If one accepts the idea of Laissez-fair Capitalism of the type associated with people like Ayn Rand, a government is still required for the sole purpose of protecting individual rights. But if property rights are sacred, how is the “limited” government to be financed?
Given that many here are anarcho-capitalists and agorists, the answer that you will get most is that a state, however limited, is inherently unjust, a position that I agree with. There is no way that a state, a claimed monopoly of the legitamite use of force, can protect individual rights without infringing them in some way.
However, there has been some limited work done in the financing of a minarchist state. Ayn Rand’s essay “Government Financing in a Free Society” (or something to that effect) in The Virtue of Selfishness is the only work that I can think of off the top of my head; she posits that government-sponsered lotteries and charging for the use of the civil court system could be used to non-coercively fund a minimal state. Other Objectivists and Randians, such as David Kelley or Tibor Machan, may go into detail on this subject in their works. A good place to check for more on this subject would be an Objectivist forum, such as Rebirth of Reason or Objectivist Living, or in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies online archive.
If you describe an institution that is voluntarily funded for the only purpose of protecting property rights, then that institution is not a government.
Nock disagrees with you.
Maybe just an argument about the definition of the word?
I like to use Hoppe’s “Government is a territorial monopoly to coerce”.
Its still of a government, but not a state. At least thats probably how Nock would put it.
It’s pretty simple. You would just have an IRS and police/prisons. And have a group steal stuff. All the better with a productive system like capitalism.
The minarchists don’t care about property as much as they care about the good old roads being built by the only way they can imagine and us being able to bomb the bejesus out of the state’s enemy of the month.
Nozick does actually recognise this and speaks of “state-like entity” and not of “governement” for his minimal state; he also admits that this weakens the necessary requirements for the obtention of a state in comparison with the classical Weberian model.
Incidentally, he trashes Rand’s essay and her solution to state funding (together with broader chunks of her theory) in an article called “On the Randian Argument” and reproduced in his Socratic Puzzles.
For an alternative source of funding, which might be more legitimate, have a look at Otsuka’s Libertarianism without Inequality. He suggests to fund social rights (a.o.) through a system of fines imposed (as a form of punishment) on people who have breached the rights of others - namely, killing two birds with the same stone, by tying the problems of redistributive and retributive justice.
One way a minimal state could fund its operations would be by demanding payment from criminals as part of their punishment. For example, if you are caught stealing, you should not only repay your victim but also the state.
That said, we should get rid of the state all together and replace it with private security and court firms.