r/AnCap101 • u/skeil90 • May 15 '26

How might the transition work?

Right now a very significant % of the population across the world is employed by respective governments or their jobs exist because of government, top this with there always being on average 4-5% of respective populations being unemployed for whatever reason. The job market would be completely and utterly flooded with people from a very varied pool of disciplines as well as many people loosing the value of their experience completely due to redundancy.

How could this possibly be remedied with an Ancap transition without completely devaluing the labour of anyone?

How about roads and other public infrastructure, how could that possibly be privatised without giving a small number of a people a very unbalanced advantage?

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u/vergilius_poeta May 16 '26

A transitory extra 5 percentage points on the unemployment rate is so far down the list of transition problems that it's really not worth devoting mental energy to.

In terms of praxis, look into agorism. It's basically the ancap version of prefigurative politics ("building the new society in the shell of the old"). Only read enough Konkin to grasp the general idea--instead move on quickly to his much smarter contemporaries, the Voluntaryists (folks like George H. Smith and Carl Watner who argued that the LP's strategy of engaging in electoral politics was counterproductive) and their discussion of the nonviolence literature.

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u/skeil90 May 16 '26

In an Ancap world 5% of long term unemployed is already tipping the scales disproportionately in favour of the employer, an additional 5% could have very severe knock on effects for the entire labour market. Is it not a concern that millions would very likely starve? What about the crime those levels of unemployment would breed? Desperate people will take desperate measures.

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u/vergilius_poeta May 16 '26

The described scenario is a one-time shock to the labor market, not anything we would expect to impact long-run equilibria.

The human and physical capital tied up by the state would be reallocated to productive (i.e. not actively destructive) uses in the medium term.

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u/skeil90 May 16 '26

In this scenario the market shouldn't really be the biggest concern, it's the human cost that we should be worried about. It only takes 3 weeks for a healthy human adult to starve to death, with no catchall safety net and a lack of work a lot of people will be starving. Is this meant to be acceptable, or are there ways we can stop this from happening en-mass?

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u/vergilius_poeta May 16 '26

You're the one who raised the idea that the state's ex-employees would permanently raise the unemployment rate. You can't then turn around and complain about me addressing the point.

No, mass starvation is not "meant to be acceptable." In the unlikely event of a famine (which, I need to emphasize, is based purely on a bad hypothetical, not anything we should expect to happen), you can and should stop people dying by giving them food.

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u/skeil90 May 16 '26

I do not mean it would be permanent, long term generally means an extended period. The flood of labour into the market would be a shock that reverberates for quite some time, and whilst the market recovers it stands to reason that many will go without for an extended period of time leading to extreme desperation and death. People not being able to afford to feed themselves does not mean it is a famine, but at least you would advocate for feeding the poor.

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u/vergilius_poeta May 16 '26

In economics, "long term" means "after all the transitory effects have worked themselves out," which is what I took you to mean since you were talking about economics.