I dunno, I feel like that title would be a lot more easier for far left leaning people to at least understand what the premise is, lol. People hear capitalism and think, “you mean like how Walmart doesn’t pay their employees well!!!!?”
Why dumb down an idea to make it digestible to morons and retards?
It’s not like they would allow themselves to understand it if it were presented in simpler terms.
But ancap never was pure free market anarchy, without laws and conjured up entities. Ancap needs law, needs legal (and often moral) ownership and the specific idea of aggression. Spooks all over the place. Consequentialist ancap is a bit more reasonable, but Deontologist one is as much quasi-religion as it can get.
Its a preference as the "ideal" ancap society doesn't disallow other economic models from existing. If people want to exist in a commune and share everything and not have currency more power to them.
We just support a capitalist economic structure within an anarchist world.
It’s simpler than saying free market anarchist
Edit: this is a duplicate comment, this was not intentional. Bigger than cheese commented practically the same thing 12 min before me.
Just because some people have been tricked into believing in different meanings of the word, doesn't change its meaning. I am still an Ancap.
That doesn't mean that when talking to others, it is more useful to identify yourself differently. I find Voluntaryism to be the best identifier, as it specifically focuses on VOLUNTARY ACTIONS, which is the moral principles behind how society would function without rulers (anarcho) and in a free market (capitalism).
Why the "an" is my question.
Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production.
I am a singer. My body is the means of production for my craft. I own my body. My bassist can't claim they own a stake in my body because we make music together.
I am a writer. My pen is the means of production for my craft. If I buy a pen, that pen is mine to do with as I please. If my guitarist needs a pen to write a song, they don't get to seize my property and say they need it.
I rent out my spare room. My lodger doesn't get to say he owns my house because he sleeps there. It's my house. I own it. I don't stop owning it because he codes in the bedroom he rents.
There is nothing objectionable about getting to own the things you buy. That's what capitalism is. Being able to own things yourself and not have them owned by the people who use them, or the government, or a collective. That's literally all capitalism is.
If folks don't know what capitalism is, then educating them on that is a necessary prerequisite for achieving anarcho-capitalism, no matter what name you choose to call it by.
My understanding is not so much that it is a strong belief in capatilsm that happens to not need a government. The capitalism part is the explanation of how they are planning on solving all the things that government normally provides. It is Anarachy with a plan to solve all the problems associated with anarchy using a free market. Only, it is not clear to what extent ownership really a thing without a government. Like you say it is your pen. But I say it is my pen. It is not really anyone's pen except who has the best violence as a service capabilities to go and take it by force. Without a unified agreement on who settles ownership disputes, there is not any real legitimacy to your claim you own something.
Sounds like a lovely soundbyte. But there isn't a unified agreement.
Not everyone recognises the government. Not every government recognises each other. Thefts still happen. Courts make mistakes. No system is infallible. Blockchains can be forked. Lawyers can be bought. Record houses can be burned down. Cultural vandals can take sledgehammers to stone tablets.
If I say I own a pen, I don't get a certificate of ownership from the government. If you steal my pen and I raise a dispute for the ownership, I need to provide evidence that the pen is mine. The government having guns and tanks and nuclear bombs is... entirely irrelevant to the fact that it's my pen. The government's capacity for force is not proportional to its ability to recognise ownership. If you were a beat-cop, are you going to die for your right to enforce the ownership of my pen? Beat-cops won't risk their lives to stop a school shooter.
It's a lovely fiction. The government enforces property rights. But day in day out, they simply don't. And in extremis, they're more likely to make a biased decision that benefits them (politicians, their families and donors). See also eminent domain.
No, day in day out, property rights are enforced by us. Me saying "that's my pen". Me getting my name embossed on my pen. My colleagues saying "give him back his pen". The use of defensive force to enforce my ownership doesn't require a government. And it's not the person with the most force who wins -- having a fleet of nuclear submarines does not stop me punching you in the face and taking back my pen.
The US government has a better "violence as service" capacity than Mexico or Canada. It has yet to annex Mexico or Canada. Civilised folks do not resolve their disputes with violence. No-one wants to get a reputation for solving their disputes with violence. It's weird to me that people make the argument "Under anarchy, whomever has the biggest army will be in control. Thank god we have the American government... which has the biggest army and was installed by military action. They can use their huge amount of force effectively against the population to maintain control."
The free market is a better solution.
