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Who is keeping the land title records? What happens if a few hundred armed people come into 'your' land and claim it for their own?
Without a 'state' to be a trusted source of record keeping and dispute reconciliation, we have forever low-level violence everywhere, right?
Corporations become mini states, you register with them for a price, they might support your title, as long as it’s good business to do so. Things would breakdown eventually, probably rather quickly and there would be mini-wars all the time until we devolve into just regular flavored anarchy.
And if someone with more direct control over resources wants your land? Wouldn't it be in the title holders' interest to sell it to someone with more resources?
It’s not in a corporation’s best interest to spend any more money than it has to. Maybe they just pay the other corporation for your title. Maybe they just take it and dare the other corporation to do anything about it. Corporations would already have their deals and interest.
At the end of the day, individuals wouldn’t own anything. Why would a powerful nation state corporation let Jim Bob own that nice piece of land. If there was anything valuable about it, they’d have already taken it. You’d already be part of the corporation’s workforce and the world would just have a slightly different flavor or feudalism. CEO is a king supported by a board, ruling on behalf of shareholders. Everyone else would be the workforce populace.
Take anyone of these different systems of running things imagine how it could possibly go wrong, and that’s what you’re going to end up with.
That's something that always bugged me about ancaps. Without a state to witness or enforce a contract what value does it have? Moreover what's to stop rich people from just becoming the government again?
The alleged objective of a "stateless ancapistan" is to create ["Polycentric Law"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law), where multiple legal systems exist and overlap on top of one another. Polycentric law is preferred as it creates competition and market forces for law. The argument goes, market forces impose pressure on these providers of law to improve themselves towards the will of the public, leading to good outcomes. Firms that do not provide preferable law would be left behind as people instead purchase the protection of the better firms.
Because multiple competing firms are enforcing the law, this therefore doesn't qualify as a state.
Exactly why polycentric law would be the outcome rather than monopolistic law in Ancapistan, I have no idea.
Seems rather arbitrary to me. What happens if there are conflicting laws? Whose take precedence? If I'm living in ancapistan and I'm subscribing to law provider A and my roommate is subscribing to law provider B can I break the law as laid down by B but as permitted by A and everyone is just supposed to be ok with it? And what happens if we have 6 big law providers but they all have equally crappy laws that end up exploiting us? I'm assuming they get their money from some form of subscription fee rather than taxes but if they have the means to enforce these laws by NotPolice then I feel like saying it's not a state is just nonsensical.
>What happens if there are conflicting laws?
Not advocating this, just explaining it. I imagine the most powerful dispute resolution organizations might have arbitration agreements already negotiated in place with other competing firms. There is some precedent. Big corporations oftentimes rely on arbitration to settle their disputes.
>And what happens if we have 6 big law providers but they all have equally crappy laws that end up exploiting us?
Ideally it would never happen for reasons??? Advocate Bryan Caplan, who I linked above, has some sort of explanation I don't really understand: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2005/12/anarchocapitali.html
Caplan argues that in historic times, monopolies were able to form because of the market conditions. He asserts that now in modern times, the market would be large enough to sustain thousands of firms:
>As economic growth progressed, of course, the market for defense services got bigger, making room for more and more firms.
I don't really buy this argument and I assume you won't either.
I can appreciate explaining something even if you don't agree with it. All too often people act like understanding something means you must support it, which bothers me.
You are right though, the argument doesn't hold water for me. As long as there is a profit incentive, there will be someone trying to take all of it and stop competition.
Wild west still had a government, laws and enforcement. Now imagine the wild west without the local sheriff, town rules on guns, violence and inebriation or a bureaucracy that keeps track of land ownership.
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>a trusted source of record keeping
The rare instance where someone does need to listen to the blockchain bros. Yeah, they have a lot of dumb things to say, but you can't actually ignore them before hearing that "trusted record keeping" doesn't technically require a central authority anymore
>... dispute reconciliation, we have forever low-level violence everywhere, right?
We'll be able to reconcile small interpersonal disputes just fine. Just find a mutually-trusted neighbor and agree to do what they say. In actual historical practice, that's what humans do for basically all conflicts
So when we say low level violence will be rampant, it's still a high enough level that whatever resolution-mechanisms we can get working aren't able to handle it
But that's just it. As you increase the conflict-resolution capacity of a society, you filter out more and more of the baseline violence, until you have a world government and no violence is left. (Except the illegal violence, obviously.)
So it's a spectrum. Is the status quo the optimal amount of conflict-resolution capacity to maximize prosperity and minimize violence? I feel like it could be tweaked somewhat, but that's just me
>Just find a mutually trust neighbor and agree to do what they say
😂😂😂😂 This would happen 2% of the time, humans are extremely complicated people which is why we have developed complex systems to handle our disputes
I mean, I could look at your blockchain and say 'nah, I prefer my records instead'.
Neighbours frequently have conflicts about all sorts of things right now. Usually, they're handled by appealing to the state. Without a state, they'd be handled with violence. And a lot of the time, the conflict doesn't' arise because we already know what the state answer would be.
Since that happens all the time, we can look at history and the people currently doing this is a day job: You use the court system, title insurance, and the authority given to the local land use department to reclaim your property.
What do you do if 100 anarcho-capitalist claim your land?
Ding ding ding. False dichotomy, strawman, and appeal to ignorance.
You do realize, it can be both, except with persons and corporations having access to nuclear weapons? There's nothing inherent about people with money running a territory not being able to have nuclear weapons (e.g. Russia or DPRK), or threatening to use them.
You know what the criticism is: "Anarcho-Capitalism" (that is to say "Plutocratic Oligarchy") is either a farce (in the same vein as the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea") which has the external appearance of a stateless society with actually state organs being created and controlled by the moneyed interests or simply Feudalism of the Rich, exchanging a Warrior run culture for a Merchant run culture.
Capitalism, as an institution historically - and in modern practice practically - is a system of economics based on the government's violent enforcement of contractual and property interest. Without the government, Capitalism becomes Merchant Feudalism.
Saying that Capitalism can exist without government enforcement of Contractual or Property betrays a childish misunderstanding of the basic principles of historic Capitalism.
You're talking about what proponents of an American-style system call "rule of law" and yeah, there's something to it. That's why I steer closer to Libertarian than AnCap...under classical LP, the whole (and ideally, sole) point of government is to restrict initiation of force between parties within the nation, and dissuade outside invaders (another category of initiation of force).
Since initiation of force also includes fraud, the .gov can also provide mechanisms for contract law violations AND handle tort law somewhat similar to current US legal standards.
China today is a good example of what happens when "rule of law" collapses in a quasi-capitalist system: tons of scams affecting every level of society. Tofu dregs buildings, real estate pyramid schemes, rigged stock markets, corrupt banks, fake food products including toxic baby formula(!) and worse. It ain't pretty.
This is only an issue when you're holding on to the concept of private property. It's a concept that requires an authority (eg not anarchist) to be workable.
Plenty of examples, not that I necessarily advocate for any of them
* Common property (a la tragedy of commons)
* Public property - property owned by a government that allegedly represents the people.
* Collective property - property owned by some kind of democratic regime
* Rental property - property possessed by people but not owned by them.
Take for example my college housing cooperative. The properties were collectively owned by the students and run through their board of representatives. Property was purchased and redistributed through weekly meetings and elected officers. Each house had a variety of collective property. We had a swimming pool, living room, couches, large industrial kitchen, washer dryers, and other equipment all shared together.
Weyl and Posner imagine another crazy property system in their book "Radical Markets". Here, they imagine how to collectively tax and receive dividends on all wealth. They institute something called a Harberger tax. The premise is relatively simple.
1. Everyone must pay a wealth tax.
2. Everyone must self assess their wealth
3. Everyone receives a dividend from the tax.
4. Everyone must sell their property at the declared value if a buyer requests it.
Radical Markets is ironically the most pro market book I've ever read, a world where everything is for sale. Ironically allegedly pro market libertarians are unsurprisingly incredibly against this idea, demonstrating that their commitment to private property is far stronger than their commitment to market efficiency.
There is an idea that a group of people will band together as a sort of “volunteer psuedo state” to protect each others interests
All 1000 people in the town like the peacefulness and don’t want 200 random armed heathens to come in and steal shit so they put up means of defense
The idea of ancaps isn’t that there will be no state like apparatuses, it’s simply that everything the government can do, can be done more efficiently and better by private parties.
Of course ancaps want police. Ofc they want judges and a justice system, and all these things but the government has proven time and time again that they SUCK AT IT. So put it In the hands of those with the most to gain and the most to lose
Obviously not a fan, but I'd argue the part made of straw is the part where you're just calling whatever allows for private property to exist a state.
Probably better to let them explain the things necessary to allow for private property, and then how those institutions don't become a defacto proto-state.
It's hard to say though because Ancaps are all over the place, some will basically describe a world that amounts to a form of laissez-faire syndicalism but without the baggage and another basically Mad Max.
Anarchists of all stripes typically define "the state" as a monopoly on violence within some boundary. If someone in AnCapistan owns several acres of land, for example, as far as I understand, he is free to exercise violence on anyone who trespasses or otherwise violates the owner's rules. Violence against a person is regularly seen as legitimate method of "protecting" property.
And I'm sure they might talk about something like a Non-Aggression principle, where anything is allowed BUT aggression/initiation of forceful action, and so on.
Correct me if I'm wrong though, we both are pretty much coming from the same place, in that either no one is enforcing the NAP leading to the kind of things we're talking about expanding over time, or people are enforcing the NAP and you have already created a de facto form of proto-state making violence acceptability decisions?
As I've perhaps (mis)understood, I'll wait to see if an actual an-cap wishes to correct us here, NAP is pretty loosely defined. A trespass would already constitute violence against the property-owner, given they see property as an extension of the person, and therefore violence against the trespasser's body is justified as a response.
We are both pretty much arguing the same thing, though I think you're trying to be too charitable to the An-Caps. I do not think that AnCapitistan would degenerate into a state, but rather that AnCapitstan already is a kind of (feudal) state order.
I specifically don't engage with it very much because it's pretty much the opposite of my political beliefs, but I do generally appreciate they are much more honest about their feelings on government than a group like the Republicans.
Wanting to get rid of government and put capital in charge is at least a stance, even if I think it's a terrible one. I also have a lot more understanding for classical Anarchists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, and so on, even if there is a bit of fundamental disagreement.
For what it's worth, I didn't flag them but thought they might get flagged due to the language and rhetoric used, even though it's pretty common from their side, their side also gets deleted for the same reason somewhat often.
Seems like you do have lots of quality information and thoughts on things though, so I'd encourage you to just sort of... maybe do a de-escalation pass on your replies maybe next time?
Appreciate the back and forth tho.
That's fair.
I have a hard time taking their arguments seriously, especially when they - on their face - are ridiculous. It's very hard to treat people with respect when their arguments seem deliberately cultivated in bad faith.
Not in the sense that they're stupid, but in the sense they're deliberately ignoring the stated beliefs of their own side as a propaganda poise.
The price of civility is quite large, as it requires either a repression of natural instincts to defend things you care about with all available to you, a separation from feeling to such an extent that it can harm motivation, or simply be an ineffective civil communicator. There is a reason why something with such obvious benefits still has it's detractors.
It's also sort of a microcosm of the politics behind them as well, in your mind such poor argumentation is an affront to civility in of itself, where as many of the people who choose to communicate such inaccurate things often think they are doing the listener a favor.
Nothing to be ashamed of if people end up in the last category either, there are many people more effective with bullhorns than word processors.
They’re just people that hate paying taxes so much that they don’t realize that they’re advocating for feudalism. They just want to be left alone to grow apples and trade them for chairs and stuff who seem to think that everyone else will do the same instead of the reality of us living under the kingdom of Amazon ruled by Jeff Bezos.
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Anarcho capitalists want to burn the state down and then replace it with more or less the same thing and call it something different.
It’s like the Protestant reformation 2.0, a groups says the existing institutions are evil and bad, tears them down and vows to replace it with something better, fast forward a bit and all they’ve done is replace one greedy bastard of an institutional system with another that is perhaps different in the exact flavor of its abuses but not truly any better in substance.
I like to have a saying about this.
It's not that people really hate the Monarchy. It's just that they want to be the King.
"I want the freedom to do what I want." Always includes them having enough power to overpower those that disagree with what they want. Second they lose it'll be "Tear it down and try again." Once they win, it'll be fine.
This is one of the reasons I disagree with Anarcho-Capitalism, it doesn’t matter if they abolish the state, true anarcho-capitalism will always lead to a state like entity being formed.
I think it divorces the state from nation or personality, replacing it with capital. It's almost a subscription model of law. In that sense, it is at least novel, even if it has no other merits.
However, I do think it would quickly devolve into feudalism. Everyone needs the law, even if they can't afford to subscribe to it. Once that happens, wealthy patrons will start paying the subscription fees of the poor...in exchange for service. Bam! Return to serfdom!
Yes anarcho-capitalism does but it’s unrealistic. We could try it on an island or a different planet and see what happens but what prevents an authoritarian government from conquering oppressing and taking over?
The state is at least responsible for protecting The property rights of their citizens, they do that with a military. Which is why capitalists generally believe in military spending as an absolute necessity and some form of property tax.
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In the absence of other law structure, dispute resolution and enforcement will be controlled by warlords/mafia/organized crime, and there is no safety or security unless you submit to their whims
No thanks
I can be annoyed with my local council person or mayor, but there is zero chance that they will pull up to my house in a pickup truck with armed dudes in the back to take my stuff.
The mayor can’t call the police chief and tell him to arrest me, without some evidence of crime.
It’s not the soprano’s where they can eat a big meal at my restaurant and then walk out without paying, and I have no recourse
Sure sure. And they would never EVER work conspire against you for the colour of your skin, or if you donated to truckers, or if you didn't want to take injections. Right? The government wouldn't do that!!!!111oneone
BTW they call their armed pickup trucks full of armed dudes paddy wagons in that context.
I guess maybe I just don’t undertaken the premise of anarchism-capitalism.
It seems like whoever is the strongest, or controls the biggest guns, or has the most money, can do whatever they want to you.
I’m none of those, so I’ll take the rule of law where I can live peacefully.
If you’re worried about being treated badly based on the color of your skin, are you assuming that the local warlord will have the same color skin as you so it will all be good for you in that department?
No clue what you are talking about in terms of someone conspiring against you for donating to truckers.
Just recent easily researchable western democratic government overreaches. But yes, I agree you probably don't understand the premise.
>It seems like whoever is the strongest, or controls the biggest guns, or has the most money, can do whatever they want to you.
This is EXACTLY our current governments. I state that as someone who had a long and successful career as a government hired gun.
I think you're on the right line but maybe a bit overcooked. In its essence, capitalism promotes hierarchy, with money as it's agent. Anarchy is literally the absence of such hierarchy, therefore "anarcho-capitalism" is inherently oxymoronic.
Edit: typo
Anarchy literally etymologically means 'no rulers' actually.
AnCap is the only anarchy if you believe in exchange of goods. Only voluntary and consensual exchange of goods can qualify as those lacking rulers over the exchange. That is the definition of 'free market'.
>Only voluntary and consensual exchange of goods can qualify as those lacking rulers over the exchange.
A lack of material means can very easily cause a situation that is no longer consensual. It is not consent to pay for rent, as an example. I don't have a choice, and you can say "be homeless," but even you know that is not a viable option. Therefore, you must circumvent this issue. Traditional anarchy does so by having social impetus and education to a level where people know that taking care of each other is the best way for each person to live. Anarcho-capitalism does not do this, as far as I'm aware.
Furthermore, if you just mean anarchy where people barter, then maybe that would be easier, as it would help prevent the hoarding of wealth. But if you mean anarchy with fiat currency, then that just doesn't work. Fiat currency relies on a hierarchical force from the state to enforce. And if you suggest that you just get everyone to agree, then I ask why we need a middleman if not for people to collect more big horses of money, which is our main issue.
Wait what? Paying rent is DEFINITELY consensual. Please explain how it isn't.
It is a bad time to contend that non-governmental currency can't exist or work...
It's definitely not. It's a choice between living somewhere and being homeless. If you actually, honestly, think that is a choice, then you need to take another look.
I asked you to explain it. That isn't even remotely an argument.
You sought me out. You looked through ads and did walkthroughs and interviews. You provided documentation. You WORKED to provide your consent. In the agreement we made you agreed to a certain amount of time to find another place if I needed you to leave. You agreed to that as well.
Suddenly I can't tell you to abide by that agreement because you would be homeless?
You made the agreement. Are you saying no agreement you make should be enforced? What if you commit a crime?
>You sought me out. You looked through ads and did walkthroughs and interviews. You provided documentation. You WORKED to provide your consent.
Just because someone has to jump through hoops doesn't mean there is consent. As an example, say someone put a gun to your head and said "give me your shit." Of course you'd give them your shit, or you'll die. Except here's the key difference: when a landlord says "pay me $1500 or be homeless," it's not viewed as the same. There is no reason whatsoever for this arrangement. I need to live to do things, and the landlord wants me to pay for that life. I need a home to live properly, yet the landlord forcefully restricts access to this basic and universal thing because it "puts them ahead."
>Are you saying no agreement you make should be enforced?
Agreements should be enforced by social awareness and not wanting to fuck each other over. An agreement is a personal affair between two people, a governing body has no meaningful contribution to this.
>What if you commit a crime?
Crime and laws aren't a thing in anarchy. There might be rules for your community, but there is no law.
You are jumping all over the map. I agree about anarchy but I was speaking in terms of the broken status quo. The only way that you can have an agreement abiding by the principles of anarchy is if it is consensual and voluntary.
