Doug: Sure. If people aren't open-minded enough to even consider an alternative view, they're their own worst problem, not my ideas. In point of fact, anarchism is the gentlest of all political systems. It contemplates no institutionalized coercion. It's the watercourse way, where everything is allowed to rise or fall naturally to its own level.
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Look, I'd be happy enough if the state – which is an instrument of pure coercion, even after you tart it up with the trappings of democracy, a constitution, and what-not – were limited to protecting you from coercion and absolutely nothing more. That would imply a police force to protect you from coercion within its bailiwick. A court system to allow you to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force. And some type of military to protect you from outside predators.
Unfortunately, the government today does everything but these functions – and when it does deign to protect, it does so very poorly. The police are increasingly ineffective at protecting you; they seem to specialize in enforcing arbitrary laws. The courts? They apply arbitrary laws, and you need to be wealthy to use them – although you're likely to be impoverished by the time you get out of them. And the military hardly defends the country anymore – it's all over the world creating enemies, generally, of the most backward foreigners.
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