I’m pretty sure I won’t be around long enough to see anarcho-capitalism—or what I call market-ordered anarchism—prevail in the United States. I’m just as sure that I won’t see government strictly limited to protecting individual rights and never violating them (if that’s coherent).

So that’s a wash.

But it doesn’t follow that discussing individualist, pro-property, free-market alternatives to the current, virtually out-of-control political system in America is time wasted. Far from it! If we want to progress toward liberty, we’d better get a move on. The only proper way to proceed is through discussion. No name-calling—no shouting Statist! or Tyrant! or Fascist! or Oppressor! or Psychopath! or Warmonger! Just discussion. (I almost said “civilized discussion,” but that is redundant.) People can be badly wrong with the best of intentions. We all know how the road to hell is paved. Nevertheless, don’t insult. Rebut. Refute. Don’t go for the jugular. Be patient. You once did not know the case you’re making today.

So let’s talk. Think of this as sort of a meta-discussion. I won’t argue here that anarcho-capitalism satisfies libertarian and other rational criteria (such as efficiency) better than a limited monopoly government does. That’s for another time. (Although see my articles, “Limited Government’s Bait and Switch” and “The Market for Law?)

Let’s begin here: the debate between libertarian anarchists and libertarian minarchists is a debate over whether we need a government to protect our rights. So what else is new?, you’ll ask. My point is that it is not a debate over whether we need governance for the sake of rights protection. Aggressors will always exist, thankfully in small numbers. Essentially, we’re arguing about means, not ends. Neither side supports chaos or Hobbes’s war of all against all. Both sides support liberal culture, with expectations of peaceful relations, without which neither system has a hope of succeeding. Notwithstanding a few disagreements over application, both believe in self-ownership, which entails the right to use and dispose of one’s justly acquired things, property—from land to income to the tools, toothbrushes, and ribeye steaks one buys. The classical liberal legal scholar Lon L. Fuller defined law, broadly conceived (as opposed to legislation), as “the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules.” That need not involve a state.

By definition, libertarians favor rules of (at least) two kinds: 1) rights, which bind independently of consent, and 2) restrictions consented to as conditions of voluntary association. The anarchist-minarchist argument is over how best to establish and enforce the first kind so that people can safely pursue happiness. I want to emphasize that, contrary to what many believe, history discloses considerable examples of such rules being secured through methods other than legislation—bottom up through custom and competing institutions. In the past, legislatures (and even kings) have codified (and often corrupted) rules that sprouted organically from the repeated interactions of self-interested, goal-directed people who realized that violence is an expensive, not to mention dangerous, way to achieve one’s ends and resolve disputes.

I regret to say that too many limited-government libertarians argue against anarcho-capitalism as though the notion sprang from late-night college-freshman dorm-room bull sessions, in which inebriated or stoned rookie libertarians, who’d barely read anything, declared, “Who needs the state anyway?” In other words, the critics either do not know or pretend not to know that the modern libertarian movement, dating back to the 1950s and especially since the 1970s, has produced a substantial body of literature arguing for market-ordered anarchism. That literature came from a host of serious scholars, some in academia, some not, who specialized in political and economic history, economics, sociology, anthropology, and other relevant disciplines.

Maybe they were right; maybe they were wrong. But they were not lightweights. Limited-government libertarians must contend with this massive historical and theoretical evidence if they want to be taken seriously. The market anarchist position cannot be lightly and sneerfully tossed aside. To their credit, some limited-government advocates, such as Public Choice school founders James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, did take it seriously and engaged by proffering rebuttals. (See the debate for yourself in Edward P. Stringham’s edited works Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice and Anarchy, State, and Public Choice. Also see Anarchism/Minarchism: Is Government Part of a Free Country?, edited by Rodertick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan.)

What I just said should indicate that the case for market anarchism is not the product of narrow rationalism, that is, of the manipulation of concepts detached from reality. On the contrary, the case is broadly empirical, guided by an understanding of human action. Historical episodes are held to yield reasonable generalizations, which may inform our choices. (See, for example, Terry H. Anderson and Peter J. Hill’s The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier, or this article based on the book.) Justifying market anarchism is no mere chess game.

Minarchists will argue that history provides no case of a pure market-anarchist society. Perhaps (if we don’t count the American West). In the spirit of fairness, they will also acknowledge that no case of a nightwatchman state can be found. But the market anarchist can respond that history strongly suggests that market anarchism is likely to work in an essentially liberal culture. For example, the Law Merchant, which emerged organically from the activities of traders from all over Europe in the Late Middle Ages, demonstrated that just and efficient law and enforcement can emerge peacefully from custom, constant dealings, and the expectations these give rise to. It’s important to realize that complex trading relations over long distances did not have to await the formation of a legal code and system. Customary law and the market blossomed together. It wasn’t a chicken-or-egg thing. Rather, “light dawn[ed] gradually over the whole,” as Wittgenstein put it in another context. (Hat tip: Roderick Long)

The minarchists will reply that the Law Merchant worked only because the state loomed, ready to intervene when needed. The state was indeed there, though hardly consolidated as it would be later. It can’t explain widespread compliance by profit-seeking merchants. The incentives that impelled buyers and sellers were powerful inducements for the spontaneous generation of customary law, along with enforcing institutions and procedures that were just and efficient. The modern competitive auto-insurance industry, in which firms routinely settle client disputes through nonstate arbitration and never resort to shoot-outs, is another instructive case. (See Harold J. Berman’s pathbreaking and magisterial Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Pay attention to the competition among courts, which Adam Smith wrote about in The Wealth of Nations.)

Alas, some advocates of limited government often engage in what appears to be a rationalist chess game. History has repeatedly shown that governments tend to grow. What better illustration could there be than the United States? Many minarchists are enthusiastic about the U.S. Constitution, albeit with a few reservations. But look at today’s U.S. Leviathan. How’d that happen? Lysander Spooner wrote in 1870—that’s no typo, 1870!—”But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Holding out a hope, after all this time, that somehow the government could be confined to protecting rights suggests a serious case of rationalism. The Public Choice school shows us why we should expect government to grow, confiscate, regulate, intrude, and oppress. Other scholars, such as Anthony de Jasay, have looked in vain for ways to limit the state. The great predator will not be caged for long.

No social system can promise perfection. All people are fallible, and some will seek power. We must not commit what economist Harold Demsetz called the Nirvana Fallacy: comparing a supposed ideal (minimal government) to the messy real world. Apples to apples, please, and reality to reality. No system can guarantee justice, so it’s a matter of comparing prospects. For a host of reasons, market anarchism would have better checks and balances aimed at protecting against tyranny than a monopoly on the use of force.

If that’s not enough, ask yourself this: if government is indispensable, don’t we need a powerful world government to discipline the 200 national governments that exist, with respect to one another, in a state of anarchy? After all, it’s not logically impossible that England could go to war with France tomorrow.