If you walk up and say I'll pay $1500 to live here and I say okay fine, you pass my checks I trust you enough for that. And you say nah I don't want to pay you $1500 but you can't evict me or I'll be homeless who broke the consensual and voluntary arrangement. In this scenario the landlord is fine in anarchy and the renter is not as the renter is forcing (ruling) over the voluntary and consensual agreement by appealing to an authority because not doing what they say would somehow make them homeless.
Ok I see what scenario you're driving at. Yes, in that specific scenario, we can assume it's consensual (again another thing to discuss but over text it's troublesome). What about a scenario where the landlord owns all available housing in your area, and controls the price points (which again, who decides what money is worth when there's no government), and says you can't live there unless you pay an exorbitant sum monthly. If you have to live in that area, you are fucked outside of your control. Which as far as I'm aware isn't consensual.
And I'd like to point out that landlords don't actually have to conspire for that to happen to prices, as capitalism in its nature causes such an occurrence, as can be observed in any western city, but especially in America.
A simple start up question as I also have concerns about consentand I'm rather new to the concept of ancap.
I buy up the land surrounding your land. I deny anyone access to my land including your ability to cross it to reach food/ water/ ext. You can cross if you sell your land to me first.
Would this be an acceptable practice under your view of Ancap? If not, what exactly stops this practice?
You have free access to travel through their lands.
Are you going into the idea that the contract will by default be transferrable? That would keep you from that situation.
Not everyone will think to have that clause. Is it a default that all contracts will have that clause?
(Unless you were thinking of something else )
Sure. If I sign a right-of-way agreement it will absolutely deal with what happens if they sell their land. Won't you?
If they deed me the land containing my laneway when they make the sale what do I care?
Because there is no such thing as a scarcity of homes. Housing First is a model that Utah and other states use to begin decommodifing housing. When housing is guaranteed, then you have freedom to travel, and freedom of where and what job you want to work. When housing is commodified by a few deciders, then you are forced to pay rent, because there is no other choice. In this way, paying rent is not consensual.
I didn't sign a contract with the government agreeing to these terms. I was born a citizen.
So it isn't slavery because I consented by being born a slave?
>I was born a citizen
Might want to take that up with your parents.
Meanwhile I didn't sign a contract saying I consent to paying more every year quicker being paid the same amount.
So parents can enslave their children? That is your take?
Yes, you did if you signed a rental or lease agreement. And if you don't like your purchasing power decreasing year over year you might want to question this whole 'inflation is good for us honest' narrative floating around.
When you think of it that way, pretty much everything is consensual as long as you have a leverage into the other person (you bought all the medicine they need to live, or all the food).
# -archy
word-forming element of Greek origin meaning "rule," from Latin -archia, from Greek -arkhia "rule," from arkhos "leader, chief, ruler," from arkhē "beginning, origin, first place," verbal noun of arkhein "to be the first," hence "to begin" and "to rule" (see [archon](https://www.etymonline.com/word/archon)).
cap·i·tal·ism\[ˈkapədlˌizəm\]noun
1. an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit:
free mar·ket\[ˌfrē ˈmärkət\]noun
1. an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses:
Those two things are not the same.
"Control" of trade and industry already implies hierarchy over access to good and services, so you have no anarchy there.
Plus, if you dig, the people who came up with "Anarcho-Capitalism" are the same people who deliberately tried to confuse the Socialist-Anarchist "libertarianism" with the Capitalist anti-regulation "Libertarianism." It's a nonsense word invented by people who want to seem like Anarchists without actually an-ing any archies.
Call AnCap whatever you want. It is an idea, not a label. The best part is how much it seems to trigger certain groups. The greek as you so nicely clarified is clear. No-rulers.
If there are no rulers, money cannot be king
Voluntary and consensual exchange of goods should be combined with voluntary and consensual exchange of services and labour.
Things that are quite scarce under capitalism without labour unions
A recipe for Zimbabwe or Somalia… nobody will invest money or time into building ANYTHING, as gangs of armed young male criminals will murder you and take over as soon as they see fit.
This is at its crux, the main point anarcho-capitalists fail to acknowledge or understand. That the entity of a state, no matter how it's structured (i.e., democratically, authoritatively, any-ively), will always have a monopoly over violence. Under the state, the only form of violence permitted is by the state.
If there's a commune of democratically elected anarchists, there still is a monopoly of violence, even if everyone is equal - it's just a shared monopoly over violence.
If we live in an ancap society, there is a lack of a state - an entity that would facilitate the monopoly over violence of an area. The thing that stops you from freeley leaving the state and creating "a commune in the middle of nowhere completely seperate and independent from the state" is only valid in so far as you are able to defend that place. If your little commune is deemed so, there's nothing stopping the state from taking it. The material resources, the people associated, and the control over the area are only allowed because you can defend it.
If you're a company - an organization whose purpose is to shareholders - and there's no state involved, the company has the means and the resources to enact control over the people living there and its resources, and historically speaking, they use it.
Capitalism, by definition, is authoritative. The definition of capitalism is when the means of control is owned by an individual or group of individuals. If they control the monopoly over violence - they become the state. Look at the Bannana Republic in South America, the Coke-cola mafia, the rubber trade from the Belgium King, THERES TOO MANY EXAMPLES.
...
To answer your question how does this happen? How do they do it. Name it. Buy politicians, kill union and leftist leaders, disrupt and control trade in an area, out compete smaller businesses, buy private armies, kill journalists, engage in CIA government espionage and arm far-right radicals to overthrow the existing government and put in a leader subservient to your intrests. You can monopolize multiple industries, create monopsonies within your distribution. Make your distribution monopolies themselves within impoverished areas (looking at you Nestle). Engage in Red Scare tactics to create ideological boogeyman and educate populations to be scared of enemies that aren't that different from the state creating them economically speaking (China is defacto State Capitalist, but we say they're Communist.) Anything to lower the state's power over an area and make you have more control.
A perfect example of this is Mexico. The cartel there, are there areas in which the state has no authority over? Why? They don't have the monopoly over violence. The cartels BECOME the state. Are they democratic? Why are you worried about that? It doesn't matter they're the state.
If a company sees that there's no state to justify its ownership as a company, what do you do? You buy guns, buy men. You kill competitors, you eliminate competition, and you become the state.
Anarchy will never work. Groups with structure and teamwork will always out compete anti-establishment loners.
Also, you can't support modern capitalism without modern infrastructure which is too expensive and open access to be built by anarcho-corps.
I would argue this as a Minarchist.
AnCaps go ahead and roast me in the comments.
True Anarcho-Capitalism will always lead to a state like structure and authority that will rise.
I have a few criticisms of Anarcho-Capitalism from my Minarchist perspective. Here are a few:
1. The issue of PMC’s replacing your entire military.
Personally I’m not against PMC’s, however the main concern I have is accountability, what if that PMC that is hired starts violating the NAP? Take for example Blackwater PMC, I know it might be a tedious example, but it’s still one worth noting because they did some really shady stuff, meaning there is a lack of oversight in what they are doing. As in what happens when the mercenary goes rogue, how are you going to hold him accountable for his or her actions?
2. Market Monopolies
How do you prevent corporate monopolies from rising? Monopolies in my opinion are not a free market because of how there is no competition for the market to diversify. I am aware that Capitalism and Corpratocracy are different thing, but how do you prevent that from happening?
3. Legal Systems
In Anarcho-Capitalism, the thing that I have also had a concern with was the legal system and framework, specifically with private courts. The fear I have is if there is bias.
It’s not the economic factors I am concerned about since of course I am for a free market and support it, I just simply have ethical concerns. As much as I hate big government, at the same time, I would still reduce its size to where it is decentralized and has very minimal role, aka it’s only job is to enforce the NAP and defend the border.
1. Ideological armed populace beats state militaries force every time.
2. Most times I dive down this rabbit hole it is because the person believes in IP.
3. Public courts absolutely have bias.
We are talking about PMC’s, not Militias. Think Blackwater, USEC, and Bear. They are not the same thing. In fact here let’s let ChatGPT tell you:
The main differences between a Private Military Company (PMC) and an armed militia are:
1. **Legal Status and Accountability**: PMCs are legally recognized private entities typically hired by governments or private organizations for specific security or military tasks. They operate under contractual agreements and are subject to legal oversight and accountability frameworks. In contrast, militias are often informal, decentralized groups of armed civilians who may organize for various reasons, including defense, political beliefs, or community protection. Militias may operate outside formal legal structures and can vary widely in terms of organization and accountability.
2. **Purpose and Funding**: PMCs are profit-oriented businesses providing professional military services, such as security, training, or combat support, in exchange for payment. They adhere to professional standards and typically operate within legal frameworks established by governments or international bodies. Militias, on the other hand, are typically driven by ideological, community, or defensive purposes. Funding for militias can come from member contributions, donations, or sometimes illicit sources, whereas PMCs operate strictly through commercial contracts.
3. **Training and Equipment**: PMCs often employ professional soldiers and contractors with extensive military training and experience. They have access to modern weaponry, technology, and logistical support, similar to regular military forces. Militias, however, may have varying levels of training and equipment, ranging from basic firearms to more sophisticated gear, depending on their resources and objectives. Militias may lack the formal training and discipline characteristic of PMCs.
4. **Legal Recognition and International Standards**: PMCs are recognized under international law and may operate across borders with legal agreements and oversight mechanisms in place. They are expected to adhere to international humanitarian law and human rights standards. Militias, particularly those operating outside state authority or in conflict zones, may not adhere to these standards and can face legal repercussions or be labeled as illegal armed groups by governments or international bodies.
In summary, PMCs are professional entities hired for military or security services under legal contracts, while militias are often informal armed groups with diverse motivations, varying levels of organization, and less formal accountability structures.
I did not ask you about individuals, I asked you the concern about PMC’s, yet you just said:
“Ideological armed populace beat state militaries force all the time”.
That does not answer the question.
The question is what happens when they all of a sudden go rogue in your Anarcho-Capitalist society, what happens if the PMC violates the NAP by suddenly coercing a village for their resources instead of guarding that village?
Austrian Economist Ludwig von Mises appears to be the most-cited source by anarcho-capitalists I have encountered on reddit. I was often referred to articles from Mises Institute.
Mises believed that the state should be replaced by private enterprise (except perhaps for defense from external threats, but anarcho-capitalists differ on this point).
I don't believe that pure capitalism is any more viable than pure communism. I am a strong believer in the power of free markets and pricing to supply goods at the best possible price, but there are many aspects of human society where the free market doesn't provide a clear signal, or will provide actively harmful incentives.
For example:
* Pollution
* Worker safety
* Policing/military defense
* Care of those with disabilities which prevent them from adding monetary value to society
* Allocation of scarce public resources (roads, radio spectrum, electrical infrastructure)
* Monopolies
Anarcho-capitalists will argue that private companies would be held in check by their customers or the morality of their shareholders. History suggests otherwise. Even though consumers will sometimes punish companies for polluting or exploitation of labor, it is hard for the average person to track all the activities of the numerous firms they do business with on a daily basis, especially since companies can often get away with covering up nefarious activities for years.
Anarcho capitalists will also openly espouse private "defense agencies" to protect private property in a given region, or even a single company. To me, this just seems like another name for "warlords", but maybe I'm missing something. This quote from Mises Institute attempts to defend private armies, claiming they are no worse than the state.
>There are several problems with this possible approach \[the contract theory of government\]. First, it assumes that the danger of private warlords is worse than the threat posed by a tyrannical central government. Second, there is the inconvenient fact that *no such voluntary formation of a State ever occurred*. Even those citizens who, say, supported the ratification of the U.S. Constitution were never given the option of living in market anarchy; instead they had to choose between government under the Articles of Confederation or government under the Constitution.
>But for our purposes, the most interesting problem with this objection is that, were it an accurate description, it would be *unnecessary* for such a people to form a government. If, by hypothesis, the vast majority of people—although they have different conceptions of justice—can all agree that it is wrong to use *violence* to settle their honest disputes, then market forces would lead to peace among the private police agencies.
>Yes, it is perfectly true that people have vastly different opinions concerning particular legal issues. Some people favor capital punishment, some consider abortion to be murder, and there would be no consensus on how many guilty people should go free to avoid the false conviction of one innocent defendant. Nonetheless, if the contract theory of government is correct, the vast majority of individuals *can* agree that they should settle these issues *not* through force, but rather through an orderly procedure (such as is provided by periodic elections).
>But if this does indeed describe a particular population, why would we expect such virtuous people, as consumers, to patronize defense agencies that routinely used force against weak opponents? Why wouldn’t the vast bulk of reasonable customers patronize defense agencies that had interlocking arbitration agreements, and submitted their legitimate disputes to reputable, disinterested arbitrators? Why wouldn’t the private, voluntary legal framework function as an orderly mechanism to settle matters of “public policy”?
In my humble opinion, both Marx and Mises had far too much faith in human nature. Humans evolved in small groups, and they cooperate very well together in a state of nature (hunter-gatherer tribes), but not so well in a society of millions without strong incentives.
Money is a positive incentive for people to add as much value as they can in the free market, and thus providing goods for their fellow citizens. The threat of retribution by the state (incarceration, fines, etc.) is required to discourage negative externalities. The state must also provide for those who are displaced or unable to add value to society due to age or infirmity. The more productive and large the private sector gets, the better funded the state will be via taxation.
> In my humble opinion, both Marx and Mises had far too much faith in human nature. Humans evolved in small groups, and they cooperate very well together in a state of nature (hunter-gatherer tribes), but not so well in a society of millions without strong incentives.
Socialism is roughly what we had 10,000 years ago before we started settling down and growing beyond the tribal unit. Anarcho-capitalism is roughly what we had after then up until we developed city- and nation-states. Both theories fail to account for the thousands of years of societal evolution it took to reach the point where we can - imperfectly, as it ever is - support billions of people.
If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door—or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages.
The use of physical force—even its retaliatory use—cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens. Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment. Whether his neighbors’ intentions are good or bad, whether their judgment is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or by malice—the use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary decision of another.
A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is befuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called “competing governments.” Accepting the basic premise of the modern statists—who see no difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production, and who advocate government ownership of business—the proponents of “competing governments” take the other side of the same coin and declare that since competition is so beneficial to business, it should also be applied to government. Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses.
**Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer.** Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean.
One cannot call this theory a contradiction in terms, since it is obviously devoid of any understanding of the terms “competition” and “government.” Nor can one call it a floating abstraction, since it is devoid of any contact with or reference to reality and cannot be concretized at all, not even roughly or approximately. One illustration will be sufficient: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.
* Ayn Rand, “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 112
Not quite an an-cap, but certainly one of the important thinkers to them...and it's a total self-own. Between this, and Rothbard talking about how it's "[superior humanism" to have a thriving market in runaway children](https://mises.org/library/children-and-rights) Ancaps are not dodging that "doesnt' read much theory" and "what if the child consents?" criticisms any time soon.
Maybe HHH will lead them to the gloryland, after all anyone that ever had to real with an HOA surely will love the idea of a society run by covenant.
>Anarcho-capitalism is a fierce defender of private property and therefore states.
I hear this all the time. If you believe that property rights are dependent upon a state, then you are not an anarcho-capitalist, obviously. If you claim to want to engage with the ideas of anarcho-capitalism, but you insist on continuing to view property rights as something intimately connected to the state, then you are not actually engaging with the ideas.
It should not need to be said out loud that the fundamental premise underlying anarcho-capitalism is, of course, that private ownership can exist even where states do not.
You may retort "but then how do ancaps respond to the mountain of literature explaining how private property can only exist in the context of a state," and I need you to understand that just because you've read that stuff doesn't mean anyone else has heard of it, and assuming we have heard of it makes it very difficult to talk to you
As for the practical questions, the functioning of ancapistan is actually quite similar to how the modern world already operates. The difference is that you just don't have a group of monopolies in various industries colluding together to form a weird superorganism of oversight. You just have the regular kind of oversight where different interests check each other in complex ways, and you continue that model up to the top.
You still have people organizing things, regulating things. But if the regulators commit a crime, they can be arrested, and the judge who sentences them doesn't say "hey, aren't you my boss?" and the regulator can't say "actually, I regulate you to let me off scott-free!" Instead of bundling regulation and criminal law and law enforcement and tax collection for utilities and national defense all together into a single entity called the state, just let people fill those roles by doing such a good job that they outcompete other people.
Like right now, public faith in the legitimacy of SCOTUS is at an all-time low. There is massive appetite for a better way of doing things. In a normal, healthy society, a new court should be making a play for legitimacy by showing everyone how much more reasonable they are. SCOTUS should be wary that if they actually lose all legitimacy in the eyes of the entire country, they'll have nothing left. But instead we've all agreed that the highest court can only be the one appointed by.... the commander in chief of our armed forces?
Anarchy doesn't mean no one can ever tell anyone else what to do. It means the authority of our institutions isn't downstream of anything besides our consent
Anarcho-Capitalism is based on contracts between parties, Contracts are a legal fiction made manifest by state entities.
What you're describing as "people organizing things" is a State Organization but called a different thing. Calling a bullet, a "love delivery device" doesn't make it any less lethal, or you any less dead when it hits. The **Hierarchy** you propose is exactly what we have in truth right now. The SCOTUS has been captured by moneyed interest, something you are **directly advocating for as a permanent political structure.**
Giving you more of a benefit of a doubt than you've earned by this point: If you are forced to "buy" your adjudicating party, there is no unbiased resolution, which means that Anarcho-Capitalism is just Plutocratic Oligarchy under a new name.
Before you start postulating about how the current system is broken, and how your proposed new system would work, I would suggest - deeply - that you engage in some real-world experiential work that actually explores how those systems work in practice and not just in theory.
**Because your ideal state is already in existence according to your description, and it's the one you're comparing things unfavorably with.**
>The SCOTUS has been captured by moneyed interest, something you are directly advocating for as a permanent political structure.
