A Note to Randians, Minarchists, and other Mini-Statists: Mind Your Manners, Know Your Place

by Stephan Kinsella on November 21, 2025

Objectivists and other statists like to retreat to emotivism and irrelevant issues like manners when debating with libertarian anarchists. The low-IQ Jan Helfeld tried this tack when I debated him years ago. He was upset that I would follow his ridiculous debate rules, to which I retorted that he favors taxing me so he is worse. It led to some pretty funny exchanges. See below.

Made this edit of a debate @NSKinsella had idk how many years ago.

Anyway, hope you enjoy! https://t.co/XB3RqbcUn7

— The Liberty Tyrant (@Liberty_Tyrant) November 20, 2025

I also debated Robert Wenzel, who may have been an ancap (not sure) but he was pro-IP socialism. Now we have Objectivist Michael Liebowitz calling libertarian anarchists like me and Per Bylund assholes because of how we are responding to his pro-statist views, which he prefers to call a “criticism of anarchism” in an attempt to put the burden on us to justify the “system” that we favor. See Per’s recent Minarchism Is Statism Lite. See some examples on twitter below:

You’re such assholes. Seriously.

— Michael Liebowitz (@Lieboisout) November 21, 2025

Emotivist? Not even close. Prefer g civility in discourse doesn’t make one an emotivist. Repeatedly mistreating people, knowing there’s no consequences, does make one a coward.

— Michael Liebowitz (@Lieboisout) November 21, 2025

I’m surprised none of them have been able to figure out an argument against anarchism yet. Sure, Rand couldn’t. But that doesn’t mean an objectivist can’t draw from the philosophy to come up with something. Instead it’s all empty, emotional lashing out – preferably at straw men.

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) November 21, 2025

Thanks again to all those minarchists who present their very logical arguments that they build atop simple fantasy or unstated, highly questionable assumptions. Like @RockChartrand and others.

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) November 20, 2025

The crazy is in the “minarchist” corner. https://t.co/7cJPsEPXJK

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) November 21, 2025

I think what you’re doing is denying the very definition of the state and pretending that my acknowledging it is the position of a mystic. Should about right?

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) November 21, 2025

I'm not sure what to make of this. You didn't stick to issues before. But I'm right here–and I debate on this platform daily. What I don't know is tolerate fantasies, incomplete arguments, or demands that I defend some straw man that people make for me.

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) November 21, 2025

Yes, claim intellectual superiority without demonstrating it. Make claims without proving them. What you can’t do is prove your case for rights, or that without the state you criticize you’d survive for a week.

— Michael Liebowitz (@Lieboisout) November 21, 2025

Here’s what Objectivists and other minarchists–mini-statists–don’t seem to realize. We anti-state libertarians believe that the consistent libertarian opposes the state just as the consistent anarchist has to be a libertarian. Just as Hoppe recognizes all states are socialist. As I noted: “The state is always socialistic, and socialism always implies a state.” Kinsella, Afterword, in Hoppe, The Great Fiction. Hoppe:

socialism, by no means an invention of nineteenth century Marxism but much older, must be conceptualized as an institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims. Capitalism, on the other hand, is a social system based on the explicit recognition of private property and of nonaggressive, contractual exchanges between private property owners. Implied in this remark, as will become clear in the course of this treatise, is the belief that there must then exist varying types and degrees of socialism and capitalism, i.e., varying degrees to which private property rights are respected or ignored. Societies are not simply capitalist or socialist. Indeed, all existing societies are socialist to some extent. [Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 1]

There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.” [Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 8]

Now libertarians are generous enough to consider minarchist libertarians to be libertarians, even if inconsistent ones. After all many anarchist libertarians passed through minarchism on the way to anarchism; as the joke goes, what’s the difference between a minarchist and and anarchist? About 6 months. Though sometimes it takes longer; took me about 7–8 years; Randianism sometimes takes a while to shake off.

I for one am happy to discourse with statists of all types, including minarchists, or mini-statists (and I consider Objectivists to be minarchist libertarians even if they ridiculously deny the label, in one of their little foot-stamping fits of pique), and even to recognize that minarchists deserve praise for opposing most aggression even if they are not (yet) fully consistent in opposing aggression in all its forms. Our hope of course is to persuade them to become more consistent libertarians.

And in doing so we are willing to be polite, discuss, debate, and so on. We are willing to overlook the Randian’s insistence that to be a “complete” advocate for liberty you must also accept the other parts of Objectivism (as if it’s that hard to recognize the need for reason, and reality, and self-interest. Yawn).

But do not ask us to pretend aggression is not what it is and statism is not what it is. We are going to plainly label the aggression the minarchist libertarians favor–either the (“minimal”) state’s right to tax us, or to outlaw competition (usually both), and usually other statist, socialist laws such as intellectual property–as what is is. If this means we are “assholes,” so be it. As I see it, the minarchists should be grateful we leave them a place at the table and consider them to be fellow liberty advocates and are willing to be patient with them and patiently explain to them the errors in their view of liberty and rights.

Some libertarian minarchists are humble enough to admit they don’t have a good argument for the state, and are simply not sure yet about anarchy. Objectivists usually have too much pride which is why many of them are never able to escape its clutches. Luckily, some do, and come to oppose both the state and intellectual property. ¹

But you people need to mind your manners: if you are talking to actually consistent opponents of aggression—that is, to libertarian anarchists—keep in mind that we are tolerating your statism. So when you have the audacity to chastise us for very minor things like manners, let’s have some perspective: you are the ones advocating institutionalized aggression against innocent people. Being rude, an asshole, or having bad manners is nothing compared to this.