Minarchist United States

apollo11

Banned
A few months ago I was dreaming up the idea of a Nightwatchman United States. I was wondering what you all thought? Was it ever a possibility Post 1900 and what would it look like today?
 
Basically you'd need a USA where...

-the government sees no interest whatsoever in promoting or protecting the well-being of certain businesses through economic intervention(IOW no tariffs, just for starters)

-there are no religious-types who want to regulate away "immoral" or licentious behaviour(IOW cocaine fueled gay-sex orgies for money are as legal as Sunday picnics)

-no one has any desire to assist the poor through any means besides charity(IOW no politician during the Great Depression gets the idea to offer the voters so much as a Hoover Camp to alleviate their pain)

And that's all just for starters. Depending on the type of minarchists running the show, you might even have to do away with immigration-controls completely.

So, long story short, you're talking about an entirely different planet.
 
A few months ago I was dreaming up the idea of a Nightwatchman United States. I was wondering what you all thought? Was it ever a possibility Post 1900 and what would it look like today?

It will look like a third world hellhole with a pollution problem worse than China, with the rich in their compound defended by private security and the rest of the people in citisized slum; more than immigration expect emigration from there (but it's very probable that will be difficult...as the corporation will not want lose cheap labor).
 
It's tough to do, especially coming after the War with Spain and (likely still) McKinley's assassination (1901), thereby elevating TR to the presidency.
 

apollo11

Banned
Depending on the type of minarchists running the show, you might even have to do away with immigration-controls completely.
I considered this as well. I figured that a Minarchist state might consider immigration controls to be an imposition on the right to freedom of movement. That and the business elites would want mass immigration to keep wages low. I have to imagine that such a state while limited to certain key functions would still be quite large if only for national security purposes. You'd need massive internal surveillance and policing just to keep a lid on foreign threats let alone the imposition of a monopoly of violence to uphold property rights and the like.

The counter to a Minarchist state having open borders would be the need for national security and internal stability of course. I figure that OTL Nativists would couch their arguments from that rational.
 
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