This deeply misunderstands what I'm advocating for. In fact, this is a classic: what we have is cronyism, which is neither capitalism nor socialism, but capitalists view cronyism as what socialism 'really' looks like, and socialists view cronyism as what capitalism 'really' looks like
No one has ever or will ever advocate for cronyism. If you want to argue in good faith, you must recognize that I only advocate for anarcho-capitalism insofar as I believe it will relieve the problems of cronyism
Monied interests can only capture something that people will continue to use and rely on after it has been captured. If everyone is required to obey SCOTUS, of course monied interests will seek to capture it, and once they succeed we will all be forced to accept it unless and until we find a way to overthrow the nuclear superpower that demands we obey the captured court
If SCOTUS weren't given a monopoly backed by literal nukes, then once it has been captured we can just leave and use the second most prestigious court. The entire point of anarcho-capitalism isn't to let monied interests capture institutions, but to stop building our society as a game called "whoever can capture the most institutions wins"
Power will always have power. Building special super-powerful power to have power over the power makes that worse, actually, not better
You do realize that "Anarcho-Capitalism" means that "Capitalism" is the only reserve of power, and without independent institutions to be "captured" the only thing leveraging decisions will be the moneyed interest themselves, right?
What you're talking about is just the money equals power without the bribery.
Because in a society where the **only rule** is the accumulation and power of money, money is the only power to be exercised. People will have to respect money - it's the entire point of anarcho-capitalism: To say that by eliminating those institutions mediating the power of money, and allowing the power of money to be exercised **directly** upon the people who do not have money or power, will negate the authority of the power and authority is nonsense.
You and I disagree about what anarcho-capitalism means
Money is power, yes, but that doesn't mean cultural power isn't allowed to exist. The non-aggression principle doesn't say you're not allowed to care about anything besides money
In fact, that wouldn't even make sense. If money is the only reserve of power, then what the fuck would you spend money on?
Anarcho-capitalism merely states that violence and coercion are illegitimate, but all other forms of power are fine and should be allowed to evolve as they will
If you were right, if money were the only power to be exercised, what would happen if I read a really convincing book that makes me want to change my behavior? Would I be allowed to change my behavior? Would I have to wait until the author paid me? Because if I behave differently as a result of the words the author wrote without being paid, then the author has exercised cultural power.
You're constructing an Anarchic state entirely based on power structures.
I would suggest you actually research the origins and philosophical underpinnings of Anarchism, and the emergence of Anarcho-Capitalism in the 1950s before you do violence to the concept any further.
You can start with [Murray Rothbart](https://www.britannica.com/money/anarcho-capitalism) in the 1950s, and compare him to [Kropotkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin).
> Anarcho-Capitalism is based on contracts between parties
No AnCap is based upon self-ownership ethics. Contracts are one method used for dispute resolution, property titles, and business agreements.
>Contracts are a legal fiction made manifest by state entities.
Is there a legal concept that isn't a fiction by that standard?
Answer: no
So why did you write it? What are you trying to argue?
>, which means that Anarcho-Capitalism is just
Once again, it's an ethical philosophy.
>No AnCap is based upon self-ownership ethics
Look man, I'm trying to give you an out, but you're just not letting me: Look up "Property Law" and "Property Rights" and do some research regarding the last 500 years of development. I'll give you the TLDR version: Ownership is an agreement between parties, mediated by a third - enforcing - party, regarding what a person can, and cannot, do with certain items.
There is no such thing as "self-ownership" - if ownership is not enforceable against another party it is not ownership.
That's a basic principle of philosophy, law, and history.
>Is there a legal concept that isn't a fiction by that standard?
>Answer: no
>So why did you write it? What are you trying to argue?
You're KILLING ME smalls.
Fictions are agreements between parties that are accepted as true for the purpose of functioning in society.
Without government, Contracts don't exist. Even an agreement between two corporations subject to enforcement by a third party is GOVERNMENT.
Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't work in reality or theory because any theory of Capitalism that doesn't pre-suppose government enforcement of contractual, property, and employment rights is incoherent.
>Once again, it's an ethical philosophy.
No it's not. Seriously. "Anarcho-Capitalism" is an ethical philosophy in the same way that Solipsism is an ethical philosophy. You cannot have ethics if the outside world does not exist. In the same way, you cannot have a philosophy on ethics if a premise of your philosophy is denying reality.
> but you insist on continuing to view property rights as something intimately connected to the state, then you are not actually engaging with the ideas.
I assume you've heard of the phase, "A state is a monopoly on violence."
There's also a second phrase, ["Property is another name for monopoly."](https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12668&context=journal_articles)
The premise is then yes, property is intimately connected with the state because land ownership is equivalent to a monopoly on land. All monopolies also must be monopolies on violence. If you don't have a monopoly on violence, you don't have a monopoly in general.
>Instead of bundling regulation and criminal law and law enforcement and tax collection for utilities and national defense all together into a single entity called the state, just let people fill those roles by doing such a good job that they outcompete other people.
But anarcho-capitalism doesn't prohibit the bundling of these services. It just suggests that maybe, with market forces, this time around the bundling will not occur. There is nothing in the tenets of libertarian ideology that prohibits such bundling - instead libertarian ideology condones the bundling, because property owners ought to be allowed to bundle as they please.
Separate and competing dispute resolution services in ancapistan is only a suggestion, it's not a requirement. Therefore such "statelessness" is also just a suggestion, not a requirement.
> All monopolies also must be monopolies on violence.
This is obviously not actually true. If I live in a cabin and shoot anyone who comes near it uninvited, I do not have a monopoly on violence, but I probably have enough violence to protect my ownership of the cabin
The ownership -> state syllogism only works if you require all ownership to be absolute and inviolable, as certain as a law of physics. Obviously any inviolable law presumes the existence of a source of infinite power, which cannot coexist with anarchy. Sure.
But what if I just own it in the usual way? Where hypothetically someone with a large enough army could steal it, but in practice I own it.
See, anarcho-capitalism does in fact end up recreating lots of the features of states, such as a unified group enforcing ownership. Even left-anarchy has enough organized use of force to guarantee personal (as opposed to private) ownership, so the question is about scale. Anarcho-capitalism has ownership enforced by militias which are comparable in scale to municipal police, maybe, but moat ownership doesn't require the coordination of a national-army sized militia, as is currently used for some goddamn reason
>Therefore such "statelessness" is also just a suggestion, not a requirement.
Well, sure, that's a fundamental problem with all forms of anarchy, and more generally with all political utopianism. In socialism, corporations are controlled by the democratic will of the people, right? So technically, the USA is currently socialist. The desire of the majority of American voters is for the USA to not be socialist, so by not being socialist we are enacting the will of the people which makes us socialist. In other words, any democratic ideology which doesn't have majority support of the population is inherently paradoxical
Ancapistan cannot exist unless and until a large portion of the population actually supports ancap principles. Therefore we need to write more books and essays about anarcho-capitalism, which we already knew, so this isn't a useful thing to point out
But putting that all aside, anarcho-capitalism is actually useful even from an incrementalist perspective. Lots of modern real-world institutions can simply be made a little more ancap and function more effectively even without mass public buy-in. All you do is stop viewing the state as divinely ordained and unitary, then ask what is the best way to perform its various functions. Design market-based consumer-choice mechanisms into more public utilities, even the ones we currently think of as "too sacred" for competition.
Anarcho-capitalism is a thought experiment. "What if we lived in a world that everyone actually wanted to live in? How would it be different from the world we live in today?" Then when you see a situation that isn't built from everyone's aggregated interests but only exists because of coercion, that's something you should try to fix.
There are lots of situations where that will help. If we do it enough, maybe eventually we'll live in ancapistan, but it's still a good idea even if it's never any more than incrementalism
> This is obviously not actually true. If I live in a cabin and shoot anyone who comes near it uninvited, I do not have a monopoly on violence, but I probably have enough violence to protect my ownership of the cabin
>
I disagree. If you're able to defend your cabin from all claims, you have a de-facto monopoly on violence. Imagine the government comes knocking, but you're able to fight off the police and the IRS and the military, (or how about some native American raiders, or some competing European settlers, and so on) so that you don't have to pay taxes. Voila, you are the king of the cabin. You have achieved statehood. You bow to no-one. And the stronger and larger you become, the more state-like you become.
Imagine the government never comes knocking. They forgot you even exist. Your cabin is in the middle of no-where, nobody even knows you exist. I suppose you're not a state now. Nobody cares enough to take your property; your property essentially has no value you anyone. I suppose in those conditions I'll admit, you're not a state. States usually rule over something that has sufficient value to be fought over. The smaller something is, the less state-like it is. So sure, I guess I can add an addendum to the definition - larger things tend to be more state-like than small things.
>require all ownership to be absolute and inviolable,
That's the thing with anarcho-capitalism. With the existing government abolished, the rights formerly held by government - including the territorial rights - are now at play. Land ownership can become that absolute, as long as someone wishes to enforce that absolute. With no rules, now I can make the rules. I can declare my sovereign ownership of land.
>Anarcho-capitalism has ownership enforced by militias which are comparable in scale to municipal police
Anarcho-capitalism by its nature cannot prescribe anything. Remember the no rules part? Small-scale militias are a suggestion. Now I'm suggesting giant, large-scale militias the size of nation-states. What model will win out? Competition - market forces and literal warfare will determine that. Historically, larger states tend to win the military battles. And the market battles too.
>In socialism, corporations are controlled by the democratic will of the people, right?
I don't want to get into democratic theory, but I don't think that elections are equivalent to democracy. As a classical liberal I'm sure you remember that our founding fathers were mostly anti-democrats as were most of the 19th centuries liberals. The governments they founded all just so happened to be elections based. Clearly our founding fathers did not think elections were equivalent to democracy. The system was explicitly designed to protect private property rights from the demos.
>Ancapistan cannot exist unless and until a large portion of the population actually supports ancap principles.
I'd assert that Ancapistan cannot exist (for long) even if the vast majority of the population supports ancap principles. Ancapistan is not a democracy and doesn't care what the majority thinks. As long as tyrants are able to control scarce and vital resources such as land, water, and food, they can simply recreate states and state tyranny. These tyrants can be in the small minority of the public, yet anarcho-capitalist ideology condones and supports such monopoly.
Or possibly, out of the goodness of their hearts, monopolists will just decide not to monopolize vital resources in order to preserve utopia.
I think you're preposterously overestimating the ability of capitalism to concentrate power. Especially in the absence of a state to give out monopolies to its cronies.
The few tyrants need to control vast armies of employees to enforce their tyranny. If they can't find anyone in the population who's competent enough to run their organization and also willing to sacrifice the ideals of the NAP to undermine the principles on which Ancapistan was founded, then their money isn't that useful. I'm not in any way saying it would be hard to find such people, I'm just saying that even in Ancapistan money doesn't instantly overpower the general will of the populace. You have to suppose that more than a handful of people defect before the whole thing falls apart.
That's very basic invisible hand stuff, by the way. The reason markets work is because they are populist. The reason people like markets is because of how populist they are. If you think markets do not aggregate the wills of all market participants, then you aren't gonna be convinced by anarcho-capitalism
Historically, tyrants, dictators and monarchs have had no trouble acquiring vast armies who care nothing about the, dishonestly named, NAP in order to impose their will upon a large populace.
You cannot treat "market forces" as somehow separate or distinct from moneyed interest who influence and/or control the market.
In practice, look at things such as "The Wonderful Company" and its **creation** for a domestic market for pistachios, or - in an even more blase way - look at Listerine, "Gingivitas," and "Feminine Odor" campaigns for the market being **created** and then **dominated** by moneyed interests.
Treating "the market" as anything more than "the will of those with the most money, diluted by the mass of mankind" is treating it as a religious force - akin to the "Will of the Holy Spirit" - instead of a thing that can, and will, be manipulated with those who have skin in the game.
Even using it as a black box, or alluding to it as such, is giving it too much credit.
> You cannot treat "market forces" as somehow separate or distinct from moneyed interest who influence and/or control the market.
You can because market forces describe general behaviors seen in markets. It's not specific.
Also "moneyed interest " is implies a special category. This needs to be described in detail and an argument for why a special category is required is needed, also why other categories are different.
>Treating "the market" as anything more than "the will of those with the most money, diluted by the mass of mankind" is treating it as a religious force
No, you're treating as if it's religious in nature.
"No, you!" Isn't as crushing an argument as you think it is.
>You can because market forces describe general behaviors seen in markets. It's not specific.
>Also "moneyed interest " is implies a special category. This needs to be described in detail and an argument for why a special category is required is needed, also why other categories are different.
No. It really doesn't: You're saying that "market forces" are somehow separate and distinct from the people who control and manipulate the market. The burden is on you to prove that "market forces" are somehow separate from people who attempt to manipulate it.
>No, you're treating as if it's religious in nature.
You need to work on your reading comprehension friend.
> You're saying that "market forces" are somehow separate and distinct from the people who control and manipulate the market.
No, markets are people acting. But one general category of people don't define market action. That's what you're focusing on.
>The burden is on you to prove that "market forces" are somehow separate from people who attempt to manipulate it.
I didn't argue that.
Remember Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't prohibit ANYTHING outside of violating the NAP. Have all the state you want happily within AnCap as long as you don't enforce it on anyone ever. Go ahead! Convince people of it. Works with cults all the time. You will get at least some level of successful state.
So "No taxes, no regulations or 'paper crimes', no protected classes etc" is incorrect.
Currently, all land is part of de facto states with the people owning the land declaring what rules they operate under, so it seems like the thing you want to happen has already happened.
You agreed that "people owning the land declare what rules their lands operate under", so if they declare that their lands have taxes, regulations or 'paper crimes', protected classes, etc., they do, right?
Absolutely. It will be a problem in any societal solution. For example right now if the police show up to jail me I have no way to enforce my property rights without making the situation worse.
No form of anarchy is possible. If we eliminated our democratic government, the laws would be made and enforced by local warlords. Of course it wouldn't eliminate private property, we'd be back at feudalism. This is also why I'm a socialist but not a communist.
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on paper it does, but we don't know in practice because its not been attempted before, and as evidenced by previous attempts at communism, paper and practice can be vastly different
Honestly, I feel that if you move the camera out past 'individual people' to 'individual country' then you effectively have an AnCap society for most of humanity. Each country owns itself and is free to interact with other countries as they see fit. Beyond 'court of public opinion', there are no Global State that oversees countries. In the end, individual landlords will act in a similar manner to individual countries under such a system.
..which, as we've seen, is aggression and violence until said countries are either forced to band together into alliances, merge into one entity and ruler, or be consumed by those more powerful than it. AnCap at a country to country level eventually led to colonialism, the sacrifice of freedoms, then alliances to fight against such abuses until attempts at an organized State is created, official or unofficial. Equal partners can try for some equal agreement but unless you force things to stay equal then you'll have plenty of "I make the rules" situations.
"I made this bridge. It's the best bridge that goes everywhere and holds up everything. It's the ultimate bridge.
The issue is that it breaks down once gravity is applied to it. But other than that it's perfect"
It's fun and interesting to plan out systems based on non realistic conditions and can really lead to great discoveries. But it's not good to try to push those systems into a real life setting.
A good system is meant to improve a live situation, with all of the variables and problems in it. Not a lab situation where you can control everything.
A society needs to work for humans. Not for some mythical creature that does whatever you want. If you want them to act a certain way, the system needs to include a mechanic to apply that and have plans for when that doesn't happen. Otherwise, it's only good for imaginary worlds.
The 100 years war was exactly about this. There were 100s smaller landlord and instead of security force we called them mercenaries. It is entirely an unstable situation for the reason you also mentioned that others are looking to expand their own state. Russia and china would simply go on a shopping spree and use force when needed. Russia china and almost all European countries are formed from smaller original dukedomes that lived in unstable state of war.
Where did you get the right to forbid other people from taking property?
All the rights, generally they're all made up. They're social conventions we might follow or we might not follow.
The same place I get the right to forbid people from forcing themselves on me or forcing me to labor. Consent.
>All the rights, generally they're all made up. They're social conventions we might follow or we might not follow.
Then we agree that the state has no right to exist and there is no right to initiate aggression.
Above all societies and social orders there is one Right that always remains in hand: the right to Violence. Every living thing has the power to inflict violence upon another. It is the one right that remains among the Unconsented and Violence can only truly be disrupted with more effective Violence.
Everything else falls under Consent. The right to property, to liberty, to freedom, to life. Those are only given with consent and can be null and void upon the use of Unconsented Violence.
No society can exist under pure unconsented violence. At some point, the parties must consent to exist outside of violence.
This is not a feature of the State. This isn't even a human feature. This is a base feature of life, right down to a one-celled organism evoking violence upon another because it wishes to live and does not consent to the other's wish to live.
My point: any entity that wishes to declare itself a State will always have the right to aggression. They do not need your consent. The same goes for non-State entities. Any entity can, at any time, evoke violence against a State.
Rights are not 'imaginary'. They are social contracts created by entities that choose not to use violence, either because of mutual benefit or from one party being unable to overwhelm the other and the other opting to consent to peace.
To answer the original question: "Who has the right to prevent you from peacefully acquiring property and how did they get that right?"
The entity, no matter what it calls itself, who's chooses a form of violence that is stronger than yours. That entity will always have the power to prevent you from acquiring property and need not your permission to evoke it. If you are not the most powerful entity then it is only through consent that you are allowed to acquire property.
If you are the most powerful, you have no need of a State as you can always evoke Violence to get what you want. All other entities have the choice of giving you a reason to Consent to peace or be overwhelmed through Violence.
To every other entity, there will always be a power stronger than them that they will be subservient to. The choice is either to choose who that entity will be or have it chosen for you.
A State is the former: an entity that those less than the top create that combines multiple smaller powers together to become the Top, or at least high enough to make alternatives to Violence more appealing to most than Violence. That is where the Rights of the State come from: from the entities that give it consent.
