By Will Porter
Minarchists claim that we need to have an institution who levies taxation just for some essential services. They claim that without this agency doing this, we would have all 
kinds of terrible problems, starving children, etc.
Voluntaryists claim that these services would be provided though, through the market, through voluntary social discourse and free exchange of goods and services. Virtually every human need is supplied by the free market, even with such a massive state full of regulations and prohibitions on competitive enterprise.
Why should we then think that, especially once free of these hampering state-mandates, the market won’t provide these services? In the words of Jeffery Tucker, “The free market is a giant conspiracy to lower all prices down to zero.”
His point being that markets always tend to lower prices and increase standards of living and productivity as capital accumulation occurs.
The time we see the most problems with the market is when the government heavily intervenes and hampers its spontaneous and expanding nature. This is why communism/socialism fails, it is a massive and all-encompassing state intervention into the market, it’s an utter failure.
Following this trend of logic, voluntaryists simply advocate for the rolling back of the state to nothing, since less state mandates into the market heed us better results in regards to human productivity and standard of living.
Moving on to a second argument…
States always expand, especially state-capitalist systems. The market economy tends to grow…if left unhampered enough by state mandates, that is. States latch on to the this growth and use the increased productivity of society in order to extract more tax money so they can fund ever-larger programs, warfare, welfare, etc. We have seen this with our own eyes, as capitalism has enriched nations, governments take advantage of this unprecedented wealth to unleash unprecedented statism and state programs.
My third thought…
This is coming from an ethical area, and is related to logical consistency. Most minarchists advocate the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). The NAP states that ALL initiated aggression against an individual is unjustified and immoral.
Taxation by definition falls under this criteria for unwarrented aggression, yet minarchists either avoid or deny this.
ALL violence means all of it, not most of it. To stop short of the state when applying the NAP is to utterly abandon the principle all together, since for a rule to be deemed a principle it must apply universally.
A man in a funny hat isn’t ethically permitted to murder people, neither is the state, neither are you or I.
When applied totally consistently, the totally free market, Anarcho-Capitalism is the logical conclusion. A society based in peaceful and voluntary relations. This is so obvious it’s weird having to explain it to people who claim to adhere and advocate the NAP, which is most minarchists (that I know at least).
So any/all statism inherently violates the NAP and can thus be deemed immoral. Simple logic, unless you can prove that extracting resources against an individual’s will doesn’t constitute as the definition of theft, you’ll have to concede to the argument.
My fourth, and I believe final, point…
This comes from historical analysis and practical, pragmatic reasoning.
We have SEEN, with our very eyes, the negative effects of statism. Wars, welfare dependency, wars on drugs, constant economic destruction of the market system via tampering with banks, currencies, interest rates, incurring massive debts, bailouts. Essentially every bad thing you can think of doing in an economic sense, it’s been done multiple times by various governments throughout history.
It takes either ignorance or intellectual dishonesty to not acknowledge the utter black record of violence attached to the state institution, both historically and RIGHT this very second, as I type.
States destroy lives and livelihood, no amount of voluntary discourse or free trade could POSSIBLY equate to the violence levied by governments against innocent human beings, no market anarchism could EVER replicate such atrocities.
The minimal state argument is as old as the “Philosopher Kings” argument. It claims that “If only the right rulers would come along and bring us our just society.”
If only we could just use the right amount of violence in the right places, if only.
Market anarchism hasn’t even been given a shot ONCE, there have been close resemblances way way back in history, but nothing modern, nothing that makes use of the amazing market capabilities we possess as a society and a race in our contemporary age.
Unlike market anarchism, governments have been tried hundreds of times. Every time essentially representing a failed experiment to create a just, peaceful society. Some of these experiments lead to mediocre amounts of freedom, wroght with huge doses of statism, sadly others take a much darker turn….
What do we have to lose?
We’ve tried statism, socialism, fascism, republics, democracies, theocracies, monarchies, tribalism, communism, syndicalism (tried in Spain), totalitarianism, nationalism, or some combination of all of them.
But NEVER once in human history have we tried FREEDOM. Amazing. The tastes we get of it cause immense raises in standards of living, propelling human beings through the industrial revolution. Freedom and free trade are the lifeblood, the soul, of the human society.
There literally IS no society without at least some degree of freedom, let’s maximize it to its fullest degree.
I wish it could just be tried on a medium-scale ONCE, market anarchism, voluntaryism, agorism. Just let people be, let them trade and live by their own means/ends, and just see what happens.
Prove me wrong!
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No one can prove you wrong, you are right but the sheep are not lisening. That is the problem.