>It is people with guns who are "extremists" because instead of seeking peaceful solutions, they "solve" everything by decree and a gun.
Democracy is a pretty fucking peaceful solution in most developped nations to solve things. The guns are there to protect the democratic system, because if there's nothing like that, people have been shown to not follow the rules decided by the democratic system.
Empirical evidence is a lot more convincing than your personal theory on how things "should" work.
"The guns are there to protect the democratic system"
You have just presented a justification for guy A killing guy B for now forking over his part of income to guy C.
Now you need to decipher "democratic system" and what does it mean in reality.
I my view, it's a label for a system where opinions of some people must be forced onto others using force based on some sophisticated paperwork called "voting".
1. Collective action makes progress a lot easier
2. Democracy is the least worst way to do it
3. I'm fine with violence not being a free market value
I think you'll find that the large majority of people agree with the third point, and even without democracy, the will of the large majority will impose itself onto everyone except in very few cases.
As I said in other threads, existence of things does not justify itself.
The fact that majority of people can force anyone in minority to comply does not say anything about morality.
I point out that people tell themselves that it is okay if majority seemingly "decide" to to allow someone to kill some people. I question that belief which oddly looks very similar to any religious dogma.
You advocate for "progress" and "democracy is the lest worst". I'm fine with it, live your life and participate in democracy. But let me politely disagree with you. Will you not participate in "majority" that tries to kill me if I don't give them my stuff?
Second, in other words you say "I don't know how to protect myself against random violence without centralized violence, I will advocate imposing that violence on everyone around."
Don't get me wrong. I don't advocate "guns are bad" or "guns are good" here. If you want to set up your protection club with helicopters and ninjas, I have nothing against. But do you say it must be imposed on me? Only because I somehow benefit under umbrella of your enterprise? In other words, you want to force me to pay for your business model when it's you who bothers about security and cannot figure out how to pay for it voluntarily.
Taking your two answers together, it seems that hiring a security company to provide armed guards to protect me would be perfectly acceptable to you.
What's to stop consolidation amongst the security companies? What would prevent them from using their monopoly of force to set up whatever government they liked?
That's essentially how central government formed in the first place. Why wouldn't it just happen again?
I think government is only possible when many believe it's good. It's not only raw violence. If people see violence they don't like it. That's why government tries hard hiding it under abstract concepts.
People aren't arguing with you because they like the fact that the government uses force. The argument is that if you eliminated the government, the alternative (private dictatorships) would be even less accountable.
Certainly people are susceptible to a kind of strange loyalty to governments, but if you remove the government that won't just disappear. People will just become loyal to the most powerful mob for protection. That's what happened before. It's up to you to explain why it would be any different now.
I think we already have "private" dictatorships in most of the world. 2/3 of states are fucked up, just look at failed state index or press freedom index.
> The argument is that if you eliminated the government, the alternative (private dictatorships) would be even less accountable.
If you are right and private defense organization would collapse into one, then why there is no single government? (Moreover, some of states(like USSR) get decomposed into few more, so the number of states even grows). Why do you assume there is no reason to prevent a number of PDO turning into violent one?
Actually we do have a overall decrease in the number of states over the past few centuries. The USSR is a special case because it was actually based on ideology and not just strength.
We can equally ask why, if your libertarian philosophy is so naturally stable, it has not emerged into the world yet?
> Actually we do have a overall decrease in the number of states over the past few centuries.
It doesn't really affect my argument(if all states didn't collapse into one over past couple of centuries, then multi-government system is quite stable), but I am quite interested in the source(out of pure curiousity).
> The USSR is a special case because it was actually based on ideology and not just strength
Almost all states utilize some sort of ideology. In fact, I agree that ideological component was really strong in the USSR, but the USSR did use raw power - it annexed baltic states for example.
Also, there are other examples: Czechoslovakia, South & North Sudan.
> We can equally ask why, if your libertarian philosophy is so naturally stable, it has not emerged into the world yet?
I would define stable as "won't collapse once established". The problem of stability is orthogonal to the problem of establishing. It is not easy to organize a market anarchy when all territory is occupied by the state(note: you cannot easily organize another state either, though existing states are relatively stable). In past there were more or less "anarcho-capitalist" societies which lasted for thousands of years: medieval iceland, medieval ireland.
Democracy is a pretty fucking peaceful solution in most developped nations to solve things. The guns are there to protect the democratic system, because if there's nothing like that, people have been shown to not follow the rules decided by the democratic system.
Empirical evidence is a lot more convincing than your personal theory on how things "should" work.