[SoftwareMaven]

I thought that was an odd thing for the article to focus on, too. When I think of something like this being libertarian, a far different picture emerges, like being free from the nanny-state and its attempts to infiltrate my life.

[rvkennedy]

I guess I prefer to think of a state as being like a piece of software. It starts out as kind of a kludge, doesn't do much, and what it does is like a blunt instrument (capital punishment, debtor's prisons and so on).

Like a piece of software, over hundreds of iterations and modifications, assuming the developers are good, a state can become pretty good - powerful enough to give its users what they want, but not monolithic and overburdened with features.

Features we need: environmental regulations, food safety, building codes, healthcare.

Of course, you can tell you've got feature-creep when your state starts building stealth bombers.

The trouble with these "micro-states" is they're starting from scratch. For the first hundred years or so, you'll be able to buy toys that can kill your kids, you'll have buildings that randomly explode, and a broken/nonexistent healthcare system.

Fortunately for the sane, we don't need to risk our families' lives and wellbeing in an unproven, buggy state. Mature, well-tested states are available!

[haecib]

>a far different picture emerges, like being free from the nanny-state and its attempts to infiltrate my life.

I think people living on something like this would illustrate that there is no such thing as a non-nanny state. We're a democracy, and we have an elected government that creates laws that govern us by our decree for the good of society on the whole. (This is obviously simplified, and ignores corruption, which is fine because that cannot be removed from any system, including the proposed one for this topic).

Those living together as a social community would find that they would need to adopt thousands upon thousands of rules that community members have to abide by or face consequences (anarchy being the alternative). They will find that what they are emulating is our democracy, just on a smaller scale. Sure, they may make different rules on a range of issues, but they will, and must, make rules all the same. And they will go beyond the theoretical brain exercises that Libertarians often substitute for law, -revolving around property law as the main focus. The only reason people will feel more free from the law is because there will be fewer of them, -it would be function of the extremely tiny size of the population itself.