Courts, police, and the army are proper. That's government. The difference is what kind of government. A proper government holds a monopoly on retaliatory force, it acts after someone initiates force or fraud. It doesn't dictate your screw size, battery compartment, or production method before you've harmed anyone.
Yes, to settle disputes. The purpose of these laws is the protection of individual rights, not consumer “rights” or any other special “rights” that belong exclusively to one group or race and no other.
It's not arbitrary. It's called the distinction between retaliatory and preemptive force. Retaliatory force requires a victim and evidence of causation. Preemptive force has no objective anchor, hence arbitrary by definition. You can't jail a man for a crime he might commit tomorrow.
What im saying is that this distinction is arbitrary. Running a society isn't all about punishing crimes. That's just one minor aspect of a states responsibilities. Standardization is another, arguably more important one.
It's far from minor. To ban physical force from social relationships,
people need an institution charged with the task of protecting their
rights. People's rights can only be violated by physical force. To
prevent this, the government's only solution is to hold a legal
monopoly on the use of physical force.
If this vested power remains unchecked and unlimited, the government
will violate the rights of its own citizens. That's why we should
limit its power to retaliatory use.
Standardization is a very valuable asset, I don't deny that. But:
1. Standardization is not limited to forced standardization;
2. It's better to live in a world not fully standardized than to
accept the premise that it's right to violate rights for a good cause.
The "good cause" shifts the question from "should rights be violated?"
to "what kind of violation do you want?" Once we accept that, we lose
to totalitarianism. A man who says "let's violate a tiny fraction of
rights" would lose to a man who declares "let's violate rights of
thousands."