i don't think it plays out like this in practice, for the reason that a government has to at least pretend it's for the people and there's at least some measure of accountability.
the alternative is very, very different and I think libertarians really underestimate how evil and creative and corrupt people can be. there is a reason we have various regulations regarding child labor, for example.
> the alternative is very, very different and I think libertarians really underestimate how evil and creative and corrupt people can be
The entire point of the parent post is that we don't underestimate the corruption that humans are capable of achieving when given power. Hence the revocation of a monopoly on the use of legitimized coercion.
In the absence of government, all violent becomes de facto legitimate, as it is in the state of nature. It is meaningless to call something "illegitimate" versus "legitimate" when you have no recourse to stop "illegitimate" actions.
> The difference between legitimized coercion and de-facto coercion is a distinction without a difference.
It would be appreciated if you made this fundamental disagreement clear when responding. It literally makes no sense to speak of anything else on this topic if we disagree on this point.
Legitimized coercion is a concept that distinguishes organizations governing an arbitrary geographic location and its people/property and the natural coercion that arises from conflicts between individuals. The former is permitted by the law of the land (whatever it may be); the latter is not.
I believe the distinction is worth making. More than that, I believe the former can be scrubbed out while the latter cannot.
EDIT to address your EDIT
> In the absence of government, all violent becomes de facto legitimate, as it is in the state of nature.
I have never seen any libertarian philosophy use the word "legitimate" to mean "natural" in this context. I certainly am not. My hope is that the other part of this comment clarifies.
You are setting up a straw man. One level of government can lose legitimacy or the ability to operate without government at other levels losing the ability to perform.
You did not respond to the central point of my comment. I will respond anyway.
Firms sell goods to buyers. If buyers stop buying said goods from a particular firm, that firm is going to be in trouble unless they get the buyers to start buying again.
Seems like at least a "pretension of accountability".
Accountability exists in forms other than democracy.
You must know that humans are very fickle creatures. People buy clothes and food from poorly-regulated industries all the time, not because none of them can be made to care about the conditions under which these goods are manufactured, but because not all of them can be made to care constantly.
If only a small group of people are ever interested enough to personally fund regulation, how can such free-market "regulation" effectively ensure good working conditions and food safety? Government solves this problem by low-pass-filtering the fickleness, thus ensuring continued funding.
My initial comment was pointing out that we libertarians very explicitly don't underestimate corruption; which factors very strongly in why we view centralized power in the form of legitimized coercion as A Bad Thing.
My follow-up to an off-topic but related comment was that accountability exists in freed markets; just not in the way you might be used to in democratic societies.
My intention is not to defend freed markets from every possible criticism. There is plenty of literature out there that does that much better than I could already. A nice place to start is David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom" for pragmatic details. [1]
Just as accountability can come in many different shapes and sizes, so too can regulation. The only requirement is a bit of imagination.
the alternative is very, very different and I think libertarians really underestimate how evil and creative and corrupt people can be. there is a reason we have various regulations regarding child labor, for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor#Early_1900s