The State is not the government; we don’t own property; scarcity doesn’t mean rare; coercion is not aggression

• State vs. Government: See Hoppe’s definition of the state in “The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It.” If government means the state, it’s criminal; but it clearly means something different: the governing institutions, law and order. The state has coopted government like it has coopted roads and transportation, money, education. But just as roads are not inherently statist, neither is government. We anarcho-libertarians do not oppose law and order and the institutions of “governance”; just state control thereof. We oppose our enemy, the state.
  • See also Conza, government is not the state
  • The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It
  • Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned? (transcript)
  • The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It
  • Is Albert Jay Nock a Statist Too?
• On owning property: See notes 29 and 57, and accompanying text, of “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward”
• On scarcity: “On Conflictability and Conflictable Resources”
• Coercion and aggression: “The Problem with “Coercion”“

My job here is done