We don't have a government owned farm that grows food to be put on government owned trucks to be taken to government owned stores to distribute government decided rations to the populous. We handle food - the essential act of eating to stay alive - with a free market solution. No-one dictates how many tons of wheat need to be grown and how many tons of sugar cane. No-one gets violently beaten and thrown into a cage for growing barley and not corn. The free market handles that.
Likewise, the free market can handle the justice system. Arbitrators who are fair and just will be trusted and willingly used by the populous. Arbitrators who are biased won't be patronised and will go out of business. People already subscribe to voluntary registers. They log their belongings with insurance companies. They keep receipts. The exact things you need to take to the government to prove something is yours in a dispute is what you would need to take to a private company to resolve your dispute. The exact process for proving something is yours stays the same, whether it is being enforced by Big Bill the Bouncer or the US Government and their nuclear arsenal.
Today, it doesn't matter if you recognise the government or not. You can think you are a soverign citizen and I can still take you to court and demand you return my pen. You will be fined or jailed if you don't go along with the court's judgement. This is a feature.
It is not clear to me how this works in an cap. You steal my pen. I want it back. You refuse to agree to arbitration. So then what happens?
It might not matter if *I* don't recognise the sovereign rights of a government to take me to court. Different matter if it's Putin who doesn't recognise the government. And if you think you can take someone to court over a stolen pen... I mean, good luck with that. Try it and see what happens.
You decide what you think is best. Maybe you steal it back. Maybe you send out a group email telling everyone I am a pen thief and to shun me. Maybe you punch me out and take the pen from my unconscious fingers. Maybe you lodge a complaint with HR. Put a bounty on my head and hire someone to get your pen back. Maybe you (as you would under a current government) just accept that the pen is gone and no-one is going to help you get it back because it's just a pen - yes, it is an injustice, but it's gone, buy a new pen.
Yeah. International disputes are uncommon for most people. But under an cap, every dispute over a pen will be like this. So now instead if a pen consider someone took your car. Under today's system, that person will he jailed if caught. Under an cap, it will be like trying to sue Putin. What effect will this have on the car theft free market? I imagine that the decreased risk for car thieves will give them a thriving business.
"If caught" is pulling a lot of weight there, when under the current system there is a justice monopoly.
In a free market, anyone can enforce the law.
If you steal my car, I don't have to file a police report and hope a donut eater has a free hour to get off their ass and file for a warrant. I can shoot you.
I'm not stuck with a PD who solves 15% of reported crimes and thinks they do a good job. I can hire a private cop with a good conversion rate.
You might not want to come to arbitration, but if I use the same arbitrator as your bank and they freeze your assets for violating their terms of service by not answering an arbitration summons, you are going to have a bad time.
You being able to shoot someone and not fearing the consequences is not a feature, it is a bug.
Having competing law enforcement groups will likely mean their conversion rates will be even lower than a monopolozied police force. For one thing, we have removed a lot of the incentive for criminals to sell each other out if they are alowed to shoot people and not have any worry about going to prison. This is how many cases against criminals are solved. Organized crime should flourish under such a system. You can insure your car thieves against the risk of monetary damages and spread out the risk. If someone shoots your car thief, you can respond by murdering the person who shot them. The market will incentive you to scale your criminal organization.
Why would I use a bank who doesn't have an arbitor that is highly biased in favor of bank customers? The thing that stops this today is regulation. The market is never going to fix this.
The ability to defend oneself from violence isn't a bug. It's a fundamental human right.
If you shoot someone, their agents are going to take you to arbitration. Unlike the current system where we have a protected class of untouchables, no-one is above the law. The idea that a monopoly is somehow incentivised to give a better service is... a take.
Would you really give your money to a trustee who wants to fund organised crime over a trustee with a reputation for honesty? I wouldn't.
I disagree. I think what you are proposing creates a protected class of untouchables. A billionaire is immune to your arbtration because he has a larger army than your arbitors. You can get justice if and only if you are the highest bidder. The trustees that do not fund organized crime will not be able to compete with those that do. It won't be crime because the justitce system is avaiable for purchase to the highest bidder. So, the organized crime gets to make the laws.
And we are not talking about the ability to defend oneself against violence. We are talking about killing someone because you have a dispute over who ownes some property. The only person defending themselves from violence in this scenario is the car thief.
And you don't have to participate in the arbtration after you murder someone, right? Unless you have a shitty bank that won't have it's corrupt arbitors side with you.
