After reading the Wikipedia entry for "Anarcho Capitalism" I am pretty sure that it isn't really a thing. Really. It is just putting together two opposite meaning words to mess with people. Libertarianism fundamentally believes in government which is the opposite of anarchy.

That zero government force... The 0 got dropped there... You need some use of force to enforce laws that support Liberty... Anarchists would disagree with any need for government to enforce laws.

The difference is that libertarians want to minimize the use of force and maximize freedom which is different than anarchism which wants zero force and no enforcement of laws. Libertarians don't believe that government force will maximize liberty.

"minimize"

Not so. Libertarianism isn't about creating an anarchy, it is about creating and perfecting a constitutional republic based on Liberty. Libertarianism is about a free society under the rule of law which recognizes that the use of force by government is evil, but that it is still sometimes necessary in defense of that Liberty.

So put simply the difference is that libertarians seek to minimize the use of force by a government (or any collective association), while anarchists seek to eliminate the use of force by a government completely.

And what you describe isn't even anarchy which would be about having no enforceable rules. What you describe is simply creating a new government but calling it a corporation instead. As soon as you are talking about forming a corporation or association or any group of people with collective rules which can be enforced by the use of force, then you are not talking about anarchy.

Libertarianism is about some minimum set of laws which are meant to uphold individual freedom that a government may need to use force to enforce. The term "free market" refers to a market that operates by a set of rules which are collectively enforced through some government entity. The exercise of those rules and code of conduct are what make a market free or not.

So things like: you may not steel or commit theft through fraud, or threaten force to coerce someone into trading goods or services at a price that is not agreed upon fairly, those would all be legitimate things for a government to use force to counterbalance or try to prevent or punish.

Libertarianism is about minimizing the use of force by government to when it is absolutely necessary not eliminating it and certainly not privatizing the use of coercive force. Individual and collective self defense is part of living in a free society, but so is a well regulated free market which is a function of government. Without a set of enforced rules, you can have a market, but it most likely won't be a free market.

Police and common defense are usually cited by libertarians as the only legitimate functions of government power, so it is hard to see how anyone would be mistaken in believing that libertarian ideology is about creating an anarchy or would seek to allow the creation of private police forces outside the rule of law.

Libertarianism is not anarchism. The maintenance of personal Liberty and a free market relies on a government which uses its force to protect that liberty and freedom. Libertarianism is not about going to an extreme that eliminates government, it is about an minimization of the use of force in society which we can work towards.

There is a huge difference between seeking to minimize government and the use of force in society and anarchists who seek no government. Equating the two does a terrible disservice to a rational debate.

Yes, I think in its purest form of libertarianism then there is no need for legal corporations at all, because corporations are a government legal invention to aggregate wealth under a legal fiction which the government then has to use force to bring into existence and protect its property and wealth.

In its purest ideological form, Libertarianism is about promoting Liberty and the limitation of the use of force by the government for police and common defense not the privatization of the use of force. "Privatizing" by merely contracting with corporations instead of individuals to act as police or government agents has nothing to do at all with libertarianism. Privatizing in this sense is just a form of contract with a group of individuals instead of individuals directly. Similarly to contracting with a labor union that represents public employees.

In this sense "privatizing" in general has nothing to do with libertarianism if it means that government is still paying with taxpayer money which is collected by the use of force. Police and Military are fundamentally the only legitimate use of government's taxing authority and even then taxes should be considered a necessary evil, but only necessary if the government can't collect sufficient money with a voluntary system.

In this case I think an important line would have been crossed if the SWAT team direction, oversight and management is coming from a private corporation. To abdicate the police powers of the government to a private corporation would be very much anti-libertarian. Very anti-libertarian. And regardless of ideology I hope people will recognize it as a bad idea that should be reconsidered.

I think liberty is a worthwhile ideal to work towards, but first you have to understand what it means.

Molten core? All the large scale solar in Germany appears to be flat panel PV which means 0% at night.

Funny, it very likely did drop to 0% over the course of one 24 hour day. Nachtzeit.

The changing mixture is news or it really should be making more headlines: Rising German Coal Use Imperils European Emissions Deal

Bottom line is that German CO2 emissions are rising because of a switch to coal that solar and wind can't keep up with. So far, even with remarkable solar adoption in a short period of time this is a failed experiment.

Germany is replacing nuclear with cheap high polluting coal. The solar is a PR stunt to distract from an unmitigated environmental disaster being perpetrated in the name of environmentalism. Is climate change a bad thing or not, because if it is then they need to start those nuclear power plants back up.

solar for 24 hours, eh?... just wish I had some mod points for "funny".

Germany has shifted from Nuclear to Coal and turned the environmental clock back to the Coal age. 50% solar for a few minutes one afternoon is a politically motivated red herring.

More than just misleading unless the headline was written at the moment it was true. 50% for a few moments when the sun was at its peak is great, don't mean to rain on the solar parade, so to speak. But if it was 50% for a few minutes on a cloudless day in Summer when the Sun was at its highest in the sky... then the stories are lacking a critical piece of information to judge the overall progress towards greener energy... Like what is the actual percentage of power over a realistic period of time? So, what was the percentage over the past month or last month for instance?

All I've heard so far is that they have primarily replaced nuclear power with coal which is a terrible situation for the environment and health. And it appears that Merkel is basically covering up the fact that the knee jerk reaction to eliminate nuclear power has been an environmental disaster with very real negative health, environmental and Climate change effects all to eliminate an energy source with very little risk and a huge environmental benefit compared to all other energy sources.

If we wanted to go back to AOL's gated network of the 1990s we would invent a time machine and cover it with AOL CDs.

We the customers are paying for a certain amount of bandwidth to the Internet and we have long since paid for the build out of the Fiber Optic network infrastructure through our monthly payments. It is simply fraudulent to be charging customers a fixed price for bandwidth and then effectively limiting peering to other networks so as to create an incentive for other networks and content providers to pay off the Telecoms to provide that telecoms customers their content as a service... these are services we as customers are already ostensibly paying for or are requesting. It isn't like a content provider can turn on your computer or tv and make you download their content... the Internet is primarily about end users initiating some communication and either the computer on the other end responds or not. Verizon or Comcast sitting in the middle and deciding which communications should get a fast lane based upon who has the most cash is just a bad way to run a communications network and a bad way to regulate a free market.

Sure transparency in what kind of peering arrangements telecoms have with other companies all contracts regarding quality of service or internet connections could be useful for regulators who might have the time to spend years sifting through all that paperwork to figure out what is good for the free market or not, but it is no substitution for net neutrality which would assure customers that they are actually getting the bandwidth and good faith service they are paying for rather than perniciously getting fleeced at both ends with service that the telecoms feel free to effectively throttle down whenever they feel like it despite apparent contracts with their customers to provide a certain level of service.