I just want to go back to this, because I think it’s touching on an important point. As libertarian anarchists, we have two goals:
- Anarchy - i.e. free entry into the field of producing legal codes (by legal codes I mean the principles under which property rights are to be assigned).
- Libertarianism - i.e. property rights being assigned according to the principles of homesteading, abandonment and voluntary exchange.
I think what AJ is getting at is that to persuade people to become libertarian anarchists, we should focus more on goal 1, because once we have acheived anarchy, people will quickly become libertarians, when the superiority of a libertarian legal code becomes apparent (i.e. libertarian legal codes will win out in competition).
Consider this diagram:
The numbers here are purely illustrative; I don’t want to get into a debate over them.
The point is that most people hold position D, and we want as many people as possible to hold position A, like us. But getting someone to jump straight from D to A is a tall order. I went from D to C (thanks to Ron Paul), and then from C to A (thanks to mises.org). I suspect many of us took this route.
Those in position B are our adversaries if we are trying to convert people to libertarianism, but they are our allies if we are trying to acheive anarchy. To acheive anarchy, we don’t need people to accept the whole of libertarianism - they must merely accept free entry to set up competing legal systems. One can imagine a threshold, say 10%, that must be reached in order to acheive anarchy. So if we manage to get 20% of the 90% in position D to position B, we will have anarchy. Once we have acheived anarchy, many people will become libertarians because it will be cheaper to buy libertarian legal codes, and they will be more effective. This may be the best strategy for getting people the whole way from position D to position A and thus acheiving our ultimate goal. Anarchy first, then the market will give us libertarianism.
The opposite strategy, the “Ron Paul strategy” of getting people from D to C and then getting them to this website (the job of LRC and C4L), is working well. It doesn’t usually take people too long after they find mises.org to see the contradictions in position C and move to position A. But a lot people remain in position C: the constitutionalists/minarchists. What use are these people? Suppose we managed to get 20% of the 90% in position D to position C. Will we acheive our goal? I don’t think so; governments grow, they do not shrink. We would still have a long way to go to get to our ultimate goal of libertarian anarchy.
Furthermore, it may actually be easier to get people in position D to go to position B rather than to position C, i.e. easier to convince people of anarchy than to convince them of libertarianism. The argument for anarchy is the relatively simple question of monopoly vs. competition. The argument for libertarianism is relatively more complicated and nuanced, and people may object to the whole philosophy because they feel particularly strongly about one issue, such as the libertarian stance on abortion, capital punishment, welfare, etc. It may be easier to convince these people of anarchy than to convince them of libertarianism.