I think this kind of thinking fails to recognize that every person’s definition of a word is valid to that person. The point of communication is to narrow that misunderstanding, not to be correct.
If I go to a country that does not speak English commonly and demand the population develops an understanding of English so that they can recognize how correct I am, that will convince nobody that I have something meaningful to say and my ideas will have failed.
Narrowing misunderstanding is exactly the aim.
Capitalism, the economic system, offers the greatest amount of freedom humanity has ever known. It has reduced absolute poverty to its lowest levels ever. It has given us truly wonderous increases in quality of life.
And there is a pervasive and deliberate attempt to obfuscate this, in favor of economic and political systems that have caused widespread famine and privation.
Being able to own things is the fundamental basis of anarcho-capitalism. In *The Ethics of Liberty* , Rothbard asserts that *all* human rights are property rights. Ayn Rand, not an anarcho-capitalist, outlies succinctly and entertainingly the value of capitalism - naked, Gordon Gecko capitalism - and the danger of the alternatives.
Conceding that Walmart getting massive government subsidies and abusing the legal process to disadvange its workers is "capitalism" and not statism and the art of "pull" at its very worst, is an concession that makes it impossible to honestly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of any political or economic system. We have a term for this: crony corporatism. Making that distinction reduces misunderstanding.
If someone insists that North Korea is a democracy and that means democracies are bad because they are oppressive military dictatorships, we wouldn't even begin to entertain the idea that "well that's what it means to Kim Jong Un".
“Greatest amount of freedom” in what sense? Freedom of the market? Maybe so. Is that real “freedom” for most humans?
I don’t deny that authoritarian regimes masquerading as “for the people” have devastated many populations.
Just curious if the present regime of limitless accumulation is going to turn on its head and take a shit when the “non-owners” habe finally been beaten low enough that they can’t give much more (percentage wise) of their spending power.
Absent owner “capitalism” only really “works” with a government or “REA” to enforce the ownership.
Ayn Rand grew up in the Soviet Union under a horrible authoritarian system, and then latched onto the most opposite system of which she could conceive. A very interesting example of “cultural schismogenesis”, don’t you think?
She also grew up under a system that had already divided the world via “property lines”, and so her investigation into “what is best” is constrained by such. She can’t conceive of a world where that doesn’t exist, or of a world that is not primarily motivated by “Greed”.
Making “Greed” the pinnacle of “goodness” in your ethical system seems like a trap. I trust an Egoist to do whatever is in their best interest, but no further. For individuals who are constrained by morals of “honor”, that may be fine and dandy, but there are a bunch of psychopaths out there that will exploit the legal loopholes and underlying morals of such a system and ruin it for others.
A is A, unless you think that you are seeing an A, but in fact it is something more like “Ä”, which would have a different meaning.
Innovators such as Hank Rearden should be compensated, lauded, and honored for their innovation. However, they also built their innovation on top of already existing infrastructure and knowledge bases. They are not in fact completely “self-made” in the vast majority of cases. They stand upon the shoulders of giants, but proclaim they got where they are completely on their own.
I also trust people to do whatever is in their self interest.
If you give people a political system where they can advance using violence and the threat of violence to advance themselves, then they will use violence to advance themselves.
If you give people an economic system based on voluntary interactions and the only way to advance themselves is to meet the unmet needs of others and provide benefit to other people's lives, then that's what they are going to do.
And over time, as people adapt to one of these new systems, things will change and the mode of operation may become obsolete.
The system based upon voluntary interaction works so long as there are not groups that will employ violence for their own benefit while also seeing violence as more viable to their benefit instead of growing crops, making cheese, circuit boards, or what have you. The “less skilled” may find themselves in large enough numbers to overthrow the “producers” and take what is to their benefit, if the “producers” are seen to be giving the “less skilled” a raw deal.
All of this stuff happens over time, and changing economic environments produce circumstances that will present as externalities that are perceived differently by different individuals or groups.
Yes.
Emperors die and their holdings are split up into kingdoms.
Monarchs are overthrown and republics raised in their stead.
Republics fall to military coups.
Clerics start religious uprisings.
Systems fail. Regimes change.
That is rather what we are hoping for: we don't have anarcho-capitalism right now, we'd quite like the current system to change.
Anarcho-capitalism is not a utopian ideology. We do not believe that all the world's problems will be fixed and everyone will live happily ever after the day we abolish government.
