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

[The Last Stand]

AnCaps have no loyalty to a nation or race therefore their opinions are irrelevant. It's also an ideology impossible to implement because you'll be immediately crushed by the Hispanics and Somalis you've invited in for the sake of "green line go up" and because enforcing a border would violate muh NAP.

I don’t believe the Somalians to be libertarians in nature. Whatever government they would impose, it would collapse in due time because they aren’t intelligent enough to govern themselves.

 

[Unarmed Gunman]

Anarcho-capitalism, much like communism and other fairy tale "systems" rely on humans to act in optimal ways that humans don't actually act. They also require the entire earth to play by the same set of rules which also doesn't happen, because humans will always human. AKA fuck yo couch, fuck yo rules.

In short, this is just another utopian ideology. It sounds good on paper, but in the end - might makes right. Whether it's pigeons, or Somalian's or some cartel/gang/political party..Power always concentrates with the most corrupt. Call it the 4th Law of Thermodynamics.

 

[Gog & Magog]

And "waiting them out" isn't the only response. Rivals can refuse to contract with them, form defensive coalitions, undercut them, or simply treat them like any other aggressor as soon as they cross into coercion.

When does this coalition turn from free market warriors to government in all but name?

 

[The Last Stand]

Anarcho-capitalism, much like communism and other fairy tale "systems" rely on humans to act in optimal ways that humans don't actually act. They also require the entire earth to play by the same set of rules which also doesn't happen, because humans will always human.

In short, this is just another utopian ideology. It sounds good on paper, but in the end - might makes right. Whether it's pigeons, or Somalian's or some cartel/gang/political party..Power always concentrates with the most corrupt. Call it the 4th Law of Thermodynamics.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the Founding Fathers’ foundation of law, liberty and prosperity which the US Constitution is based on. The issue is the people that are elected to supposedly uphold the Constitution. If we just got rid of the Constitution as per anarcho capitalism, law and order would be infinitely harder to enforce.

 

[Unarmed Gunman]

The issue is the people

You could have just stopped right there. This is the issue with every system. This is the reason that there is no "perfect" system.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

If "law" is just whatever the dominant gang decrees, then you've defined away the difference between rule and crime. Slavery, genocide, or your daily ration of tranny cum all count as law. But in that case, calling them law doesn't add clarity, all it does is get rid of the very category you're trying to describe.

No. You're just conflating "law" and "justice."
Law is what is enforced, crime is a violation of it. Simple as. The only thing that differentiates a gang's turf and a local council is recognition by the next level in the hierarchy.
The Taliban IS the government of Afghanistan now. Palestinian or Taiwanese statehood depends on who you ask. Whether these people are criminals or lawmakers is a question of who's authority, if any, on the matter you're beholden to.
I don't want to play the obnoxious "facts over feelings" card, but legality and preference are two wildly different things.

Two or more people cannot simultaneously use a physical thing in the same way at a time, so boundaries have to be drawn if conflict is to be avoided.

One means of doing that is establishing property rights. Another is establishing rules on usage. "Ownership" is not the objective property of a thing you appear to think it is. Without a mediating authority, the rule on usage is "I get to use this thing until someone more violent than me wants it."

That means that anyone can defend their boundaries, anyone can contract for protection, anyone can hold an aggressor liable.

If they have the capacity to enact violence which you do not have the capacity to defend against, then no, you cannot hold that aggressor liable. That's the whole point. They invested their resources to become more wealthy than you. They used that wealth to acquire a loyal following that you don't have. You're powerless in comparison and they can utilize their power to ensure that you stay that way.

 

[Gog & Magog]

Let's assume we're not talking about pigeons, but actual human beings, since those can be reasoned with.

edit: This was funnier in my head.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Anarcho-capitalism, much like communism and other fairy tale "systems" rely on humans to act in optimal ways that humans don't actually act. They also require the entire earth to play by the same set of rules which also doesn't happen, because humans will always human. AKA fuck yo couch, fuck yo rules.

In short, this is just another utopian ideology. It sounds good on paper, but in the end - might makes right. Whether it's pigeons, or Somalian's or some cartel/gang/political party..Power always concentrates with the most corrupt. Call it the 4th Law of Thermodynamics.

Anarcho-capitalism is not built on the idea or requirement that all people act optimally. The other way around, it's built on the fact that they don't. Because people will sometimes lie, steal, and attack, you need rules for how to resolve conflict without contradiction. And that's what property and contract are, they're a framework for coexistence when people don't always behave.
Saying "might makes right" just collapses description into prescription. People sometimes win by violence, but that doesn't make it right. Think about it, if raw force were the only law, then calling rulers "corrupt" would be nonsense. Whoever wins by force would, by definition, be legitimate. The fact that you call them corrupt shows that you already recognize a standard beyond brute power.

