AMA: Iraq Vet, Current LEO

I typically post on this subreddit under a different user account, but for what should be obvious reasons, I decided to generate another user name to make this post.

I am an Iraq war verteran, and am currently serving as a Law Enforcement Officer. I work for a large muncipality.

I, again for obvious reasons, won't tell you where I work or any other information that I deem too specific about my life.

I first delved into Libertarianism several years ago, and have been steadily drifting towards Anarcho-Capitalism since then.

I often feel like a walking paradox.

I understand how many here feel about LEOs, and the knee jerk reaction that many have when discussing them.

I am still a fairly new AnCap, so I am not very good at debating the finer points of Rothbard and Hayek.

I do feel that I have light to shed on some subjects that are very hot topics in this SubReddit.

Please play nice.

EDIT: This has certainly been an interesting discussion so far. I thank you all for your input. I expected plenty of "how can you live with yourself?" questions, and I was not disappointed. I also expected more questions about how Law Enforcement in our current system really functions in order to shed light on many of the widespread misconceptions in the libertarian/AnCap communities. I have not received as many of those.

I have thought long and hard on many of the questions posed in this AMA, and have strived to find where the disconnect between my trains of thought are and the AnCap community at large. I have reached a conclusion, which makes sense to me. I hope that this has been a positive exercise for everyone involved. It seems that many of you have had a chance to pose some hard questions to an LEO that you may have not been able to ask otherwise. Some of them I have answered in what I believe to be a satisfactory manner. Others, not so much. Many of these points are ones that I have not pondered before, so it is refreshing to see a different point of view. My entire professional career, I have interacted with people that would take pride in killing me on a daily basis. I'm sure that there are those here who would love to see me against the wall when the "time comes."

To the heart (at least as I see it) of the matter. I did not arrive at the point of considering myself an AnCap through an evolution of moral reasoning as it seems many of you have. Instead, I have gradually come to except that the state is not very effective at anything, and that human society would function in a more efficient and fair manner if the state were abolished and services that the state provides were privatized. I have not yet accepted the NAP, or really any other moral philosophy associated with AnCapism (however I am reading voraciously on all of these subjects). The cognitive dissonance that many of you are asking about hasn't destroyed me psychologically because, frankly, there isn't any. I'm not a pacifist. I think that there will be situations in an AnCap society where the initiation of violence may very well be the most economically expedient manner of solving a problem. What we do have in common, is that I believe that private industry is the key to a more efficient society with a higher quality of life. I believe that the imposition of order is important to guarantee the smooth function of a large group of people, however, I believe that this order can be imposed through voluntary contracts, as opposed to the mysterious "social contract."

I have many anecdotal experiences that I wished to share with this reddit that I thought that many of you find interesting, but we never got past the "how can you bare to be evil?" argument. If many of you are interested in genuinely converting large numbers of people to AnCapism, it will not be done through morality, but practicality. Some of you are pleasant to discuss things with, some of you are off putting. I imagine this may be on purpose.

I obviously have a different view on AnCapism than many of you. I believe that someone could support the existence of an AnCap society simply by recognizing the practical merits of it. It seems that some of you would only accept someone as an AnCap that holds the exact same moral views as you. The beauty of this, to me, is if this society were established, you would be left to explore the merits of your morality, and I, mine, without either of us imposing them on one another.

As I stated in my previous post, I am rather new to the concept of AnCapism, and welcome polite discussion on the matter. I'm certainly not perfect, far from it.

Do not expect to convert me to your world-view by incessantly nagging at me on the internet. I would prefer, instead, to be offered a way to explore your philosophy on my own.