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RE: Ending the “Anarchist VS Minarchist” Debate Once and For All

in #libertarian6 years ago

The concept of, 'minarchist' always seemed funny to me.
It literally means, 'The government should only do those things which I believe are necessary', which is what everyone believes.
Everyone who's not an anarchist is a minarchist.
I don't know any 'maxarchists' who would claim that the government should do things they consider unnecessary.

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Yeah, I've made this point before, even though it's also somewhat of a silly semantic one. Yes, even Donald Trump and Barrack Obama are "minarchists." The question is are you an ethical or unethical minarchist.

I've met "maxarchists" who think that people cannot be left to their devices and require a protocol for everything. Most are corporatist, others communist or ultra-nationalist, few are violent but all are control freaks. I've even met people that personally have a phobia of making their own decisions and insist someone else decide everything for them. The most extreme case of this was a man that got himself incarcerated so that he could be told when to eat, sleep etc.

The former would call themselves minarchists, since they believe the state needs to do those things, at a minimum.
The latter are nutcases, but they're not imposing that on others, which is nice.

Yeah I have to agree Matt. Minarchy is as relative a term as socialism and doesn't inherently identify if it is voluntary. Anarchy implies voluntaryism because it defines a society without rulers, therefore no coercive rulers.

Minarchist have their own war to fight amongst themselves to define themselves by more specific and more ethical terms not laid out in the current definition. That being said, I don't consider myself a minarchist in the same way that I don't consider myself a conservative, because both imply relative terms surrounding the existence of a possible / probable state.