I think you may have misunderstood the way "socialist" was being used there.
They talk about the elimination of the state, and in the same breath (or at least the same Wiki article) of collective ownership of the means of production. The idea seems to be that it isn't a "state" when it's Us, only when it's Them. Since it's Us, and therefore good and right, everyone will voluntarily agree to it. Anyone who does not is Bad, and therefore not one of Us, but one of Them. Liberty is liberty to do anything that is right, that is, to agree with Us. You can have anything you like, and do anything you like, as long as it's what We think you ought to have and do. We are truly democratic, since everyone voluntarily supports Us, but They are undemocratic, even if They have elected government, because if They had truly democratic government They would be organised like Us.
But this is politics.
I suspect this is similar to the question for certain right-anarchists of why can't one think of the state as defense agency, that decided to expand into other services.
I suspect the actual content of these philosophies is ideas about the optimal way to run a government/defense agency/collective ownership council.
11/26: The survey is now closed. Please do not take the survey. Your results will not be counted.
It's that time of year again.
If you are reading this post, and have not been sent here by some sort of conspiracy trying to throw off the survey results, then you are the target population for the Less Wrong Census/Survey. Please take it. Doesn't matter if you don't post much. Doesn't matter if you're a lurker. Take the survey.
This year's census contains a "main survey" that should take about ten or fifteen minutes, as well as a bunch of "extra credit questions". You may do the extra credit questions if you want. You may skip all the extra credit questions if you want. They're pretty long and not all of them are very interesting. But it is very important that you not put off doing the survey or not do the survey at all because you're intimidated by the extra credit questions.
The survey will probably remain open for a month or so, but once again do not delay taking the survey just for the sake of the extra credit questions.
Please make things easier for my computer and by extension me by reading all the instructions and by answering any text questions in the most obvious possible way. For example, if it asks you "What language do you speak?" please answer "English" instead of "I speak English" or "It's English" or "English since I live in Canada" or "English (US)" or anything else. This will help me sort responses quickly and easily. Likewise, if a question asks for a number, please answer with a number such as "4", rather than "four".
Okay! Enough nitpicky rules! Time to take the...
2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Thanks to everyone who suggested questions and ideas for the 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey. I regret I was unable to take all of your suggestions into account, because some of them were contradictory, others were vague, and others would have required me to provide two dozen answers and a thesis paper worth of explanatory text for every question anyone might conceivably misunderstand. But I did make about twenty changes based on the feedback, and *most* of the suggested questions have found their way into the text.
By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.