Libertarians hold two positions which, at first glance, might seem to be contradictory: First, that government is coercive and involuntary, and second, that the power of government rests ultimately on public opinion rather than coercion.
The first point is stated brilliantly by Mises:
It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
In other words, all government edicts, taxes, regulations, etc. are enforced by the threat and application of violence.
The second point was originally expounded by Boétie and Hume. As Boétie writes in his Politics of Obedience:
[The tyrant has] nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?
He concludes:
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.
And as Hume put it in his "First Principles of Government”:
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.
Thus government, as a minority of the population, does not have the power to control the entire population through force alone, but must rely on widespread support in the form of public opinion.
But, one might object, if government requires widespread support from its citizens, how can it also be coercive and involuntary?
First, notice that government can be coercive and yet draw its power from something other than its coerciveness (e.g. public opinion.) Just because government does not derive its power from its coerciveness, it doesn’t follow that government isn’t coercive.
Let’s investigate more closely. The government decrees what its citizens may and may not do, and threatens violence against recalcitrant individuals who disobey. The citizens acquiesce to government rule, but they do so under duress. This point is crucial: the citizens are acquiescing under the threat of coercion. In other words, the majority of people, under the threat of coercion, do comply with the government’s dictates, while recalcitrant individuals are directly coerced. Thus, government is coercive.
But if the government is vastly outnumbered by its citizens, why do they put up with its coercive dictates? Why don’t they rise up and overthrow it? The answer is public opinion: the citizens, steeped in statist ideology, believe that government is just and necessary, and hence refrain from revolting. More specifically, public opinion creates a collective action problem. If most people believe in statism, then one individual’s resistance to government will achieve nothing except martyrdom. The government can dispose of one lone resister. If most people believe in anarchism, however, then their combined resistance will be sufficient to topple the government. The government’s existence depends on what the public believes. The difficulty lies in coordinating simultaneous and effective resistance. Thus, the power of government rests on public opinion.
(So Boétie is incorrect to say that “It is… the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude.” It’s true that their coordinated resistance would bring down the government. But it’s wrong to say that their servitude is voluntary or consensual, because as we’ve seen, the government threatens them with coercion. It might be the case that governments are more or less coercive depending on the credibility of their threats.)
(Also, his statement “I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer” needs clarifying. It’s not that people just have to withdraw their “consent”. Rather, they have to disobey the government and make it carry out it’s threat of coercion; they have to call the government’s bluff. So “removing your support” means potentially incurring the wrath of the state.)
Thus, there is no paradox at all. Government is coercive and draws its power from public opinion. But this raises the question: if coercion is not the base of government’s power, then is it a necessary feature of government? The answer must be yes; government just is a coercively maintained territorial monopoly of ultimate jurisdiction.
This raises the following question: if coercion is not the base of government’s power, then is government a necessary feature of society? This question is the driving force of market anarchism. As Long writes: “if governmental force is impotent except insofar as it accords with public opinion, then … it is public opinion, not governmental force, that actually maintains social order, in which case we can safely dispense with governmental force and rest social order on public opinion alone.”