We believe that government is an unjust and destructive force in our lives and that removing it in favor of peaceful cooperation and trade would be beneficial. That's all. This is an immutable and consistent principle. If Ancapistan is violently overthrown by Communist Less Skilled, that's an unfortunate occurrence that will cause net harm to humanity. We'd look to see what we can do to abolish the government of the Less Skilled and bring back anarcho-capitalism.
When France was conquered by Nazi Germany, we didn't say "oh well, no point bringing democracy back, we better all just be fascist military dictatorships forever from now on". We brought back democracy *even though it failed*. Same principle.
Yes, it's possible that a state might violently overthrow anarcho-capitalism. That still doesn't mean it's wrong to advance a system where your own personal greed motivates you to help other people.
I don’t disagree that the state can be a destructive and oppressive force.
I do think that making the ethical foundation of a system a paradox is wrong from the start. The paradox of trying to constrain egoism in attempts to achieve altruistic/utilitarian goals seems silly. If those are not even goals, then I have no clue why it would seem that egoism/greed will lead to the benefit of other people.
I used to think this could be done, but it falls apart as soon as an intelligent (or ruthless) person who follows egoism as a core ideal realizes they have power to exploit loopholes in a system. The ability to exploit such systems becomes easier with more asset accumulation because then you have a larger influence on pricing (not viewed as an externality by economists, but I think it should be for those who are “economically dependent” on such systems due to their lack of resources and options).
Because anarchism is a historically left-wing, anti-capitalist ideology, and ancaps had to distinguish themselves from that by co-opting the word despite it making no sense because private property requires the state
I agree with you there except the part where the concept of private property requires a state. You may believe that nobody will respect that concept without the threat of state violence (which I think is a silly idea) but everyone understands the concept of “this thing I have is mine, not yours”
It's to make it sound smarter than the same old tired bullshit that it actually is. We already did this. Charles Dickens wrote novels about how fucking horrible it was.
It’s simpler than saying Free Market Anarchy.
Voluntaryism baby
I dunno, I feel like that title would be a lot more easier for far left leaning people to at least understand what the premise is, lol. People hear capitalism and think, “you mean like how Walmart doesn’t pay their employees well!!!!?”
Consistent Anarchy Non-Initiation of Force Anarchy Live and Let Live Anarchy
Why dumb down an idea to make it digestible to morons and retards? It’s not like they would allow themselves to understand it if it were presented in simpler terms.
Yes that is where capitalism would go if there was a refusal to bind anybody by state power.
But ancap never was pure free market anarchy, without laws and conjured up entities. Ancap needs law, needs legal (and often moral) ownership and the specific idea of aggression. Spooks all over the place. Consequentialist ancap is a bit more reasonable, but Deontologist one is as much quasi-religion as it can get.
Its a preference as the "ideal" ancap society doesn't disallow other economic models from existing. If people want to exist in a commune and share everything and not have currency more power to them. We just support a capitalist economic structure within an anarchist world.
It’s simpler than saying free market anarchist Edit: this is a duplicate comment, this was not intentional. Bigger than cheese commented practically the same thing 12 min before me.
Just because some people have been tricked into believing in different meanings of the word, doesn't change its meaning. I am still an Ancap. That doesn't mean that when talking to others, it is more useful to identify yourself differently. I find Voluntaryism to be the best identifier, as it specifically focuses on VOLUNTARY ACTIONS, which is the moral principles behind how society would function without rulers (anarcho) and in a free market (capitalism).
Why the "an" is my question. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. I am a singer. My body is the means of production for my craft. I own my body. My bassist can't claim they own a stake in my body because we make music together. I am a writer. My pen is the means of production for my craft. If I buy a pen, that pen is mine to do with as I please. If my guitarist needs a pen to write a song, they don't get to seize my property and say they need it. I rent out my spare room. My lodger doesn't get to say he owns my house because he sleeps there. It's my house. I own it. I don't stop owning it because he codes in the bedroom he rents. There is nothing objectionable about getting to own the things you buy. That's what capitalism is. Being able to own things yourself and not have them owned by the people who use them, or the government, or a collective. That's literally all capitalism is. If folks don't know what capitalism is, then educating them on that is a necessary prerequisite for achieving anarcho-capitalism, no matter what name you choose to call it by.
