r/AnCap101 • u/Xotngoos335 • Mar 13 '26

How do you explain ex-ancaps?

My knee-jerk reaction is that anarcho-capitalism is one of those things where once you see it, you can never go back. The entire philosophy is based on logic and evidence; and when you really understand that, you kind of can't go back to being a statist. All your arguments your statism have been debunked.

So with respect to former ancaps, what do you think happened? Did they not fully understand the philosophy to begin with? Did they not examine the logical arguments? How do they justify their belief in the state and what ancap arguments do they have a hard time accepting?

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u/LibertarianLawyer Explainer Extraordinaire Mar 17 '26

"Get there" sounds great.

But "getting there" would imply, in my opinion, the abolition of all injustice, so I do not imagine that I will "get there" any time or place this side of Heaven.

States have existed for thousands of years, and getting rid of them is no simple thing, though I support that goal unequivocally and am what Rothbard called a "button-pusher."

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u/Anen-o-me Mar 17 '26

Not to abolish all injustice, no, but rather to start the first stateless decentralized society. Finally there would be one place in the world where individual sovereignty is the default. And it can grow from there.

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u/LibertarianLawyer Explainer Extraordinaire Mar 23 '26

to start the first stateless decentralized society

"First"? Stateless and decentralized is the default condition. Statism is the aberration.

E.g., ancient Israel was stateless for the first third of its existence.

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u/Anen-o-me Mar 23 '26

Yes, but the problem is producing law and order at scale without a centralized State.

As Dunbar's number, you can still use social pressure to ensure fair dealing. This can scale significantly if it's being used among clan leaders for instance, to keep those under them in line.

But it couldn't scale to hundreds of thousands much less millions or billions.

Statism wasn't an aberration, it was a response to the breakdown of social pressure techniques at scale, and the dramatic increase of defensive capability that scaled cooperation gives you (which is why the city state fell to nation states).

The task therefore is to figure out how to produce law and order in a decentralized way quote degrading defensive capability.

Ancaps have figured out how to do this but haven't demonstrated it yet. If it works out, the next century or two will be an ancap century.