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I assume, Jim, that your questions are aimed at Steve, and not myself.
But I would like to take the opportunity to comment on the (at least) six questions and two contentious assertions you have made above.
When I quoted Brant Gaede here: "Objectivism needs to be cut down to its roots and thoroughly re-evaluated and understood apart from all its principals, past and present. Most people--Objectivists--do not understand the actual terrifying simplicity of Objectivism and that the complexity and difficulty is in the details of living an individual life." You responded that you did not understand how living a non-coercive life could be terrifying. Of course, the quote said no such thing, so I suggested you reread the quote and pay attention to what the adjective terrifying was modifying. Then you decided to become an amateur literary critic, responding "Why not say "wonderful simplicity", thus painting following Objectivist principles in a positive light?" This shows, of course, that you did not notice that the quote was about the principal personalities of Objectivism, not about its principles, terrifying or not. Then in the end those two simple, annoying, unambiguous questions of mine became "vague," vague in some way that your eight or so contentions above presumably are not.
 So, now, with the same attitude, you throw a bunch of absurdities and non-sequiturs at Steve to see, I assume, if any of them will stick.
The mere quantity alone is rude, even if one discounts the delivery.
I didn't hit you with eight or more contentions when you questioned the previous quote. I simply asked you to form one clear thought at a time.
Now we get this: "If you draw a Venn diagram of minarchy and anarcho-capitalism, you'll find that anarcho-capitalism is a special subset of minarchism, where government funding goes from "very little" to "zero", just like circles are a special subset of ovals." Well, this has at least two fatal flaws. First, government funding is not an essential in the definition of anarcho-capitalism, competition is. There is zero government funding in the headhunter societies of primitive New Guinea or the Amazon. I don't think you would want to present the headhunting Asmat (above) or the cannibal Yanomamo (center) as model anarcho-capitalists. Or even the Somalis, who only "tax" the international community. But maybe you would. And with competing governments, who will prevent any authority that wishes from augmenting its funding, some single central authority? Oh, no, then that wouldn't be anarcho-capitalism, it would be Steve's system. Of course, the more obvious flaw is the "goes from very little to zero" analogy. That's like saying there's no essential major difference between a man on a diet who eats very little and a corpse that eats not at all.
And note that in this analogy, anarcho-capitalism is the corpse.
 Now, of course, all my questions here are rhetorical. I don't expect you to answer me, and I think the answers are obvious anyway. So I would suggest that if you really want to engage in dialog, rather than attempted point scoring with haphazard multiple attacks, you pick just one question for Steve, one well formed, well thought out question, and see if he will answer it.
(Edited by Ted Keer on 6/26, 9:33pm)
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I won't just imply it - I'll state it out-right - There must be a government monopoly on law. There can be but one set of laws for a given jurisdiction. Period. There is a huge, enormous, unbridgable gap between minarchy and 'anarcho-capitalism.' Minarchy and 'anarcho-capitalism' are so far apart as to be opposites. Capitalism can only exist if there is the freedom for markets to function. And there can be no freedom for markets without the protection of individual rights. People require the protection of person and property against the intiation of force, fraud and theft to make markets free - to open the door for competition. And that requires laws that define those rights.