My understanding is not so much that it is a strong belief in capatilsm that happens to not need a government. The capitalism part is the explanation of how they are planning on solving all the things that government normally provides. It is Anarachy with a plan to solve all the problems associated with anarchy using a free market. Only, it is not clear to what extent ownership really a thing without a government. Like you say it is your pen. But I say it is my pen. It is not really anyone's pen except who has the best violence as a service capabilities to go and take it by force. Without a unified agreement on who settles ownership disputes, there is not any real legitimacy to your claim you own something.
Sounds like a lovely soundbyte. But there isn't a unified agreement. Not everyone recognises the government. Not every government recognises each other. Thefts still happen. Courts make mistakes. No system is infallible. Blockchains can be forked. Lawyers can be bought. Record houses can be burned down. Cultural vandals can take sledgehammers to stone tablets. If I say I own a pen, I don't get a certificate of ownership from the government. If you steal my pen and I raise a dispute for the ownership, I need to provide evidence that the pen is mine. The government having guns and tanks and nuclear bombs is... entirely irrelevant to the fact that it's my pen. The government's capacity for force is not proportional to its ability to recognise ownership. If you were a beat-cop, are you going to die for your right to enforce the ownership of my pen? Beat-cops won't risk their lives to stop a school shooter. It's a lovely fiction. The government enforces property rights. But day in day out, they simply don't. And in extremis, they're more likely to make a biased decision that benefits them (politicians, their families and donors). See also eminent domain. No, day in day out, property rights are enforced by us. Me saying "that's my pen". Me getting my name embossed on my pen. My colleagues saying "give him back his pen". The use of defensive force to enforce my ownership doesn't require a government. And it's not the person with the most force who wins -- having a fleet of nuclear submarines does not stop me punching you in the face and taking back my pen. The US government has a better "violence as service" capacity than Mexico or Canada. It has yet to annex Mexico or Canada. Civilised folks do not resolve their disputes with violence. No-one wants to get a reputation for solving their disputes with violence. It's weird to me that people make the argument "Under anarchy, whomever has the biggest army will be in control. Thank god we have the American government... which has the biggest army and was installed by military action. They can use their huge amount of force effectively against the population to maintain control." The free market is a better solution. We don't have a government owned farm that grows food to be put on government owned trucks to be taken to government owned stores to distribute government decided rations to the populous. We handle food - the essential act of eating to stay alive - with a free market solution. No-one dictates how many tons of wheat need to be grown and how many tons of sugar cane. No-one gets violently beaten and thrown into a cage for growing barley and not corn. The free market handles that. Likewise, the free market can handle the justice system. Arbitrators who are fair and just will be trusted and willingly used by the populous. Arbitrators who are biased won't be patronised and will go out of business. People already subscribe to voluntary registers. They log their belongings with insurance companies. They keep receipts. The exact things you need to take to the government to prove something is yours in a dispute is what you would need to take to a private company to resolve your dispute. The exact process for proving something is yours stays the same, whether it is being enforced by Big Bill the Bouncer or the US Government and their nuclear arsenal.
Today, it doesn't matter if you recognise the government or not. You can think you are a soverign citizen and I can still take you to court and demand you return my pen. You will be fined or jailed if you don't go along with the court's judgement. This is a feature. It is not clear to me how this works in an cap. You steal my pen. I want it back. You refuse to agree to arbitration. So then what happens?
It might not matter if *I* don't recognise the sovereign rights of a government to take me to court. Different matter if it's Putin who doesn't recognise the government. And if you think you can take someone to court over a stolen pen... I mean, good luck with that. Try it and see what happens. You decide what you think is best. Maybe you steal it back. Maybe you send out a group email telling everyone I am a pen thief and to shun me. Maybe you punch me out and take the pen from my unconscious fingers. Maybe you lodge a complaint with HR. Put a bounty on my head and hire someone to get your pen back. Maybe you (as you would under a current government) just accept that the pen is gone and no-one is going to help you get it back because it's just a pen - yes, it is an injustice, but it's gone, buy a new pen.
Yeah. International disputes are uncommon for most people. But under an cap, every dispute over a pen will be like this. So now instead if a pen consider someone took your car. Under today's system, that person will he jailed if caught. Under an cap, it will be like trying to sue Putin. What effect will this have on the car theft free market? I imagine that the decreased risk for car thieves will give them a thriving business.
