Libertarianism is not ‘no gun in the room’
Stefan Molyneux has written:
“One of the most difficult — and essential — challenges faced by libertarians is the constant need to point out ‘the gun in the room.’ In political debates, it can be very hard to cut through the endless windy abstractions that are used to cover up the basic fact that the government uses guns to force people to do what they do not want to do, or prevent them from doing what they do want to do. … It is a wearying but essential task to keep reminding people that the state is nothing but an agency of violence. When someone talks about ‘the welfare state helping the poor,’ we must point out the gun in the room. When someone opposes the decriminalization of marijuana, we must point out the gun in the room. When someone supports the reduction of taxes, we must point out the gun in the room — even if one bullet has been taken out.”
It can be useful to point out the power structure that exists around people. Governmental laws and government social programs are indeed ultimately backed up by physical force, which is not always visible to many people.
The thing is though that all political systems (including all variants of libertarianism) are ultimately backed up by physical force. This means that the problem of political philosophy is not suddenly solved after finding out that governments have men with guns. Anarcho-capitalism, just like a modern democracy, functions through the majority using their power to institute a set of rules on those who do not agree with them. The difference between political systems is the kinds of rules that are supported; not the fact that there are rules, and that they are enforced.
Words like aggression, violence, and force have underlying to them ideas about property and social rules. When people have different beliefs about those underlying ideas, then the words themselves are not readily usable between those people, nor can invoking them be used to solve the argument. In other words, you need to go deeper.
What I try to do, as Ludwig von Mises did, is to show people how a different property system can benefit them. This requires explanations about economics, the Austrian version of which most people are not yet familiar with.
