David Friedman on Consensual Government

See Friedman's brief "Requirements for anarcho-capitalism to work"-

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/My_Posts/Reqmts_for_Anarcho_C.html

I too prefer that the conversation work from where we are. In other words, that it consider reforms. Talking about reform is talking about the agent's point of view, a pragmatist catch-phrase.

I don't much care for anarchy discussions, because, qua reform, it means changing so many variables at once that the thought experiment is jejune. Talking about how or whether "anarchy would work" is a bit like talking about what the computer industry will be like in the year 2500.

But I like conversations about abolishing this or abolishing that. I think those conversations are often meaning and fruitful, even essential.

While I don't declare myself an anarchist, I'm certainly a serial abolitionist.

You would meet a massive amount of resistance achieving unbundling because many of the services currently provided by states are bundled with a redistributive program, so cancelling the service entails direct conflict with the beneficiaries of said redistribution.

The Pareto improvement which suggests itself is to accept the redistribution as an unbundled program whilst privatizing the services, but somehow I can't see that being popular among US libertarians, even if Scandinavia gets away with it. Many libertarians care less about the freedom and more about the marginal tax rate, if forced to choose between the two.

Incremental reform is better achieved outside the system. Economic free zones, tax avoision*, seasteads, secession. It allows you to start with a clean slate from an initial condition inside the system.

*I don't say "evasion" I say "avoision".

"Starting from where we are today ..."

I would really like to see how this is a morally-meaningul baseline. Rather silly approach.

Arnold, Arnold!
Pay attention, this is your economic subconscious speaking: You are charging too much for your widely unread book Unchecked and Unbalanced ($16.50 for Kindle Edition at Amazon)!!

I'd love to read your tome, for about $9.99

Trust the market, cut the price, reap the profits of accessible rates. It's nothing personal, it's strictly economics.

I believe it is reasonable for many libertarians to focus upon reform, to try to mend the problems of existing states. Reform might succeed. The US might survive for another 500 years.

But I believe it is also reasonable for many libertarians abandon efforts of reform. The US may continue to grow more corrupt in spite of all efforts at reform. The US may weaken and die as did the Roman empire, over a span of 100 or more years. A dark age of institutional collapse may be coming. But we can prepare if some of us embrace this view. Scholarship is needed.

This is why ideas like seasteading and charter cities are so appealing (to me anyway). It may not be completely starting with a blank canvas, but possibly is much easier than unbundling what it took the state hundreds of years to bundle.