Quote from: anarcho47 on February 23, 2012, 12:39 amI would argue more for the case that the invention of the individual gun was what ushered in the end of the feudal era more so than the development of markets. The ability for an individual to protect his property against multiple assailants with one affordable tool has never before existed in history.Government does not function under market principles, ever. They feed off of the market using violent coercion. The only argument I can make for a state is a couple of tiny roles that would encompass the entirety of a country universally, like border defense. Even courts and arbitration could be "opt-in/opt-out" if both sides of a dispute agree to use alternatives (as is often the case with private business disputes, since the effectiveness, efficiency, and "justice" of public courts has been demonstrated to fail all litmus tests a great majority of the time). Monopolization of anything is ineffective and requires a violent backdrop. It is counter to improving economic conditions, in all instances. Therefore, it makes no sense to possibly argue FOR such an institution in any but the most "necessary evil" sort of context, which would be minarchist at MOST.This individual arguing for unions needs to do some studying of wage history in the US and child labor, like what happened to wages before unions were given the weight of government violence and entrepreneurs started becoming the most politically demonized "class" of citizen (as it is today), or how many "child laborers" were actually effected by the enacted legislation against it (i.e. how much of the child labor issue the private market had already dealt with LONG before the demigods with guns decided to pass laws for political gain).Something I am curious about. Do corporations exist in this view of the world anarcho?This question is prompted by the essay "The Nature of the Firm" by Ronald Coase, in which it successfully argues that corporations and governments are essentially communist entities. Now, I'm sure most people reading that would be thinking "whatisthisshit.jpg". But actually it's a profoundly important question, why do corporations exist?After reading it, I came to the conclusion that Capitalism is not about corporations at all. They are like little islands in the pacific, surrounded by a vast body of water that is the market. The market is the transaction between corporations and individuals, but it is not the individuals or the corporations themselves. Bizarre though that may sound, it explains a whole lot of other things.So, you see, I came to the conclusion that in a real anarchy-capitalist world, there would be no corporations, just individuals working on the basis of contracts collecting together momentarily and scattering after work was completed. If you think about it, it could be that we're gradually heading into this direction in the far distant future. You would have a central state perhaps, but the concept of corporation would be vastly more fluid than it is today. Think of Amazon's Mechanical Turk Machine, and you understand the direction I'm coming from.