Not by me, and my point stands unanswered.
How can the weakling states you imagine prevent individuals or groups from becoming powerful enough to subvert them, and to replace them with something far less friendly to individual freedoms?
Allowed nothing more than the enforcement of contracts, property rights, and non-violence, the state would have no way to prevent individuals or cartels acquiring power vastly greater than its own. And once you reach that point, it's inevitable that the power of the state itself will fall into the hands of those who might reap far greater profit from expanding that power than from continuing its restriction.
How would it be a "weakling State"? The fundamentals of State security are there in a minarchist system - police, army, courts [and intelligence services within that]. There will be a free press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, open journalism. So with the freedom to criticise, voice dissent, organise and modify policy, then it's no more likely that a small number of goons could take over the country than in any other stable democracy. In a worst-case scenario, people will use their democratic freedom to put a different kind of government into power.
JollyRoger said:
The problem is, that once you have easy access to a government liability shield, most entities of any size take it.
You say we can avoid those carrying the government shield, but can we? When is the last time you bought gas from a sole proprieter or partnership?
The point is, if you have a government provided shield and a bunch of people acting in their rational self-interest, most are going to take the handout of the shield. In a true free market, the shield should not be government provided, but should be negotiated on a contract-by-contract basis, with silence in the contract meaning the shield is not there.
It's not a handout when people choose to form their company with limited liability. Do you know what the word "handout" means? It has nothing to do with the formation of a legal business entity for trading - no-one is having wealth taxed off them and given to these companies - as I said, I think this is a tedious conflation where you are trying to equate something as a handout when it isn't. And anyway, if it really were seen to be an unfair economic intrusion, it would be eliminated anyway.
Traitorfish said:
Will reply in full in a separate post
JonBonham said:
So answer me this, when we are not required by regulatory laws to have certain standards in advertisingélabelling etc. do you think companies will simply volunteer to put out all the information on their products?
No, but some will. And if consumers really want that, then they can choose their preference.
JonBonham said:
I am surprised that you seem genuienly surprised by Ziggy Stardust's 100% Orange Juice example that is only 10% juice and that you seem to think this a strange/peculiar funny and not ideal company but also don't seem to think that it's the norm. In Objectivist society I create a cigarette company and market that my cigarettes have health benefits, (as they used to be marketted) so how will the market resolve that issue?
The courts will resolve that issue because it is false advertising.
JonBonham said:
The other companies will start marketting their health benefits instead. Those nasty government mandated labels will come off the boxes.
You keep saying the legal mechanisms would be kept, but what legal mechanisms? The regulations and laws we currently have? Why must we keep law based on other social theories and ideas, let's not talk about gradual, if Objectivism is the best social theory around than surely the laws should be based on Objectivist principles. So what law will say I cannot label my cigarettes as such?
The same law that will stop you shooting people and saying "I did it for the health benefit". It is a form of aggression against people to harm them by deceiving them. If you sell the cigarettes on the grounds that they are healthy, then you are legally liable for that claim. Objectivists are not interested in eliminating the rule of law, only in removing most or all intrusive regulations that are seen as unnecessary for business and society.
JonBonham said:
Since the role of the courts is to enforce these laws I really would like to hear what laws these courts would be enforcing. For instance, will there be some 'government' regulatory law requiring I can't advertise how I choose for my own business?
The same laws and legal principles as exist today, with the exception of some or most of the excessive business regulations that exist. The body of law is enormous and regulations are just one small part of it - most of the law would be kept.
You seem to be thinking of a society in which there is no law - try anarcho-capitalism or anarchism for that

Objectivism has a minarchist State and rule of law.
If it turned out that people were exploiting loopholes in the law to poison food etc, then the law would be changed in some way to prevent them doing that. It is the intention of Objectivism to make society as free as possible, not to turn it into a jungle.
Cutlass said:
See, there's another problem. You want a state to protect what you want, but not to protect what others want. So you're really just another group of authoritarians.
What kind of definition of authoritarianism is that? By that definition, isn't almost everyone an authoritarian - please tell me who, under that definition, would not be classed as an "authoritarian"?
Graffito said:
yes it does have a good history, BUT it also has a history of opposing the views your supporting , unless you have an example i don,t know about, I mean even the Salvos take Huge government grants and lobby for more Government intervention, so your sort of saying yes there are private solutions avalible that work well, if we don't adopt the system your advocating for
perhaps you could give an example where the private charity ALSO advocates the ideas your advocating
There are different kinds of private charity, but I don't think the issue is whether charity supports Objectivism, but whether pricate charity is an effective mechanism for looking after people without government support. Nearly all charities acquire private funds where possible - such as Red Cross, Medicine Sans Frontiers, Bill Gates Foundation to name a few. They may not support the entirety of Objectivism, but they certainly support private solutions to social problems, else they wouldn't form themselves as charities.
Cutlass said:
You're just assuming bands of nomads didn't wander across the land before someone settled on it.
Now you appear to be saying private property is immoral, based purely on some unknown speculation you are making about what our ancestors might have done 75,000 years ago. This is part of anarcho-communist myth-making - that sometime in the past, there was a virgin Earth, and that this free Earth was enclosed and denied to others by the creators of private property. Anarcho-communists go on to say that this "original sin" invalidates all the private property in the Earth today. It completely ignores the fact that it is utter speculation, that social development was immensely complex and occured in multiple locations, and that it hardly matters anyway what our ancestors did 75,000 years ago, as what they did or did not do has no relevance on the current wisdom of private property ownership and legal titles for organising production.