where I deviate is the actual mechanism in place. whether private (voluntary) or not (public)there is still enforcement. I put a link on another post of a book called Jefferson's Moose. The author makes the case that settling the West was much like governance by voluntary/private means. The term "wild west" was somewhat of a misnomer, overall communities thrived by hiring their police and judicial services. His other major example is the internet.The cooperation and development have not had government oversight until states voted to be a taxing authority. That started the slip into a strong federal push we are seeing now. So many of the pioneers were immigrants and I am skeptical they completely knew and understood what our Constitution was. But those ideas were already in action-the action of Capitalism, which included the concept of a man's creation is his own, in settling and working the land or panning for gold.

Except for the annoying fact that private mediation (aka: arbitration) does not work that way. In the real world all parties agree IN ADVANCE to be bound by the arbitrator's decision(s).

we have private mediation services now. everyone can agree to let someone else's decision be binding until they lose

Sorry, but these "examples" in no way answer the question I asked. Every one of them operated in an already established coercive nation state. They are also ancient history.

Let me put it to you this way:

Why on earth would I, having succeeded brilliantly at amassing a substantial fortune and gaining social prominence by voluntary cooperation, creativity and plain hard work, want to risk all that on hiring, feeding and equipping enough thugs to become a much reviled war lord?

Approach it from a different angle altogether.

I avoid committing acts of aggression against others lest they do the same or worse to me.

It really becomes that simple in the end.

OCCAM'S RAZOR.

Wrong question. Ask this one instead:

How would any man, woman or would-be gang go about amassing the fortune required and gaining enough of a strategic advantage to hijack anything in a society without central banks, fractional lending, limited liability, crony-capitalism, eminent domain, taxation, inflation, limits on gun ownership or all the hundreds of other coerced mechanisms of the state?

It is a fascinating question which I have been pondering for decades and for which I have never been able to come up with an answer that stood up to scrutiny and so far neither has anybody I asked.

Voluntary governance is something entirely different from coercive government. This is a fundamental error made by so many. In considering the concept of anarchy they assume that it means a free for all without any rules of conduct. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Statists also like to reinforce this fallacy in public schools and via the main stream media to advance their own agenda.

How about: "I am forbidden by my personal ethic from doing that."

I actually understand these concerns, and think they can be addressed. If we own ourselves, we also own what we create with our time and effort, and what we receive in voluntary trade. We own what we homestead, in terms of physical land and natural resources, if nobody already owns it, because of the investment of our time and effort.

There will be bad people who initiate aggression not only with physical force, but by trying to steal our property. When I started to learn about anarchy, my big concern was also the same: Who will protect us from the "bad guys"?

One thing I realized along the way is that government doesn't do a very good job of protecting us. They sometimes catch, and sometimes punish, people who've harmed others after the fact, but the law actually says it's not their job to protect us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKVSNjlS... Can anyone say our system is ideal? Can anyone propose a solution that is likely to fix or improve it that hasn't been tried before?

I've addressed the other reasons to support a voluntary, non-coercive system in other comments here. In brief, I think it's more moral than the current system, since it doesn't initiate force against innocent people. (Taxation means demanding someone's property under threat of force, when they have done nothing to harm another.) And I believe it would be more effective, since monopolies aren't known for producing quality, while free markets are.

For those who argue that we need a uniform system of laws, why should we stop at just our country? Shouldn't we have world law, like the U.N.? Why should we have state courts? Shouldn't the same laws apply everywhere? I suspect that most Gulch members wouldn't want standardized national law, or international law. There are benefits of having competing systems, and I think we need more of them.

I left the USA also. In 2010. We have that in common. :)

You are accusing people on this thread as using arguments that no one has made, l but I wasn't attributing promotion of anarchism to you.

We have no idea of what anyone told you years or decades ago about a painting, but it has nothing to do with the topic here or what anyone else has said about it.

Leonard Peikoff has not said that there is no new ground to cover and has attempted to do so himself (with mixed results). He does defend the position that Ayn Rand used the term "Objectivism" to refer to her philosophy as she formulated it, and that others claiming to 'extend' it, correctly or not, are not included in that. He insists that even his own subsequent work is not included, although he calls it "applications of Objectivism" and sometimes consciously 'suggests' that Ayn Rand would agree with him, which in significant areas I strongly doubt. She isn't here to say one way or the other.

Bra-vo!!!

Repeating the same superficiality and fallacies for over 50 years is no great achievement and no excuse to try to exploit this web site to try to resurrect and promote it.

Ayn Rand's philosophy is not based on "the non-aggression principle" and does not lead to anarchy. That is so outrageous as to be stupid. Maphesdus has no understanding of Ayn Rand's philosophy and repeatedly misrepresents it with reckless slogans in troll posts.

Maphesdus is a 27 year old college sophomore gadfly in "digital media" and an avowed "left libertarian", i.e., a leftist ,who claims to have been "through a period of about six months where I got really into Ayn Rand's philosophy" before rejecting it as supposedly opposing the "principles of the Declaration of Independence".

Nobody can "get really into" her philosophy in all of "six months" let alone honestly conclude something so dumb with even the most casual understanding of her political philosophy.

This is so stupid as to raise the question of intellectual dishonesty as well as severe disability, and with repeated obvious misrepresentation repeatedly refuted leaves no room for further patience with this troll who constantly trashes Ayn Rand under the guise of wanting to "debate" it with nowhere else to do it.

Maphesdus is a collectivist who demands government policy based on race in a statist, racist notion of government. Rejection of such statism does not make Ayn Rand an "anarchist" denying "essential functions of government".

I think so, if we're agreeing that there will be bad people under any system of organizing society. But I do think we could reduce the number of "bad people" if we encouraged more people to adopt the non-aggression principle, i.e., the moral judgment that it is wrong to initiate force. Ayn Rand said the same: http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/origin...

To me, "forbidden" implies that it being forced on you from the outside, as in "forbidden fruit." (Forbidden by whom? By God.) To say I have decided not to do something, or that I believe something to be immoral, I wouldn't say, "I'm forbidden from doing that." The question does seem intentionally tricky, though, probably to make us think about who has the right to "forbid" us from doing something.

that's what I am speaking to...:)