[Nielsio]

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When you get right down to it, thers'e not a lot of difference between anarcho-capitalists and Marxists. Although they envision a very different types of utopian societies. Both have equal probability of actually happening in the real world. Zero.

The state isn'g going to "wither away" in either a capitalist or socialist economy. The best we can hope for is to keep some limits on the power of the state.

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The existence of the state is based on the number of people that believe in it's virtue. In the middle ages the church had their own paid mob. This was still a +EV strategy, because of the relative small number of people they had to chase around and torture. And this was because of the mental grip the church had on the people's minds. Then things started to change. There was progress in rational thinking and there was a shift towards deism and doubt in the church. At that point, the power of the church withered away. The small mob was no longer sufficient to keep the crowds down.

Present Canada has 85.000 people in the military and 5.000 troops it can actually employ (yes, that's govt efficiency for you). Canada has 32.5 million 'citizens'. As long as most people believe in the state, you can gun down a few people who refuse to obey you. But there is a critical mass of people where this strategy cannot work anymore; and the state will crumble in days, if it cannot collect the money to pay for all the people who are sucking at it's teet.

Also, states grow and states self-destruct inevitably because of their violent, short-term, win-lose strategy.

So to say that we can never get rid of the state is pretty silly.