I can't defend anarcho-capitalism

[gwax23]

As a Minarchist who is about as close as you can get to AnCap without being an Ancap the whole competing Courts and Police has never been the biggest issue for me when trying to become an AnCap. Biggest issue for me is how an AnCap society remains one. How do states no simply naturally rise up? Whats to stop people from saying their community is a new State.

 

[muzzled dogg]

How will the iPhone 10 work?

 

[Tod]

As a Minarchist who is about as close as you can get to AnCap without being an Ancap the whole competing Courts and Police has never been the biggest issue for me when trying to become an AnCap. Biggest issue for me is how an AnCap society remains one. How do states no simply naturally rise up? Whats to stop people from saying their community is a new State.

I think that it depends entirely on the vigilance of the people to take principled stands. The way our government has gotten so big is that most people just try to live their daily life without paying attention to what government is doing or standing up to it.

And that is an aspect of human nature that is unlikely to go away even with education.

 

[mczerone]

I've read through all the posts, but I'll address the OP, where I think the real questions are.

The problem is, the average person cannot possibly comprehend how competing police forces and courts are able to work. And frankly, even I don't know how they would work. Based on economic laws, I do believe they would work, but HOW I really don't know.

That's kinda the point: nobody can really know how to best provide these services, a priori. So how does the best solution reveal itself? Trial and error, open competition, and accountability to independent agencies of justice. If we could devise "the best" system, for all times, places, and people, we would advocate for a State, indeed a global (or universal) State to implement that solution.

And, though I completely, wholeheartedly understand that voluntary cooperation works better than coercion, I don't honestly know WHY. The pragmatic aspect isn't really the reason I believe in voluntarism. I believe in voluntarism because I believe it to be morally right. Though shall not steal, murder, etc. I'd believe in those things even if they didn't "work". But I do believe they would work. I just can't prove it in a casual conversation. The statist has an inherent advantage because he works from the commonly accepted notions. How can you account for this?

Why: because every voluntary act is taken to benefit the actor. Free trade benefits all traders.

Then question commonly accepted notions: how is this "State" thing working out, even with Constitutional protections on growth, tyranny, and separation of powers?

By contrast, minarchy (Which probably gets 95% of the principles right) I find to be fairly easy to explain.

But if you know it's not "right" - you shouldn't feel good explaining it as an end in itself. And explaining Voluntarism will get easier as you get more immersed in the thought.

Also, why try to explain everything? Everyone has the internet. Just give broad overviews, and refer to source material. Get familiar with links to material that you trust. There are tons of great legal thinkers, economic thinkers, and moral thinkers that have already answered these questions. So don't try to reinvent the wheel - just tell people that the wheel exists and point them to where they can discover it.

But frankly, to explain to somebody how those crimes that actually do have victims (murder, rape, fraud, theft, etc.) could be prosecuted without government police, courts, or taxes, frankly, I don't fully understand how myself. I do understand the vague concept that people could hire different police companies, or use different arbitrators to resolve disputes, but I find that its really, really hard to explain the idea to someone who has never encountered it before, and if they ask "How would that work", I find it very hard to answer. With roads there's a similar problem, although there are cop outs that there is already a road network in the US or to appeal to the (comparatively more obvious, although it will still be debated) immorality of eminent domain.

Again - we can't know exactly. So tell them that. But remind them how poorly the system is working today.

Then ask what their particular fears are about your proposal - and show that the "worst case scenario" is not much different from where we are today.

So, I'd request any help I can get from you guys on this. How do you explain this concept to people? Is it even really worth trying unless they're a minarchist already? Or is it simpler to just act as a minarchist (Even while holding the ancap principles and sharing them with minarchists as necessary) in actual debates to make things less confusing?

I appeal to what they want from govt, and what they don't want. Talking to an atheist who wants to help the poor? Convince them that competing agencies of govt will ensure that welfare waste will be minimized, and the best way to help people will be discovered quickly when there's a profit motive for charities and people LIKE THEM can keep more of their money from funding corporate welfare and faith-based programs.

