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This is not true. Private citizens can be reasoned and negotiated with. Sovereign rule is absolute. Especially in the context of the administrative state.
The only regress of grievances offered is one that exists at the pleasure of the sovereign and can be abolished at will.
You may argue that the lives of private citizens would bear similar relationships of total violence as they do with the State in the state of nature, but this is an argument against anarchism, not against libertarianism.
Let's again go back to the analogy. If a parent with a maximally-oppositional child or a board game master with a maximally-oppositional player decides to press with their rule, what redress of grievances is available other than their pleasure? Yes, they can at will decide to give up on enforcement of the rule. There are tons of examples of that happening with the government, too. Moreover, there are many overlapping methods of petition for redress of grievances in a system like what the US has. That was kind of an important part of the founding movement. One might not like them; one might not think they are working in the way that they "should", but that is a separate matter from the mere question of what is required to state that all government rules are uniquely enforced by violence/kidnapping. You need to posit other things like maximal-opposition. In fact, if you ask someone who makes such a claim how they end up in such a situation, they almost by necessity appeal to maximal-opposition. "This rule seems to be enforced by a $5 fine, not violence/kidnapping." "Well, what if you don't pay that fine?" "The next step is X." "What happens if they refuse to comply with X?" "The next step is Y." "...what happens if they refuse to comply with Y?" And so on and so forth until you get to the point where violence/kidnapping occurs. There may be offramps along the way, but they all tend to be ignored in such reasoning. I'm simply pointing out that if we apply the same reasoning to essentially any other rule in the world, you either have to posit an offramp occurring, or you still end up in violence/kidnapping. Fewer people are quite as willing to think about this and apply the same reasoning to any other rule in the world.
There is a bit of a Clauswitzian feel to this reasoning. Any time you're trying to enforce any rule, either someone backs down, comes to an agreement or something, or escalates further. If we take any conflict over anything that seems like 'rule enforcement', if parties are willing to escalate and go further in their maximal opposition, you end up in warfare/violence. Politics is just one form of conflict management, but just as sure as war is politics by other means, violence in general is conflict management/"rule enforcement" by other means. Just take almost any example of a rule you want to enforce and walk through the exact same steps of, "Well, what if they're maximally-oppositional?"
Finally, to be completely clear, this is not an argument "against libertarianism". It is simply bringing clarity to the nature of one particular type of argument.
Parental relationships are indeed similar in nature to that of a sovereign to his subjects. Is is common the words are the same even.
What you seem to be denying is that civilization allows us other types of relationships. But it does.
Equals in rank or station within civilized society have a fundamentally different relationship and method of conflict resolution, one which specifically prohibits or codifies the escalation to a state of war.
Libertarians, Classical Liberals and other legalists seek to extend the domain of this boon granted by civilization to the largest possible extent.
This is not fundamentally opposed to the base idea that this ability is grounded by violence, either in individual self defense or through the means of sovereign enforcement of law. This connection is in fact one of the core components of the philosophy since the beginning.
One in fact so characteristic the derisive name the fascist gave it as the "night watchman state" stuck as a self description of minarchism.
I don't see anything in here about the question of the uniqueness of government rule enforcement being with violence/kidnapping. Mayyyybe this:
But it doesn't actually discuss rule enforcement. How do you do rule enforcement? Like, any example of rule enforcement? I've given two example scenarios. You can give others. How do you do it in the case of maximal-opposition?
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