"if you steal my intellectual property- it is the same as breaking into my home. If you make knockoff NIKES, you have stolen my design and brand name."
I agree completely, but it's not the same as my everyday definition of force. I might say, "I left the door unlocked, so the thieves were able to come in an steal my property without using force." That's just a colloquial definition of force. By the objectivist definition, they did use for, and they had pointed a gun at me during the theft it would have been further use of force.

Based on the fundamental misconception you have that Objectivism's logical end is anarchy, you seem to be trusting the writings of others that disagree with Rand rather than drawing conclusions from reading her non-fiction works. However, I could be wrong in my assumption regarding what you've read.

Well said and a fair plan.

We may need to agree to disagree because I don't see the just punishment of a crime as an initiation of force.

My question is failure to relinquish some of the money force? It's not my everyday definition of force, but if it is philosophical force then I agree with the thing about never initiating force first.

Contractural performance. You volunteer to give up some rights in order to enforce performance. If you don 't perform you have to give back the payment.

What if you it's a civil matter, like someone paid me to write articles but they think I breached b/c I missed a deadline. If they sue, the courts may force me to pay back some of that money. Did I use force against the publisher when I missed the deadline?

I just don't agree. If you are correct we should have devolved into anarchy at some point early in our history. Instead we became the most powerful nation on earth with the strongest middle class in history. Straying from limited government and capitalism has brought us to where we are.

Straight;

The sad, but true conclusion of my lifetime of observing peoples and governments all around the world is obeying the rules doesn't work, violence does. The party most willing and able to break the rules and visit violence upon its foes will win.

To wit: The Democrat Party breaks the rules and wins via vote fraud and unlawful persecution of its foes by government agencies. Militant Islamists retake control of anyplace left in the hands of "moderate Muslims".

Thus, if a government cannot or will not exercise force, it will soon be an ex-government, because somewhere inside its habit will exist a party that will use force.

And, once bereft of forceful governments, we're reduced not to mob rule, but tribal war. Think for awhile and you can imagine us dividing ourselves into tribes. They already exist in street gangs and, even though we might not choose to join the Bloods or MS-13 or the Satanas, when government lacks force, eventually, as a means of survival, we will form tribes. When seen objectively, "Deliverance" was a tribal war, us against them.

One can only strive for a government willing to allow us to be us within our tribes, but strong enough to defeat any tribe that attacks another. Our problem at the moment is the Totalitarian Socialist Tribe is attacking the rest of us and the once (perhaps) beneficent, or at least neutral government has joined in on the side of the attackers.

GODS HAIRY BALLS!

Rand was not an anarchist.
"If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door—or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages.

The use of physical force—even its retaliatory use—cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens. Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment. Whether his neighbors’ intentions are good or bad, whether their judgment is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or by malice—the use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary decision of another." Virtue of Sefishness

If you continue to conflate capitalism with anarchism and ascribe it to Objectivism, I will down vote-it will not be productive becasue it is an untruth

I found even today that I had to check my premises with regard to the honesty and good will of people.

With regard to projection, it is the default reaction for liberals and, unfortunately, suprisingly common amongst non-liberals.

Point taken. It was a hypothetical to set up the more important questions that followed.