BTW: I'm giving the "Ron Paul is a voluntarist/ancap" line of thought a lot more consideration than I have in the past as I'm considering this. Even if Ron does believe in those principles 100% of the time, if he had brought those things up in the Presidential debates it would have been really, really difficult for him to deal with the more immediate issues of support for the FED, the wars, the drug wars, etc.

Although this thread is primarily being started for other ancaps/voluntarists to help me work out, those who do not agree with those principles are more than welcome to try to convince me that my position is wrong. It would also probably be easier to have that debate on this forum since pretty much everyone here understands the theory whether they buy it or not. Most people IRL don't even understand the theory.

Hit the issues you're comfortable with, and refer other issues out to other sources. There's value in arguing about the FED, the drug war, and "smaller govt" - but only to emphasize that the solutions are in the freed market.

 

[Christian Liberty]

As a Minarchist who is about as close as you can get to AnCap without being an Ancap the whole competing Courts and Police has never been the biggest issue for me when trying to become an AnCap. Biggest issue for me is how an AnCap society remains one. How do states no simply naturally rise up? Whats to stop people from saying their community is a new State.

OK, this is interesting because this is almost never the question people ask in my experience. I don't really have an answer for it. If people want the State badly enough, they will get it. Vigilance is required.

I don't see how this truly differs from minarchism in that regard, though. If enough people want big government, how can minarchy stop them from imposing it? Ultimately I don't see minarchy as a solution to the problem that you correctly point out exists.

 

[Christian Liberty]

I've read through all the posts, but I'll address the OP, where I think the real questions are.


That's kinda the point: nobody can really know how to best provide these services, a priori. So how does the best solution reveal itself? Trial and error, open competition, and accountability to independent agencies of justice. If we could devise "the best" system, for all times, places, and people, we would advocate for a State, indeed a global (or universal) State to implement that solution.



Why: because every voluntary act is taken to benefit the actor. Free trade benefits all traders.

Then question commonly accepted notions: how is this "State" thing working out, even with Constitutional protections on growth, tyranny, and separation of powers?



But if you know it's not "right" - you shouldn't feel good explaining it as an end in itself. And explaining Voluntarism will get easier as you get more immersed in the thought.

Also, why try to explain everything? Everyone has the internet. Just give broad overviews, and refer to source material. Get familiar with links to material that you trust. There are tons of great legal thinkers, economic thinkers, and moral thinkers that have already answered these questions. So don't try to reinvent the wheel - just tell people that the wheel exists and point them to where they can discover it.



Again - we can't know exactly. So tell them that. But remind them how poorly the system is working today.

Then ask what their particular fears are about your proposal - and show that the "worst case scenario" is not much different from where we are today.



I appeal to what they want from govt, and what they don't want. Talking to an atheist who wants to help the poor? Convince them that competing agencies of govt will ensure that welfare waste will be minimized, and the best way to help people will be discovered quickly when there's a profit motive for charities and people LIKE THEM can keep more of their money from funding corporate welfare and faith-based programs.



Hit the issues you're comfortable with, and refer other issues out to other sources. There's value in arguing about the FED, the drug war, and "smaller govt" - but only to emphasize that the solutions are in the freed market.

I agree with everything you say here. I guess my remaining question would be, what if the person doesn't actually realize our current system is screwed up? Most people don't.

 

[gwax23]

OK, this is interesting because this is almost never the question people ask in my experience. I don't really have an answer for it. If people want the State badly enough, they will get it. Vigilance is required.

I don't see how this truly differs from minarchism in that regard, though. If enough people want big government, how can minarchy stop them from imposing it? Ultimately I don't see minarchy as a solution to the problem that you correctly point out exists.

Oh yes people dont usually ask it. I meant to say that this is my usual concern.

Weve never seen a state formed on the basis of Minarchy. Even the US this wasnt the case, thought despite this it maintained a distinct Minarchist character for quite some time. Many states go through periods when they could be considered Minarchies or close to them, but usually its not their intention. A could be set up in a way to severely limit the growth of government. Things like short term lengths and limits, state nullification, judicial review (but not precedence), bicameralism, absolute veto and line item vetoes., tough voting standards (i.e. not a Democracy but a Republic) a federal or confederal devolution of powers, a clear constitution outlying the limited scope of government. Just too name a few of the more obvious things. Some could say this is idealistic but not anymore so than Anarcho Capitalism.

