So I have to be robbed and coerced by a government because you and others think it greatly reduces my risk of being attacked?
Even if I’m more than capable of arming myself or voluntarily paying for a protection service if the risk is large enough?
Discussion
There’s no have to in what I’m saying. There’s only the fact that government exists, and it is acting legitimately if it’s securing the conditions for the prosperity of its citizens and nothing more. If it fails to do that or does something else, it’s not legitimate.
Do I personally believe the existence of police and government reduce your chances of getting robbed or murdered? Yes, I do. But who knows? Maybe the state of nature is more friendly than we’ve been led to believe!
Has any government in human history successfully secured the conditions of prosperity for all of its people? Is that even possible? Because my prosperity is directly violated every time I’m coerced to pay income tax, property tax, car registration, drivers license renewal, etc.
I'd say the founding principles of the US secured the conditions for a lot of people, with obvious injustices and exceptions. Property and income tax are scourges, way over the line of minimum necessary. You can quibble on whether requiring driver’s licenses supports or detracts from those conditions, but small potatoes compared to the main taxes.
But the principle IMO is important because government exists, and we should have a standard (even an aspirational one) to which to hold it.
Why not have the standard to not condone violence and theft? Why not aspire to the eradication of such things?
For me, it’s just a matter of where the violence and theft are coming from and how you are going to split the cost of preventing it. I don’t think we have a world without violence or a garden without weeds, insects, etc.
Of course not but why should we legitimize it and act like it’s a necessary evil? Why not strive to live in a world without weeds instead of pretending that we need a certain number of weeds for society to prosper?
There is no world without weeds. Basically there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.