[pvn]

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In your AC world it seems there are many costly laws and enforcements that governments provide that wouldn't exist in AC due to cost and the problem of funding. i.e. prisons, drug safety enforcement and review (perhaps partially provided by certifying bodies, but easily overcome with money, marketing and/or intimidation), covert operations, child protection agencies; laws to protect software, music, writing, inventions, motion pictures, and artwork; tariffs and subsidies.

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Why do you think these are too expensive to be funded in a free market? Because people don't value them? If so, why *should* they be funded? Tarriffs and subsidies, for example, are flat-out corporate welfare. If *you* want to pay for that, go right ahead, I'll pass. On the other hand, I am in favor of funding private testing and review facilities (and I do, right now, in the status quo, voluntarily).

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I always assumed that ACers on this board recognized the natural right of an author/creator/inventor to protect his works,

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Sure. Who said they didn't? But there's a difference between protecting your work and using coercive force; copyright, for example, is a voluntary contract - it only covers works that are developed based on the copyrighted work; patents, on the other hand, are involuntary, and if you independently invent something that someone else has patented, even if you have zero knowlege even of the existence of that patented item, you are infringing. That's a lot more than protecting your work, that's actively obstructing others' work.

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and the good it does for the economy.

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This is the least of my concerns. I can't speak for others, though.

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If you guys want to claim that Somalia is a poor example of AC, you have to recognize that the US is a poor example of government and democracy.

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Somalia isn't *at all* an example of AC.