Note that this is not to say that I don't wholeheartedly accept the theory. I completely believe that any rights that any person as... we all have the same rights. This rules out taxation, a legally protected monopoly on policing and courts, etc.
The problem is, the average person cannot possibly comprehend how competing police forces and courts are able to work. And frankly, even I don't know how they would work. Based on economic laws, I do believe they would work, but HOW I really don't know.
And, though I completely, wholeheartedly understand that voluntary cooperation works better than coercion, I don't honestly know WHY. The pragmatic aspect isn't really the reason I believe in voluntarism. I believe in voluntarism because I believe it to be morally right. Though shall not steal, murder, etc. I'd believe in those things even if they didn't "work". But I do believe they would work. I just can't prove it in a casual conversation. The statist has an inherent advantage because he works from the commonly accepted notions. How can you account for this?
By contrast, minarchy (Which probably gets 95% of the principles right) I find to be fairly easy to explain. Of course, a person might simply reject it for whatever reason, and most people have a question or two about roads, but its not hard to understand the principles involved. Only having laws against actions that have victims, that's an easy principle to understand. Of course, even among libertarians there are gray areas and disagreements, so there will certainly be such from the person who is just learning about these principles. But its fairly easy to explain the concept, or to understand. Similarly, its fairly easy to understand how government involvement in the economy is wrong, and easy to explain. Or that wars that aren't defense of one's own country is wrong. Again, on both counts, people will disagree, but the concepts aren't actually complicated, either to explain or to understand.
But frankly, to explain to somebody how those crimes that actually do have victims (murder, rape, fraud, theft, etc.) could be prosecuted without government police, courts, or taxes, frankly, I don't fully understand how myself. I do understand the vague concept that people could hire different police companies, or use different arbitrators to resolve disputes, but I find that its really, really hard to explain the idea to someone who has never encountered it before, and if they ask "How would that work", I find it very hard to answer. With roads there's a similar problem, although there are cop outs that there is already a road network in the US or to appeal to the (comparatively more obvious, although it will still be debated) immorality of eminent domain.
So, I'd request any help I can get from you guys on this. How do you explain this concept to people? Is it even really worth trying unless they're a minarchist already? Or is it simpler to just act as a minarchist (Even while holding the ancap principles and sharing them with minarchists as necessary) in actual debates to make things less confusing?
BTW: I'm giving the "Ron Paul is a voluntarist/ancap" line of thought a lot more consideration than I have in the past as I'm considering this. Even if Ron does believe in those principles 100% of the time, if he had brought those things up in the Presidential debates it would have been really, really difficult for him to deal with the more immediate issues of support for the FED, the wars, the drug wars, etc.
Although this thread is primarily being started for other ancaps/voluntarists to help me work out, those who do not agree with those principles are more than welcome to try to convince me that my position is wrong. It would also probably be easier to have that debate on this forum since pretty much everyone here understands the theory whether they buy it or not. Most people IRL don't even understand the theory.
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