The more I study the pertinent arguments, the more I am frustrated by the simplistic libertarian or rather anarcho-capitalist take according to which the world is evil because of the presence of the state and the concomitant article of faith that complete - and hence morally compelling - betterment is just a matter of removing the state.
Things are a lot more subtle and complicated. Summary visceral dismissal of "the state" may elicit a high feel-good-factor within a choir of predisposed hecklers, but it is not apt to advance comprehension and adaptation to the challenge.
"The state" has never been decreed into existence, and it will never be decreed out of existence; relations and relationships of power, fiat, coercion imposed and agreed are the substratum in which liberty and markets are enmeshed. Out of this substratum we must form markets and liberty, if they are to be.
I know of no way to reduce the prospective enhancement from greater political power-seeking, but I do know ways to reduce the rewards to market-oriented capitalist competition. Political power is dominant in being able to set the rules of the game to reduce the rewards to capitalist-type successful competitors. It is rule maker, umpire, and player: by taxes, regulations, controls, national planing and directives, lawsuits, etc. But I have been unable to discern equivalently powerful ways for economic power to reduce the rewards to competitors for political power! Each capitalist may buy off a politician, but that only enhances the rewards to political power.
The Collected Works of Armen A. Alchian, Volume 2, p. 604
Toward the very end of the video, Alchian offers a momentous proposition: "After all, property rights are what the rest of society will enforce for me."
More on authors and literature mentioned by Alchian.
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