Ask a genuine anarcho-capitalist anything* - *ideally where a libertarian framework is relevant

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How long have you been this stupid? When, precisely, did your stupidity start? Did you gradually get more stupid over time? Or did you just get full blown stupid at once? Do you enjoy being stupid? Or would you rather you weren't so stupid? How do your parents feel about stupidity? Are they also stupid? Is your stupidity genetic? Do you have stupid little friends? And a stupid little car? Is your dog less stupid than you? Does your dog teach you tricks? Or are you too stupid to learn tricks? Do you ever take advantage of how stupid you are? Or do you just kind of go with the flow all stupid like?
 
rando[Numbers] said:
How long have you been this stupid? When, precisely, did your stupidity start? Did you gradually get more stupid over time? Or did you just get full blown stupid at once? Do you enjoy being stupid? Or would you rather you weren't so stupid? How do your parents feel about stupidity? Are they also stupid? Is your stupidity genetic? Do you have stupid little friends? And a stupid little car? Is your dog less stupid than you? Does your dog teach you tricks? Or are you too stupid to learn tricks? Do you ever take advantage of how stupid you are? Or do you just kind of go with the flow all stupid like?
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That’s not a question or a point. Try again.
 
What's your ethnicity and religion? Do you have a dual citizenship? Do you support Israel or Palestine?
 
The Last Stand said:
Do you have an example? A man cannot serve two masters.
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I was actually just thinking of this one:
During Covid, California passed a series of orders about masks, curfews, etc. The county I was residing in within California saw the sheriff ordering his deputies to disregard all of them.
So I was residing in a state where one was mandated to wear a mask whenever leaving the house, no company was allowed over, and everyone had to be home by 10PM unless they were working in an "essential" industry.
But I was also in a county where I knew none of that would be enforced. So I would get piss drunk at my friend's place once a week, occasionally hit up the bar, some people wore masks, most did not... you get the idea.
 
The Last Stand said:
Do not tell me you trust insurance companies to operate in good faith all the time.
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That's how Marcus Licinius Crassus accumulated his real estate empire, he started a fire brigade in Rome and would buy the property from the owner while it was on fire for a cheap price, only putting out the fire if the owner agreed.

There's really nothing stopping someone from taking that same approach under a stateless system. The more effective property insurance based companies that arose in Western Europe during the 17th-18th centuries were due to the state and its laws around these kinds of companies.
 
Penis Drager 2.0 said:
I was actually just thinking of this one:
During Covid, California passed a series of orders about masks, curfews, etc. The county I was residing in within California saw the sheriff ordering his deputies to disregard all of them.
So I was residing in a state where one was mandated to wear a mask whenever leaving the house, no company was allowed over, and everyone had to be home by 10PM unless they were working in an "essential" industry.
But I was also in a county where I knew none of that would be enforced. So I would get piss drunk at my friend's place once a week, occasionally hit up the bar, some people wore masks, most did not... you get the idea.
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Okay, we’re getting somewhere. Is your basis of law on who enforces it or whether if law itself is just?

Would you consider yourself a legal positivist where state intervention is tolerated only if it would abide with your way of living? It’s impossible to strike a perfect harmony of law and order with civil liberties where somebody would freely behave with autonomy and expect to maintain authority.
 
The Last Stand said:
Is your basis of law on who enforces it or whether if law itself is just?
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Whether it is enforced. The who doesn't matter so much. Justice doesn't matter at all. That's been like my whole argument this entire time.

I would consider myself a social constructivist regarding the law in that my preference on what those laws are or their justification is largely irrelevant.
 
XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG said:
If you own the venue, you set the rules. If you don't, you live with the rules of whoever does. That's how peaceful order emerges without a central mafia.
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Not reading the other 7 pages, just wanted to touch this piece. That's literally how organized crime works. They utilize coercion to own and rule things in their domain and then set rules that people have to abide by if they wish to operate within those spaces, ie paying extortion money to operate businesses in certain areas.
I'd further go on to argue that violence is just a fundamental benefit of power by which control is a measure of. If you have the power to exclude, you presumably have control of your chosen domain already and you can use violence at that point if you wish. Obviously that domain could be incredibly small or of such low value that your control goes uncontested, like choosing who is on your MySpace top 4 friends list, but the principles remain the same.

I forgot my point midway through. Control/power/violence is interesting though. Like who would win, the president of America or a brown bear? President obvs nukes the bear basically 10/10 times, but run it back in a downed elevator and suddenly all the authority and control the president has means fuck all.
 
clara red bottoms said:
I forgot my point midway through. Control/power/violence is interesting though. Like who would win, the president of America or a brown bear? President obvs nukes the bear basically 10/10 times, but run it back in a downed elevator and suddenly all the authority and control the president has means fuck all.
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Donald J. Trump could Trump ANY adversary. Nature, liberals, fake news, he’s the God Emperor for a reason. Believe me.
 
