[maxharris]

No, that's not what I'm saying at all.

I'm not an anarchist. We need a government! Without creating the conditions necessary for a market, that market cannot exist. What are those conditions? The only fundamental one is to retaliate against anyone that initiates physical force against another. (Examples of this include murder, theft, fraud, assault, etc.)

[summerdown2]

I suspect you need a lot more than that. You need a police force to enforce it, for example, courts to try and prisons to put away offenders. Then you need communications so people know what the penalties are, and somewhere they are compiled, and a system for changing them and keeping them current.

And then you'll need a financial system to pay for it, which means you will need some sort of currency combined with laws to regulate counterfeiting and some sort of contract law to let people make deals. Oh, and it might be an idea to have a boundary so people know where the law is valid, as well as a language in which the law is written, which means it's a good idea to educate people in that language.

Then what happens if someone doesn't initiate force against another, but just abandons them - eg a mother abandoning her child. Has she committed a crime? What about international fraud? Better have inter-country arrangements in place. But then you might need diplomats, and maybe an armed force just in case.

I could go on. My dream if ever a libertarian paradise comes to fruition is to buy up a one mile strip of land fully enclosing a village and refuse everyone the right to cross it - food delivery, immigrants, emigrants - everyone, trapping the people inside and letting them starve. After all, I can do whatever I like with my property, and the only law we need to implement is property rights, correct?