Here in Georgia, for instance, the recourse consists of evicting you (after giving appropriate notice), retaining your deposit and imposing whatever penalty is defined in the lease, commonly the rent for the remaining months of the lease.

And yes, if you refuse to pay, the landlord can go to small claims court (or state court if the amount is large enough) and sue to collect the debt.

Likewise, if the landlord breaks the terms of the lease, you, the renter, have legal recourse under the law as well.

But neither of you has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against the other. All you can do is seek to get the government to use force in retaliation for the breach-of-contract by the other party.

Government, by contrast, can initiate the use of physical force against a citizen that has done no harm to anyone else, broken no contract, etc. That’s the distinction.

As to the rest of your statement, which begins with “Libertarians can’t show a historical magical Libertarian Eden of simple anarcho-Libertarians . . . ” — you seem to be employing a form of the standard muirgeo conflation fallacy.

This fallacy consists of treating any criticism of government actions, or any advocacy of freedom, capitalism or limited government, as if it is an advocacy of anarchy — so that you can then respond with the claim that since no functional anarchist “Eden” can be shown to exist, our arguments are refuted!

But this line of “argument” is so completely fallacious it‘s silly. Advocating capitalism, freedom and limited government is not all the same thing as advocating anarchy.

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, wherein all property is privately owned and the role of government is limited to the (crucial!) function of protecting individual rights against those who initiate the use of physical force or fraud in any of its forms (which includes unilateral breach of contract). Now that’s not anarchy.

Thus, while a landlord may arbitrarily change the terms of a rental (outside of a legally binding contract, under which a renter could challenge any such change in court), the landlord has no power to compel the renter to accept these new terms — the renter can walk away without the landlord extracting another dime of his money.

Government, however, has the power to compel acceptance of any new “terms” it chooses to impose on the citizens, with jail sentences for any who try to “walk away” from its edicts.

I was just thinking about that the other day while out on a walk. Specifically, that the idea of a social “contract” is invalidated by the fact that one party has the right to change the terms at will and without the consent of the other interested parties. Thanks for reminding me.

Subsidized transport makes a bite, then takes a bite.