 

[Ronin Truth]

How will the iPhone 10 work?

That's the one I'm waiting for. Till then I'm just gonna keep on using my old dumb phone.

 

[juvanya]

There are 190 something competing police forces in the world already.

Done.


Also, http://mises.org/daily/4683 and citations.

 

[mczerone]

I agree with everything you say here. I guess my remaining question would be, what if the person doesn't actually realize our current system is screwed up? Most people don't.

If there's not something that they don't like about our current state (meaning "general condition") - then you move on.

You can't save everyone.

 

[July]

I personally found the concept of private free market law difficult to understand until I started to look at contract law, roman law, the origin of common law, Germanic law, civil law, international law, and other competing legal systems that have co-existed in the past (and still do co-exist today). In other words, law is already a lot more decentralized than I realized it was, and there are some good historical examples of competing legal systems co-existing.

As far as how would people then decide which legal system to use, given so many to choose from, that already happens today. When you enter into an agreement, the parties can specify a choice of law that they both agree.

I agree with you this would be difficult to explain to a general audience, as most people just tend to think of state codified civil law (statutes) today as being the norm, and I believe it's the most common legal system in the world now. But it's definitely interesting to read about how different legal systems evolved over time, and they haven't all depended on state codification.

 

[Christian Liberty]

If there's not something that they don't like about our current state (meaning "general condition") - then you move on.

You can't save everyone.

Well, OK, they usually have problems with it, even big problems. They just don't see it as being nearly as bad as we do. BTW: They would probably call "not ideal" what I would call "evil", and that goes for most people I know.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I just can't prove it in a casual conversation....

By contrast, minarchy (Which probably gets 95% of the principles right) I find to be fairly easy to explain.

So, you have a belief system with some sophisticated concepts which you find hard to explain, but also some simple ones which you can explain very easily. Have you ever considered just focusing on the easy-to-explain concepts in your conversations? This would seem to be the easy and obvious solution.

Especially when you yourself are new to an idea, it will be hard to explain. So if the goal is just to be persuasive to everyone right now, probably stick to the older more comfortable ideas which you are good at explaining.

Of course, in explaining and discussing new ideas, you may refine and expand your own understanding of them. You also will certainly learn what common objections you will face. You may even find someone who can actually change your understanding by convincing you that something about the new idea is wrong. So there are lots of payoffs from being willing to discuss ideas even which are new to you and you aren't good at explaining. But just don't expect to convince anyone.

See, for example, all my many recent disastrous attempts in the economics forums to explain some new investment ideas I've found. How many people have understood what I am trying to say? Probably none! And how many have I convinced? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!! Can the number be negative?

But, trying to explain the ideas makes me understand them better, and there's always the possibility that someone will happen along who has some even better ideas and by putting myself out there, it opens up the possibility that he will come refute me and expand my comprehension of reality.

So, talk about an-cap, or don't. Either way can be awesome. It just depends on what you want.

 

[Christian Liberty]

@Helmuth- Good stuff

@July- Even I find the idea of private law confusing. Rothbard may have been correct that you do need a uniform legal code in a given area, or at least, the NAP as a baseline. I see no real way of avoiding that. I also don't necessarily see that as a problem.

 

[boneyard bill]

For anarchism to succeed, it isn't necessary to change the nature of man, it is necessary to change the nature of men. "Man," in this context, is an abstraction. Most people are happy enough to live and let live, but some are anxious for power and conquest. These are real concrete individuals, not some abstraction, and we must deal with them. We do so by forming groups of men to give us the strength to fend off those prone to violence and conquest. Those groups may be informal and unauthorized by any established claim to legal authority i.e. vigilantes. Or they may be formal and claim a legal origin i.e. militia, or even be professionals ie. police and army. But we have to band together to defend ourselves against aggressive people. But then who defends us against the militias or the police? Our only defense is the rule of law.

