I need your assistance for something I am attempting. Here is the assumption:
You have a captive audience. This person is hesitant to hear your ideas, but is generally open-minded and willing to listen completely to whatever you have to say. You have their complete attention for a matter of a few days to a few weeks. Your task is to economize your most convincing arguments for property rights and a stateless society. How would you go about arranging your arguments to have the most decisive impact on your listener? First of all, since the time you have with them is scarce, which arguments deserve the highest priority for you to achieve your ends (100% acceptance)? Which arguments are not as immediately relevant? Secondly, since the order in which evidence is presented is also relevant to the power of changing minds, which arguments would you start with? What kind of progression would you make? Do you jump into economics or appeal to ethics or natural rights? What do you think would make for the most convincing progression of ideas?
I have many ideas of how to go about this, but I am interested in seeing how others handle this situation. Perhaps it will light a new spark in my mind.
Best regards,
Bright
P.S. I suppose this question can also be related to how you personally came to accept anarcho-capitalism. What was the idea that first attracted you to this philosophy; the idea that first made you sit up and pay attention, the one that hooked you and wouldn’t let you go. For myself it was monetary theory, but I wonder what it was for others.
Oh, I should clarify on what I mean by “most convincing”, since what is convincing is purely a subjective judgement. I should say most convincing in your experience (discussing these ideas with others).
Thanks 
I’d start with ethics and morals, and mention utilitarianism, and natural law. Then explain negative rights and positive rights, and how positive rights can lead to tyranny. Then explain the IP and physical property debate. Then pretty much make the rest of the topics follow (roughly) the chapters of human action.
Historical examples to be placed wherever it helps with illustrating a point.
It might even be necessary to bring up arguments against these days and the counter-arguments. It is important to discredit common arguments against when trying to be persuasive.
The first step in talking about morals and ethics really helps in clearing up what the purpose of what all the following stuff is, or how it fits in a general framework of society.
This is all off the top of my head, so YMMV.
Appeal to their self-interest.
I think it always depends on who you are talking to, their level of knowledge and interest, their political persuasion, and how they react to the things you say.
But speaking from my own experience, I would say four major revelations brought me to libertarian anarchy:
- Government is unethical. (Governments require taxation, taxation is theft, theft is unethical).
- Government is uneconomical. (Governments disrupt the price system, the price system is vital to efficient allocation of resources, and hence prosperity. All government spending comes from taxation, merely redistributing wealth, not adding to it).
- Government is the cause of, and not the solution to, all the major problems with the world. (Greedy businessmen is not the problem, the problem is greedy businessmen with government support. Today we have corporatism, not a free market).
- Government is unnecessary. (There is nothing that the free market cannot provide).
Number 1 here is by far the most important IMO. It’s also the quickest to explain and easiest to understand, and if applied consistently, leads directly to libertarian anarchy. I stress this point the most. People usually accept this easily, but say no government at all is impractical and idealistic (as I once did). However its essential to make people aware that they are the ones supporting an unethical system, and it is up to them to justify it. The cognitive dissonance I felt when I believed that “government is unethical, but necessary” was what drove me to learn more about economics and politics. I was hooked by Ron Paul, who stood out for me more because of his ethics than his economics. The freedom message resonated with me.
2 and 3 require at least a basic understanding of economics. Hazlitt is great for newbies to the subject, and for debunking the view that things like minimum wage, regulations, subsidies, tariffs, etc are good for the economy.
Only when I understood the first three points did I begin to seriously explore point 4. How the hell can police/armies/law/courts/roads work without a government? These were the last roadblocks for me, and it took me a good few months of reading Rothbard, Hoppe, D Friedman, etc, as well as asking questions and following debates on these boards, before I considered myself to be a libertarian anarchist.
These are really all fantastic replies, thank you. It is encouraging to know that I am on the right track with this.
Just a few things to add:
Stranger mentioned appeal to their self-interest. I think this aspect of argumentation is critical, and I am trying to apply it the best I can. I think if I can make something personally relevant, that will hook them and encourage them to listen to everything else that comes afterward. With this in mind, what subjects do you believe are the most powerful “hooks” that will capture an audience? The way I have structured my project so far, the two hooks that lead to everything else are appeals to self-interest based on 1. private property via an understanding of the implications of self-ownership and 2. money (since money is a factor in everyone’s life). Are there other, better, more focused subjects that I can choose to convey to people early on? I don’t want to start people off with abstract concepts but things that are immediately relevant to their personal lives and build up from that (that’s why I start with self-ownership, as it is the most immediately conceivable axiom I can build the other arguments upon).
I should also mention the audience for this, as it probably will help with your suggestions. The captive audience I have in mind is the intelligent layperson. That is, the person who would pick up and read a novel, or seek out and watch a documentary on a subject that interests them. It is not (intentionally) aimed at academics and such.
Thanks again everyone!
Bring up cultural issues, “proper” music, thoughts, actions etc. These are always pretty fundamental to people I think.
Super-short path: Monopoly is harmful. People intuitively understand this, and it can be used to answer every single concern of the prospective libertarian.
Even shorter path: Why can’t I opt out of your political association? Why must all in a given territory be bound by the government’s laws? This appeal to non-territoriality really entails the anti-monopoly concept as well. They are two sides of the same coin, and can be used alternately to make the necessary points as needed.
For more on this shortest-path concept, in an article that makes it seem strikingly close to mainstream thought, check out Towards YouTopia. The author doesn’t go all the way to (p)anarchy, because he’s still talking about a state monopoly on so-called “territorial goods,” but the concept is extremely powerful because he takes a hop, skip and a jump from mainstream thought and ends up at near-panarchy.