So asks Michael Lind in Salon yesterday.

My answer to the question would be:

A libertarian state (he says “country”) is a contradiction in terms. Duh! Some states/countries are certainly more libertarian than others, and the Salon piece even acknowledges that, but the state itself is the reason there are no pure “libertarian countries”. It need not have anything to do with anarchism as even limited government advocates view the state as a necessary evil, and its nature as eventually and inevitably corruptive of all that exists within its prerogatives.

If Mr. Lind simply wants an example of a geographic area that is entirely libertarian, sans state, he would first need to acknowledge that no such place can exist within or as part of a state. But since every country in the world is a state, there are no such places. Even if there were, they wouldn’t count according to Mr. Lind, because they would not fit his definition of country. Notice how he discounts several contestants, having already failed to say what he thinks a libertarian country would look like: Continue reading →