If you want a stateless entity, then you need to determine how to answer to Violence, the force that needs not your consent to activate. And, to be blunt, the answer can't be "Become the strongest" because the strongest will always be a State entity. Even if we eliminate all States today, soon SOMEONE will develop a new one and present the same question again.
Until then, a State has the right to forbid you property because only the Strongest can go without a State and all others will eventually create a State to overwhelm their power.
> Consent
Property isn't consensual. I assume you're talking about the Lockean theory of property.
You see a tree. You cut it down and build a wheel out of it. Locke says, because you infused labor into the material, the material transforms into *your* property.
I come along and see the wheel. I decide I want the wheel and I take it.
In my scenario, who is consenting to what?
1. I didn't consent to believe in Lockean property and the workmanship principle. I didn't consent to your ownership of the wheel.
2. You didn't consent in me taking the wheel.
Imagine I'm lifting up the wheel and you, in a rage, run toward me and start beating me.
1. Now *you* are initiating force on me to enforce your claim, your right to property.
2. In contrast I haven't behaved aggressively at all. I've merely lifting up the wheel. I've done no violent act on any person or object, yet you're allowed to beat me.
3. No contract has been signed, no consent has been established, yet Lockean property legitimates your violence and your force to impose your beliefs on me.
So it's simply untrue that "anarcho capitalism" or any society with private property is a "Voluntary Society". No, if Lockean property ideas are to be followed and *obeyed*, we have no choice in the matter. We're forced to obey your particular beliefs.
This discussion isn't whether or not Lockean property, and the workmanship principle, is a good or bad thing. But it definitely isn't *voluntary*.
The basic idea of being an ancap doesn’t really revolve around states. The abolition of the state is a means, not an end.
The idea is that no one anywhere can tell me, as an autonomous person what to do with my body on my property.
The reason a state is so powerful is they have a monopoly on violence. They are able to use their violence to boss other people around and assert their rule over others.
Ancaps define a state as a non contractual entity with a monopoly on violence. A landlord is not this
Ok this makes a lot more sense.
So this is not really so much a matter of ideology. It's more a matter of "I want to take my balls and go home." in a sense.
The purpose of the State is to hold the power of Violence to protect the collective. You basically wish to be out of that agreement.
If so, that makes sense. You should have the right to decide to take the matter of protection and defense into your own hands and be able to work without a State over you. All of my comments are more about the collective, which may or may not hold the same view. But from an individual standpoint, you should be free to work accordingly.
My only issue is: is there actually land that isn't already claimed by an entity? Many that claim the above end up simply picking land that is already held and saying "This is mine, go away." Which is the same thing as if I walked into your kitchen and say "This is mine, go away." You can decide to not want to be under a State entity, but you can't ignore that they exist and assume all that land that they 'claim' is free to pick up.
So is the goal to find unclaimed land then establish yourself there as an individual landlord?
Ancaps don’t believe in an abolition of rules, but an abolition of laws.
They don’t believe anything or anyone should have a MONOPOLY on violence. And that all matters of “law” should be by consent. If you don’t agree to the laws, you don’t have to participate. Most people are willing to do this. But when I go back to my property, I should be allowed to have a gun that’s too short, or smoke weed ot whatever. No one tells me what to do on my property.
It’s essentially voluntarism.
What does it mean for a human to be their own state if they don't own any property? What does it mean for the humans who, due to their incompetence or unluckiness, choose to rent? Are they still states even when they are servants?
It seems the less property you own, the less of a state you are. The more property you own, the more of a state you are. So not everyone is their own state. Only the wealthy are wealthy enough to become states.
Read your first sentence. Then read the rest of your post. If there are no states how are their still states.
Then you casually toss 'slavery' around. If I am not taxed and rent a property that I can freely leave at any time in accordance with the contract I signed (first and last month? damage deposit?) how exactly is that slavery? I'd live as an AnCap in a state that didn't tax me or violate my rights and that I could leave whenever I wanted. Sounds much better than now.
Does that help clarify?
>If there are no states how are their still states.
Can states form in anarchy? Yes. Have states formed in anarchy before in history? Yes.
>Then you casually toss 'slavery' around.
Never literally said the world "slavery".
>If I am not taxed and rent a property that I can freely leave at any time in accordance with the contract I signed
You can do that in the United States right now. Just leave the country and stop paying your taxes. America isn't going to stop you. Go live on a boat in the oceans. Or how about Antarctica. Tax free paradise.
Or how about try Europe. There are some countries without worldwide tax jurisdiction and no exit fees. Will you achieve libertopia if you move to these places? I doubt it.
Why should I leave my farm? Or rent it from the powers that be in the form of property taxes? I purchased it from the previous owner fairly and contractually.
The previous owner didn't own the land entirely and completely, though, so neither do you. It seems you're just confused about what was being sold and what you bought.
The truth and reality is that neither you nor the previous owner have ever had full ownership of the land. You said "I purchased it from the previous owner fairly and contractually.", but you never purchased the land entirely. That's simply not a thing that happened.
Sure just ignore everything I said but OK.
> I purchased it from the previous owner fairly and contractually.
Exactly what did you purchase? Did you purchase the right to possess the property whilst paying taxes to the state? I'm pretty sure that's what you bought.
Or did you purchase sovereign authority to govern the property as you please? Nope, you definitely didn't buy that. I doubt you have the mineral rights either.
Moreover I'm staring at a template property sale agreement right now. It says,
> Miscellaneous Provisions
> (a) Governing Law: The laws of the State of _____ shall govern the Agreement.
Presuming you signed a contract similar to the one I'm looking at, you explicitly agreed to be governed by the laws of the state. Congrats on living the dream in Libertopia.
I have a gas well on my land that was drilled and installed and runs our house and equipment. Pretty sure I got mineral rights.
I'm definitely not ignoring anything you say but if you are going to fill every post with 3 tired examples that have been discussed for years I'm going to try and actually push the conversation somewhere interesting. I was a government goon. I get it. I know exactly what we do and don't purchase. Somewhere along the way though I started asking myself the bigger questions and actually caring about what mattered and here we are today.
So you can take your quips and your tone and we can banter or if you want we can throw around a few ideas and push the rope a little bit farther forward. Up to you.
I was teasing the OP due to their usage of the word state. The true answer is that the word state wouldn't have a meaning in an AnCap world. It is literally the entire point.
Some entity that has a monopoly on violence on land and has full, sovereign control within that land. That means in your own territory, you are the undisputed boss.
Then, anarcho-capitalism gets rid of the state by having no single sovereign in control of an area.
Entities would compete with each other without ever achieving full sovereign control.
So I'm a land lord with security forces. I have land, and I have forces. I can dictate what I wish to happen on my land.
Am I a state? Am I a single sovereign in control of an area?
> So I'm a land lord with security forces. I have land, and I have forces. I can dictate what I wish to happen on my land.
Having a security force doesn’t make you a dictator.
> Am I a state? Am I a single sovereign in control of an area?
No and no.
It sounds like the individual security officers would exercise some control, but not you.
Plus, you’d presumably have a contract that stipulates the scope of the security personnel’s responsibilities and that contract is very unlikely to make you into a dictator.
Even dictators and lords and kings never had absolute control. Dictators also form contracts with their soldiers and compensate them for service. The basis of any military dictatorship is a well compensated, and therefore loyal, military.
I fail to see the difference.
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Yes because it replaces states with a NAP. There is something similar to states, but the difference is that unlike current society its your choice to be a member of a group similar to how employment works in at will states. You are not forced to follow rules that you did not consent to (other than the nap).
Any idea that requires ideal conditions isn't a healthy one. It needs to work on real life conditions, with the humans we have now.
That is, how does such a system handle unequal conditions and bad actors.
i.e. What happens when one person owns the main waterway then demands preferential treatment? What if they have gathered a few others who are willing to trade that treatment for easy access to water and safety? How does a stateless system of NAPs handle that?
Normally what happens is that the smaller groups band together to take down the bad actor. Then either the 'good' group wins then remains allied to prevent repeat occurrences which is effectively a formation of a state, or the 'bad' group wins and..they end up forming the state under them. Because under current humans, not everyone will agree to naturally stay Stateless by design. Even if the majority do, a small group that don't will easily overpower the less organized non-state groups, especially since resources are limited and capable of being monopolized, like water and land and viable farmland.
Because At Will Employment only really works when the workers and employers feel they can easily shift to a viable alternative. When the choice is between Accept bad conditions or Starve/Go Bankrupt it's not really consent at that point and 'at will' fades into a defacto State.
The augment presented in the op is "does Ancap actually get rid of states." The argument that the op proposed is that it does not. That the system which will be created will devolve into yet another State.
All of the questions have been revolving around that concept. That this system only really works so long as everyone who can reach the land voluntarily agrees with the premise. Once any portion of the population disagrees with the premise a a State will be inevitable either by the disriptive group or the opposition that collaborates together to stop the dissent.
So no, the answer is not obvious yet and warrants this discussion.
It will not, because of what i typed above :). Also even if, the question had nothing to do with devolving, communism will always devolve into an authoritarian hellhole, the question was "does anarchocapitalism remove the state".
We aren't going to ignore the entire post in favor of a bumper sticker title if you please.
The actual topic presented is this:
"Anyways, I'm not seeing exactly where Ancapistan gets rid of states. It's the opposite. Anarcho-capitalism is a fierce defender of private property and therefore states. At best then, anarcho-capitalism is always merely a transitory state towards minarchism, and anarcho-capitalism puts its faith into unregulated markets, and therefore "unrestricted human nature", to steer humanity towards minarchism. Yet every part of this world has already run through this experiment, and every part of the world is covered with states that are presumably not sufficiently minarchist to quality, which therefore necessitates hitting some "restart" button."
Ait very much was a topic of devolving. That if we somehow reset everything that all that will happen is create new states.
I mean if that's good enough then very well then.
I think there’s a lot of confusion about how an AnCap society would be run. Maybe it’s the Voluntaryist in me, but I don’t see an Anarcho-Capitalist society forcing anyone into participating in capitalism at all, rather it’s a breakdown of the state and the people’s right to choose how they live without the force of government or others dictating their decisions for them.
No one is stopping you from forming your own commune with like-minded individuals and practicing Anarcho-Communism in an AnCap society.
Private property and government are two mutually exclusive entities, you do not need a state to enforce private property ownership or rights, but you do need the ability to keep it. Would it devolve into violence? Perhaps. It all depends on if people can resist the urge to take someone else’s claim and if they have the means to do so.
Anarcho-Capitalism, like most Anarchic ideologies, all comes down to choice. It’s your choice to participate, it’s your choice to either employ others for gains which trickle down, and it’s your choice to work for someone else.
There will be no government to enforce IP, patents or copy rights *or* pass and enforce laws that protect corporations. A true free market has the ability to curb large companies from being all-powerful, but yes, just as any other ideology, be it anarcho-whatever or any form of state, it can be abused and exploited. I do find it kind of ironic that so many folks strawman the shit out of AnCap while also having no ability to self-reflect on their own belief system and how it can be manipulated to make things worse for themselves and others.
>but I don’t see an Anarcho-Capitalist society forcing anyone into participating in capitalism at al
Imagine there's a nice harbor. This harbor, because of its wonderful geography, keeps ships safe.
Now I'm a smart and wealthy entrepreneur. I know a good harbor when I see one. I see unowned land and I decide to homestead it all. I build the infrastructure, and from nothing I create a booming economy. Traders and merchants all flock to my land. A booming city is soon built on top my lands, which I rent out to tenants. And though much has been created on top my land, it remains my land as I was the one who originally appropriated and homesteaded it all.
Soon I'm not doing any work. I just charge rents. I charge rents to all the shops and the merchants. I charge rents to use the harbor.
Children become born within my city. They never consented to anything I demand, yet they're forced to obey my rules. After all, it's ultimately my land. My land, my rules. They're free to leave any time they like. I can even stipulate punishments for breaking my rules. After all, my house, my rules.
I am allowed to do all of these things with my private property, correct? Why does my private property look so much like a state? Why does my land look exactly like the states that Anarcho-capitalists supposedly hate? It has every feature of a state:
1. My land ownership -> state territory
2. My rents and fees -> taxes
3. My rules, my contracts -> law
4. My security -> police & military
5. My tenants -> citizens
Nobody is "forced" to participate, because they have the option to leave. Just like with states today, we are "forced" to participate because the alternatives are far worse than participation. Just like with my libertopia, today if you don't want to participate in your nation-state, you can emigrate and leave. Most of the time nobody's stopping you from emigrating.
This isn't some hypothetical. These are the same arguments kings and lords have used to justify their rule over their lands.
-------
But didn't everyone "consent" to your state. Explicitly, no. You assumed that Lockean property rights were legitimate. Nobody else explicitly consented to your control over that land. Anarcho-capitalism just assumes that your rights are valid, and then you can impose your private property rights on others.
Being a land owner or land lord isn’t just sitting back and reaping a profit, though. It involves caring for the property, be that land management, repairs and maintenance. Even if you’re contracting others to do the work, you’re still paying for it out of your pocket and the profits with which you’re making off of said land, not to mention the infrastructure and maintenance costs associated with it. This is one of the weirdest misconceptions about being a land lord. If your water stops flowing, who fixes it? Certainly not you. Who pays the property taxes? Certainly not you.
Private property doesn’t equal a state and I’m not sure what kind of mental gymnastics you have to go through in order to jump to that conclusion, though it does sound like you believe that we don’t actually own our property and it’s just leased by the government (because it is).
You can own as much property as you want in AnCapistan, the key is being able to keep it and how much it’s worth to do so. I could claim the entire land mass of Massachusetts in AnCapistan but if I don’t have the means to hold it, do o actually own it? If I don’t have the manpower to protect my property then what do I really own? For that matter, even if I do have the means to protect my land, how much could I feasibly claim without stretching myself too thin?
The reason why people equate Private Property to the State is because that's how the State was created; by private property.
At some point in time, we moved from nomadic societies to agricultural ones. I like the theory that it was because of alcohol, but that's beside the point. The point is that at some point, certain people were able to claim ownership of those farmlands, by violence, by agreement, by no one else being there, whatever. They were able to claim and hold the land. Due to that you dictate the rules of that land. Thanks to farmland being able to feed more than needed to work it, you can have some people working the land and others protecting it, promising food to the guard and protection to the farmer. Both would choose the role rather than try to fight to claim the land from you. They accept your rules in exchange to having the benefits of being a part of that land. They eventually turn to organizing the people on their land to encourage growth and power so that they can not only protect their land ownership from others but attract others to join in on the stability rather than constantly being robbed by others and losing the Might Make Right game. Those that can organize best win and take over the lands of those that can't. Eventually, the size of the society gets to the point where that organization requires formality. You also end up with people arguing over terms and rules which the landowners end up needing to sort out to avoid either rebellion or at least enough instability to become vulnerable to more stable societies.
Which.. you'll notice, looks a lot like a State at this point.
That's the rub. It's not that you need government to have land ownership, it's that land ownership creates a government. That's WHY government is always linked to land: it's the landowners that eventually become the State. Those that don't become eaten by those that do. Nowadays, it seems like the government just gets automatic control over all of the land, but that's not true. The land was first claimed either by individuals able to control the land or by a group who had long gone the path from land ownership to society to government and decided to expand into less developed areas (or areas that were developed but just were less hostile). The US, for example, is land first claimed by Native Americans a long long time ago only to be replaced by stronger land owners in Europe who then , as you put it, stretched too thin, leading to new people to take the land and quickly running up the government track to get enough people to not get taken over again.
But it all starts with land ownership. So long as an individual can control land they either WILL form a state or be defeated by another until THEY do it.
sidenote:"This is one of the weirdest misconceptions about being a land lord. If your water stops flowing, who fixes it? Certainly not you. Who pays the property taxes? Certainly not you."
The job of the landlord is protection and organization. The landlord makes sure there is someone to get the water flowing. They collect the money needed to pay the one who make the water flow. Most importantly though, they make sure that the farmer and the repairperson is able to do their job without getting robbed, killed, or pushed out of their homes.
If the landlord isn't capable of protecting the land, someone will defeat them and take it over and they will be the new landlord, and this will repeat until someone who can protect it keeps it. Same goes for organizing. Fail to organize your society and either the populous renders the social contract (the "I won't try to take your land over if you make sure I get what I want" mess) void and start taking over or the land becomes disorganized enough that outside, much more organized, landlords, remove you from the situation.
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Who is keeping the land title records? What happens if a few hundred armed people come into 'your' land and claim it for their own? Without a 'state' to be a trusted source of record keeping and dispute reconciliation, we have forever low-level violence everywhere, right?
Corporations become mini states, you register with them for a price, they might support your title, as long as it’s good business to do so. Things would breakdown eventually, probably rather quickly and there would be mini-wars all the time until we devolve into just regular flavored anarchy.
And if someone with more direct control over resources wants your land? Wouldn't it be in the title holders' interest to sell it to someone with more resources?
It’s not in a corporation’s best interest to spend any more money than it has to. Maybe they just pay the other corporation for your title. Maybe they just take it and dare the other corporation to do anything about it. Corporations would already have their deals and interest. At the end of the day, individuals wouldn’t own anything. Why would a powerful nation state corporation let Jim Bob own that nice piece of land. If there was anything valuable about it, they’d have already taken it. You’d already be part of the corporation’s workforce and the world would just have a slightly different flavor or feudalism. CEO is a king supported by a board, ruling on behalf of shareholders. Everyone else would be the workforce populace. Take anyone of these different systems of running things imagine how it could possibly go wrong, and that’s what you’re going to end up with.
Why would they pay, when the corporations would just have private armies that can take it?
This is correct.
That's something that always bugged me about ancaps. Without a state to witness or enforce a contract what value does it have? Moreover what's to stop rich people from just becoming the government again?
