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No.

Enforcing a monopoly requires the application of violence to maintain it. In the absence of violence, anybody may compete.

Physical property rights, as an example, exist at all times in the absence of force. To physically take something from someone you must use violence in one form or another. That ownership is not granted by the government, it's granted by my having acquired it without using any form of violence to get it, and you must take the thing from me to change that.

The government doesn't guarantee I'll always own my property, they provide no guarantee to a monopoly over my car. A thief can come and steal it, and I may never see that car again. The government will not then replace it. The government provides justice, not property guarantees.




I don't understand this comment at all. How do physical property rights exist in the absence of force? How are you yourself not demonstrating that they don't when you talk about thieves stealing your property?


My response would be that violence-enforced monopolies on scarce resources like land and physical objects are more "natural" than those on non-scarce resources like digital media. Note that I don't mean to appeal to nature, because I'm not concluding that one is more "right" than the other. But considering territorial animals practice monopolies on scarce resources enforced by violence, it's clear that government is not a strict requirement for violence-enforced monopolies of scarce resources (unless we propose a very loose definition of "government" that includes the social activity of territorial animals).




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