but a strong state is necessary to restrain those forces (or we end up with clown world).
I don't understand why you think of your government as weak. Do we not already have a powerful, strong state?
You know, biggest military in the world, historically defeating european nationalism. Government working together with the sugar industry. Public schools ( = government) teaching your child about analsex before it even reached puberty.
You bigot, are you assuming my nationality?!
But seriously—your assessment is fair, however it doesn't change the fact that a strong state would be necessary to attempt to restrain capitalism and social liberalism. I don't see how a decentralized 'weak' state could a) resist capitalistic de facto centralization and social liberalism (aka progressivism) or b) compete with major centralized states. So you're implying a false alternative. The only reasonable choice is between 'strong' states with different value paradigms (or 'Cathedrals') and different (((elite))) vs. elite interests.
Does social liberalism not depend on a strong state? Affirmative action, critical race theory, food stamps, public school indoctrination...?
Let's imagine we'd establish a completely free market and we somehow prevent people from having a communist revolution. A market so free, an unemployed single mother would starve to death because she cannot afford food. Unemployable people either have to leave the country, or die. Capitalism as cruel as it possibly could be.
Woman has a child with a black guy who leaves her? Death sentence.
IQ below 70? Too dumb to work in an increasingly automated country? Death sentence.
I believe people would go back to shotgun marriages, racism, eugenics and prudish manners within a generation.
There would be nothing to stop corporations from growing super powerful and becoming de facto state authorities themselves, engineering society however they saw fit (what else are they going to spend insane profits on?). At some point profit becomes power. But even before that possibility, there's nothing to prevent competing centralized states from manipulating your totally free markets with dumping, labour invasions and shit like that (assuming they don't just conquer your uncoordinated voluntary defense forces with military might).
I agree that without welfare, behaviour would improve dramatically; however, I think you underestimate the chaos/destruction that the huge newly useless proportion of the population would cause before they expired or were 'subdued'. The rest of it is a lolbertarian pipe dream, I'm afraid. State authority is an inevitable result of civilization.
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