Much of the "progress" made during the industrial revolution was in fact a response to government intervention-either by liability limitation, or direct "internal improvements" in the case of the US.
What you're forgetting is that the expenditures on "internal improvements" caused multiple states to reach the brink of bankruptcy, requiring bailouts and scrapping of many of those same "improvements" at terrible losses.
The rhetoric of merchantilism sounds good, but on net it's always less efficient in terms of cost/benefit than supposedly "wasteful" competition.
I can suggest "How Capitalism Saved America" or perhaps a search on Mises.org for "internal improvements". I assure you, you're not alone in this confusion.
Not to mention the huge expenditure of government resources upon military innovation......
Expenditures, yes, but with what benefits? "Spending" is not a measure of economic health, or booms would never have busts. That's why Keynesian economists are left scratching their heads when their predictions of "a new permanent high" end up with yet another, inevitable, bust. Just like now.
Lives lost, bombs dropped, buildings, resources, materials all destroyed, military "expenditure" is the Broken Window Fallacy writ HUGE. There is no net gain, only loss because once it's done it requires vast resources be spent cleaning up just to get back to where we started. The vast majority of toxic waste "Superfund" sites are military-industrial.
I believe in a free-market because it is moral, because I think that the means must justify the end, not vice-versa. Often I think many "free-market" types, such as Randians, lose track of that. Don't stop questioning things, no matter what you do.
Here I'll agree with you completely. Unless we can question our own assumptions, we will be defeated by the simple act of someone else doing it.
Vigilance implies the use of force to create "liberty", which is not freedom at all.
Ah! Now we have a point of discussion: The difference between
coercion and
response.The reason why the Non-Aggression Principle is worded as it is is because of that distinction.
Simple "force" is like gravity. It just "is". Trying to argue for or against "force" is futile and leads to apparent contradictions, because "force" is not and never has been at issue.
It is the
initiation of force that is addressed specifically by the Non-Aggression Principle and is the root of Libertarian and Anarchist philosophy.
For example, it is wrong to shoot your neighbor's dog. It is perfectly reasonable to shoot your neighbor's dog if the dog has run onto your property and is attacking your daughter.
It is wrong to shoot someone walking past your house. It is perfectly acceptable to shoot someone who is clearly the aggressor and is trying to violently harm someone who is walking past your house.
In each situation, the same use of "force" is either bad or good depending solely upon whether it is in response to someone
else creating the situation first. The initiation of force is what is wrong. The use of coercion on someone else, against their will, not "force" by itself.
Another example: Pollution. I dump toxic waste in my back yard, and there is nothing you can do about it. The instant it leaks into your property, blows over the fence, whatever, I have trespassed upon you and am prosecutable for it. However, since I have not initiated violence, violence is not a suitable response. Filing a suit in court for adjudication is a suitable response. Pollution is not a violent initiation of force, even though it is trespassing.
That's why shooting someone's 5 year old for picking your flowers is unacceptable, because it is a social standard (in any place I'd like to live) that a violent response to non-violence is anti-social.
Anarcho Capitalism might be the philosophical ideal, but there will still be random crimes, and likely unforeseen consequences
There will, of course, be anti-social people who act stupidly. But if history is any indication, the petty results of private crime pales to insignificance compared to the depredations of government.
Removing the institution with the legitimate monopoly on the initiation of force also means that there is no ability for a crime to be ignored on the basis that the criminal was acting in their "official" capacity as a government agent. Cop runs a stop-sign and kills 4 people, sorry, it's not murder. Oh, yes it is, because there is no immunity from being a government agent any more!
Private cop enters your house looking for a fugitive, knocks over a lamp, they are liable for that damage. Not so the clumsy police officers who rip your house to shreds, shoot your dog and leave you tied up on the floor for hour after hour only to discover later they had the wrong house.
Ask the person wrongly convicted of a government crime, who spends years in jail and when the conviction is overturned is released without even a "sorry", their life ruined and no one can be held "responsible".
See the difference?