Ever heard of the fact that Americans can leave the U.S but still get taxed? If one does not want the services of a certain agency, and still has to pay for them, then it's FORCE, THUS THEFT. Do you just ignore logic when it comes to the government?

I make a comfortable amount over the median income, and my EFFECTIVE tax rate - which is not the posted tax bracket rates but what one truly pays in taxes as a percentage of gross income - is meager.
Honestly, I get to live in the world's richest most technologically advanced nation, enjoy an overall good economy of limitless opportunity for advancement and education, clean streets, safe drugs and food and buildings, and road and freeway systems across a virtual continent for THIS much? DEAL!

If you're an American take a look at the rest of the world, how they live and what they live on and their level of personal freedom...and then STFU.

I have to ask: What club charges its members an average of 40% of their income(when all Federal, State and Local taxes are combined), and charges members extra for being wealthy, or for owning a house(property taxes) or for being single without kids, and then takes dues from one of its members heirs after he dies(estate taxes)?

Retirement communities?

I have to ask: What club charges its members an average of 40% of their income(when all Federal, State and Local taxes are combined), and charges members extra for being wealthy, or for owning a house(property taxes) or for being single without kids, and then takes dues from one of its members heirs after he dies(estate taxes)?

What club offers its members the range of services that the US government offers its citizens?

I'm not opposed to paying taxes per se, but our current tax system(in America at least) is a mess, and we pay WAY TOO MUCH in taxes.

Perhaps slightly less. But that wouldn't solve the problem. The nation-states would take up just as much space as they do now, and there would be nowhere to go that would truly be free of them except perhaps Antarctica. Even there governments have a presence, however.

On the other hand, freedom of movement might erode our current nation-states. I don't really know what would happen if such a massive change in policy was allowed across the world. Probably Europe would look a lot more Chinese due to immigrants from China, for starters. What are the chances of every nation-state agreeing to this freedom of movement, though? I'd say pretty much no chance.

Since I have never advocated for dictatorships I don't see the relevance of the question, Leum. Dictatorship-- whether by the majority, an oligarchy, or whatever form it takes-- is what I've been arguing against.

If you're suggesting that dictatorship is the inevitable alternative to our modern democracies I don't buy that. For one thing, a democracy is itself a dictatorship by the majority, and fifty-one percent of any given democracy can force the other forty-nine percent to do whatever the majority wants. In our modern political system it is even worse since a large chunk of the populace can't bring itself to vote in elections, or is too young to vote. In 2008, for example, about 130 million cast votes in a total population exceeding 300 million. Of the votes cast about 70 million went to Barack Obama. So roughly one fourth of the U.S. population decided on the President intended to speak and act for them all. Hardly representative, is it?

I prefer liberty to every sort of dictatorship.

That's not historically accurate. States are terrible at avoiding collapse. Some of them just last longer. The Roman Empire fell. The Persian Empire fell. Athens fell to Sparta. Sparta disintegrated of its own weaknesses. For a while France was switching its government every fifty years or less. History is full of men trying to build great states--men like Alexander the Great, Caesar, Augustus, Ashoka in ancient India, and so on-- only to have their grand political achievements break apart after their deaths. The United States didn't make it a century before getting nearly torn apart by civil war, and before that it fought in a number of other costly wars. Suggesting that states make society stable is absurd. Any state is a bloodthirsty state to one degree or another; you could count the number of consistently pacifist states on one hand. I hope we can agree that war does not tend to create stability for anyone.

"It's what I keep pushing at, and you keep dodging: who will enforce penalties on those using "coercive force", and prevent penalties from being enacted on those using "retaliatory force"? An entity with the final say on whether or not an action of force is legitimate is a state."

But who will watch the watchman? Making a single state the final arbiter gives that state a corrupting amount of power. It doesn't matter who you vote in. They'll abuse their power if they have the final say.

My solution would be to decentralize law enforcement and other such services. Since it is a common need in human society, society will develop local solutions to such problems. Spreading out responsibility is much better, to my mind, than concentrating it in a single entity. You might not find that 'final' or 'definitive' enough. You'll have to get religion if you want a more absolute authority to depend on.

I still disagree with you on the Icelandic Commonwealth. What we know of it doesn't match your first definition of a state--that is, monopoly on legitimate use of force. Your confederation idea doesn't quite fit either; confederacies are groups of states, not individuals.

Prase:
"Similarly, no particular state has a monopoly on force, the states compete with each other to win citizens. There are about 180 independent states today, not much maybe, but the number of Icelandic goðar was about 40. What's exactly the core of the difference?"

The difference is that a chieftain is an individual while a state is not. I consider the individual to be the basic and unalienable unit of human society.