> So... are you an anarchist, or just a big fan of small governments? :) I'm looking to minimize the amount of force used in the world. Increasingly smaller gov

> So... are you an anarchist, or just a big fan of small governments? :) I'm looking to minimize the amount of force used in the world. Increasingly smaller governments are in the right direction, and without central governments I believe we'd still organize ourselves in enclaves or archologies that would trade with each other. > one problem with this approach is the small government [...] then keeps going until it's a large government again People would only allow to be governed with explicit contracts and insurance in place. This gets into dispute resolution, which I'm still studying, but there are definitely ways to set incentives in place so that "becoming a large government" becomes a terrible course of action (economically, not just nominally and flexibly as is with law today). > If they strike, or demonstrate, my police forces kill them You can't initiate force in a libertarian society, or you will be inviting problems/conflicts. It's not economically advantageous to wage wars in a free society, so this won't be chosen often. The reason people go to war is because they want to make money selling weapons. This model only works with fiat money (historically, as wars are usually much more expensive than anyone could pay for). Real money can't pay for wars. Wars are really expensive. Sundown towns were an explicit death threat to people who did not initiate force. > We tried it your way, more or less, back in the Gilded Age I'm reading a lot about the Gilded Age now and I'd really emphasize your "more or less". There was a lot of government meddling in the market at the time (railroads: government land grants and subsidies; in 1873 the Coinage Act demonetized silver [this is a huge intervention], which raised interest rates [artificially, which is why it's bad], which contributed to the first "Great Depression" until 1879). And that's not even the beginning of government interventions within 1860-90. The Gilded Age is not an example of the free market. I'm looking at Celtic Ireland for something more like it.