>> Almost nobody would respect property rights if there wasn't the implicit threat of a man with a gun either, so the stuff would all get taken by someone else

>> Almost nobody would respect property rights if there wasn't the implicit threat of a man with a gun either, so the stuff would all get taken by someone else anyway. > Negative rights versus positive rights, this is an old and well-documented dichotomy. You can go on about "negative rights" all you want, but they're meaningless unless there's "a man with a gun" making sure they're respected. You may say that, you'll be that guy with the gun, but then what happens when there are more bandits than you can handle? Try to solve that problem, and pretty soon you've invented government with taxes and everything. Refuse to solve that problem, and you're a serf to some bandit lord. The libertarian dream is like an unstable element that has a half-life of a microsecond. Sure, maybe you can imagine conditions for its existence and people can (and do) write books about how it would work under those conditions. However, that's all moot because those conditions are unstable and it will quickly decay into something else.