miljacicMr. Casey,
after reading the book I have a question about organizing the army (aka national defense). David Friedman called this “the hard problem” in his Machinery of Freedom. What’s your take on this, you seem to have avoided addressing this question (or I missed that part on the first read)?
To be more specific. Let’s imagine some people get enthusiastic after reading your book and decide to abolish their own state and organize libertarian anarchy paradise. Then, a neighboring state notices this new state-less territory and of course immediately moves on to incorporate it into itself.
How shall state-free people react to it? Will they be able to protect themselves against the trained army of the neighboring state?
Will it not be that whoever decides to abolish their own state, will be left exposed to an (even a quite peaceful and purely formal) takeover by another state? Is keeping a state apparatus of defense the only protection against other states? Or not so?
If a state is a wolf, and if every nook and cranny of the planet is filled with roaming and ever-hungry wolves, how can one have a piece of land with no wolves, unless one has its own wolf that barks: “hey brother-wolves, this particular territory is mine, stay away”?