How might an Ancap society treat a state that emerged from it?

Not meant to be a “gotcha” type of thing –I’m genuinely curious. I feel that I’m an anarchist at heart, but a libertarian/minarchist for practicality’s sake. I hope that you’ll understand why after reading this.

The default state of humanity is anarchic. States, therefore, must have emerged from this anarchy. States have endured this long, and have only grown in strength and number. Nearly every human is a member of a region governed by a state. It would seem, then, that there is a natural selection pressure towards states. From a purely Darwinian point of view, anarchism just doesn’t seem to be practical.

And it’s easy to see why. Much like nuclear deterrence, everyone needs a state to protect them from someone else’s. That’s one of the primary functions of the state, after all: security against other states. Once one state exists, every other place needs one, too –or else they might end up under their thumb. That’s pretty ironic and dumb: “We need a state. We don’t need it for any other reason than to keep other states from reigning over us.”

In a hypothetical Ancap world, who’s to say that a state wouldn’t emerge in a similar manner to the original states millennia ago? It’d only have to be one singular state, I think, to kick off an “arms race” to for people to equip themselves with states to fend off the others.

Again, I’m not trying to be an ass. I’ve just been thinking about this. What do you think? Would an Ancap society be able to fend off an emergent state? Would it be a violation of the NAP to rip down any new states that popped up? Or would it be more appropriate to leave them alone and let their (in theory) uncompetitive nature cause them to fizzle out?

submitted by /u/Average_Spaceman
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