Honestly, any system where the average citizen is expected to use force against others is not a system I would call ideal.
When you vote for say, a law making marijuana illegal, you ARE using force against others. You are giving the authority to an agent to act on your behalf to use force against others. The fact that you won't do it yourself just makes you a coward. Same thing as when you vote for warmongering politicians.
I already know shopkeepers who would deny service to anyone under 30 if they could. People are rarely logical in practice.
Individuals are often illogical. That's the beauty of the market though. The market on the whole, is. A shopkeeper who refused to sell to those under 30 would likely face some stiff competition from one who would be willing to serve anyone. IF there was in fact a significant market for "stores where no young people are allowed in" and he could stay in business, then hey, more power to him. If the 20-somethings don't like it, let them start their own store.
I take it you've never been to some of the worse areas in the states then? I had a friend who used to live in the sates beaten up pretty bad for being atheist, and nobody in the town gave a damn about him. Another friend lost his friends and family because he decided as he grew up that he didn't want to be a Jehova's witness. And just look at how women are treated in the hardcore middle eastern countries.
I've never experienced anything like that, no. You're right about the middle east, that is a good example of a society that culturally is CLEARLY not ready for voluntarism. Even America is probably not ready right now at this exact moment. It's like I've always said about Ron Paul. If Ron Paul were elected President based on a cult of personality and most of his voters didn't truly agree with his positions, nothing would really change (because Congress and the Courts would still be full of power-mad statists). For a voluntarist society to work, you'd have to have a majority of people who accepted the principles of voluntarism. The middle east obviously has a LONG way to go to get there.
I'm just looking at historical examples.
What historical examples? How can there be "historical examples" of the problems of a system that has never been tried? As far as the "power vacuum" theory goes, I just don't buy it. There is less centralized power in South Korea than there is in North Korea, is there not? And yet, this "vacuum" has not resulted in them becoming a dictatorship like North Korea, now has it? My position is rather simple, and I would dare to say, more logically consistent than yours and red sox. My claim is that more freedom = better society. Always and absolutely. Your guy's claim is that more freedom = better society to some arbitrary and ill-defined point at which all of a sudden the trend reverses. Presumably Barack Obama knows exactly where that point is and we can trust him to grab power that far and no more, right?
Can you really tell me that there are not groups out there that would pay vast sums of money for nuclear weaponry?
At this point in society today, perhaps. Although who would sell it to them? I can't imagine any corporation would be stupid enough to develop nuclear weapons and sell them to, say, the Westboro Baptist Church, a group that is crazy enough that most people would consider them likely to actually use them. I'm not sure any organization large enough to have the ability to manufacture something as complicated as a nuclear weapon would be short-sighted enough to sell it to someone likely to use it.
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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/