massive problems becoming a multi-ethnic republic, not to mention that I don’t actually speak German.

But in the end it’s not about finding the perfect choice, but about finding a better choice.

When you have a government which can attribute itself new powers, responsibilities and resources, by taking them from the individuals (who ultimately are the only owners of rights and property), the system makes it a valuable business strategy to get government “favors”. If you increase the scope of government slowly, you get the same boiled frog analogy ;-)

John Stossel highlighted some good examples just last week: http://dumky.posterous.com/john-stossel-crony-capitalism

I think the most thought-provoking author on this topic is probably Hoppe. In particular, he wrote on the natural consequences of democracy, he outlines that book here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe4.html