Minarchism

Minarchism is a right-libertarian political philosophy which advocates for the State to exist solely to provide a very small number of services. A popular model of the State proposed by minarchists is known as the night-watchman state, in which the only governmental functions are to protect citizens from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud as defined by property laws, limiting it to three institutions: the military, the police, and courts.

The word "minarchist" was coined by Samuel Edward Konkin III in 1980. It differs from anarchism in that it is not completely based on voluntary association.

Etymology

Minarchy is a contraction of minimum and -archy. Arche (/ˈɑːrki/; Template:Lang-grc) is a Greek word which came to mean "first place, power", "method of government", "empire, realm", "authorities" (in plural: ἀρχαί), "command".

Philosophy

Minarchists argue that it is malum in se for a government to interfere in transactions between people by taxing for services not directly related to the protection of citizens.

Some minarchists argue that a state is inevitable, thus believing anarchy to be futile. Minarchists justify the necessity of the state on the grounds that private defence agencies and courts could be biased by unevenly representing the interests of higher paying clients. Robert Nozick, who publicized the idea of a minimal state in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, argued that a night-watchman state provides a framework that allows for any political system that respects fundamental individual rights, and therefore morally justifies the existence of a State.

Criticism

Proponents of an economically interventionist state argue it is best to evaluate the merits of government intervention on a case-by-case basis in order to address recessions (see Keynesian economics) or existential threats.

Social liberals and social democrats argue that a government should be able to appropriate private wealth in order to better reach a society-wide optimum (as opposed to each actor sub-optimizing for themselves). This may include ensuring care for disadvantaged or dependent people such as the elderly, the physically and mentally disabled, immigrants, the homeless, and the poor.

Social conservatives argue that the state should maintain a moral outlook and legislate against behavior commonly regarded as culturally destructive or immoral, proposing that the state cannot survive if its citizens do not have civic virtue

Left-libertarians, such as libertarian socialists and anarchists argue that the inherent inequalities within a society under a minarchist system would further be exacerbated by the accumulation of private wealth by the already wealthy and private landowners, and argue that a properly functioning libertarian system needs common ownership and worker collectives.

Deontological anarcho-capitalists argue that states or governments are malum in se and violate the non-aggression principle by their very existence, contending that private markets should supply all goods and services, including all legal and protective services as well as the means of exchange. Consequentialist anarcho-capitalists criticize all state or state-sanctioned monopolies, citing them as corrupt and inefficient for eliminating or artificially restricting competition through laws and regulations.

Minarchist projects

There have been initiatives to create minarchist states.

• In 2001, Jason Sorens, an American Ph.D in political science and economics, founded the Free State Project, a plan of mass migration to the state of New Hampshire in order to establish there an independent government founded on libertarian principles. One of the project's initial goals was to collect a petition with 20,000 signers declaring their intent to move to the state; this was achieved in February 2016.
• In 2015, Czech politician and libertarian activist Vít Jedlička proclaimed the Free Republic of Liberland on a disputed area between Serbia and Croatia on the margin of the Danube river. The project aims to establish Liberland as a libertarian micronation with voluntary taxation in the region. In the first week following the creation of Liberland's official website, over 200,000 people applied for citizenship.

See also

• Anarcho-capitalism and minarchism – comparison and relation between the two theories

Minarchist or similar models and concepts

• Night-watchman state – a model of minarchy which recognizes only police, courts, and national defense forces as legitimate provisions of government
• Small government – a government intended to intervene little on peoples' economic and individual activities
• Limited government – a government whose actions are limited by its law

Related or encompassing philosophies

• Right-libertarianism – encompasses both theories as anti-statist market economy or laissez-faire philosophies; advocates either the full privatization of the means of production including land (economic sense), or else conservative social values such as traditional morality, conventional aesthetics, and natural inequality (cultural sense)
• Classical liberalism – the 18th-century Enlightenment political philosophy that, together with 19th-century individualist anarchism, gave rise to the modern right-libertarian movement
• Georgism – an economic philosophy holding that, while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from land and natural resources should belong equally to all members of society
• Geolibertarianism – an economically centrist or left-libertarian model in which all necessary operations of government are funded by the collection of market rental value from private land holdings, understood as an optimal tax or fee on the monopolization of natural opportunities, the surplus revenue being distributed to residents as a form of basic income
• Objectivism – a rationalist, atheist, and ethical egoist philosophical system proposed by Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand, who supported laissez-faire capitalism and opposed collectivism, altruistic morality, and state authority

Other terms used by right-libertarians

• Big government – a government with a large bureaucracy that intervenes in many sectors of civil society, perceived as inefficient, corrupt, and lacking in transparency
• Statism – general support for large-scale state intervention and highly centralized government authority, coined by Ayn Rand
• Economic interventionism – state intervention into economic affairs, either to generate demand for particular goods and services, nationalize industry, reshape the wealth distribution and combat material inequalities attributed to market freedom, restrict private sector competition, or promote domestic over foreign trade (see protectionism)
• Nanny state – a pejorative term for an overprotective, overinvolved, and paternalistic welfare state
• Paternalism – the belief that a state (or other organization) ought to make decisions on behalf of individuals who are presumed to be unable or unwilling to do so
• Social engineering (political science) – the concept of a state or other powerful group manipulating society
• Welfare state – the concept of state promoting well-being of citizens, leading to intervention on a great number of sectors