I'm saying that statism, the belief that a state is necessary and desirable, is the real utopianism. The core premise of that ideology is that you can hand a monopoly of violence to a small group of people and they won't abuse it.
Anarcho-capitalism rejects that fantasy and treats aggression as aggression no matter who commits it. That's the only consistent realism.

---

When does this coalition turn from free market warriors to government in all but name?

The difference between free market warriors and government isn't in size or coordination, but exemption. A defense coalition that people join voluntarily, fund voluntarily, and can exit voluntarily is not a government. It's an association, no different in principle than a church or a mutual aid society.
A government is a gang that claims jurisdiction whether you consent or not, and it exempts itself from the very rules it enforces on others. That's a line that may not be crossed under anarcho-capitalism.

So if a coalition ever did declare "we have authority over everyone in this territory regardless of consent", then yes, it would act as a state. But as long as it operates by voluntary contract and respects property boundaries, it's just a large-scale example of the same principle that governs smaller contracts.

---

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the Founding Fathers’ foundation of law, liberty and prosperity which the US Constitution is based on. The issue is the people that are elected to supposedly uphold the Constitution. If we just got rid of the Constitution as per anarcho capitalism, law and order would be infinitely harder to enforce.

The Constitution didn't collapse because Americans elected the wrong people, it collapsed because it granted a monopoly of taxation, regulation, and conscription in the first place. Once that power existed, it was only a matter of time before the worst people rose to use it. All the Constitution did was institutionalize corruption.

Anarcho-capitalism is precisely not-utopian because it does not count on men suddenly becoming angels. It assumes they won't become angels. That's why the rules are simple and universal. Self-ownership, property, voluntary exchange. No special exemptions, no proviso for "good rulers" entrusted to break those rules for the greater good.

Law is not made harder by rejecting the US Constitution. Right now, "law" is whatever a legislature writes or a court reinterprets. In anarcho-capitalism, law is discovered in property boundaries and consent. Aggression is aggression, no matter if's done by a burglar or a sitting Member of Congress. Again, the real utopia is the delusion that some piece of parchment can limit a monopoly gang of rulers.

---

You could have just stopped right there. This is the issue with every system. This is the reason that there is no "perfect" system.

True, people are the issue. Therefore, let's look at what makes the anarcho-capitalist framework different from all the others.
A system that hands some flawed people a monopoly of violence magnifies the problem.
A system that applies the same rules to everyone without exception keeps flaws contained.

Anarcho-capitalism is not about "perfection", it's about consistency. Precisely because it's taken into account that people will lie, cheat, and aggress, nobody gets an exemption to do these things legally. That is the distinction between a burglar and the IRS. One is recognized as a thief, the other is sanctified as "government". The point is to stop making that exception.

Seriously, if "people are the problem" is the whole story, then giving some people unchecked power really is the worst possible solution.

---

No. You're just conflating "law" and "justice."
Law is what is enforced, crime is a violation of it. Simple as. The only thing that differentiates a gang's turf and a local council is recognition by the next level in the hierarchy.
The Taliban IS the government of Afghanistan now. Palestinian or Taiwanese statehood depends on who you ask. Whether these people are criminals or lawmakers is a question of who's authority, if any, on the matter you're beholden to.
I don't want to play the obnoxious "facts over feelings" card, but legality and preference are two wildly different things.

Once again, if law is only "what's enforced" then there simply is no more difference between justice and crime. So the Nazis were lawful, the gulags were lawful, and the Taliban is lawful simply because they got away with it. But if that's the case, then the word "law" is just another way of saying "who's winning right now". It adds no clarity. What reason is there for "law" to be a word if you could just say "power" to mean the same thing?

"Ownership" is not the objective property of a thing you appear to think it is. Without a mediating authority, the rule on usage is "I get to use this thing until someone more violent than me wants it."

Ownership is not a mystical intrinsic divine property of things, ownership is a recognition of the reality that two people can't use the same scarce good in the same way at the same time. The boundary that prevents conflict is objective, it's established by first use and embordering. You can deny it, but you can't abolish the underlying fact of scarcity.

If they have the capacity to enact violence which you do not have the capacity to defend against, then no, you cannot hold that aggressor liable. That's the whole point. They invested their resources to become more wealthy than you. They used that wealth to acquire a loyal following that you don't have. You're powerless in comparison and they can utilize their power to ensure that you stay that way.

