We do not need the State to help us live our lives.

I remind you that the challenge is to provide one government function necessary that could not be provided without the State in place. In other words, you are still free to add topics to your list but as of now I will only debate protection (police and military) and law-making. You correctly separated protection into two sectors: police and military. One protects citizens within the borders of the State and the other defends the citizens from foreign threats. And in both cases you are arguing that only the government could efficiently provide these services, even though you acknowledged the possibility of private providers arising ("mercenaries"). I come to you with the case that police protection can be effectively and efficiently provided by the private sector through private security companies. As of today, the private police industry employs more people than the government polices worldwide (almost twice as much according to Reuters . http://in.reuters.com...). So obviously, the notion of private security works. This principle is already included in mall centers, attraction parks, hotels, hospitals, etc. and it could also be extended to the regular environment: in a scenario of no State, streets would be owned by private companies, who would employ or contract private security officers and agencies to make sure the streets are secure for walkers (clients). Now, the military argument needs more detailing. First of all, in my extreme scenario, there would be no governments in the world so the very need for a military becomes futile, if not ridiculous. But let's assume that only one country has hypothetically gotten rid of its State apparatus. What would happen in this case? In such a scenario, the country in discussion would now be entirely "private", meaning that all land is now owned by private individuals rather than by the government. Now, any attack on a piece of land in the given country becomes an attack on an individual's private property. The proprietor would then be at ease to hire either a private militia if the attack is small or a military contractor if the attack is made on a larger scale. In today's world, both entities already exist and I do not see the problem with such a situation where the government-provided military protection is replaced by privately-operated military protection. The idea that private companies would somehow be more corrupted (define corruption in the absence of a corrupting State, though) is simply uninformed, especially when one considers the level of corruption of today's military-industrial complex. I also come to you with the belief that laws are not necessarily made by the government or the State. But before I go on I would like to notice that you were careful not to include law enforcement -courts, prisons, etc. - but only the concept of law itself. Now, be careful not to take my position the wrong way. I am not AGAINST the law. I am simply against the concept of government-provided and mandated law. There have been countless examples of law and legal concepts offered on a private base, with no government involvement, such as the Brehon Code in the Emerald Isle (. http://mises.org...) and the pre-Hammurabi Code Mesopotamia. In fact, it is to some extent a private exercise of the concept of law when a country has no regime of civic code (such as the United States, except Louisiana, which uses the French Napoleonic model) but rather lets judges rule on litigations on their own. We could simply allow private judges to do the job as long as they have been contracted by the people in legal conflict. This is one theory. Another one is David Friedman's view of polycentric law. According to Friedman, in a stateless society, law would be provided by land owners who would decide on which laws to be applied on his private property (keep in mind that even streets would become private property). So if you own a piece of land and are against marijuana use, you would make it unlawful and a violation of contract for someone to use marijuana on your land or property. Would someone use this as a way to legalize rape and murder on his lands? Maybe, but this would simply desertify his or her land as no visitor would dare to tease the Devil. Could this system lead to chaos with thousands of conflicting legal systems? Most likely not. It would not be efficient for society if each street in a given city had its own unique sets of laws as confusion would arise. Instead, private entrepreneurs and owners would work toward the harmony of the marketplace of land and make sure people can travel as easily as possible. Chances are the drug example would be one of the extreme cases of differences in law. Murray Rothbard, a political economist and philosopher of the late 19th century, had his own idea of the question. He said that one's rights are not from the government or the Constitution, but rather from nature, from the natural state of humankind. Men have rights because they are rational beings with the capacity to own property and reason. These rights are known as natural rights and are extended to the sanctity of one's private property (including the body). All law should thus ensue from those natural rights. But how can we be sure a judge will consider a murder to be a crime? The same way we can trust all dictionary presses to offer the same definition for the verb "To Be". It is a natural definition, just like natural rights would translate into natural laws, or automatic laws about violations of property. These are three different theories. In my opinion, the polycentric view of David Friedman is the most reasonable and the most realistic, even though history has given us instances of all three scenarios. But the fact is that we do not need a government to dictate uniform laws for all of us. There are 7 billion individuals in the world and merely 213 sets of laws. This is not worthy of the 21st century, an era where mankind is more diverse and intelligent than ever before. You are now free to add topics to your list or elaborate on these three subjects if you think I haven't been clear enough or convincing enough.