On blog.Mises, as a late comment to Hans Hoppe’s “On the Impossibility of Limited Government,” Joe Stoutenburg makes an important point that I have yet to hear any of the better-known ancaps address:

Having an actuarial background and working for a large insurance company, I have long been intrigued with the idea of insurance companies providing security. I believe that the arrangements could work. There are two main factors (in addition to throwing off the yoke of oppressive government) that must be worked out:

1. The public greatly mistrusts insurance companies. How would they be convinced to accept insurance company services for government? [Though I have to wonder why they trust government more than insurance companies...]

2. Sadly, much of the mistrust is well-placed. Insurance companies enjoy many advantages through regulations, barriers to entry, tax laws and so forth. While the institutions of insurance require massive assets, I’m not convinced that individual companies must be so gigantic. There are markets for sharing risk, and insurance industries fight their development for fear of losing dominance. While insurance companies do compete among each, the level of innovation in a free market would drastically change the industry.

In short, the marketplace could provide the services outlined in this article. But the current insurance industry would probably drastically change if it was to adapt to an unfettered market.

"If the public ever figures out that it can escape the clutches of higher education in the United States, which absorbs about a third of a trillion dollars a year, the game will end. The guilds will have to compete in a free market. They are not used to this. They will resent it. But they are going to have to learn to live with it."

– Gary North, “The Self-Serving System of Peer Review”

From Joel Schlosberg:

Recently, there have been a number of news stories, such as this one, reporting that Serena and Venus Williams are not voting in the upcoming presidential election due to being Jehovah’s Witnesses, which prohibits voting among its adherents (I definitely didn’t know that beforehand!)

This is confirmed by Wikipedia, which additionally points out that other political acts eschewed by Jehovah’s Witnesses include saluting flags, singing nationalistic songs, and serving in the military, but on the other hand, they’re supposed to obey laws and pay taxes.

Joel