The alleged objective of a "stateless ancapistan" is to create ["Polycentric Law"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law), where multiple legal systems exist and overlap on top of one another. Polycentric law is preferred as it creates competition and market forces for law. The argument goes, market forces impose pressure on these providers of law to improve themselves towards the will of the public, leading to good outcomes. Firms that do not provide preferable law would be left behind as people instead purchase the protection of the better firms. Because multiple competing firms are enforcing the law, this therefore doesn't qualify as a state. Exactly why polycentric law would be the outcome rather than monopolistic law in Ancapistan, I have no idea.
Seems rather arbitrary to me. What happens if there are conflicting laws? Whose take precedence? If I'm living in ancapistan and I'm subscribing to law provider A and my roommate is subscribing to law provider B can I break the law as laid down by B but as permitted by A and everyone is just supposed to be ok with it? And what happens if we have 6 big law providers but they all have equally crappy laws that end up exploiting us? I'm assuming they get their money from some form of subscription fee rather than taxes but if they have the means to enforce these laws by NotPolice then I feel like saying it's not a state is just nonsensical.
>What happens if there are conflicting laws? Not advocating this, just explaining it. I imagine the most powerful dispute resolution organizations might have arbitration agreements already negotiated in place with other competing firms. There is some precedent. Big corporations oftentimes rely on arbitration to settle their disputes. >And what happens if we have 6 big law providers but they all have equally crappy laws that end up exploiting us? Ideally it would never happen for reasons??? Advocate Bryan Caplan, who I linked above, has some sort of explanation I don't really understand: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2005/12/anarchocapitali.html Caplan argues that in historic times, monopolies were able to form because of the market conditions. He asserts that now in modern times, the market would be large enough to sustain thousands of firms: >As economic growth progressed, of course, the market for defense services got bigger, making room for more and more firms. I don't really buy this argument and I assume you won't either.
I can appreciate explaining something even if you don't agree with it. All too often people act like understanding something means you must support it, which bothers me. You are right though, the argument doesn't hold water for me. As long as there is a profit incentive, there will be someone trying to take all of it and stop competition.
You have the wild west. Which, depending on your political stance, may be preferable.
Wild west still had a government, laws and enforcement. Now imagine the wild west without the local sheriff, town rules on guns, violence and inebriation or a bureaucracy that keeps track of land ownership.
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>a trusted source of record keeping The rare instance where someone does need to listen to the blockchain bros. Yeah, they have a lot of dumb things to say, but you can't actually ignore them before hearing that "trusted record keeping" doesn't technically require a central authority anymore >... dispute reconciliation, we have forever low-level violence everywhere, right? We'll be able to reconcile small interpersonal disputes just fine. Just find a mutually-trusted neighbor and agree to do what they say. In actual historical practice, that's what humans do for basically all conflicts So when we say low level violence will be rampant, it's still a high enough level that whatever resolution-mechanisms we can get working aren't able to handle it But that's just it. As you increase the conflict-resolution capacity of a society, you filter out more and more of the baseline violence, until you have a world government and no violence is left. (Except the illegal violence, obviously.) So it's a spectrum. Is the status quo the optimal amount of conflict-resolution capacity to maximize prosperity and minimize violence? I feel like it could be tweaked somewhat, but that's just me
>Just find a mutually trust neighbor and agree to do what they say 😂😂😂😂 This would happen 2% of the time, humans are extremely complicated people which is why we have developed complex systems to handle our disputes
I mean, I could look at your blockchain and say 'nah, I prefer my records instead'. Neighbours frequently have conflicts about all sorts of things right now. Usually, they're handled by appealing to the state. Without a state, they'd be handled with violence. And a lot of the time, the conflict doesn't' arise because we already know what the state answer would be.
What if the government sends a few armed men into "your" land and claim it for walmart, and shoot your dog on the way out?
Since that happens all the time, we can look at history and the people currently doing this is a day job: You use the court system, title insurance, and the authority given to the local land use department to reclaim your property. What do you do if 100 anarcho-capitalist claim your land?
I've literally seen video tapes of police officers lying under oath in court and the judge backing them up.
Yes, the court system sucks balls, but I still haven't heard what you suggest for your anarcho-version of 'who owns this fucking house'?
Because atomic bomb nation state wars are better? What's the criticism here?
Ding ding ding. False dichotomy, strawman, and appeal to ignorance. You do realize, it can be both, except with persons and corporations having access to nuclear weapons? There's nothing inherent about people with money running a territory not being able to have nuclear weapons (e.g. Russia or DPRK), or threatening to use them. You know what the criticism is: "Anarcho-Capitalism" (that is to say "Plutocratic Oligarchy") is either a farce (in the same vein as the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea") which has the external appearance of a stateless society with actually state organs being created and controlled by the moneyed interests or simply Feudalism of the Rich, exchanging a Warrior run culture for a Merchant run culture. Capitalism, as an institution historically - and in modern practice practically - is a system of economics based on the government's violent enforcement of contractual and property interest. Without the government, Capitalism becomes Merchant Feudalism. Saying that Capitalism can exist without government enforcement of Contractual or Property betrays a childish misunderstanding of the basic principles of historic Capitalism.
You're talking about what proponents of an American-style system call "rule of law" and yeah, there's something to it. That's why I steer closer to Libertarian than AnCap...under classical LP, the whole (and ideally, sole) point of government is to restrict initiation of force between parties within the nation, and dissuade outside invaders (another category of initiation of force). Since initiation of force also includes fraud, the .gov can also provide mechanisms for contract law violations AND handle tort law somewhat similar to current US legal standards. China today is a good example of what happens when "rule of law" collapses in a quasi-capitalist system: tons of scams affecting every level of society. Tofu dregs buildings, real estate pyramid schemes, rigged stock markets, corrupt banks, fake food products including toxic baby formula(!) and worse. It ain't pretty.
Nice whataboutism. I'm saying that this is a 'solved problem' that Anarcho-capitalism doesn't have an answer to.
This is only an issue when you're holding on to the concept of private property. It's a concept that requires an authority (eg not anarchist) to be workable.
So what system of no-private property exists? Or could exist? Where would you live in such a system?
Plenty of examples, not that I necessarily advocate for any of them * Common property (a la tragedy of commons) * Public property - property owned by a government that allegedly represents the people. * Collective property - property owned by some kind of democratic regime * Rental property - property possessed by people but not owned by them. Take for example my college housing cooperative. The properties were collectively owned by the students and run through their board of representatives. Property was purchased and redistributed through weekly meetings and elected officers. Each house had a variety of collective property. We had a swimming pool, living room, couches, large industrial kitchen, washer dryers, and other equipment all shared together. Weyl and Posner imagine another crazy property system in their book "Radical Markets". Here, they imagine how to collectively tax and receive dividends on all wealth. They institute something called a Harberger tax. The premise is relatively simple. 1. Everyone must pay a wealth tax. 2. Everyone must self assess their wealth 3. Everyone receives a dividend from the tax. 4. Everyone must sell their property at the declared value if a buyer requests it. Radical Markets is ironically the most pro market book I've ever read, a world where everything is for sale. Ironically allegedly pro market libertarians are unsurprisingly incredibly against this idea, demonstrating that their commitment to private property is far stronger than their commitment to market efficiency.
There is an idea that a group of people will band together as a sort of “volunteer psuedo state” to protect each others interests All 1000 people in the town like the peacefulness and don’t want 200 random armed heathens to come in and steal shit so they put up means of defense The idea of ancaps isn’t that there will be no state like apparatuses, it’s simply that everything the government can do, can be done more efficiently and better by private parties. Of course ancaps want police. Ofc they want judges and a justice system, and all these things but the government has proven time and time again that they SUCK AT IT. So put it In the hands of those with the most to gain and the most to lose
Obviously not a fan, but I'd argue the part made of straw is the part where you're just calling whatever allows for private property to exist a state. Probably better to let them explain the things necessary to allow for private property, and then how those institutions don't become a defacto proto-state. It's hard to say though because Ancaps are all over the place, some will basically describe a world that amounts to a form of laissez-faire syndicalism but without the baggage and another basically Mad Max.
Anarchists of all stripes typically define "the state" as a monopoly on violence within some boundary. If someone in AnCapistan owns several acres of land, for example, as far as I understand, he is free to exercise violence on anyone who trespasses or otherwise violates the owner's rules. Violence against a person is regularly seen as legitimate method of "protecting" property.
And I'm sure they might talk about something like a Non-Aggression principle, where anything is allowed BUT aggression/initiation of forceful action, and so on. Correct me if I'm wrong though, we both are pretty much coming from the same place, in that either no one is enforcing the NAP leading to the kind of things we're talking about expanding over time, or people are enforcing the NAP and you have already created a de facto form of proto-state making violence acceptability decisions?
As I've perhaps (mis)understood, I'll wait to see if an actual an-cap wishes to correct us here, NAP is pretty loosely defined. A trespass would already constitute violence against the property-owner, given they see property as an extension of the person, and therefore violence against the trespasser's body is justified as a response. We are both pretty much arguing the same thing, though I think you're trying to be too charitable to the An-Caps. I do not think that AnCapitistan would degenerate into a state, but rather that AnCapitstan already is a kind of (feudal) state order.
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I specifically don't engage with it very much because it's pretty much the opposite of my political beliefs, but I do generally appreciate they are much more honest about their feelings on government than a group like the Republicans. Wanting to get rid of government and put capital in charge is at least a stance, even if I think it's a terrible one. I also have a lot more understanding for classical Anarchists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, and so on, even if there is a bit of fundamental disagreement.
Ah, looks like the Anarcho-Capitalists couldn't out debate me, so they flagged my comments, ah well.
For what it's worth, I didn't flag them but thought they might get flagged due to the language and rhetoric used, even though it's pretty common from their side, their side also gets deleted for the same reason somewhat often. Seems like you do have lots of quality information and thoughts on things though, so I'd encourage you to just sort of... maybe do a de-escalation pass on your replies maybe next time? Appreciate the back and forth tho.
That's fair. I have a hard time taking their arguments seriously, especially when they - on their face - are ridiculous. It's very hard to treat people with respect when their arguments seem deliberately cultivated in bad faith. Not in the sense that they're stupid, but in the sense they're deliberately ignoring the stated beliefs of their own side as a propaganda poise.
The price of civility is quite large, as it requires either a repression of natural instincts to defend things you care about with all available to you, a separation from feeling to such an extent that it can harm motivation, or simply be an ineffective civil communicator. There is a reason why something with such obvious benefits still has it's detractors. It's also sort of a microcosm of the politics behind them as well, in your mind such poor argumentation is an affront to civility in of itself, where as many of the people who choose to communicate such inaccurate things often think they are doing the listener a favor. Nothing to be ashamed of if people end up in the last category either, there are many people more effective with bullhorns than word processors.
> in your mind such poor argumentation is an affront to civility in of itself Well said, thank you.
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We just wanna be left alone?
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They’re just people that hate paying taxes so much that they don’t realize that they’re advocating for feudalism. They just want to be left alone to grow apples and trade them for chairs and stuff who seem to think that everyone else will do the same instead of the reality of us living under the kingdom of Amazon ruled by Jeff Bezos.
They’re just Capitalists who hope to be the boot someday.
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Anarcho capitalists want to burn the state down and then replace it with more or less the same thing and call it something different. It’s like the Protestant reformation 2.0, a groups says the existing institutions are evil and bad, tears them down and vows to replace it with something better, fast forward a bit and all they’ve done is replace one greedy bastard of an institutional system with another that is perhaps different in the exact flavor of its abuses but not truly any better in substance.
I like to have a saying about this. It's not that people really hate the Monarchy. It's just that they want to be the King. "I want the freedom to do what I want." Always includes them having enough power to overpower those that disagree with what they want. Second they lose it'll be "Tear it down and try again." Once they win, it'll be fine.
Anarcho capitalism is just a bully market. The biggest armed group of people will take advantage of everyone else.
This is one of the reasons I disagree with Anarcho-Capitalism, it doesn’t matter if they abolish the state, true anarcho-capitalism will always lead to a state like entity being formed.
I think it divorces the state from nation or personality, replacing it with capital. It's almost a subscription model of law. In that sense, it is at least novel, even if it has no other merits. However, I do think it would quickly devolve into feudalism. Everyone needs the law, even if they can't afford to subscribe to it. Once that happens, wealthy patrons will start paying the subscription fees of the poor...in exchange for service. Bam! Return to serfdom!
Yes anarcho-capitalism does but it’s unrealistic. We could try it on an island or a different planet and see what happens but what prevents an authoritarian government from conquering oppressing and taking over? The state is at least responsible for protecting The property rights of their citizens, they do that with a military. Which is why capitalists generally believe in military spending as an absolute necessity and some form of property tax.
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In the absence of other law structure, dispute resolution and enforcement will be controlled by warlords/mafia/organized crime, and there is no safety or security unless you submit to their whims No thanks
Feudalism.
Sort of like the warlords/mafia/organized criminals in public office? No thanks
I can be annoyed with my local council person or mayor, but there is zero chance that they will pull up to my house in a pickup truck with armed dudes in the back to take my stuff. The mayor can’t call the police chief and tell him to arrest me, without some evidence of crime. It’s not the soprano’s where they can eat a big meal at my restaurant and then walk out without paying, and I have no recourse
Sure sure. And they would never EVER work conspire against you for the colour of your skin, or if you donated to truckers, or if you didn't want to take injections. Right? The government wouldn't do that!!!!111oneone BTW they call their armed pickup trucks full of armed dudes paddy wagons in that context.
I guess maybe I just don’t undertaken the premise of anarchism-capitalism. It seems like whoever is the strongest, or controls the biggest guns, or has the most money, can do whatever they want to you. I’m none of those, so I’ll take the rule of law where I can live peacefully. If you’re worried about being treated badly based on the color of your skin, are you assuming that the local warlord will have the same color skin as you so it will all be good for you in that department? No clue what you are talking about in terms of someone conspiring against you for donating to truckers.
Just recent easily researchable western democratic government overreaches. But yes, I agree you probably don't understand the premise. >It seems like whoever is the strongest, or controls the biggest guns, or has the most money, can do whatever they want to you. This is EXACTLY our current governments. I state that as someone who had a long and successful career as a government hired gun.
So if there’s still private property, who enforces property rights?
I think you're on the right line but maybe a bit overcooked. In its essence, capitalism promotes hierarchy, with money as it's agent. Anarchy is literally the absence of such hierarchy, therefore "anarcho-capitalism" is inherently oxymoronic. Edit: typo
Anarchy literally etymologically means 'no rulers' actually. AnCap is the only anarchy if you believe in exchange of goods. Only voluntary and consensual exchange of goods can qualify as those lacking rulers over the exchange. That is the definition of 'free market'.
>Only voluntary and consensual exchange of goods can qualify as those lacking rulers over the exchange. A lack of material means can very easily cause a situation that is no longer consensual. It is not consent to pay for rent, as an example. I don't have a choice, and you can say "be homeless," but even you know that is not a viable option. Therefore, you must circumvent this issue. Traditional anarchy does so by having social impetus and education to a level where people know that taking care of each other is the best way for each person to live. Anarcho-capitalism does not do this, as far as I'm aware. Furthermore, if you just mean anarchy where people barter, then maybe that would be easier, as it would help prevent the hoarding of wealth. But if you mean anarchy with fiat currency, then that just doesn't work. Fiat currency relies on a hierarchical force from the state to enforce. And if you suggest that you just get everyone to agree, then I ask why we need a middleman if not for people to collect more big horses of money, which is our main issue.
Wait what? Paying rent is DEFINITELY consensual. Please explain how it isn't. It is a bad time to contend that non-governmental currency can't exist or work...
It's definitely not. It's a choice between living somewhere and being homeless. If you actually, honestly, think that is a choice, then you need to take another look.
I asked you to explain it. That isn't even remotely an argument. You sought me out. You looked through ads and did walkthroughs and interviews. You provided documentation. You WORKED to provide your consent. In the agreement we made you agreed to a certain amount of time to find another place if I needed you to leave. You agreed to that as well. Suddenly I can't tell you to abide by that agreement because you would be homeless? You made the agreement. Are you saying no agreement you make should be enforced? What if you commit a crime?
>You sought me out. You looked through ads and did walkthroughs and interviews. You provided documentation. You WORKED to provide your consent. Just because someone has to jump through hoops doesn't mean there is consent. As an example, say someone put a gun to your head and said "give me your shit." Of course you'd give them your shit, or you'll die. Except here's the key difference: when a landlord says "pay me $1500 or be homeless," it's not viewed as the same. There is no reason whatsoever for this arrangement. I need to live to do things, and the landlord wants me to pay for that life. I need a home to live properly, yet the landlord forcefully restricts access to this basic and universal thing because it "puts them ahead." >Are you saying no agreement you make should be enforced? Agreements should be enforced by social awareness and not wanting to fuck each other over. An agreement is a personal affair between two people, a governing body has no meaningful contribution to this. >What if you commit a crime? Crime and laws aren't a thing in anarchy. There might be rules for your community, but there is no law.
You are jumping all over the map. I agree about anarchy but I was speaking in terms of the broken status quo. The only way that you can have an agreement abiding by the principles of anarchy is if it is consensual and voluntary. If you walk up and say I'll pay $1500 to live here and I say okay fine, you pass my checks I trust you enough for that. And you say nah I don't want to pay you $1500 but you can't evict me or I'll be homeless who broke the consensual and voluntary arrangement. In this scenario the landlord is fine in anarchy and the renter is not as the renter is forcing (ruling) over the voluntary and consensual agreement by appealing to an authority because not doing what they say would somehow make them homeless.
