Your ideas are not new to the small group of libertarians who call themselves panarchists. I encourage you to take a look at panarchist.org, and especially the links there to panarchy.org (home of an exhaustive library of references), and Panarchy South Jersey (panarchy-sj.com), which discusses the implementation of panarchy at the municipal level of government.

As opposed to the utilitarian or deontological, I take the ontological approach, looking at human nature and the human rights that derive from it as the source of my argument for panarchy. My example of two non-territorial governments in my town does not attempt to resolve your question of territorial versus non-territorial, but simply gets around it by positing two independent governments that cooperate on all things (at least in this example) except education. My intention is to get people first of all to recognize the very possibility of non-territorial governments existing. The resolution of what must be territorial I leave for the working out by experiment, with the creation of other non-territorial governments within the town which attempt to go their own way with regard to police and judicial services, or any other component of govennment that might be considered properly territorial.

I began by saying that your ideas are not new to panarchists; however, I am very happy to see these thoughts so clearly expressed by you in your two “Youtopia” articles. The freedom of self-determination, including the right to choose ones government at every level, is something that we should all be working toward, each in his own way, but acknowledging the good wherever we see it.

I wanted specifically to say something about “taxes”. Libertarians look upon taxes as theft, insofar as the government is an involuntary component in society. The ability for a person to choose their government would remove the nature it has had up to now of being monopolist and involuntary. I would agree with you that taxes within the context of a freely chosen government lose the nature of “stolen goods” and become instead “fees for services”.

Nice attempt. I think the dissonant thinking that leads to such conclusions is the bait-and-switch between moral and utilitarian arguments. E.G. saying “rich people need to pay more taxes because they benefit more” to “we can’t let rich people pay lesser taxes, it would harm the poor” depending on the argument, and combining both of those into a muddled narrative. Of course one can believe both the moral and the consequential argument, but i’m guessing (pessimistically) that the (moral) frame that you have established will be countered with consequential/utilitarian arguments, and if/when you argue the consequential, you’ll be presented with moralistic preening.