Brown, R Ken wrote:

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No-one's yet noticed that my Jim's house burning down is a problem for his neighbours. Not just for the fear and distress it causes them but because the fire might spread to their houses. Which is why we have fire brigades. And why they are nearly always paid for out of tax. Almost the last thing in the world anyone does privately.

Of course, that applies to cities, not to the country - but cities are where it's at.

Tax supported fire brigades are a very recent invention, and are often still privately run (at least in my neck of the woods). In the above circumstance (my [sic] Jim's house), one would have to weigh the relative risks against the possible rewards. If Jim is such an assh*le to live next to, I might be more inclined to soak my own house in the expectation that Jim will be hitting the road after his house has burned down. Given that humans tend to go in for self-organization, there are likely to be a multitude of societies that naturally form in an anarchy. Presumably they would be heavily ghettoized a-la Snow Crash, but there will always be plenty of room for various stripes of socialist/neo-fascists to form their own societies. What they can't do with impunity, is tell me that I am, ipso facto, a member of their society. Undoubtably they would be inclined to try, but in the absence of a highly organized and militarized support group, in the form of the 'monopoly merchants', they will have a harder time of it. Personally, I believe that states inevitably arise out of anarchic assemblages of societies. Chalk it up to human frailty. Where anarchy is beneficial, is in terminating obsolete state structures in order to allow newer and (hopefully) more appropriate social structures to form. The current form in the US is rather pathetic. A 'great society' that has as its paramount goal the perpetuation of a 19th century hierarchical model for human interaction. I would have said 18th century, but Abe took care of the restructuring 130 years ago. In the 19th century, the model for state formation was based upon geographical limitations. The technologies of the day meant that the territory you could force to knuckle under was severely constrained. Starting from scratch today, it would make more sense to create societies out of like minded individuals from wherever they live on the planet (and off it?). The phylums of the Diamond Age are, IMHO, a good model for this. This should give the socialists among us great cheer and hope. Rather than attempting to coerce all individuals within an arbitrary geographical region to knuckle under and pay taxes. I would suggest a good PR and proselytization campaign with the intention of recruiting good tax-paying and benefit consuming suckers -- er ... subscribers, wherever they may live. Its not like this model hasn't been successful in the past, viz: the Mormons, Scientologists, Roman Catholic Church, Marxism, the Moonies, Amway, Herbal Life, and certain aspects of the music industry. Think of it, rather than trying to disenfranchize 50 million north americans, there exists already a highly indoctrinated group of people in China (some 2 billion at last count) who would gladly subscribe to your brand of socialism, even if just to get away from their current model. At the very least, this would breathe new life back into Radio America. It would also legitimize the need for US military troops stationed in 100+ locations around the world. They could be seconded to the IRS to enforce compliance. On the other hand, maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe the use of coercion and force *is* the raisson d'etre for the state.