> Most libertarians support the government providing a few limited key services such as national defense and operating a police force. Where you see libertarians start balking at government services is when they reach out beyond the scope of protecting an individual from the use of force by another. In so expanding its scope, the government becomes that which it was created to defend against.
But its "key" services would be still run on forcedly stolen money, right? Because everyone "needs" police protection (and it surely can't be provided via free market), there still will be armed criminals who take the money from people in order to "provide" their "services". And as they have sovereign control over some area of land, you won't be able to opt out by any mean other than moving out to a different country.
Minarchism is better than the current systems in the same way small theft is better than murder, but it's still not ideal.
("National defense", by the way, is a myth. There would be no need of one if there are no governments.)
> everyone "needs" police protection (and it surely can't be provided via free market)
Police protection certainly can be provided privately via the free market - and it often is even today, in the sense that there are more private security guards than public police officers in the US - but we usually call people who advocate entirely private generation and enforcement of law anarcho-capitalist rather than libertarian.
Economist David Friedman is one of the best thinkers on this subject; he bases his views on history and the economics of law - this chapter of his book Machinery of Freedom is a good starting point on the theoretical case:
(I do know what anarcho-capitalism is; I'm anarcho-capitalist myself.)
Libertarianism is a broad term. Anarcho-capitalists are as libertarian as minarchists are. "Libertarian" can refer to either. It's obvious @essrinn was referring to minarchism, but I just wanted to point out that minarchists still advocate presence of a gang with weapons to preserve the "order" in the society and steal from people along the way.
But its "key" services would be still run on forcedly stolen money, right? Because everyone "needs" police protection (and it surely can't be provided via free market), there still will be armed criminals who take the money from people in order to "provide" their "services". And as they have sovereign control over some area of land, you won't be able to opt out by any mean other than moving out to a different country.
Minarchism is better than the current systems in the same way small theft is better than murder, but it's still not ideal.
("National defense", by the way, is a myth. There would be no need of one if there are no governments.)