Liberty, in the sense that we understand it in the modern West, grew out of Roman and Medieval law. Individual liberty is not the inherent state of mankind. It is a cultural achievement. We don't really have any abstract "rights." They are all subject to various exceptions. Should we really allow "snuff" pornography? Should I have every right to buy a film than includes a real murder because I enjoy it as long as I had nothing to do with the murder itself? That would be the implication of the anarchist position. But, in reality, what our freedoms amount to in Western traditions is the right to due process. "Liberty" is freedom from arbitrary rule. In a minarchist society there would be few laws, but those laws would be vigorously enforced because to tolerate lack of enforcement is to tolerate arbitrary enforcement and therefore arbitrary government.

The history of mankind is a history of violence and war. Violence is the norm. Until the modern era, war was actually looked upon as good thing and as a perfectly legitimate profit-making enterprise. The non-aggression principle is an abstract concept. You cannot derive it logically from nature at all. In the natural world, animals eat each other alive.

Liberty is a cultural achievement, not the inherent state of mankind. Man was not born free, as Rousseau claimed, he was, and still is, born into complete dependency, and we remain in states of mutual dependency our entire lives (with a few odd exceptions like the hermit). The modern state, grounded in the rule of law, is a great invention of the West. It makes a greater degree of individualism possible than was ever achievable under previous institutions. But it is also a great threat to human liberty precisely because it is more efficient than its predecessors. That is why preservation of the rule of law is so essential. That is why "strict constructionism" is so important.

The reason why anarchism is so difficult to defend is because anarchism is unachievable. It relies upon some abstract notion of "man" rather than on the concrete nature of "men." As Madison said, "If men were angels, we would need no government." Burke noted, in his criticism of the French Revolution, that liberty can only survive under conditions of order. When you destroy that order you open the doors to brute force and even "libertarians" cannot be trusted with arbitrary power. Robespierre entered the French National Assembly as a strong opponent of the death penalty. Edmund Burke is regarded as "the father of conservatism," and his defense of monarchy seems quaint to us. But he wasn't defending monarchy. He was defending the French monarch and the British monarch in their role as checks on absolute power. His work was all about liberty and how the French were seeking it in all the wrong ways. "Libertarian conservatism" is a redundancy. Conservatism, at least in its Burkean form, is all about liberty. (People calling themselves conservatives in American are a different story).

Rand, in seeking to unite Tea Party "conservatives" with the liberty movement isn't simply a "more pragmatic" version of Ron, he is a better philosopher than Ron.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

For anarchism to succeed, it isn't necessary to change the nature of man, it is necessary to change the nature of men.

Well, it depends on what you mean by "anarchism". Statelessness is the condition in which humans lived, according to anthropologists, for tens of thousands of years. If modern Homo sapiens has been around for 200,000 years, he has lived in a condition of statelessness for about 190,000 of them. Obviously it is wholly in line with the nature of man to live with no state. He has been doing it all along, until really very recently.

Agreed, boneyard bill?

 

[boneyard bill]

Well, it depends on what you mean by "anarchism". Statelessness is the condition in which humans lived, according to anthropologists, for tens of thousands of years. If modern Homo sapiens has been around for 200,000 years, he has lived in a condition of statelessness for about 190,000 of them. Obviously it is wholly in line with the nature of man to live with no state. He has been doing it all along, until really very recently.

Agreed, boneyard bill?

Of course, we don't need a state. We have lived without them even after the rise of civilization. The feudal system was a stateless society. But that does not mean that we lived in peace and harmony. We can't know how much cavemen fought each other although we do know that some of them practiced cannibalism so the stone age certainly was not without violence. But there were so few cave men that they may not have come in contact with each other all that often.

But the cave man, like modern humans, was subject to mutual dependency, and that means he had to have institutions of mutual dependency, but these were probably pretty informal. But when the territory gets the least bit crowded, you need to deal with the political function. That is the need for defense of the mutually dependent group and ways for handling disputes within the group. Of course, you don't need a state to do this. But you do need social institutions of some sort. (and by social institutions I mean customs and practices as well as actual, formal institutions). Of all of the political institutions that have arisen throughout history, the most congenial to individualism has been the institutionalization of that function in what we call a "state."