And the claim that someone stronger can take is is just describing aggression. Of course a stronger aggression can sometimes prevail. That doesn't make their action lawful, it makes it a crime. In anarcho-capitalism, aggression is named accurately and there is no legitimacy for it whatsoever.

That's the whole point. If might defines law, then every tyrant in history was automatically right. If law is objective, then might can sometimes prevail temporarily, but it never becomes right by the act of prevailing.

 

[The Last Stand]

If they have the capacity to enact violence which you do not have the capacity to defend against, then no, you cannot hold that aggressor liable. That's the whole point. They invested their resources to become more wealthy than you. They used that wealth to acquire a loyal following that you don't have. You're powerless in comparison and they can utilize their power to ensure that you stay that way.

Wouldn't THAT be an example of a monopoly itself, even if a state itself doesn't declare it as such? A monopoly is just that, a group having exclusive control over something.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Wouldn't THAT be an example of a monopoly itself, even if a state itself doesn't declare it as such? A monopoly is just that, a group having exclusive control over something.

No, under that definition every instance of private ownership would fall under "monopoly". Consider the screen you're looking at. You have not just exclusive control over that screen but, at least until your regional government seizes it, also the right to exclusive control over that screen. Does that make you the monopolist?

A monopoly is a legally enforced privilege that bars anyone else from competing. That's why it's always a state creation. Tariffs, licensing, patents, charters, all of those things are monopoly protections.
If a firm grows huge by serving customers, that's not monopoly, that's success. If they then try to exclude rivals by force, that's also not monopoly, it's aggression. At that point the firm is just a gang, no different in kind from someone who goes to rob a gas station.
If we call every case of dominance or aggression a "monopoly" then the word loses meaning. In no way is a farmer with a fence a "monopoly on his own crops". The real distinction is whether there are legal bars to competition. And my point regarding monopolies is that this literally cannot happen without a state.

 

[Taser Confetti]

Regarding borders, in libertarianism every border is private. You can exclude anyone from your property and you can join with others to set mutual rules of entry. What doesn't exist is a central bureaucracy that forces one border policy on millions of unwilling people.
And it's worth noticing that inversion. Was it ancaps who flooded Europe and America with mass migration? Were ancaps responsible for wars abroad, welfare promises at home, and decrees that nobody can opt out of? Or have ancaps been busy advocating that every property owner controls their borders directly, instead of hoping and coping that politicians won't sell them out?

Your ideology is incapable of scaling up defense to meaningful numbers. A guy defending his pot farm with an AR15 or an HOA full of age of consent debate enjoyers isn't gonna prevent "Camp of the Saints".

 

[We Are The Witches]

So what's your stance on the Stop Killing Games movement? Since you're european (I think), you had an opportunity to participate. Did you know about this, and did you participate? Why or why not?

This is somewhat tangentially pertinent because it relates to consumer rights.

 

[Unarmed Gunman]

I'm saying that statism, the belief that a state is necessary and desirable, is the real utopianism.

A system that applies the same rules to everyone without exception keeps flaws contained.

My man, I consider myself to be a reluctant anarchist (precisely because I understand the nature of The State), but you have a very "I am 14 and this is deep" view of the world. It isn't that a government is desirable, it's that a government is inevitable. I don't like it either, but I understand human nature.

The wrong kind of people are drawn to power, and power has a natural tendency to concentrate. With that concentrated power, they will take what they need from you by coercion if you're lucky, or direct force if necessary. This is the monkey wrench in your fairy tale.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Your ideology is incapable of scaling up defense to meaningful numbers. A guy defending his pot farm with an AR15 or an HOA full of age of consent debate enjoyers isn't gonna prevent "Camp of the Saints".

What makes you think large-scale defense requires a central bureaucracy? All that's required for large-scale defense is coordination.
History is full of decentralized militias, frontier communities, and alliances defending successfully without a monopoly state. Privateers defended trade routes, merchant leagues enforced law across oceans, and militias defended towns long before standing armies became the norm.

The real reason "Camp of the Saints" (had to look up what that is) scenarios happen today is precisely because states engineer them. States wage wars abroad, states subsidize welfare at home, and states outlaw property owners from excluding or defending directly. In anarcho-capitalism there is no such machinery. Every single property owner, association, or insurer has the direct authority to exclude and defend.

