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I would just like to take a moment to clarify something since there seem to be a lot of different interpretations of what I mean when I poke fun at “minarchists”.
When I use the term “minarchism”, I’m referring to an individual belief system, someone who believes a small government is necessary, and perhaps evil. A minarchist believes that government has a role in protecting life, liberty, and property. By itself, that wouldn’t be worthy of ridicule, but where it falls apart is when they insist that it must be an authoritarian monopoly on violence, i.e. that it must exert a supreme authority over a certain geographic region and individuals cannot choose to act apart from it. By its very nature, such a thing will never protect life, liberty, and property. Such a thing is inherently contradictory to such values. If, on the other hand, you can let go of the idea of it being a monopoly, then it is subject to the controls of the free market and regains the accountability that’s essential for it to ever do more good than harm.