Some more primitive societies have allowed their members more latitude than others, but there has always been a line that, if crossed, would get you banished. Today, we use prisons instead, and I definitely believe that we use too many of them, but we're never going to create a perfect society. We will always be seeking a balance and, at this stage in our history, we need to restore the balance by moving away from state power and especially away from the accumulation of power by the executive. But if we decided that we were gong to do away with state power altogether, we wouldn't succeed. We'd just end up speaking Chinese.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Of course, we don't need a state. We have lived without them even after the rise of civilization. The feudal system was a stateless society.

At least the Western European version of feudalism was (I would say the Russian version was not). Agreed.

It sounds like you have your facts straight and we pretty much agree.

So much disagreement and confusion amounts, in the end, to just a mismatch of definitions of terms. It seems like maybe you think that "anarcho-capitalism" is a system of utopianism, striving for some kind of perfected world. What makes me think this, is that you wrote things like:

But that does not mean that we lived in peace and harmony.
... the stone age certainly was not without violence. But there were so few cave men that they may not have come in contact with each other all that often.
... we're never going to create a perfect society.

But my understanding of anarcho-capitalsm (also called voluntarism, or private property society, or simply libertarianism taken to its logical conclusion) is that it's not utopian. Its goals are much narrower, much smaller, and (I believe) much more realistic. It does not seek nor presume to create Harmony, Perfection, Rainbows, nor even to eliminate violence.

Also, it seems that you believe that a private property society (my own preferred term) proposes to eliminate all institutions and perhaps even all rules and politics itself. It seems this way to me because you wrote:

But the cave man, like modern humans, was subject to mutual dependency, and that means he had to have institutions of mutual dependency,
...when the territory gets the least bit crowded, you need to deal with the political function.
...But you do need social institutions of some sort. (and by social institutions I mean customs and practices as well as actual, formal institutions).
...but there has always been a line that, if crossed, would get you banished.

But again, I think that you have misunderstood or been misinformed about what advocates of the private property society are trying to accomplish. There are certinly left-anarchists that are fighting for the elimination of all institutions and all heirarchal structure. For instance, Sanguine, a member right here on RPF. That is what he and others like him want. But it is not what private property society people want. We want social institutions! We want more and stronger social institutions, in fact. We want rules, we want uncrossable lines, we want punishments. Politics... well, there's another one of those words with a whole ton of definitions, so it depends on how you define it whether we want it or not.

One way to boil it down to the essential would be this: We just oppose giving one man or group (the state) a forcible monopoly on.... well.... anything. We think that free competition and a free market will work better -- does work better -- in all aspects of life. That's it! Just eliminate monopoly privilege. That's all we want.

You can learn more about how I think about this, and what reforms we want to implement, from this lecture series:

http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=66

Essentially, Hoppe makes the point that we just got somewhat off-track when the kings managed to get in an enforced monopoly position. Get rid of the monopoly, and we can continue onward and upward as a species.

 

[boneyard bill]

At least the Western European version of feudalism was (I would say the Russian version was not). Agreed.

It sounds like you have your facts straight and we pretty much agree.

So much disagreement and confusion amounts, in the end, to just a mismatch of definitions of terms. It seems like maybe you think that "anarcho-capitalism" is a system of utopianism, striving for some kind of perfected world. What makes me think this, is that you wrote things like:



But my understanding of anarcho-capitalsm (also called voluntarism, or private property society, or simply libertarianism taken to its logical conclusion) is that it's not utopian. Its goals are much narrower, much smaller, and (I believe) much more realistic. It does not seek nor presume to create Harmony, Perfection, Rainbows, nor even to eliminate violence.

Also, it seems that you believe that a private property society (my own preferred term) proposes to eliminate all institutions and perhaps even all rules and politics itself. It seems this way to me because you wrote:



But again, I think that you have misunderstood or been misinformed about what advocates of the private property society are trying to accomplish. There are certinly left-anarchists that are fighting for the elimination of all institutions and all heirarchal structure. For instance, Sanguine, a member right here on RPF. That is what he and others like him want. But it is not what private property society people want. We want social institutions! We want more and stronger social institutions, in fact. We want rules, we want uncrossable lines, we want punishments. Politics... well, there's another one of those words with a whole ton of definitions, so it depends on how you define it whether we want it or not.