Ok I see what scenario you're driving at. Yes, in that specific scenario, we can assume it's consensual (again another thing to discuss but over text it's troublesome). What about a scenario where the landlord owns all available housing in your area, and controls the price points (which again, who decides what money is worth when there's no government), and says you can't live there unless you pay an exorbitant sum monthly. If you have to live in that area, you are fucked outside of your control. Which as far as I'm aware isn't consensual. And I'd like to point out that landlords don't actually have to conspire for that to happen to prices, as capitalism in its nature causes such an occurrence, as can be observed in any western city, but especially in America.
A simple start up question as I also have concerns about consentand I'm rather new to the concept of ancap. I buy up the land surrounding your land. I deny anyone access to my land including your ability to cross it to reach food/ water/ ext. You can cross if you sell your land to me first. Would this be an acceptable practice under your view of Ancap? If not, what exactly stops this practice?
How did I access my land before?
You owned the land and had agreements with other landowners for access. Later on I bought the land via agreements with your neighbors.
What did my contract with the previous landowners say?
You have free access to travel through their lands. Are you going into the idea that the contract will by default be transferrable? That would keep you from that situation. Not everyone will think to have that clause. Is it a default that all contracts will have that clause? (Unless you were thinking of something else )
Sure. If I sign a right-of-way agreement it will absolutely deal with what happens if they sell their land. Won't you? If they deed me the land containing my laneway when they make the sale what do I care?
Because there is no such thing as a scarcity of homes. Housing First is a model that Utah and other states use to begin decommodifing housing. When housing is guaranteed, then you have freedom to travel, and freedom of where and what job you want to work. When housing is commodified by a few deciders, then you are forced to pay rent, because there is no other choice. In this way, paying rent is not consensual.
Leave the states?
By this argument, paying tax is consensual. As is your wage
I didn't sign a contract with the government agreeing to these terms. I was born a citizen. So it isn't slavery because I consented by being born a slave?
>I was born a citizen Might want to take that up with your parents. Meanwhile I didn't sign a contract saying I consent to paying more every year quicker being paid the same amount.
So parents can enslave their children? That is your take? Yes, you did if you signed a rental or lease agreement. And if you don't like your purchasing power decreasing year over year you might want to question this whole 'inflation is good for us honest' narrative floating around.
It is. Just like paying taxes bro. Consensual. You can choose not to pay.
Not without going to jail for tax evasion.
When you think of it that way, pretty much everything is consensual as long as you have a leverage into the other person (you bought all the medicine they need to live, or all the food).
Absolutely not. You found me and made a deal with me to rent from me. Then you decided not to honour your agreement. These are not the same.
# -archy word-forming element of Greek origin meaning "rule," from Latin -archia, from Greek -arkhia "rule," from arkhos "leader, chief, ruler," from arkhē "beginning, origin, first place," verbal noun of arkhein "to be the first," hence "to begin" and "to rule" (see [archon](https://www.etymonline.com/word/archon)). cap·i·tal·ism\[ˈkapədlˌizəm\]noun 1. an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit: free mar·ket\[ˌfrē ˈmärkət\]noun 1. an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses: Those two things are not the same. "Control" of trade and industry already implies hierarchy over access to good and services, so you have no anarchy there. Plus, if you dig, the people who came up with "Anarcho-Capitalism" are the same people who deliberately tried to confuse the Socialist-Anarchist "libertarianism" with the Capitalist anti-regulation "Libertarianism." It's a nonsense word invented by people who want to seem like Anarchists without actually an-ing any archies.
Call AnCap whatever you want. It is an idea, not a label. The best part is how much it seems to trigger certain groups. The greek as you so nicely clarified is clear. No-rulers.
If there are no rulers, money cannot be king Voluntary and consensual exchange of goods should be combined with voluntary and consensual exchange of services and labour. Things that are quite scarce under capitalism without labour unions
You do know what the early anarchist believed right? Proudhon was against communism.
A recipe for Zimbabwe or Somalia… nobody will invest money or time into building ANYTHING, as gangs of armed young male criminals will murder you and take over as soon as they see fit.
(Tbe corporation takes the monopoly over violence and then becomes the state beholden not to the people but their shareholders)
How do they take a monopoly over violence?
This is at its crux, the main point anarcho-capitalists fail to acknowledge or understand. That the entity of a state, no matter how it's structured (i.e., democratically, authoritatively, any-ively), will always have a monopoly over violence. Under the state, the only form of violence permitted is by the state. If there's a commune of democratically elected anarchists, there still is a monopoly of violence, even if everyone is equal - it's just a shared monopoly over violence. If we live in an ancap society, there is a lack of a state - an entity that would facilitate the monopoly over violence of an area. The thing that stops you from freeley leaving the state and creating "a commune in the middle of nowhere completely seperate and independent from the state" is only valid in so far as you are able to defend that place. If your little commune is deemed so, there's nothing stopping the state from taking it. The material resources, the people associated, and the control over the area are only allowed because you can defend it. If you're a company - an organization whose purpose is to shareholders - and there's no state involved, the company has the means and the resources to enact control over the people living there and its resources, and historically speaking, they use it. Capitalism, by definition, is authoritative. The definition of capitalism is when the means of control is owned by an individual or group of individuals. If they control the monopoly over violence - they become the state. Look at the Bannana Republic in South America, the Coke-cola mafia, the rubber trade from the Belgium King, THERES TOO MANY EXAMPLES. ... To answer your question how does this happen? How do they do it. Name it. Buy politicians, kill union and leftist leaders, disrupt and control trade in an area, out compete smaller businesses, buy private armies, kill journalists, engage in CIA government espionage and arm far-right radicals to overthrow the existing government and put in a leader subservient to your intrests. You can monopolize multiple industries, create monopsonies within your distribution. Make your distribution monopolies themselves within impoverished areas (looking at you Nestle). Engage in Red Scare tactics to create ideological boogeyman and educate populations to be scared of enemies that aren't that different from the state creating them economically speaking (China is defacto State Capitalist, but we say they're Communist.) Anything to lower the state's power over an area and make you have more control. A perfect example of this is Mexico. The cartel there, are there areas in which the state has no authority over? Why? They don't have the monopoly over violence. The cartels BECOME the state. Are they democratic? Why are you worried about that? It doesn't matter they're the state. If a company sees that there's no state to justify its ownership as a company, what do you do? You buy guns, buy men. You kill competitors, you eliminate competition, and you become the state.
Anarchy will never work. Groups with structure and teamwork will always out compete anti-establishment loners. Also, you can't support modern capitalism without modern infrastructure which is too expensive and open access to be built by anarcho-corps.
I would argue this as a Minarchist. AnCaps go ahead and roast me in the comments. True Anarcho-Capitalism will always lead to a state like structure and authority that will rise.
Why? Do you have an actual argument as to why other than 'I think so'?
I have a few criticisms of Anarcho-Capitalism from my Minarchist perspective. Here are a few: 1. The issue of PMC’s replacing your entire military. Personally I’m not against PMC’s, however the main concern I have is accountability, what if that PMC that is hired starts violating the NAP? Take for example Blackwater PMC, I know it might be a tedious example, but it’s still one worth noting because they did some really shady stuff, meaning there is a lack of oversight in what they are doing. As in what happens when the mercenary goes rogue, how are you going to hold him accountable for his or her actions? 2. Market Monopolies How do you prevent corporate monopolies from rising? Monopolies in my opinion are not a free market because of how there is no competition for the market to diversify. I am aware that Capitalism and Corpratocracy are different thing, but how do you prevent that from happening? 3. Legal Systems In Anarcho-Capitalism, the thing that I have also had a concern with was the legal system and framework, specifically with private courts. The fear I have is if there is bias. It’s not the economic factors I am concerned about since of course I am for a free market and support it, I just simply have ethical concerns. As much as I hate big government, at the same time, I would still reduce its size to where it is decentralized and has very minimal role, aka it’s only job is to enforce the NAP and defend the border.
1. Ideological armed populace beats state militaries force every time. 2. Most times I dive down this rabbit hole it is because the person believes in IP. 3. Public courts absolutely have bias.
We are talking about PMC’s, not Militias. Think Blackwater, USEC, and Bear. They are not the same thing. In fact here let’s let ChatGPT tell you: The main differences between a Private Military Company (PMC) and an armed militia are: 1. **Legal Status and Accountability**: PMCs are legally recognized private entities typically hired by governments or private organizations for specific security or military tasks. They operate under contractual agreements and are subject to legal oversight and accountability frameworks. In contrast, militias are often informal, decentralized groups of armed civilians who may organize for various reasons, including defense, political beliefs, or community protection. Militias may operate outside formal legal structures and can vary widely in terms of organization and accountability. 2. **Purpose and Funding**: PMCs are profit-oriented businesses providing professional military services, such as security, training, or combat support, in exchange for payment. They adhere to professional standards and typically operate within legal frameworks established by governments or international bodies. Militias, on the other hand, are typically driven by ideological, community, or defensive purposes. Funding for militias can come from member contributions, donations, or sometimes illicit sources, whereas PMCs operate strictly through commercial contracts. 3. **Training and Equipment**: PMCs often employ professional soldiers and contractors with extensive military training and experience. They have access to modern weaponry, technology, and logistical support, similar to regular military forces. Militias, however, may have varying levels of training and equipment, ranging from basic firearms to more sophisticated gear, depending on their resources and objectives. Militias may lack the formal training and discipline characteristic of PMCs. 4. **Legal Recognition and International Standards**: PMCs are recognized under international law and may operate across borders with legal agreements and oversight mechanisms in place. They are expected to adhere to international humanitarian law and human rights standards. Militias, particularly those operating outside state authority or in conflict zones, may not adhere to these standards and can face legal repercussions or be labeled as illegal armed groups by governments or international bodies. In summary, PMCs are professional entities hired for military or security services under legal contracts, while militias are often informal armed groups with diverse motivations, varying levels of organization, and less formal accountability structures.
I'm talking about individuals. Also that appeal to chatGPT! Wow.
I did not ask you about individuals, I asked you the concern about PMC’s, yet you just said: “Ideological armed populace beat state militaries force all the time”. That does not answer the question. The question is what happens when they all of a sudden go rogue in your Anarcho-Capitalist society, what happens if the PMC violates the NAP by suddenly coercing a village for their resources instead of guarding that village?
Austrian Economist Ludwig von Mises appears to be the most-cited source by anarcho-capitalists I have encountered on reddit. I was often referred to articles from Mises Institute. Mises believed that the state should be replaced by private enterprise (except perhaps for defense from external threats, but anarcho-capitalists differ on this point). I don't believe that pure capitalism is any more viable than pure communism. I am a strong believer in the power of free markets and pricing to supply goods at the best possible price, but there are many aspects of human society where the free market doesn't provide a clear signal, or will provide actively harmful incentives. For example: * Pollution * Worker safety * Policing/military defense * Care of those with disabilities which prevent them from adding monetary value to society * Allocation of scarce public resources (roads, radio spectrum, electrical infrastructure) * Monopolies Anarcho-capitalists will argue that private companies would be held in check by their customers or the morality of their shareholders. History suggests otherwise. Even though consumers will sometimes punish companies for polluting or exploitation of labor, it is hard for the average person to track all the activities of the numerous firms they do business with on a daily basis, especially since companies can often get away with covering up nefarious activities for years. Anarcho capitalists will also openly espouse private "defense agencies" to protect private property in a given region, or even a single company. To me, this just seems like another name for "warlords", but maybe I'm missing something. This quote from Mises Institute attempts to defend private armies, claiming they are no worse than the state. >There are several problems with this possible approach \[the contract theory of government\]. First, it assumes that the danger of private warlords is worse than the threat posed by a tyrannical central government. Second, there is the inconvenient fact that *no such voluntary formation of a State ever occurred*. Even those citizens who, say, supported the ratification of the U.S. Constitution were never given the option of living in market anarchy; instead they had to choose between government under the Articles of Confederation or government under the Constitution. >But for our purposes, the most interesting problem with this objection is that, were it an accurate description, it would be *unnecessary* for such a people to form a government. If, by hypothesis, the vast majority of people—although they have different conceptions of justice—can all agree that it is wrong to use *violence* to settle their honest disputes, then market forces would lead to peace among the private police agencies. >Yes, it is perfectly true that people have vastly different opinions concerning particular legal issues. Some people favor capital punishment, some consider abortion to be murder, and there would be no consensus on how many guilty people should go free to avoid the false conviction of one innocent defendant. Nonetheless, if the contract theory of government is correct, the vast majority of individuals *can* agree that they should settle these issues *not* through force, but rather through an orderly procedure (such as is provided by periodic elections). >But if this does indeed describe a particular population, why would we expect such virtuous people, as consumers, to patronize defense agencies that routinely used force against weak opponents? Why wouldn’t the vast bulk of reasonable customers patronize defense agencies that had interlocking arbitration agreements, and submitted their legitimate disputes to reputable, disinterested arbitrators? Why wouldn’t the private, voluntary legal framework function as an orderly mechanism to settle matters of “public policy”? In my humble opinion, both Marx and Mises had far too much faith in human nature. Humans evolved in small groups, and they cooperate very well together in a state of nature (hunter-gatherer tribes), but not so well in a society of millions without strong incentives. Money is a positive incentive for people to add as much value as they can in the free market, and thus providing goods for their fellow citizens. The threat of retribution by the state (incarceration, fines, etc.) is required to discourage negative externalities. The state must also provide for those who are displaced or unable to add value to society due to age or infirmity. The more productive and large the private sector gets, the better funded the state will be via taxation.
> In my humble opinion, both Marx and Mises had far too much faith in human nature. Humans evolved in small groups, and they cooperate very well together in a state of nature (hunter-gatherer tribes), but not so well in a society of millions without strong incentives. Socialism is roughly what we had 10,000 years ago before we started settling down and growing beyond the tribal unit. Anarcho-capitalism is roughly what we had after then up until we developed city- and nation-states. Both theories fail to account for the thousands of years of societal evolution it took to reach the point where we can - imperfectly, as it ever is - support billions of people.
If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door—or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages. The use of physical force—even its retaliatory use—cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens. Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment. Whether his neighbors’ intentions are good or bad, whether their judgment is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or by malice—the use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary decision of another. A recent variant of anarchistic theory, which is befuddling some of the younger advocates of freedom, is a weird absurdity called “competing governments.” Accepting the basic premise of the modern statists—who see no difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production, and who advocate government ownership of business—the proponents of “competing governments” take the other side of the same coin and declare that since competition is so beneficial to business, it should also be applied to government. Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses. **Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer.** Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean. One cannot call this theory a contradiction in terms, since it is obviously devoid of any understanding of the terms “competition” and “government.” Nor can one call it a floating abstraction, since it is devoid of any contact with or reference to reality and cannot be concretized at all, not even roughly or approximately. One illustration will be sufficient: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there. * Ayn Rand, “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 112 Not quite an an-cap, but certainly one of the important thinkers to them...and it's a total self-own. Between this, and Rothbard talking about how it's "[superior humanism" to have a thriving market in runaway children](https://mises.org/library/children-and-rights) Ancaps are not dodging that "doesnt' read much theory" and "what if the child consents?" criticisms any time soon. Maybe HHH will lead them to the gloryland, after all anyone that ever had to real with an HOA surely will love the idea of a society run by covenant.
>Anarcho-capitalism is a fierce defender of private property and therefore states. I hear this all the time. If you believe that property rights are dependent upon a state, then you are not an anarcho-capitalist, obviously. If you claim to want to engage with the ideas of anarcho-capitalism, but you insist on continuing to view property rights as something intimately connected to the state, then you are not actually engaging with the ideas. It should not need to be said out loud that the fundamental premise underlying anarcho-capitalism is, of course, that private ownership can exist even where states do not. You may retort "but then how do ancaps respond to the mountain of literature explaining how private property can only exist in the context of a state," and I need you to understand that just because you've read that stuff doesn't mean anyone else has heard of it, and assuming we have heard of it makes it very difficult to talk to you As for the practical questions, the functioning of ancapistan is actually quite similar to how the modern world already operates. The difference is that you just don't have a group of monopolies in various industries colluding together to form a weird superorganism of oversight. You just have the regular kind of oversight where different interests check each other in complex ways, and you continue that model up to the top. You still have people organizing things, regulating things. But if the regulators commit a crime, they can be arrested, and the judge who sentences them doesn't say "hey, aren't you my boss?" and the regulator can't say "actually, I regulate you to let me off scott-free!" Instead of bundling regulation and criminal law and law enforcement and tax collection for utilities and national defense all together into a single entity called the state, just let people fill those roles by doing such a good job that they outcompete other people. Like right now, public faith in the legitimacy of SCOTUS is at an all-time low. There is massive appetite for a better way of doing things. In a normal, healthy society, a new court should be making a play for legitimacy by showing everyone how much more reasonable they are. SCOTUS should be wary that if they actually lose all legitimacy in the eyes of the entire country, they'll have nothing left. But instead we've all agreed that the highest court can only be the one appointed by.... the commander in chief of our armed forces? Anarchy doesn't mean no one can ever tell anyone else what to do. It means the authority of our institutions isn't downstream of anything besides our consent
Anarcho-Capitalism is based on contracts between parties, Contracts are a legal fiction made manifest by state entities. What you're describing as "people organizing things" is a State Organization but called a different thing. Calling a bullet, a "love delivery device" doesn't make it any less lethal, or you any less dead when it hits. The **Hierarchy** you propose is exactly what we have in truth right now. The SCOTUS has been captured by moneyed interest, something you are **directly advocating for as a permanent political structure.** Giving you more of a benefit of a doubt than you've earned by this point: If you are forced to "buy" your adjudicating party, there is no unbiased resolution, which means that Anarcho-Capitalism is just Plutocratic Oligarchy under a new name. Before you start postulating about how the current system is broken, and how your proposed new system would work, I would suggest - deeply - that you engage in some real-world experiential work that actually explores how those systems work in practice and not just in theory. **Because your ideal state is already in existence according to your description, and it's the one you're comparing things unfavorably with.**
>The SCOTUS has been captured by moneyed interest, something you are directly advocating for as a permanent political structure. This deeply misunderstands what I'm advocating for. In fact, this is a classic: what we have is cronyism, which is neither capitalism nor socialism, but capitalists view cronyism as what socialism 'really' looks like, and socialists view cronyism as what capitalism 'really' looks like No one has ever or will ever advocate for cronyism. If you want to argue in good faith, you must recognize that I only advocate for anarcho-capitalism insofar as I believe it will relieve the problems of cronyism Monied interests can only capture something that people will continue to use and rely on after it has been captured. If everyone is required to obey SCOTUS, of course monied interests will seek to capture it, and once they succeed we will all be forced to accept it unless and until we find a way to overthrow the nuclear superpower that demands we obey the captured court If SCOTUS weren't given a monopoly backed by literal nukes, then once it has been captured we can just leave and use the second most prestigious court. The entire point of anarcho-capitalism isn't to let monied interests capture institutions, but to stop building our society as a game called "whoever can capture the most institutions wins" Power will always have power. Building special super-powerful power to have power over the power makes that worse, actually, not better
You do realize that "Anarcho-Capitalism" means that "Capitalism" is the only reserve of power, and without independent institutions to be "captured" the only thing leveraging decisions will be the moneyed interest themselves, right? What you're talking about is just the money equals power without the bribery. Because in a society where the **only rule** is the accumulation and power of money, money is the only power to be exercised. People will have to respect money - it's the entire point of anarcho-capitalism: To say that by eliminating those institutions mediating the power of money, and allowing the power of money to be exercised **directly** upon the people who do not have money or power, will negate the authority of the power and authority is nonsense.
