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Other people say power comes out of the barrel of a gun.


Here's the thing, it's power that is relevant here. Not how it originates, but how it is weilded, by whom, and to what ends.

Who buys and sells those guns? Using what currency? And do you really want to kick the hornets' nest of slaver repressions, traders, anti-union violence, including multiple open wars, range wars, the Johnson County War, the Great Potato Famine, Opium War, British occupation of India, China, Egypt, Palestine, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? All in the name of commerce and markets.

I'll let you find the passages in Smith yourself where he talks of the joint-stock-company created and operated garrisons in India, Africa, and the Americas.

And just to preempt a likely upcoming reference to Weber, his famous [hrase has three conditions, not one: it conerns the monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

Absent government, what is lost isn't violence, but the monopoly on legitimacy. Ony entity that succeeds in reimposing that monopoly is by the definition a government, and absent monopoly or legitimacy what remains is illegitimate and/or multiparty violence.

(A nominal government itself may lose its claim to legitimacy, as recent public protests in the US and elsewhere have suggested).

You've managed to have numerous horses shot from under you with no apparent grieving on your part in this exchange. In sympathy with the horses, I think I've pursued this as far as I care to.

But you might care to examine your premises and their foundations a bit more carefully.


The job of government is to protect rights, and the government gets a monopoly on force.

If other people are using force, that is a failure of the government, not of free markets.

Wars, for example, are not free market operations, even if they are done "in the name of".




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