LIBERTARIAN TERMINOLOGY: STATE AND GOVERNMENT ARE NOT SYNONYMS THE PROBLEM IS NO

LIBERTARIAN TERMINOLOGY: STATE AND GOVERNMENT ARE NOT SYNONYMS

THE PROBLEM IS NOT GOVERNMENT: THE PROBLEM IS THE STATE.

One of the problems we face in the libertarian movement is the confusion between the terms “state” and “government”. A government can consist of a constitution enumerating property rights, a private judiciary, and a volunteer militia. This government need not assist in the concentration of capital into infrastructure. It needs only to define a monopoly of property rights, and to provide the means by which to evolve that definition via the evolution of the common law along with the means of evading property rights that evolve along with the market .

When we use the term “state”, we refer to a bureaucracy that holds a monopoly on the use of violence and which holds a means by which to arbitrarily redefine property rights, and to confiscate and make use of property.

Our alternatives to the state rely on a formally articulated property rights and obligations, private judiciaries, competing insurance companies that provide all of the services we attribute to the monopoly that is the state, and private institutions (like stock markets) that concentrate capital for the purpose of creating infrastructure.

Libertarianism does not suggest solutions for creating a social order – the ability to cooperate at scale – that are without “government”. Even the anarchic program relies upon articulated private property rights – a government of norms, meaning informal but not formal institutions.

Instead, Libertarians argue against the “state” because it is a fictitious representation of a collective will that is better able to provide for wants than is the market. When in fact, the state is a vehicle by which a class of individuals profits by stealing from some constituencies to give to others.

We argue that the products of modernity exist because of the market, and that this prosperity exists in spite of statist governments who plunder us, not because of such statist governments.