Toji Suzuhara said:
Why? Under an anarchist system (not just anarcho-capitalist), who decides when a child becomes old enough to be an adult? Who decides that adults shouldn't harm children? How would an anarcho-capitalist system prevent a situation where a society that approves of the abuse of children perpetuates itself in time, like what happened in the Pitcairn Islands, for example?
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The answers are grounded in the same principle that grounds all rights, namely self-ownership. A child is a human being with a developing rational faculty. That means two things:
Two important things must be kept in mind, namely
  1. Parents/guardians do not own the child. They are stewards and not masters. Their role is custodial until the child matures.
  2. Maturity is objective, accordingly it is neither a popularity contest nor a one-size-fits-all solution. Maturity is a biological and cognitive reality and not up to a vote or cultural preference.
So the question of when a child becomes an adult is depending on whether someone has the requisite rational ability to understand what they're agreeing to. And when it comes to contracts, sex, or long-term commitments, the matter at hand is the maturity to grasp consequences and exercise judgment across time. Children can't have that, which is why guardianship exists in the first place. Consent to sexual intercourse presupposes a level of maturity that children simply don't have. The notion that a child can "consent" to sex with an adult is fraud at best and aggression at worst.
re: Pitcairn Islands, that's exactly the kind of abuse that is impermissible under libertarian law. As I keep mentioning, law is objective, and accordingly the fact that a whole island of people tolerating slavery doesn't make slavery legitimate, and neither does tolerating abuse make abuse legitimate. If you're a fan of hating lesser cultures, why not become an anarcho-capitalist? Under anarcho-capitalism, "cultural norms" are not a valid legal argument or shield, and if parents and "elders" collude in abuse, then by definition they are aggressors against their children. And there's no "but everyone here agrees it's fine" that can make any of it acceptable. Did you read about how anyone may enforce the law and you're not reliant on a third party to do it? You can literally go out there and legally use violence to exercise self-defense on behalf of molested children.

tl;dr
Adults harming children is aggression because it violates the self-ownership of the child. Adulthood is determined by rational capacity and not legal decree or arbitrary tradition. A society perpetuating abuse does not disprove the principle, it's just an example of a society engaging in systematic crime. Objective ethics do not bend to whatever a mob of subhumans tolerates.



Private Tag Reporter said:
You're a respectable poster, but is that really all it takes to dismantle your worldview? "You win, then what?"

Like, you've got people coming up with fun philosophical arguments, but "yeah but what if there's a guy with a bigger stick" is where you throw up your hands and shrug, because I don't accept the premise?

Because not going to lie, it sounds like ancapistan is predicated on world peace, in which case your theory has a pretty big problem to deal with.

To restate the core problem: How does a lesser force combat a larger one? And that's a pretty general question, so more specifically, how does a smaller ancap force combat a larger unspecified force? It seems pretty important based on the decentralized nature of force under ancap theory.
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The short answer is that no system guarantees victory against a bigger coalition. That holds true for both yours and mine. States lose wars all the time. If your standard for legitimacy is "guaranteed wins", then every system on planet Earth fails this test. Ethics are not invalidated by risk, ethics are the rules for facing risks.

But world peace? Seriously?
Anarcho-capitalism is not premised on peace, it's premised on clear rules in conflict, namely boundaries, consent, and liability. Conquest is named what it is (aggression) and never gets upgraded to "legitimate authority" just because a sufficiently high number of boots were marching.

And how smaller free orders fight larger forces? I can delve into asymmetrical warfare if you like, but wasn't it you who complained about fedposting? I admit I've done so much replying today that names are blending together.
Regardless, I'll give you a brief rundown of how smaller free orders fight larger forces, because that is a notion that I imagine most people are simply completely unfamiliar with. Especially in a decentralized system with a completely different topology of power than what they're used to under the state.

The first point you need to keep in mind is that there is no decapitation target in a free society. There is no capital to seize, no Führer to extort, no ministry to capture. A network of owners, insurers, and defense associations can't be taken or conquered by toppling one office.
Consider economics and finance. On the defense side, every single owner, insurer, and mutual aid compact has direct incentives to harden, pay bounties, and fund interdiction. Meanwhile, on the offense, occupation would need to be financed without a local tax base or legitimacy. Logistics and compliance are expensive when literally every square foot can simply refuse.
What's needed to actually scale force isn't monopoly, but rather coordination. Retainer contracts, mutual defense clauses, and pooled defense funds buy serious capacity without jurisdiction over non-signers.
Think of bounties. Price targets for kidnappers, saboteurs, command nodes, materiel etc. are really really effective at mobilizing irregulars. You pay for results instead of bureaucracy.
Ownership is dispersed, so the entire territory is hostile and information-rich ground. Good luck ruling a place whose owners won't provision you, won't insure you, and are paid to make your logistics fail. And you simply can't hold conquered territory when production and people can reroute around you (contracts sever, suppliers vanish, infrastructure is privately controlled and uncooperative).
And that is how a "smaller" force bleeds a "larger" one to death. Deny targets, spike up costs, refuse collaboration, reward interdiction. This is literally how asymmetric defense works anywhere where a heavy hierarchy goes against a motivated network.

