Henry Haller wrote: HH> My understanding of these terms is that the anarchist believes there should be no government at all, while the minarchist believes in government, but also believes that it should be funded through voluntary means. Thus, neither one accepts coercive taxation. <HH
Unlike deontological anarcholibertarianism, minarchism typically isn't defined to include an absolute commitment to the zero-aggression principle (ZAP). Note that David Friedman's non-deontological brand of anarchocapitalism is similarly not based on ZAPsolutism, but rather on a more consequentialist argument that the private sector does better than the state for every possible function, including that of producing law, and that the law it produces would tend to converge on codifying the ZAP. ZAPsolutists usually try to claim that the label "libertarian" applies only to them, but they're simply in denial about the breadth of the libertarian movement. As it says in the Wikipedia article on Libertarianism: > Consequentialist libertarians do not have a moral prohibition against "initiation of force," but believe that allowing a very large scope of political and economic liberty results in the maximum well-being or efficiency for a society - even if protecting this liberty involves some initiation of force by government. It just so happens that such governmental actions are limited in the free society they envision. This type of libertarianism is associated with Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek. < In his recent epic history of libertarianism, "Radicals For Capitalism", Brian Doherty (senior editor at Reason magazine) on page 8 calls Milton Friedman, Mises, and Hayek all minarchists. Some minarchists indeed claim absolute fealty to the ZAP while advocating a state monopoly on law enforcement, but their position seems to be either incoherent or functionally identical to deontological anarchocapitalism. If a lifelong coercion abstainer nevertheless refused to recognize the state monopoly on law enforcement, then either the state would have to coerce him or the state would have to surrender its monopoly and would be just another voluntary anarcholibertarian protection agency. If an institution has no more authority over you than what you've voluntarily granted it by explicit contract, or if you can decline to recognize its authority or opt out of its authority without emigrating, then that institution is a club or maybe a standards body, but not a state. And if the state is going to violate ZAP and coerce a lifelong coercion abstainer for the goal of uniform law enforcement, then that is morally comparable to the minarchist state of Milton Friedman and Mises and Hayek (and me) that violates ZAP to collect minimal taxes to finance universal law enforcement. Even thought I'm a hardcore minarchist, I don't advocate that the Platform say our Freedom Train should stop at minarchism with no option to continue on to anarcholibertarianism. However, I think that in minarchotopia we would only need to tax negative externalities and land rents, and I agree with Santa Clara University economics professor (and former LP candidate) Fred Foldvary that both kinds of taxes are compliant with the spirit of ZAPsolutism. I wish we could get the ZAP purist faction to seriously evaluate these two kinds of taxes, but I fear that they would reflexively oppose anything that has the silhouette of a tax, even if it doesn't violate self-ownership (as neither of these two taxes do).
