When is a Monopoly Not a Monopoly? A Reply to Tibor Machan (Essay‪)‬

In a lengthy footnote to his essay "Reconciling Anarchism and Minarchism" (1) (henceforth RAM) Tibor Machan accuses me of engaging in equivocation, and also of psychologising, in my essay "The Facts of Reality: Logic and History in Objectivist Debates about Government" (2) (henceforth TFOR). Machan writes: ... Dykes doesn't seem to realise that monopoly in the use of retaliatory force is not the same as a legal or coercive monopoly in that use. He persists in this equivocation. Yet, one can have a monopoly that comes about naturally, because it is freely granted to one by people--as, say, they effectively granted the Beatles monopoly status in rock music or Fred Astaire in dancing or IBM in computers and Microsoft in software ... without keeping anyone out by force. Furthermore, if people freely select a group of specialists to protect them by way of a long-term binding contract [or compact] that's not to establish an objectionable, coercive monopoly, merely an exclusive but binding relationship ... It is along such lines that Rand's notion of the "monopoly" of retaliatory force needs to be understood (RAM 61).