People being fickle, apathetic, or whatever isn’t a good criticism of “an-capism”. Re: the charge of utopianism read Rothbard here. (Link may not work so go to page 297)
While it is vital for the libertarian to hold his ultimate and “extreme” ideal aloft, this does not, contrary to Hayek, make him a “utopian.” The true Utopian is one who advocates a system that is contrary to the natural law of human beings and of the real world. A Utopian system is one that could not work even if everyone were persuaded to try to put it into practice. The Utopian system could not work, i.e., could not sustain itself in operation. The Utopian goal of the left: communism — the abolition of specialization and the adoption of uniformity — could not work even if everyone were willing to adopt it immediately. It could not work because it violates the very nature of man and the world, especially the uniqueness and individuality of every person, of his abilities and interests, and because it would mean a drastic decline in the production of wealth, so much so as to doom the great bulk of the human race to rapid starvation and extinction.
In short, the term “utopian” in popular parlance confuses two kinds of obstacles in the path of a program radically different from the status quo. One is that it violates the nature of man and of the world and therefore could not work once it was put into effect. This is the utopianism of communism. The second is the difficulty in convincing enough people that the program should be adopted. The former is a bad theory because it violates the nature of man; the latter is simply a problem of human will, of convincing enough people of the Tightness of the doctrine. “Utopian” in its common pejorative sense applies only to the former. In the deepest sense, then, the libertarian doctrine is not Utopian but eminently realistic, because it is the only theory that is really consistent with the nature of man and the world. The libertarian does not deny the variety and diversity of man, he glories in it and seeks to give that diversity full expression in a world of complete freedom. And in doing [p. 304] so, he also brings about an enormous increase in productivity and in the living standards of everyone, an eminently “practical” result generally scorned by true Utopians as evil “materialism.”
The libertarian is also eminently realistic because he alone understands fully the nature of the State and its thrust for power. In contrast, it is the seemingly far more realistic conservative believer in “limited government” who is the truly impractical Utopian. This conservative keeps repeating the litany that the central government should be severely limited by a constitution. Yet, at the same time that he rails against the corruption of the original Constitution and the widening of federal power since 1789, the conservative fails to draw the proper lesson from that degeneration. The idea of a strictly limited constitutional State was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable and propitious circumstances. If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now? No, it is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical Utopian.
There is another deep sense in which libertarians scorn the broader utopianism of the left. The left Utopians invariably postulate a drastic change in the nature of man; to the left, man has no nature. The individual is supposed to be infinitely malleable by his institutions, and so the communist ideal (or the transitional socialist system) is supposed to bring about the New Communist Man. The libertarian believes that, in the ultimate analysis, every individual has free will and moulds himself; it is therefore folly to put one’s hope in a uniform and drastic change in people brought about by the projected New Order. The libertarian would like to see a moral improvement in everyone, although his moral goals scarcely coincide with those of the socialists. He would, for example, be overjoyed to see all desire for aggression by one man against another disappear from the face of the earth. But he is far too much of a realist to put his trust in this sort of change. Instead, the libertarian system is one that will at once be far more moral and work much better than any other, given any existing human values and attitudes. The more the desire for aggression disappears, of course, the better any social system will work, including the libertarian; the less need will there be, for example, for any resort to police or to the courts. But the libertarian system places no reliance on any such change.
But consider this also from Kennedy’s The Revolution Will Be All Business
What kind of businesses can advance market anarchism? Businesses which make people more expensive to govern. Businesses which offer their customers the means to protect their property and their persons from government. One of the highest leverage possibilities is a business that offers its customers the means to shield their income from taxation. Taxes become voluntary to the extent that individuals can avoid them, and when taxes become sufficiently voluntary governments must fail. What is the incentive for businesses to offer such services? Such businesses would be going after a piece of the same massive revenue stream that governments now control, the financial rewards would be immense.
I work in finance & insurance, so I’m a part of this. I prosper regardless of the existence of the state, but I want a better life for all people.
