I'm afraid that simply plugging your ears against your critics is not equal to having no decent criticism. Though it's my policy to never feed the trolls, I unfortunately can't help myself in this instance.

You're correct in that the initiation of force statement is indeed missing a premise. We need to first establish that a social contract exists, before we can determine that the non-tax payer is the initiator of force. I contend – and I would imagine most other people – that the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim for existence.

I find your "libertarians cannot define initiation of force" quite puzzling, as I imagine most libertarians have an extremely easy definition for it. In it's simplest terms that definition is: the use or threat of violence against a person who had previously made no use or threat of violence against you. I think you may be confusing definition with investigation – that is, while the definition of what IS the initiation of force is quite easy, discovering WHO was the initiator of force isn't always so.

You seem to have missed the point of the restaurant analogy completely. Libertarians aren't against the use of police force in defense of property. What you have failed to ask in these situations is who the initiator of force in either situation. If you walk into a restaurant, eat a meal provided by them, and then attempt to leave without paying, NO ONE would argue that the restaurant initiated the force. In the social contract scenario, again, you are right IF AND ONLY IF you can prove the existence of the social contract.

Sadly (for you at least), poor comparisons to restaurant dining do not a social contract theory make.

Let's see: the stupidity starts with:
"Note that NLF doesn’t actually refute the premise[...]"

Rewritten to make it obvious, the statement is missing premises that would be required to make logical syllogisms.
P1: If you don’t pay your taxes
[missing premises]
C1: then men with guns will show up at your house and put you in jail
[more missing premises]
C2: then this is initiation of force

Now, if Kip had any reading comprehension, he would notice that I was denying the second conclusion, not the first. Kip defends the first unnecessarily. We also can note that Kip doesn't explain why libertarian enforcement with guns is any better than government enforcement with guns.

The second conclusion is the unconvincing one: because libertarians have no coherent way of defining when initiation of force occurs. Instead, they simply call all government force and any other force they don't like "initiation". Libertarians also have an excuse for force by which they claim it is not initiation: when it is for enforcement of rights, including contractual rights. And so libertarians should accept enforcement of government contractual rights. Read the FAQ for further explanation.

Kip also states (entirely without support, and as if he hasn't read my FAQ) that:
"[the explicit social contract is] not explicit, not social, and not a contract."
Now if only Kip would grant me the courtesy of assuming my conclusion like that!

Kip's ignorance on social contract is even more comical when he babbles about Locke and Hobbes when I'm plainly using social contract in the Madisonian sense. You know, the guy who wrote the US Constitution. If he had taken the trouble to read the wikipedia article on it, as any school child would, he might have noticed. Madison was perhaps the most important classical liberal: not only did he correct many mistakes of his forebears, but he put liberalism into practice.

Kip's "analogy" to the restaurant example is ridiculously changed. First, he misses the point that in the real world, you WILL be arrested by men with guns for failure to pay your bill. Shopkeepers themselves in the US are permitted significant powers of armed arrest as shoplifters will tell you, and they need only summon police to have the police do the work for them. Then Kip compares adults to children, not noting that many entrants to the US do come voluntarily as adults and not noting that many adults voluntarily emmigrate out of the US. And if he had read my FAQ, he would have noticed that I do point out that children's choices are made by their parents, not by the state.

"Put aside also the pesky fact that no libertarian seriously makes a “statute of frauds” defense against social contract theory (i.e., “if only it were in writing…”).

Now that is where Kip looks REALLY stupid. A 5 second search with google for signed libertarian "social contract" turns up 8500+ hits, and many of them are libertarians making exactly the claims he denies.

I'll be adding the "no third solution" criticism to my list of criticisms of my FAQ. Like the other criticisms, it is rather sad and pathetic, not really any better than Kip's stupidity. I haven't had to revise it in 15 years: no libertarian has come up with a decent criticism. Even the most intelligent libertarians (such as David Friedman) resort to criticizing definitions or making counter claims instead of actually addressing my points.

[Kip replies:

Cheers.]

It's unfortunately necessary to refute these idiotic arguments, from time to time, if only because they are so widely accepted.

Well said, especially this part:

"Moreover, the context of social contract theory has long been lost on modern discourse: It was a response to the then-dominant theory of the divine right of kings"

Anyone who doubts this should take a look at Locke's FIRST treatise.

Huben's FAQ is silly, but I have heard some libertarians say the things he criticizes. At the same time, charity usually behooves us to examine the stronger arguments for a position, not the ones that can be "refuted" in sentence or two.