If Austrian Economics is correct then the state is inefficient, any state activity will lead to a decrease in utility, moreover without the ability to calculate, provision of services by the state will always be inferior to the provision of services by private, voluntarily funded, competing businesses.
If libertarian philosophy is correct the state lacks any legitimacy and the very nature of the state violates the rights of those that live within the territory it claims to own. This occurs through systematic theft and even murder.
I believe both of these beliefs to be justified, nonetheless libertarianism seems to be somewhat ignored. I have two comments regarding this. The first is that I am not of the belief that it is wise to rely on “mass enlightenment” in order to abolish the state. The second is that this is to be expected, since if we are correct then the state, and its historical allies the intellectuals will no doubt go out of their way to dismiss and attempt to refute libertarian theory.
In spite of this, I believe that libertarians tend to be very poor when it comes to expressing themselves, and that there are numerous ways that libertarians could improve the image of libertarianism and their beliefs. Normally I would remark upon the horrible name libertarians have done in labelling themselves, the word libertarian having been stolen from communitarians and “anarcho capitalist” being the two worst words that could possibly go together. However, there has been discussion of this recently so I will not make any further comments.
My first point to make is that the all too often heard libertarian claims about the government being criminals and taxation being theft is unwise. This line is most certainly going to alienate many individuals who seem to view to government in a positive light, and regard the state as entirely indispensable. Moreover this emphasis the fact that libertarians are on the fringe and perhaps even lead to the situation in which libertarianism is associated with conspiracy theories, which once again are often seen in a negative light.
In fact, it seems to me that philosophy is a dead end. The people on these forums tend to be smarter than the average person. Indeed, many individuals on these forums are inclined towards philosophy and find the subject interesting, I would include myself in this group. The average person, however, cares not for philosophy. Especially in regards to the state, I daresay 95% of the population, myself more than likely included, would be willing to steal if it meant not letting their children go hungry. It is this sort of belief that the government is founded upon. Most individuals consider the government to be necessary to acheive the ends they desire. Their ends are usually to get rid of poverty and to bring safety and security. Indeed one will have a difficult time in convincing people that they should opposed taxation if it will come at the cost of the death of the poor due to starvation.
It would appear that using economic reasoning to convince people will be far more effective. Since we do not have to convince them about the ends, only that the means they wish to use to attain these ends will not bring about the results they wish for. Hence the emotional reaction from the statist will not be as pronounced as it would be if one had tried to convince them that the state is “evil”, which is essentially meaningless, and perhaps even insulting, to the average person.
Moreover, it is far more simple to demonstrate that minimum wages cause unemployments and that inflation harms the poor than it is it even begin to explain natural rights, moreover it is far more real to most people. My final point is that culture has the potential to be far more effective in bringing statists around to the anarchist point of view than philosophy. For the conservative this means explaining that upon abolishing the state we are likely to see a stronger family structure amongst other results and to the liberal this could take a number of forms such as lower income inequality.