And scaling up is just federating those defenses. Agencies and coalitions can pool resources as needed, without claiming the "right" to tax, conscript, or override their members. And that's the difference between large-scale defense in a free society and under the state. One is voluntary coordination, the other is a monopoly that consistently sells out its citizens.

---

So what's your stance on the Stop Killing Games movement? Since you're european (I think), you had an opportunity to participate. Did you know about this, and did you participate? Why or why not?

This is somewhat tangentially pertinent because it relates to consumer rights.

I've already opined on this in the SKG thread and, your mileage may vary, I caught quite a bit of flak for it.

My stance is that "game ownership" is logically incoherent, "consumer rights" are not some special category handed down by regulators, and the SKG movement is understandable, but the way they're going about it is wrong.
Lobbying a state regulator to step in just replaces one form of arbitrary power with another. The real solution to Slop Corp selling you a product on the promise that it works, and then deliberately crippling it after the fact, is to treat this as contract violation and theft and to enforce restitution directly.

Like with many many many such cases, we see the same problems, but diverge on solutions.

---

My man, I consider myself to be a reluctant anarchist (precisely because I understand the nature of The State), but you have a very "I am 14 and this is deep" view of the world. It isn't that a government is desirable, it's that a government is inevitable.

The wrong kind of people are drawn to power, and power has a natural tendency to concentrate. With that concentrated power, they will take what they need from you by coercion if you're lucky, or direct force if necessary. This is the monkey wrench in your fairy tale.

We agree that power tends to concentrate. But I say that's exactly why statism is the problem.
Do you see how "government is inevitable" does not make the government legitimate? Like, if I say "theft is inevitable", you would agree that that doesn't mean theft is legitimate, right?

States don't appear by natural law. They have to be maintained by taxation, indoctrination, and the outlawing of alternatives. That's why governments spend so much energy crushing competitors, from militias to currencies. If their rule were as inevitable as gravity, then literally none of that would be necessary.

I understand human nature.

If the wrong kind of people are drawn to power, then concentrating power in a monopoly guarantees that the wrong kind of people rule everyone. And that's the most dangerous utopianism of all. The delusional belief that you can hand unchecked power to the worst people and somehow come out safe.

But that's a common mistake. Government is just organized crime, dressed up in rituals so effectively that people mistake it for gravity.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

the Nazis were lawful, the gulags were lawful, and the Taliban is lawful

We can even justify this with simple common parlance. Any history book that covers the era will discuss the laws the Nazis passed while they were in power.
Idk if this is an ESL thing or what, like is the word you're translating as "law" something that has a different connotation in your native tongue?

ownership is a recognition of the reality that two people can't use the same scarce good in the same way at the same time.

Yes. And I mentioned an alternative being "rules for usage." You can regulate the usage of something without declaring it as property of anyone. Water sources, for example. This is not a new or revolutionary idea and is no less "a recognition of reality" than "first one gets dibs" is.

In anarcho-capitalism, aggression is named accurately and there is no legitimacy for it whatsoever.

"Aggression" is often arbitrary, believe it or not. Nearly every mutual lawsuit ever filed is a dispute of "who was the aggressor here."
Most tyrants don't see themselves as such but if you're doing something you feel you should rightfully be allowed to do and that gets in the way of his profits, he will feel aggressed upon in the same way you'll feel aggressed upon when he keeps you from doing what you want to do. And without a neutral third party to arbitrate for you, the authority rests upon this guy who will happily bring you to your knees.

If you've ever been a teenager in public school, you've seen first hand how fickle people can be. You've more than likely seen how someone who's done nothing wrong can be turned into a pariah and portrayed almost universally as "the bad guy" because he slightly irritated someone more socially powerful than him.

If might defines law, then every tyrant in history was automatically right

I'll repeat again that "lawfulness" is not "righteousness." See what I said above about potential language barrier issues because this conflation of yours is just weird to me.

 

[The Last Stand]

So what's your stance on the Stop Killing Games movement? Since you're european (I think), you had an opportunity to participate. Did you know about this, and did you participate? Why or why not?

This is somewhat tangentially pertinent because it relates to consumer rights.

Not to speak for him, but in short, he is against it because the government should not have to uphold a consumer's responsibility on whether or not a product is revoked because of a corporation's ability. He did offer alternatives of such if you're curious to search on the SKG thread.

 

[Rapesputin]

To what degree does objectivism differ from standard libertarianism?

 

[The Last Stand]

Most tyrants don't see themselves as such but if you're doing something you feel you should rightfully be allowed to do and that gets in the way of his profits, he will feel aggressed upon in the same way you'll feel aggressed upon when he keeps you from doing what you want to do. And without a neutral third party to arbitrate for you, the authority rests upon this guy who will happily bring you to your knees.