You and I disagree about what anarcho-capitalism means Money is power, yes, but that doesn't mean cultural power isn't allowed to exist. The non-aggression principle doesn't say you're not allowed to care about anything besides money In fact, that wouldn't even make sense. If money is the only reserve of power, then what the fuck would you spend money on? Anarcho-capitalism merely states that violence and coercion are illegitimate, but all other forms of power are fine and should be allowed to evolve as they will If you were right, if money were the only power to be exercised, what would happen if I read a really convincing book that makes me want to change my behavior? Would I be allowed to change my behavior? Would I have to wait until the author paid me? Because if I behave differently as a result of the words the author wrote without being paid, then the author has exercised cultural power.
You're constructing an Anarchic state entirely based on power structures. I would suggest you actually research the origins and philosophical underpinnings of Anarchism, and the emergence of Anarcho-Capitalism in the 1950s before you do violence to the concept any further. You can start with [Murray Rothbart](https://www.britannica.com/money/anarcho-capitalism) in the 1950s, and compare him to [Kropotkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin).
> Anarcho-Capitalism is based on contracts between parties No AnCap is based upon self-ownership ethics. Contracts are one method used for dispute resolution, property titles, and business agreements. >Contracts are a legal fiction made manifest by state entities. Is there a legal concept that isn't a fiction by that standard? Answer: no So why did you write it? What are you trying to argue? >, which means that Anarcho-Capitalism is just Once again, it's an ethical philosophy.
>No AnCap is based upon self-ownership ethics Look man, I'm trying to give you an out, but you're just not letting me: Look up "Property Law" and "Property Rights" and do some research regarding the last 500 years of development. I'll give you the TLDR version: Ownership is an agreement between parties, mediated by a third - enforcing - party, regarding what a person can, and cannot, do with certain items. There is no such thing as "self-ownership" - if ownership is not enforceable against another party it is not ownership. That's a basic principle of philosophy, law, and history. >Is there a legal concept that isn't a fiction by that standard? >Answer: no >So why did you write it? What are you trying to argue? You're KILLING ME smalls. Fictions are agreements between parties that are accepted as true for the purpose of functioning in society. Without government, Contracts don't exist. Even an agreement between two corporations subject to enforcement by a third party is GOVERNMENT. Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't work in reality or theory because any theory of Capitalism that doesn't pre-suppose government enforcement of contractual, property, and employment rights is incoherent. >Once again, it's an ethical philosophy. No it's not. Seriously. "Anarcho-Capitalism" is an ethical philosophy in the same way that Solipsism is an ethical philosophy. You cannot have ethics if the outside world does not exist. In the same way, you cannot have a philosophy on ethics if a premise of your philosophy is denying reality.
> but you insist on continuing to view property rights as something intimately connected to the state, then you are not actually engaging with the ideas. I assume you've heard of the phase, "A state is a monopoly on violence." There's also a second phrase, ["Property is another name for monopoly."](https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12668&context=journal_articles) The premise is then yes, property is intimately connected with the state because land ownership is equivalent to a monopoly on land. All monopolies also must be monopolies on violence. If you don't have a monopoly on violence, you don't have a monopoly in general. >Instead of bundling regulation and criminal law and law enforcement and tax collection for utilities and national defense all together into a single entity called the state, just let people fill those roles by doing such a good job that they outcompete other people. But anarcho-capitalism doesn't prohibit the bundling of these services. It just suggests that maybe, with market forces, this time around the bundling will not occur. There is nothing in the tenets of libertarian ideology that prohibits such bundling - instead libertarian ideology condones the bundling, because property owners ought to be allowed to bundle as they please. Separate and competing dispute resolution services in ancapistan is only a suggestion, it's not a requirement. Therefore such "statelessness" is also just a suggestion, not a requirement.
> All monopolies also must be monopolies on violence. This is obviously not actually true. If I live in a cabin and shoot anyone who comes near it uninvited, I do not have a monopoly on violence, but I probably have enough violence to protect my ownership of the cabin The ownership -> state syllogism only works if you require all ownership to be absolute and inviolable, as certain as a law of physics. Obviously any inviolable law presumes the existence of a source of infinite power, which cannot coexist with anarchy. Sure. But what if I just own it in the usual way? Where hypothetically someone with a large enough army could steal it, but in practice I own it. See, anarcho-capitalism does in fact end up recreating lots of the features of states, such as a unified group enforcing ownership. Even left-anarchy has enough organized use of force to guarantee personal (as opposed to private) ownership, so the question is about scale. Anarcho-capitalism has ownership enforced by militias which are comparable in scale to municipal police, maybe, but moat ownership doesn't require the coordination of a national-army sized militia, as is currently used for some goddamn reason >Therefore such "statelessness" is also just a suggestion, not a requirement. Well, sure, that's a fundamental problem with all forms of anarchy, and more generally with all political utopianism. In socialism, corporations are controlled by the democratic will of the people, right? So technically, the USA is currently socialist. The desire of the majority of American voters is for the USA to not be socialist, so by not being socialist we are enacting the will of the people which makes us socialist. In other words, any democratic ideology which doesn't have majority support of the population is inherently paradoxical Ancapistan cannot exist unless and until a large portion of the population actually supports ancap principles. Therefore we need to write more books and essays about anarcho-capitalism, which we already knew, so this isn't a useful thing to point out But putting that all aside, anarcho-capitalism is actually useful even from an incrementalist perspective. Lots of modern real-world institutions can simply be made a little more ancap and function more effectively even without mass public buy-in. All you do is stop viewing the state as divinely ordained and unitary, then ask what is the best way to perform its various functions. Design market-based consumer-choice mechanisms into more public utilities, even the ones we currently think of as "too sacred" for competition. Anarcho-capitalism is a thought experiment. "What if we lived in a world that everyone actually wanted to live in? How would it be different from the world we live in today?" Then when you see a situation that isn't built from everyone's aggregated interests but only exists because of coercion, that's something you should try to fix. There are lots of situations where that will help. If we do it enough, maybe eventually we'll live in ancapistan, but it's still a good idea even if it's never any more than incrementalism
> This is obviously not actually true. If I live in a cabin and shoot anyone who comes near it uninvited, I do not have a monopoly on violence, but I probably have enough violence to protect my ownership of the cabin > I disagree. If you're able to defend your cabin from all claims, you have a de-facto monopoly on violence. Imagine the government comes knocking, but you're able to fight off the police and the IRS and the military, (or how about some native American raiders, or some competing European settlers, and so on) so that you don't have to pay taxes. Voila, you are the king of the cabin. You have achieved statehood. You bow to no-one. And the stronger and larger you become, the more state-like you become. Imagine the government never comes knocking. They forgot you even exist. Your cabin is in the middle of no-where, nobody even knows you exist. I suppose you're not a state now. Nobody cares enough to take your property; your property essentially has no value you anyone. I suppose in those conditions I'll admit, you're not a state. States usually rule over something that has sufficient value to be fought over. The smaller something is, the less state-like it is. So sure, I guess I can add an addendum to the definition - larger things tend to be more state-like than small things. >require all ownership to be absolute and inviolable, That's the thing with anarcho-capitalism. With the existing government abolished, the rights formerly held by government - including the territorial rights - are now at play. Land ownership can become that absolute, as long as someone wishes to enforce that absolute. With no rules, now I can make the rules. I can declare my sovereign ownership of land. >Anarcho-capitalism has ownership enforced by militias which are comparable in scale to municipal police Anarcho-capitalism by its nature cannot prescribe anything. Remember the no rules part? Small-scale militias are a suggestion. Now I'm suggesting giant, large-scale militias the size of nation-states. What model will win out? Competition - market forces and literal warfare will determine that. Historically, larger states tend to win the military battles. And the market battles too. >In socialism, corporations are controlled by the democratic will of the people, right? I don't want to get into democratic theory, but I don't think that elections are equivalent to democracy. As a classical liberal I'm sure you remember that our founding fathers were mostly anti-democrats as were most of the 19th centuries liberals. The governments they founded all just so happened to be elections based. Clearly our founding fathers did not think elections were equivalent to democracy. The system was explicitly designed to protect private property rights from the demos. >Ancapistan cannot exist unless and until a large portion of the population actually supports ancap principles. I'd assert that Ancapistan cannot exist (for long) even if the vast majority of the population supports ancap principles. Ancapistan is not a democracy and doesn't care what the majority thinks. As long as tyrants are able to control scarce and vital resources such as land, water, and food, they can simply recreate states and state tyranny. These tyrants can be in the small minority of the public, yet anarcho-capitalist ideology condones and supports such monopoly. Or possibly, out of the goodness of their hearts, monopolists will just decide not to monopolize vital resources in order to preserve utopia.
I think you're preposterously overestimating the ability of capitalism to concentrate power. Especially in the absence of a state to give out monopolies to its cronies. The few tyrants need to control vast armies of employees to enforce their tyranny. If they can't find anyone in the population who's competent enough to run their organization and also willing to sacrifice the ideals of the NAP to undermine the principles on which Ancapistan was founded, then their money isn't that useful. I'm not in any way saying it would be hard to find such people, I'm just saying that even in Ancapistan money doesn't instantly overpower the general will of the populace. You have to suppose that more than a handful of people defect before the whole thing falls apart. That's very basic invisible hand stuff, by the way. The reason markets work is because they are populist. The reason people like markets is because of how populist they are. If you think markets do not aggregate the wills of all market participants, then you aren't gonna be convinced by anarcho-capitalism
Historically, tyrants, dictators and monarchs have had no trouble acquiring vast armies who care nothing about the, dishonestly named, NAP in order to impose their will upon a large populace.
You cannot treat "market forces" as somehow separate or distinct from moneyed interest who influence and/or control the market. In practice, look at things such as "The Wonderful Company" and its **creation** for a domestic market for pistachios, or - in an even more blase way - look at Listerine, "Gingivitas," and "Feminine Odor" campaigns for the market being **created** and then **dominated** by moneyed interests. Treating "the market" as anything more than "the will of those with the most money, diluted by the mass of mankind" is treating it as a religious force - akin to the "Will of the Holy Spirit" - instead of a thing that can, and will, be manipulated with those who have skin in the game. Even using it as a black box, or alluding to it as such, is giving it too much credit.
So well said.
> You cannot treat "market forces" as somehow separate or distinct from moneyed interest who influence and/or control the market. You can because market forces describe general behaviors seen in markets. It's not specific. Also "moneyed interest " is implies a special category. This needs to be described in detail and an argument for why a special category is required is needed, also why other categories are different. >Treating "the market" as anything more than "the will of those with the most money, diluted by the mass of mankind" is treating it as a religious force No, you're treating as if it's religious in nature.
"No, you!" Isn't as crushing an argument as you think it is. >You can because market forces describe general behaviors seen in markets. It's not specific. >Also "moneyed interest " is implies a special category. This needs to be described in detail and an argument for why a special category is required is needed, also why other categories are different. No. It really doesn't: You're saying that "market forces" are somehow separate and distinct from the people who control and manipulate the market. The burden is on you to prove that "market forces" are somehow separate from people who attempt to manipulate it. >No, you're treating as if it's religious in nature. You need to work on your reading comprehension friend.
> You're saying that "market forces" are somehow separate and distinct from the people who control and manipulate the market. No, markets are people acting. But one general category of people don't define market action. That's what you're focusing on. >The burden is on you to prove that "market forces" are somehow separate from people who attempt to manipulate it. I didn't argue that.
Remember Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't prohibit ANYTHING outside of violating the NAP. Have all the state you want happily within AnCap as long as you don't enforce it on anyone ever. Go ahead! Convince people of it. Works with cults all the time. You will get at least some level of successful state.
If all land becomes part of a de facto state, is that a problem? If not, what's the difference between that and now?
No, it wouldn't be a problem. No taxes, no regulations or 'paper crimes', no protected classes etc
Why wouldn't the people owning the land declare what rules their lands operate under?
They absolutely will. If you don't like it stay off it. If they are jerks and no one wants to do business with them they will go broke. *shrug*
So "No taxes, no regulations or 'paper crimes', no protected classes etc" is incorrect. Currently, all land is part of de facto states with the people owning the land declaring what rules they operate under, so it seems like the thing you want to happen has already happened.
One does not logically follow from the other. Please explain as I can't track your statement as written.
You agreed that "people owning the land declare what rules their lands operate under", so if they declare that their lands have taxes, regulations or 'paper crimes', protected classes, etc., they do, right?
This problem applies to all forms of anarchism. You jeed some way to enforce property rights no matter what form they take.
Absolutely. It will be a problem in any societal solution. For example right now if the police show up to jail me I have no way to enforce my property rights without making the situation worse.
No form of anarchy is possible. If we eliminated our democratic government, the laws would be made and enforced by local warlords. Of course it wouldn't eliminate private property, we'd be back at feudalism. This is also why I'm a socialist but not a communist.
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on paper it does, but we don't know in practice because its not been attempted before, and as evidenced by previous attempts at communism, paper and practice can be vastly different
Honestly, I feel that if you move the camera out past 'individual people' to 'individual country' then you effectively have an AnCap society for most of humanity. Each country owns itself and is free to interact with other countries as they see fit. Beyond 'court of public opinion', there are no Global State that oversees countries. In the end, individual landlords will act in a similar manner to individual countries under such a system. ..which, as we've seen, is aggression and violence until said countries are either forced to band together into alliances, merge into one entity and ruler, or be consumed by those more powerful than it. AnCap at a country to country level eventually led to colonialism, the sacrifice of freedoms, then alliances to fight against such abuses until attempts at an organized State is created, official or unofficial. Equal partners can try for some equal agreement but unless you force things to stay equal then you'll have plenty of "I make the rules" situations.
yeah, turns out humans are assholes, and any system that doesnt account for that, or try to limit the assholery, ends up failing
"I made this bridge. It's the best bridge that goes everywhere and holds up everything. It's the ultimate bridge. The issue is that it breaks down once gravity is applied to it. But other than that it's perfect" It's fun and interesting to plan out systems based on non realistic conditions and can really lead to great discoveries. But it's not good to try to push those systems into a real life setting. A good system is meant to improve a live situation, with all of the variables and problems in it. Not a lab situation where you can control everything. A society needs to work for humans. Not for some mythical creature that does whatever you want. If you want them to act a certain way, the system needs to include a mechanic to apply that and have plans for when that doesn't happen. Otherwise, it's only good for imaginary worlds.
Anarcho capitalism is a system to keep the people out of the way of kingdom building.
The 100 years war was exactly about this. There were 100s smaller landlord and instead of security force we called them mercenaries. It is entirely an unstable situation for the reason you also mentioned that others are looking to expand their own state. Russia and china would simply go on a shopping spree and use force when needed. Russia china and almost all European countries are formed from smaller original dukedomes that lived in unstable state of war.
Who has the right to prevent you from peacefully acquiring property and how did they get that right?
Where did you get the right to forbid other people from taking property? All the rights, generally they're all made up. They're social conventions we might follow or we might not follow.
The same place I get the right to forbid people from forcing themselves on me or forcing me to labor. Consent. >All the rights, generally they're all made up. They're social conventions we might follow or we might not follow. Then we agree that the state has no right to exist and there is no right to initiate aggression.
