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RE: Response: Sorry Libertarian Anarchists, Capitalism Requires Government
A free market is a market free from force. If you want to trade force on the market it's not free. A government is there to extract force from the market. If funded voluntarily there is no force involved. A government is a necessary good. Harry Binswanger is spot on.
If you define government that way (the ideal rather than the realization), you're exactly right. Unfortunately, that definition does not describe any contemporary government I know of, and all too few historical ones. I think the Irish Brehon Law system did match that, though. That was a fine example of anarchist governance.
Harry Binswanger's mistake is the assertion that a government must be granted carte-blanche to use force, and never be forcefully challenged or competed with. That system is guaranteed to degenerate.
The argument that any force makes a market less free is bogus. The idea that we can have no force at all is, of course, a pipe dream. Appropriate retaliatory force in response to things like fraud or theft makes a market freer by discouraging other uses of force.
"Initiatory" force is implied here, but you're right, that could've been more clear.
If mughat meant initiatory force, then his argument falls apart. Nobody is arguing that there should be a market for initiatory force.
Of course, given that humans are imperfect, there will be a market for initiatory force no matter what we do. We all want that market to be as small as possible so that the market overall can be as free as possible. The question is what's the best way to destroy any market for initiatory force. The disagreement is over whether the answer to that is government or a market for retaliatory force.
I'll let mughat clarify what he means for himself. :)
> The disagreement is over whether the answer to that is government or a market for retaliatory force.
By definition, government cannot remove force from the market because government is defined to be initiatory force.