One way to boil it down to the essential would be this: We just oppose giving one man or group (the state) a forcible monopoly on.... well.... anything. We think that free competition and a free market will work better -- does work better -- in all aspects of life. That's it! Just eliminate monopoly privilege. That's all we want.

You can learn more about how I think about this, and what reforms we want to implement, from this lecture series:

http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=66

Essentially, Hoppe makes the point that we just got somewhat off-track when the kings managed to get in an enforced monopoly position. Get rid of the monopoly, and we can continue onward and upward as a species.

I suppose that, to some extent, it depends upon what you call a state. The normal definition that I have heard most often is that the state is an institution that possesses a monopoly of legitimate violence. I don't know that you need to empower a single institution with this monopoly, but I do think that any group of people that is going to have the capability of defending itself against out aggression is going to need to start with a concept of "legitimate violence." Likewise a society that is going to punish violent offenders is going to need to employ coercive power against those offenders. However, these two functions, both political, do not necessarily need to reside in the same institution, and in our early history they essentially did not. There was little provision in the constitution for criminal law, for example. In the case of treason, yes. And I think for counterfeiting, but for the most part, law enforcement was left to the states.

But how could the principle of voluntarism adequately fulfill these roles? And is it even desirable? I have already cited the case of snuff pornography. The desire of someone to purchase such materials, a purely voluntary act, nonetheless contributes to the incentive for people to provide it. But such practices violate human nature because they violate the principle of mutual dependency which is readily observable in nature whereas the principle of non-aggression most definitely is not.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

The normal definition that I have heard most often is that the state is an institution that possesses a monopoly of legitimate violence.

Close enough for horseshoes!

I don't know that you need to empower a single institution with this monopoly,

Well there we go. Once you go from "I don't know that we need to give a single institution a monopoly" to "I believe we don't need to give a single institution a monopoly" then you are an advocate for the private property society. You will then be in the same place that I am.

Earlier you asked:

But we have to band together to defend ourselves against aggressive people. But then who defends us against the militias or the police?

And you answered that "Our only defense is the rule of law." But I don't know how true that is, or more precisely how useful. Every civilization and their dog throughout modern history has had "rule of law" in some sense. What was fundamentally different with European law vs. Chinese law or Arab law? Because there was a fundamental difference. I agree with you: liberty is a cultural acheivement of Western Civilization. But why did the Chinese legal system not evolve to respect the liberty and property of individuals?

I would say that the key element Europe had was decentralization:
-- The many, many tiny principalities, bishoprics, kingdoms, city-states, etc., which made it very easy to move if one prince got too overbearing,
-- A common language and religion spanning political boundaries, also making it easy to move without leaving behind your whole culture and civilization,
-- The checks and balances on power and taxation provided by a powerful, wealthy, institutional Church (the Catholic Church), which was a competitor for the funds and loyalty of the people and thus had a strong incentive to not permit princes to raise taxes too high. The Church would sometimes excommunicate those princes who raised taxes higher than the Church wished, launched wars the Church forbade, or did other things the Church disapproved of.

It's been said that the great non-event of history was that when the Roman Empire collapsed, no new great empire rose to take its place. Thus, Europe was left radically decentralized, with the elements I listed above.

You said:

The modern state, grounded in the rule of law, is a great invention of the West.

But actually, I would say that it was the decentralization of the western European feudal system that led to liberty's advancement and blossoming. The kings managing to undermine the feudal lords and get a monopoly on ultimate conflict resolution was an aberration, a step backwards.

There is no benefit whatsoever for giving the king (or sheik, or parliament, or council, or soviet, or Pope, or board of directors...) a monopoly over all dispute resolution (including disputes involving himself!). There are many, many well-documented disadvantages to doing so.

So ultimately, what will protect us from the king or militias or police? The rule of law, yes, but a rule of law backed with teeth: the teeth of many other competing militias or kings or police, all following the same rule of law, with customers demanding that law be obeyed, with strong incentive to bring down wrath upon any king or militia or police which decides to go rogue and violate it, and with plenty of resources to do so.

Private property society is just the next logical step in the great Western experiment. It takes the genius of Western politics -- decentralization -- radicalizes it, and canonizes it.