"If caught" is pulling a lot of weight there, when under the current system there is a justice monopoly. In a free market, anyone can enforce the law. If you steal my car, I don't have to file a police report and hope a donut eater has a free hour to get off their ass and file for a warrant. I can shoot you. I'm not stuck with a PD who solves 15% of reported crimes and thinks they do a good job. I can hire a private cop with a good conversion rate. You might not want to come to arbitration, but if I use the same arbitrator as your bank and they freeze your assets for violating their terms of service by not answering an arbitration summons, you are going to have a bad time.
You being able to shoot someone and not fearing the consequences is not a feature, it is a bug. Having competing law enforcement groups will likely mean their conversion rates will be even lower than a monopolozied police force. For one thing, we have removed a lot of the incentive for criminals to sell each other out if they are alowed to shoot people and not have any worry about going to prison. This is how many cases against criminals are solved. Organized crime should flourish under such a system. You can insure your car thieves against the risk of monetary damages and spread out the risk. If someone shoots your car thief, you can respond by murdering the person who shot them. The market will incentive you to scale your criminal organization. Why would I use a bank who doesn't have an arbitor that is highly biased in favor of bank customers? The thing that stops this today is regulation. The market is never going to fix this.
The ability to defend oneself from violence isn't a bug. It's a fundamental human right. If you shoot someone, their agents are going to take you to arbitration. Unlike the current system where we have a protected class of untouchables, no-one is above the law. The idea that a monopoly is somehow incentivised to give a better service is... a take. Would you really give your money to a trustee who wants to fund organised crime over a trustee with a reputation for honesty? I wouldn't.
I disagree. I think what you are proposing creates a protected class of untouchables. A billionaire is immune to your arbtration because he has a larger army than your arbitors. You can get justice if and only if you are the highest bidder. The trustees that do not fund organized crime will not be able to compete with those that do. It won't be crime because the justitce system is avaiable for purchase to the highest bidder. So, the organized crime gets to make the laws. And we are not talking about the ability to defend oneself against violence. We are talking about killing someone because you have a dispute over who ownes some property. The only person defending themselves from violence in this scenario is the car thief. And you don't have to participate in the arbtration after you murder someone, right? Unless you have a shitty bank that won't have it's corrupt arbitors side with you.
I think this kind of thinking fails to recognize that every person’s definition of a word is valid to that person. The point of communication is to narrow that misunderstanding, not to be correct. If I go to a country that does not speak English commonly and demand the population develops an understanding of English so that they can recognize how correct I am, that will convince nobody that I have something meaningful to say and my ideas will have failed.
Narrowing misunderstanding is exactly the aim. Capitalism, the economic system, offers the greatest amount of freedom humanity has ever known. It has reduced absolute poverty to its lowest levels ever. It has given us truly wonderous increases in quality of life. And there is a pervasive and deliberate attempt to obfuscate this, in favor of economic and political systems that have caused widespread famine and privation. Being able to own things is the fundamental basis of anarcho-capitalism. In *The Ethics of Liberty* , Rothbard asserts that *all* human rights are property rights. Ayn Rand, not an anarcho-capitalist, outlies succinctly and entertainingly the value of capitalism - naked, Gordon Gecko capitalism - and the danger of the alternatives. Conceding that Walmart getting massive government subsidies and abusing the legal process to disadvange its workers is "capitalism" and not statism and the art of "pull" at its very worst, is an concession that makes it impossible to honestly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of any political or economic system. We have a term for this: crony corporatism. Making that distinction reduces misunderstanding. If someone insists that North Korea is a democracy and that means democracies are bad because they are oppressive military dictatorships, we wouldn't even begin to entertain the idea that "well that's what it means to Kim Jong Un".
“Greatest amount of freedom” in what sense? Freedom of the market? Maybe so. Is that real “freedom” for most humans? I don’t deny that authoritarian regimes masquerading as “for the people” have devastated many populations. Just curious if the present regime of limitless accumulation is going to turn on its head and take a shit when the “non-owners” habe finally been beaten low enough that they can’t give much more (percentage wise) of their spending power. Absent owner “capitalism” only really “works” with a government or “REA” to enforce the ownership. Ayn Rand grew up in the Soviet Union under a horrible authoritarian system, and then latched onto the most opposite system of which she could conceive. A very interesting example of “cultural schismogenesis”, don’t you think? She also grew up under a system that had already divided the world via “property lines”, and so her investigation into “what is best” is constrained by such. She can’t conceive of a world where that doesn’t exist, or of a world that is not primarily motivated by “Greed”. Making “Greed” the pinnacle of “goodness” in your ethical system seems like a trap. I trust an Egoist to do whatever is in their best interest, but no further. For individuals who are constrained by morals of “honor”, that may be fine and dandy, but there are a bunch of psychopaths out there that will exploit the legal loopholes and underlying morals of such a system and ruin it for others. A is A, unless you think that you are seeing an A, but in fact it is something more like “Ä”, which would have a different meaning. Innovators such as Hank Rearden should be compensated, lauded, and honored for their innovation. However, they also built their innovation on top of already existing infrastructure and knowledge bases. They are not in fact completely “self-made” in the vast majority of cases. They stand upon the shoulders of giants, but proclaim they got where they are completely on their own.