But what if that third party is the tyrant? Then, you're basically stuck under the mercy of opposing force unless you decide for yourself to fight back.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

We can even justify this with simple common parlance. Any history book that covers the era will discuss the laws the Nazis passed while they were in power.
Idk if this is an ESL thing or what, like is the word you're translating as "law" something that has a different connotation in your native tongue?

If law just means "rules enforced at the time", then yes, history books can say "Nazi laws". And in doing so, they reduce law to a sociological label. It becomes nothing more than "what the rulers wrote down". By that definition, again, every act of conquest or terror instantly becomes "law". But that erases the very distinction the word is supposed to denote.

Yes. And I mentioned an alternative being "rules for usage." You can regulate the usage of something without declaring it as property of anyone. Water sources, for example. This is not a new or revolutionary idea and is no less "a recognition of reality" than "first one gets dibs" is.

Those only work if someone has the authority to enforce them. If no one owns the spring, then the "rule" is just whoever seizes it this week. Property is the only rule that makes use predictable without requiring an overseer, because boundaries can be drawn, defended, and exchanged without appealing to a central arbiter.

"Aggression" is often arbitrary, believe it or not. Nearly every mutual lawsuit ever filed is a dispute of "who was the aggressor here."
Most tyrants don't see themselves as such but if you're doing something you feel you should rightfully be allowed to do and that gets in the way of his profits, he will feel aggressed upon in the same way you'll feel aggressed upon when he keeps you from doing what you want to do. And without a neutral third party to arbitrate for you, the authority rests upon this guy who will happily bring you to your knees.

If you've ever been a teenager in public school, you've seen first hand how fickle people can be. You've more than likely seen how someone who's done nothing wrong can be turned into a pariah and portrayed almost universally as "the bad guy" because he slightly irritated someone more socially powerful than him.

Aggression isn't arbitrary, and the proof of that is the fact that people dispute which side aggressed. Both sides recognize that aggression is a valid category, otherwise there would be no dispute. The task of law is to measure actions against an objective standard of boundaries, and not to throw the standard out the window because people sometimes lie about it.

I'll repeat again that "lawfulness" is not "righteousness." See what I said above about potential language barrier issues because this conflation of yours is just weird to me.

I agree that lawfulness and righteousness are distinct. But if you say law is purely "what's enforced", then law has no content whatsoever beyond "who won". And that means law is war. In anarcho-capitalism, law is grounded in scarcity and consent, and not in whoever has the biggest gang at the moment.

---

To what degree does objectivism differ from standard libertarianism?

Good question! I'm in the position to elaborate on this a bit.
If we go with what I said earlier, namely that consistent libertarians must be anarchists (trivially true because the state necessarily commits aggression, which is illegitimate under libertarian property rights theory), then we can narrow down "standard libertarianism" to a narrow legal or political theory. Aka non-aggression principle, property rights, no state.
Objectivism is a philosophy that begins with metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, but, at least in orthodox Randian objectivism, somehow tosses all of that out the window and derives the state and capitalism. So where many libertarians treat non-aggression as an axiom, objectivism grounds liberty in a wider view of man and reality and, in my opinion due to personal flaws of Rand, inconsistently.
Rand did defend individual rights, voluntary exchange, and capitalism, but stopped at a minimal state, whereas consistent libertarians argue that these principles leave no room whatsoever for a state. And that is why my personal stance is like an integration of objectivism and libertarianism.

 

[Taser Confetti]

What makes you think large-scale defense requires a central bureaucracy? All that's required for large-scale defense is coordination.
History is full of decentralized militias, frontier communities, and alliances defending successfully without a monopoly state. Privateers defended trade routes, merchant leagues enforced law across oceans, and militias defended towns long before standing armies became the norm.

The real reason "Camp of the Saints" (had to look up what that is) scenarios happen today is precisely because states engineer them. States wage wars abroad, states subsidize welfare at home, and states outlaw property owners from excluding or defending directly. In anarcho-capitalism there is no such machinery. Every single property owner, association, or insurer has the direct authority to exclude and defend.

Lmao, this isn’t the Mexican revolution buddy. You’re gonna get curb stomped by drones and cruise missiles. A bunch of neckbeards with Palmetto State and Holosun optics ain’t stopping even the Mexican military.

Your delusional only works if the entire planet agrees to dissolve their governments and hope the town next door decides not to make a new one.