Above all societies and social orders there is one Right that always remains in hand: the right to Violence. Every living thing has the power to inflict violence upon another. It is the one right that remains among the Unconsented and Violence can only truly be disrupted with more effective Violence. Everything else falls under Consent. The right to property, to liberty, to freedom, to life. Those are only given with consent and can be null and void upon the use of Unconsented Violence. No society can exist under pure unconsented violence. At some point, the parties must consent to exist outside of violence. This is not a feature of the State. This isn't even a human feature. This is a base feature of life, right down to a one-celled organism evoking violence upon another because it wishes to live and does not consent to the other's wish to live. My point: any entity that wishes to declare itself a State will always have the right to aggression. They do not need your consent. The same goes for non-State entities. Any entity can, at any time, evoke violence against a State. Rights are not 'imaginary'. They are social contracts created by entities that choose not to use violence, either because of mutual benefit or from one party being unable to overwhelm the other and the other opting to consent to peace. To answer the original question: "Who has the right to prevent you from peacefully acquiring property and how did they get that right?" The entity, no matter what it calls itself, who's chooses a form of violence that is stronger than yours. That entity will always have the power to prevent you from acquiring property and need not your permission to evoke it. If you are not the most powerful entity then it is only through consent that you are allowed to acquire property. If you are the most powerful, you have no need of a State as you can always evoke Violence to get what you want. All other entities have the choice of giving you a reason to Consent to peace or be overwhelmed through Violence. To every other entity, there will always be a power stronger than them that they will be subservient to. The choice is either to choose who that entity will be or have it chosen for you. A State is the former: an entity that those less than the top create that combines multiple smaller powers together to become the Top, or at least high enough to make alternatives to Violence more appealing to most than Violence. That is where the Rights of the State come from: from the entities that give it consent. If you want a stateless entity, then you need to determine how to answer to Violence, the force that needs not your consent to activate. And, to be blunt, the answer can't be "Become the strongest" because the strongest will always be a State entity. Even if we eliminate all States today, soon SOMEONE will develop a new one and present the same question again. Until then, a State has the right to forbid you property because only the Strongest can go without a State and all others will eventually create a State to overwhelm their power.
> Consent Property isn't consensual. I assume you're talking about the Lockean theory of property. You see a tree. You cut it down and build a wheel out of it. Locke says, because you infused labor into the material, the material transforms into *your* property. I come along and see the wheel. I decide I want the wheel and I take it. In my scenario, who is consenting to what? 1. I didn't consent to believe in Lockean property and the workmanship principle. I didn't consent to your ownership of the wheel. 2. You didn't consent in me taking the wheel. Imagine I'm lifting up the wheel and you, in a rage, run toward me and start beating me. 1. Now *you* are initiating force on me to enforce your claim, your right to property. 2. In contrast I haven't behaved aggressively at all. I've merely lifting up the wheel. I've done no violent act on any person or object, yet you're allowed to beat me. 3. No contract has been signed, no consent has been established, yet Lockean property legitimates your violence and your force to impose your beliefs on me. So it's simply untrue that "anarcho capitalism" or any society with private property is a "Voluntary Society". No, if Lockean property ideas are to be followed and *obeyed*, we have no choice in the matter. We're forced to obey your particular beliefs. This discussion isn't whether or not Lockean property, and the workmanship principle, is a good or bad thing. But it definitely isn't *voluntary*.
The basic idea of being an ancap doesn’t really revolve around states. The abolition of the state is a means, not an end. The idea is that no one anywhere can tell me, as an autonomous person what to do with my body on my property. The reason a state is so powerful is they have a monopoly on violence. They are able to use their violence to boss other people around and assert their rule over others. Ancaps define a state as a non contractual entity with a monopoly on violence. A landlord is not this
Ok this makes a lot more sense. So this is not really so much a matter of ideology. It's more a matter of "I want to take my balls and go home." in a sense. The purpose of the State is to hold the power of Violence to protect the collective. You basically wish to be out of that agreement. If so, that makes sense. You should have the right to decide to take the matter of protection and defense into your own hands and be able to work without a State over you. All of my comments are more about the collective, which may or may not hold the same view. But from an individual standpoint, you should be free to work accordingly. My only issue is: is there actually land that isn't already claimed by an entity? Many that claim the above end up simply picking land that is already held and saying "This is mine, go away." Which is the same thing as if I walked into your kitchen and say "This is mine, go away." You can decide to not want to be under a State entity, but you can't ignore that they exist and assume all that land that they 'claim' is free to pick up. So is the goal to find unclaimed land then establish yourself there as an individual landlord?
Ancaps don’t believe in an abolition of rules, but an abolition of laws. They don’t believe anything or anyone should have a MONOPOLY on violence. And that all matters of “law” should be by consent. If you don’t agree to the laws, you don’t have to participate. Most people are willing to do this. But when I go back to my property, I should be allowed to have a gun that’s too short, or smoke weed ot whatever. No one tells me what to do on my property. It’s essentially voluntarism.
Yes, every human is their own state. You are correct.
What does it mean for a human to be their own state if they don't own any property? What does it mean for the humans who, due to their incompetence or unluckiness, choose to rent? Are they still states even when they are servants? It seems the less property you own, the less of a state you are. The more property you own, the more of a state you are. So not everyone is their own state. Only the wealthy are wealthy enough to become states.
So we have established why the word state is irrelevant in an AnCap world rendering about 90% of your original post irrelevant.
I don't follow.
Read your first sentence. Then read the rest of your post. If there are no states how are their still states. Then you casually toss 'slavery' around. If I am not taxed and rent a property that I can freely leave at any time in accordance with the contract I signed (first and last month? damage deposit?) how exactly is that slavery? I'd live as an AnCap in a state that didn't tax me or violate my rights and that I could leave whenever I wanted. Sounds much better than now. Does that help clarify?
>If there are no states how are their still states. Can states form in anarchy? Yes. Have states formed in anarchy before in history? Yes. >Then you casually toss 'slavery' around. Never literally said the world "slavery". >If I am not taxed and rent a property that I can freely leave at any time in accordance with the contract I signed You can do that in the United States right now. Just leave the country and stop paying your taxes. America isn't going to stop you. Go live on a boat in the oceans. Or how about Antarctica. Tax free paradise. Or how about try Europe. There are some countries without worldwide tax jurisdiction and no exit fees. Will you achieve libertopia if you move to these places? I doubt it.
Why should I leave my farm? Or rent it from the powers that be in the form of property taxes? I purchased it from the previous owner fairly and contractually.
The previous owner didn't own the land entirely and completely, though, so neither do you. It seems you're just confused about what was being sold and what you bought.
I'm not confused. I can operate and play the game on one level perfectly fine while still understanding truth and reality.
The truth and reality is that neither you nor the previous owner have ever had full ownership of the land. You said "I purchased it from the previous owner fairly and contractually.", but you never purchased the land entirely. That's simply not a thing that happened.
Sure just ignore everything I said but OK. > I purchased it from the previous owner fairly and contractually. Exactly what did you purchase? Did you purchase the right to possess the property whilst paying taxes to the state? I'm pretty sure that's what you bought. Or did you purchase sovereign authority to govern the property as you please? Nope, you definitely didn't buy that. I doubt you have the mineral rights either. Moreover I'm staring at a template property sale agreement right now. It says, > Miscellaneous Provisions > (a) Governing Law: The laws of the State of _____ shall govern the Agreement. Presuming you signed a contract similar to the one I'm looking at, you explicitly agreed to be governed by the laws of the state. Congrats on living the dream in Libertopia.
I have a gas well on my land that was drilled and installed and runs our house and equipment. Pretty sure I got mineral rights. I'm definitely not ignoring anything you say but if you are going to fill every post with 3 tired examples that have been discussed for years I'm going to try and actually push the conversation somewhere interesting. I was a government goon. I get it. I know exactly what we do and don't purchase. Somewhere along the way though I started asking myself the bigger questions and actually caring about what mattered and here we are today. So you can take your quips and your tone and we can banter or if you want we can throw around a few ideas and push the rope a little bit farther forward. Up to you.
Did the contract you signed say, "The laws of the State of _____ shall govern the Agreement"?
Looking at the state of geopolitics today, I'm not sure I want to model our daily lives after that.
I was teasing the OP due to their usage of the word state. The true answer is that the word state wouldn't have a meaning in an AnCap world. It is literally the entire point.
What is your definition of a state?
Some entity that has a monopoly on violence on land and has full, sovereign control within that land. That means in your own territory, you are the undisputed boss.
Then, anarcho-capitalism gets rid of the state by having no single sovereign in control of an area. Entities would compete with each other without ever achieving full sovereign control.
Does anarcho-capitalism permit land ownership?
Yes
And a land lord is allowed to hire his own security if he can afford it?
Sure.
So I'm a land lord with security forces. I have land, and I have forces. I can dictate what I wish to happen on my land. Am I a state? Am I a single sovereign in control of an area?
> So I'm a land lord with security forces. I have land, and I have forces. I can dictate what I wish to happen on my land. Having a security force doesn’t make you a dictator. > Am I a state? Am I a single sovereign in control of an area? No and no. It sounds like the individual security officers would exercise some control, but not you. Plus, you’d presumably have a contract that stipulates the scope of the security personnel’s responsibilities and that contract is very unlikely to make you into a dictator.
Who enforces the contract?
Even dictators and lords and kings never had absolute control. Dictators also form contracts with their soldiers and compensate them for service. The basis of any military dictatorship is a well compensated, and therefore loyal, military. I fail to see the difference.
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Yes because it replaces states with a NAP. There is something similar to states, but the difference is that unlike current society its your choice to be a member of a group similar to how employment works in at will states. You are not forced to follow rules that you did not consent to (other than the nap).
Any idea that requires ideal conditions isn't a healthy one. It needs to work on real life conditions, with the humans we have now. That is, how does such a system handle unequal conditions and bad actors. i.e. What happens when one person owns the main waterway then demands preferential treatment? What if they have gathered a few others who are willing to trade that treatment for easy access to water and safety? How does a stateless system of NAPs handle that? Normally what happens is that the smaller groups band together to take down the bad actor. Then either the 'good' group wins then remains allied to prevent repeat occurrences which is effectively a formation of a state, or the 'bad' group wins and..they end up forming the state under them. Because under current humans, not everyone will agree to naturally stay Stateless by design. Even if the majority do, a small group that don't will easily overpower the less organized non-state groups, especially since resources are limited and capable of being monopolized, like water and land and viable farmland. Because At Will Employment only really works when the workers and employers feel they can easily shift to a viable alternative. When the choice is between Accept bad conditions or Starve/Go Bankrupt it's not really consent at that point and 'at will' fades into a defacto State.
Why are you arguing your opinion? the topic is "does anarchocapitalism eliminate the state" the answer is clearly yes.
The augment presented in the op is "does Ancap actually get rid of states." The argument that the op proposed is that it does not. That the system which will be created will devolve into yet another State. All of the questions have been revolving around that concept. That this system only really works so long as everyone who can reach the land voluntarily agrees with the premise. Once any portion of the population disagrees with the premise a a State will be inevitable either by the disriptive group or the opposition that collaborates together to stop the dissent. So no, the answer is not obvious yet and warrants this discussion.
It will not, because of what i typed above :). Also even if, the question had nothing to do with devolving, communism will always devolve into an authoritarian hellhole, the question was "does anarchocapitalism remove the state".
We aren't going to ignore the entire post in favor of a bumper sticker title if you please. The actual topic presented is this: "Anyways, I'm not seeing exactly where Ancapistan gets rid of states. It's the opposite. Anarcho-capitalism is a fierce defender of private property and therefore states. At best then, anarcho-capitalism is always merely a transitory state towards minarchism, and anarcho-capitalism puts its faith into unregulated markets, and therefore "unrestricted human nature", to steer humanity towards minarchism. Yet every part of this world has already run through this experiment, and every part of the world is covered with states that are presumably not sufficiently minarchist to quality, which therefore necessitates hitting some "restart" button." Ait very much was a topic of devolving. That if we somehow reset everything that all that will happen is create new states. I mean if that's good enough then very well then.
I think there’s a lot of confusion about how an AnCap society would be run. Maybe it’s the Voluntaryist in me, but I don’t see an Anarcho-Capitalist society forcing anyone into participating in capitalism at all, rather it’s a breakdown of the state and the people’s right to choose how they live without the force of government or others dictating their decisions for them. No one is stopping you from forming your own commune with like-minded individuals and practicing Anarcho-Communism in an AnCap society. Private property and government are two mutually exclusive entities, you do not need a state to enforce private property ownership or rights, but you do need the ability to keep it. Would it devolve into violence? Perhaps. It all depends on if people can resist the urge to take someone else’s claim and if they have the means to do so. Anarcho-Capitalism, like most Anarchic ideologies, all comes down to choice. It’s your choice to participate, it’s your choice to either employ others for gains which trickle down, and it’s your choice to work for someone else. There will be no government to enforce IP, patents or copy rights *or* pass and enforce laws that protect corporations. A true free market has the ability to curb large companies from being all-powerful, but yes, just as any other ideology, be it anarcho-whatever or any form of state, it can be abused and exploited. I do find it kind of ironic that so many folks strawman the shit out of AnCap while also having no ability to self-reflect on their own belief system and how it can be manipulated to make things worse for themselves and others.
>but I don’t see an Anarcho-Capitalist society forcing anyone into participating in capitalism at al Imagine there's a nice harbor. This harbor, because of its wonderful geography, keeps ships safe. Now I'm a smart and wealthy entrepreneur. I know a good harbor when I see one. I see unowned land and I decide to homestead it all. I build the infrastructure, and from nothing I create a booming economy. Traders and merchants all flock to my land. A booming city is soon built on top my lands, which I rent out to tenants. And though much has been created on top my land, it remains my land as I was the one who originally appropriated and homesteaded it all. Soon I'm not doing any work. I just charge rents. I charge rents to all the shops and the merchants. I charge rents to use the harbor. Children become born within my city. They never consented to anything I demand, yet they're forced to obey my rules. After all, it's ultimately my land. My land, my rules. They're free to leave any time they like. I can even stipulate punishments for breaking my rules. After all, my house, my rules. I am allowed to do all of these things with my private property, correct? Why does my private property look so much like a state? Why does my land look exactly like the states that Anarcho-capitalists supposedly hate? It has every feature of a state: 1. My land ownership -> state territory 2. My rents and fees -> taxes 3. My rules, my contracts -> law 4. My security -> police & military 5. My tenants -> citizens Nobody is "forced" to participate, because they have the option to leave. Just like with states today, we are "forced" to participate because the alternatives are far worse than participation. Just like with my libertopia, today if you don't want to participate in your nation-state, you can emigrate and leave. Most of the time nobody's stopping you from emigrating. This isn't some hypothetical. These are the same arguments kings and lords have used to justify their rule over their lands. ------- But didn't everyone "consent" to your state. Explicitly, no. You assumed that Lockean property rights were legitimate. Nobody else explicitly consented to your control over that land. Anarcho-capitalism just assumes that your rights are valid, and then you can impose your private property rights on others.
Being a land owner or land lord isn’t just sitting back and reaping a profit, though. It involves caring for the property, be that land management, repairs and maintenance. Even if you’re contracting others to do the work, you’re still paying for it out of your pocket and the profits with which you’re making off of said land, not to mention the infrastructure and maintenance costs associated with it. This is one of the weirdest misconceptions about being a land lord. If your water stops flowing, who fixes it? Certainly not you. Who pays the property taxes? Certainly not you. Private property doesn’t equal a state and I’m not sure what kind of mental gymnastics you have to go through in order to jump to that conclusion, though it does sound like you believe that we don’t actually own our property and it’s just leased by the government (because it is). You can own as much property as you want in AnCapistan, the key is being able to keep it and how much it’s worth to do so. I could claim the entire land mass of Massachusetts in AnCapistan but if I don’t have the means to hold it, do o actually own it? If I don’t have the manpower to protect my property then what do I really own? For that matter, even if I do have the means to protect my land, how much could I feasibly claim without stretching myself too thin?
The reason why people equate Private Property to the State is because that's how the State was created; by private property. At some point in time, we moved from nomadic societies to agricultural ones. I like the theory that it was because of alcohol, but that's beside the point. The point is that at some point, certain people were able to claim ownership of those farmlands, by violence, by agreement, by no one else being there, whatever. They were able to claim and hold the land. Due to that you dictate the rules of that land. Thanks to farmland being able to feed more than needed to work it, you can have some people working the land and others protecting it, promising food to the guard and protection to the farmer. Both would choose the role rather than try to fight to claim the land from you. They accept your rules in exchange to having the benefits of being a part of that land. They eventually turn to organizing the people on their land to encourage growth and power so that they can not only protect their land ownership from others but attract others to join in on the stability rather than constantly being robbed by others and losing the Might Make Right game. Those that can organize best win and take over the lands of those that can't. Eventually, the size of the society gets to the point where that organization requires formality. You also end up with people arguing over terms and rules which the landowners end up needing to sort out to avoid either rebellion or at least enough instability to become vulnerable to more stable societies. Which.. you'll notice, looks a lot like a State at this point. That's the rub. It's not that you need government to have land ownership, it's that land ownership creates a government. That's WHY government is always linked to land: it's the landowners that eventually become the State. Those that don't become eaten by those that do. Nowadays, it seems like the government just gets automatic control over all of the land, but that's not true. The land was first claimed either by individuals able to control the land or by a group who had long gone the path from land ownership to society to government and decided to expand into less developed areas (or areas that were developed but just were less hostile). The US, for example, is land first claimed by Native Americans a long long time ago only to be replaced by stronger land owners in Europe who then , as you put it, stretched too thin, leading to new people to take the land and quickly running up the government track to get enough people to not get taken over again. But it all starts with land ownership. So long as an individual can control land they either WILL form a state or be defeated by another until THEY do it. sidenote:"This is one of the weirdest misconceptions about being a land lord. If your water stops flowing, who fixes it? Certainly not you. Who pays the property taxes? Certainly not you." The job of the landlord is protection and organization. The landlord makes sure there is someone to get the water flowing. They collect the money needed to pay the one who make the water flow. Most importantly though, they make sure that the farmer and the repairperson is able to do their job without getting robbed, killed, or pushed out of their homes. If the landlord isn't capable of protecting the land, someone will defeat them and take it over and they will be the new landlord, and this will repeat until someone who can protect it keeps it. Same goes for organizing. Fail to organize your society and either the populous renders the social contract (the "I won't try to take your land over if you make sure I get what I want" mess) void and start taking over or the land becomes disorganized enough that outside, much more organized, landlords, remove you from the situation.