Remove. the. lever. Your model requires a crowned monopolist for you to feel safe, that's okay. But don't pretend that that's realism and my stance is unrealistic. All you have is a preference for being ruled, and a lot of cope non-arguments to justify it. Be my guest.
If you want a guarantee, I'm not here to tell you lies. There are no guarantees in life. The only thing is that, in a free order, there exists no such thing as a gang, foreign or domestic, ever becoming "the law" by winning a battle or popular vote. And that difference is everything.


Penis Drager 2.0 said:
Justice doesn't matter at all. That's been like my whole argument this entire time.
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Then why do you even use the word "law"?
Your argument has been treating a weather report of violence as if it were a theory of law.
Again, if law is just "whatever is enforced", then nobody can ever know in advance what the law is until the boot hits their neck. Surely that's just chaos?

Agamemnon Busmalis said:
That's how Marcus Licinius Crassus accumulated his real estate empire, he started a fire brigade in Rome and would buy the property from the owner while it was on fire for a cheap price, only putting out the fire if the owner agreed.

There's really nothing stopping someone from taking that same approach under a stateless system. The more effective property insurance based companies that arose in Western Europe during the 17th-18th centuries were due to the state and its laws around these kinds of companies.
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I knew Crassus was going to get brought up sooner or later. Und herzlich willkommen.
My take is that Crassus pulled that shit off precisely because Rome already was a state. Crassus had political clout, privileged legal standing, and the ability to use his ties to call off retaliation. In a free order, arson + extortion != "entrepreneurship". It's aggression and would have been treated as such.

As for the later insurers you mention, many of the earliest fire brigades and mutual insurance associations actually came before state monopolization. When the state stepped in, it usually introduced crony favoritism and inefficiency, as it does everywhere and always. What kept insurers honest was the same thing that keeps any service honest, and that's competition and liability. If a firm tried to copy Crassus's scam, it would be recognized as aggression, they'd lose clients and face retaliation. If a firm actually protected property, it would thrive.



clara red bottoms said:
That's literally how organized crime works. They utilize coercion to own and rule things in their domain and then set rules that people have to abide by if they wish to operate within those spaces, ie paying extortion money to operate businesses in certain areas.
I'd further go on to argue that violence is just a fundamental benefit of power by which control is a measure of. If you have the power to exclude, you presumably have control of your chosen domain already and you can use violence at that point if you wish. Obviously that domain could be incredibly small or of such low value that your control goes uncontested, like choosing who is on your MySpace top 4 friends list, but the principles remain the same.

I forgot my point midway through. Control/power/violence is interesting though. Like who would win, the president of America or a brown bear? President obvs nukes the bear basically 10/10 times, but run it back in a downed elevator and suddenly all the authority and control the president has means fuck all.
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What you described is a textbook violation of rule #4 of libertarian property rights theory (ownership must originate in legitimate first use, voluntary transfer, or contract). Extortion is none of these things. A mafia "owning" turf is not legitimate ownership under anarcho-capitalism, it's trespass with threats attached.
The distinction is important because conflating extortion with ownership is exactly how legal positivists collapse crime into "law". They completely annihilate the difference between a shopkeeper defending his store and a gang burning the store down. Or do you reckon the burglar legitimately owns the house until the cops show up?
 
I was an anarcho-capitalist once. Then Chris Cantwell blamed me for his devolution into Nazism because I was the first person to publicly name all the lurid shit he was up to that everyone around him knew about.

These extreme politics people can only ever talk at a very naive, Wikipedia level world understanding.

The term is "armchair quarterback," just because you can cite league stats, doesn't mean you know the first thing to work a professional level.

A holocaust denier knows the temperature Zyclon-B dissipates, but they still have no clue what they're talking about.

There's never been a living person on the planet that claimed to be an anarcho-capitalist and even had a cursory understanding of real world history, economy and politics.

It's entirely, read some shit off of Wikipedia, start building a literal imaginary universe in your head, then presuppose everything on top of that. Act like you're above everyone else and take the tone of a high school debate club.

I've seen this playbook ad nausem.

The entire conversation becomes what ifs and "just do this." It's a joke, and not worth the engagement.
 
rando[Numbers] said:
There's never been a living person on the planet that claimed to be an anarcho-capitalist and even had a cursory understanding of real world history, economy and politics.
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Iast time I checked, I'm alive, and I'm gonna dox my location as planet Earth

If you got any question, ask, but otherwise I will politely request you vacate the premises.
 
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