Anarchist or Minarchist?

Anarchist

39 (67.2%)

Minarchist

19 (32.8%)

Total Members Voted: 33

[freeAgent]

I'm pretty solidly minarchist.  I don't buy into free market justice systems when you have people who are violent and refuse to voluntarily submit to any justice.  At this point I'm all for taking the government out of just about everything it's involved in.

[anarchir]

I just did an unscientific poll of these folks.  They vote no.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPKGZreusoQ&NR=1

[youtube=425,350]MPKGZreusoQ[/youtube]

I didnt watch the vid yet, but a third world anarchist society does not equal that of a first world one.

[digitalfour]

I for one am glad this place is now anarchist-heavy. When I first came here over four years ago it was not. Now I am not needed to argue in favor of it. 

[voodoo]

I didnt watch the vid yet, but a third world anarchist society does not equal that of a first world one.

Ha!  Zimb-america is anything but an anarchy.  In fact, they are the minarchy of record.

Society, on the other hand...

[YixilTesiphon]

Zimbabwe's not an anarchist society, it's a micromanaged clusterfuck.

[mikehz]

Zimbabwe's not an anarchist society, it's a micromanaged clusterfuck.

At one time, it was one of the most prosperous states in Africa. Then, when it gained independence, it opted for socialism, which was all the rage at the time. From there on, it was downhill all the way. Now, it's pretty much just a socialist dictatorship under one-man rule.

[anarchir]

Anarchist.

Not a "libertarian."

This indeed.

[Richard Garner]

Anarchist, but the topic is pretty academic at this point: just getting less government is what is important first

[jeffersonish]

Anarchist, but the topic is pretty academic at this point: just getting less government is what is important first

It's like the rabbit trying to decide if he should take action to keep from being shot entirely, or just avoid begin fatally shot. The efforts taken to escape the hunter are probably about the same either way in most situations. It is more a matter of how quickly and vigorously he attempts escape than whether he goes behind the trees or the barn.

[Richard Garner]

Anarchist, but the topic is pretty academic at this point: just getting less government is what is important first

It's like the rabbit trying to decide if he should take action to keep from being shot entirely, or just avoid begin fatally shot. The efforts taken to escape the hunter are probably about the same either way in most situations. It is more a matter of how quickly and vigorously he attempts escape than whether he goes behind the trees or the barn.

Exactly. Enacting Rothbard's For a New Liberty would be better than Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, but that doesn't mean rejecting Free to Choose just because For a New Liberty is not available!

[Spideynw]

I am an anarchist, because government without consent of the governed is immoral, and no government can exist with consent of the governed.

[Alex Libman]

The anarchist-minarchist debate will still be around thousands of years after Karl Marx is universally confused with Shaka Zulu's witch-doctor, but it's not very relevant in the present.  I see myself being on both sides of this debate.

Being a programmer, I tend to think of this through the following analogy:  imagine I get hired to re-engineer the information systems of a small business and develop a new version of their accounting software while keeping their business running with the old version in the meantime.  I find that the current IT system is a 1960s-era pre-UNIX mainframe held together with duct tape, the Algol code is documented in French, and it averages three electrical fires per month, which as of now are my problem to deal with.  The new system will be perfect, but I need time to implement it, test everything, make sure it can handle all of their long-term business needs, document it, train the accountants to use it, convert the data, make changes to other systems that used to interact with the accounting mainframe, and so on.  That old mainframe represents society as it stands now, and the patches I need to make to the mainframe to keep the short-term business operations flowing is what the pragmatic / minacrhist Libertarian Party is trying to do.  The new version (i.e. perfect Anarcho-Capitalism) may take a while to stabilize, and not everyone will want to be an alpha / beta tester.  You have to split your time between the two systems and keep both your balls in the air.