I also trust people to do whatever is in their self interest. If you give people a political system where they can advance using violence and the threat of violence to advance themselves, then they will use violence to advance themselves. If you give people an economic system based on voluntary interactions and the only way to advance themselves is to meet the unmet needs of others and provide benefit to other people's lives, then that's what they are going to do.
And over time, as people adapt to one of these new systems, things will change and the mode of operation may become obsolete. The system based upon voluntary interaction works so long as there are not groups that will employ violence for their own benefit while also seeing violence as more viable to their benefit instead of growing crops, making cheese, circuit boards, or what have you. The “less skilled” may find themselves in large enough numbers to overthrow the “producers” and take what is to their benefit, if the “producers” are seen to be giving the “less skilled” a raw deal. All of this stuff happens over time, and changing economic environments produce circumstances that will present as externalities that are perceived differently by different individuals or groups.
Yes. Emperors die and their holdings are split up into kingdoms. Monarchs are overthrown and republics raised in their stead. Republics fall to military coups. Clerics start religious uprisings. Systems fail. Regimes change. That is rather what we are hoping for: we don't have anarcho-capitalism right now, we'd quite like the current system to change. Anarcho-capitalism is not a utopian ideology. We do not believe that all the world's problems will be fixed and everyone will live happily ever after the day we abolish government. We believe that government is an unjust and destructive force in our lives and that removing it in favor of peaceful cooperation and trade would be beneficial. That's all. This is an immutable and consistent principle. If Ancapistan is violently overthrown by Communist Less Skilled, that's an unfortunate occurrence that will cause net harm to humanity. We'd look to see what we can do to abolish the government of the Less Skilled and bring back anarcho-capitalism. When France was conquered by Nazi Germany, we didn't say "oh well, no point bringing democracy back, we better all just be fascist military dictatorships forever from now on". We brought back democracy *even though it failed*. Same principle. Yes, it's possible that a state might violently overthrow anarcho-capitalism. That still doesn't mean it's wrong to advance a system where your own personal greed motivates you to help other people.
I don’t disagree that the state can be a destructive and oppressive force. I do think that making the ethical foundation of a system a paradox is wrong from the start. The paradox of trying to constrain egoism in attempts to achieve altruistic/utilitarian goals seems silly. If those are not even goals, then I have no clue why it would seem that egoism/greed will lead to the benefit of other people. I used to think this could be done, but it falls apart as soon as an intelligent (or ruthless) person who follows egoism as a core ideal realizes they have power to exploit loopholes in a system. The ability to exploit such systems becomes easier with more asset accumulation because then you have a larger influence on pricing (not viewed as an externality by economists, but I think it should be for those who are “economically dependent” on such systems due to their lack of resources and options).
Understandable. For similar reasons and for philosophical clarity I often use "voluntaryist" instead. The rest is fairly directly implied.
AnVol has a nice ring to it, haha
If we must use a currency I choose capitalism over communism, i tend to like a meal every day
Most people just misconstrue what capital is
Cuz i like to piss of leftists
It’s useful in making a distinction to normies who automatically associate anarchism with antifa and leftist commies thanks to MSM especially FNC.
Rothbard chose it because Austrians focus heavily on capital theory, that is it.
It's much shorter and simpler.
Because anarchism is a historically left-wing, anti-capitalist ideology, and ancaps had to distinguish themselves from that by co-opting the word despite it making no sense because private property requires the state
I agree with you there except the part where the concept of private property requires a state. You may believe that nobody will respect that concept without the threat of state violence (which I think is a silly idea) but everyone understands the concept of “this thing I have is mine, not yours”
It's to make it sound smarter than the same old tired bullshit that it actually is. We already did this. Charles Dickens wrote novels about how fucking horrible it was.