Since people absolutely hate me posting in this thread, if you aren't interested in the books I replied with earlier, especially the bolded one, these articles from the author will do about as much good as me continuing to shit up the thread and make everyone endlessly miserable no matter how much I enjoy our discussions.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/03/04/michael-huemer/problem-authority
http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/1.htm
That first article is absolute garbage. I have no reservations about saying that. It's perpetuating the belief that the government is some evil entity behind a curtain taking your money and oppressing you. The social contract explaination he gives his disingenuous because he fails to mention the functions of government that benefit the average person; emergency services, utilities, road/utility maintenance, public schools, assistance programs, etc. His explaination exclussively mentions the "negatives" in most peoples minds; paying taxes and following laws you might not agree with.
This mentality is what has lead to people by and large hating Obamacare, but loving all the provisions within it. Obfuscating the functions of the Federal Government and applying negative connotations to all policy you disagree with is Right-Wing Rhetoric 101. Everything about that article is expertly worded with false dichotemies that the Extreme Right loves, comparing the government to criminal organizations being the biggest. My favorite was comparing how law enforcement
might be necessary for a civilized society but;
But why must the government control what drugs you may put into your body, what wages you may pay your employees, how much wheat you may grow on your farm, and whether you buy health insurance?
Those things have nothing to do with his point. They are unrelated matters that have varying answers, but you can't easily state that, so his argument has the illusion of being stronger. The idea that the government is constantly overreaching and invading your lives. But lets focus on the real point of this article, anarcho-capitalism;
In this society, the services now provided by governmental police would instead be provided by competing protection agencies, hired either by individuals or by associations of property owners. Protection agencies, knowing that violence is the most expensive way of resolving disputes, would require their customers to seek peaceful resolutions of any disputes with other individuals.
HOLD THE PHONE. That sounds dangerously familiar. Let's see if I can remember;
In this case, the statist’s claim seems analogous to the leader of a protection racket claiming that his victims have voluntarily agreed to pay him protection money, merely by living in their own houses.
I see minimal difference between these two scenarios. Rather than a small portion of your pay being taken by a central agency for law enforcement and a judicial system, you pay into a business that is focused on profit margins and have them comepete against each other. It doesn't offer respite from being "coerced", it just trades passive coercion for active coercion. Coercion would still exist, it just wouldn't be as passive. You would basically have thugs come to your house over any dispute and either take your property (literally robbing you) or force you to pay them for similar protection and then they would side whichever side paid them more money, a substantially more corrupt system than we currently have.
people choose to hire protection agencies and arbitrators, signing actual, literal contracts with them
It's a false choice though. If you don't hire those protection agencies people will do whatever they want to you. As it stands right now all American citizens are bound by the law of the country, and the police and court have an obligation to resolve disputes fairly (obviously having a better lawyer helps in the current system, but it's nowhere near as open to corruption).
EDIT: Finally, there's his analogy comparing the government to a corporation. The difference between a government and a corporation is the fact that corporations are driven by profits and revenue, and the people at the top making decisions get a cut of all the revenue. If the US were running a budget surplus Obama wouldn't get a fat paycheck. What this inevitably leads to is corporations caring more about doing anything possible to increase profits, things such as cutting the work force, relocating facilities to other countries, and cleaver uses of the tax code. The US Government has no such focus. The focus of the government is to provide the best opportunities and service to the citizens of the United States. This is also why the "run government as a business" analogy is so horrible and mislreading. If we ran the United States like a business we would have sold large swaths of the country for underperforming (looking at you Mississippi and Alabama).
