This is, by definition, impossible with governments.

For me, it just breaks down when you ask how a society might prevent markets from springing up without something resembling a state.

If people want to trade and hold property themselves, what anarchist can prevent them from doing so?

I have to admit, I don’t really understand leftist anarchism.

As seen in countries such as India or China, when they actually allowed markets to work, poverty plummeted and living standards for all exploded.

As an side note, I saw Paul give a speech in Iowa back in 2008. He said almost the exact same words as RAW says there: “I have no problem with communism, as long as everyone has the choice to participate or not.”

I think if he said he was an anarchist today, many more people would appreciate where he was coming from :)

Please note that I am not an Ayn Rand objectivist, and find something basically abhorrent about some of the places she goes (although I agree with her on some areas as well).

There is strong evidence that people want to help the poor and create a good world for everybody. The continued popularity of voting for liberal social parties, for instance.

Libertarians generally don’t believe that the state is a legitimate vessel for delivering social good, because it is too dangerous and prone to abuse.  If people want in their hearts to help the poor, why don’t they band together and help the disadvantages, instead of passing off that responsibility to assuage their consciences?
The proper vehicle for helping those unable to help themselves are, basically, communities. People coming together to help each other on a personal level, in towns and cities. Also, families, churches, collectives, communes, etc. 

The government taking a huge piece out of everyone’s money and pretending to solve the problem makes people much less likely to actually get together and help each other themselves.

Listen to the RAW clip posted above. RAW is a voluntaryist, a market anarchist, an anarcho-capitalist, a panarchist, an anarcho-libertarian, a rothbardian, even a no adverb anarchist, etc. His views match mine very closely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQczen4rECY

This is usually when libertarians run screaming into the night, or say “somebody will provide charity, but not me” which is evasion that proves my point.

Even in our current system, people with disabilities often end up living in the street, but at least there are a few programs available to them. If the charities can’t help them even with safeguards, how are they going to without it?

The divide between productive and unproductive is far less moral at the bottom end of things, where even people capable of being productive are shut out of minimum wage jobs because employers demand desperation in their employees. How could it be less so without minimum wage?

Would it really serve society to have no minimum wage, with the poorest slowly starving to death and homeless while working full time?

–GimpWii

Any productive are oppressed by the unproductive in many ways in the world today: patent trolls, organic and small scale farmers harassed by monsanto bullshit, businesses that maintain their market share by passing laws that hurt more productive but smaller businesses, taxpayers who pay for nonproductive enterprises such as war, etc.

So what you say is true, but it misses the big picture.

The details of how this would work have been laid out by authors such as Rothbard and David Friedman.

Many on the Koch/Cato/Reason side tend to be non-anarchist, and have a lot of influence; but the numbers of anarcho-libertarians are not insignificant.

The military industrial complex, the politically connected wall street bankers, big pharma, big oil with their free mercenary force called the ‘army’, etc. etc. In many ways, states act like reverse robin hoods.

It’s possible to become a millionaire in America through hard work and inspiration. But most billionaires achieve that status in some way through the assistance of the state.

We might consider a small manufacturer who has a net worth of $1M to be rich. But, when a giant politically powerful corporation that manufacturs overseas lobbys for a law that puts him out of business, he is indeed oppressed.

So, yes, the state does oppress even the ‘rich’ – at the hands of the ultra rich.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQczen4rECY

Libertarians just object to where the line for “what the state can do” is drawn.  They want it drawn where the state does as much as it possibly can to protect their own rights, but stops where protecting someone else’s rights interferes with their own rights.  Which is why libertarians often can’t even agree with each other on what libertarianism means – everybody draws that line differently because everybody has slightly different self-interests.