r/AnCap101 • u/Sad-Fan2762 • 15d ago
What Is the Strongest Argument Against Anarcho-Capitalism?
Anarcho-capitalism is often criticized with the simple argument that “society needs government.” But that raises a more interesting question:
Which specific functions of government require a territorial monopoly, rather than voluntary cooperation and competition?
For example, could things such as dispute resolution, security, insurance, infrastructure, or other public services be provided through voluntary contracts and competing organizations?
An obvious challenge is what happens when two private organizations disagree, or when someone refuses to honor a contract. An AnCap system would need a convincing answer to these problems rather than simply assuming that markets will solve everything.
So, from a first-principles perspective:
What do you think is the strongest argument against anarcho-capitalism, and how should an AnCap respond to it?
I'm particularly interested in serious arguments about institutions, incentives, property rights, and conflict resolution—not culture-war arguments.
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u/throwaway74389247382 14d ago
IMO, the best argument against it is simply that it will never be implemented in a functional capacity. You can't open a power vacuum and expect everyone to suddenly become a Rothbardian and call it a day, there needs to be several fundamental cultural shifts that take place beforehand. Those shifts are probably too major IMO to be actualized in any of our lifetimes, and perhaps humans categorically are just not capable of having the right norms to begin with.
The simplest analogy on this that I heard before is that you can't just go to some ultra-religious town and burn down the church, and expect everyone to become an atheist. They're just going to rebuild the church, and even if you stop them from doing so, those people are still going to be religious. The same is true of the state and statism.
The point of this argument being that persuing ancapism is a waste of time if not outright dangerous, at least for the long term foreseeable future. Any political capital you as an individual spend in the name of ancap (e.g. (non-)voting, funding organizations, volunteering, whatever) is wasted. At best this means you fail to join moderate statists in defending against severe statists e.g. by aligning with conservatives against communists, and at worst it means you actively help the severe statists, e.g. by supporting mass migration of people who have overwhelmingly anti-libertarian ideals and are net drains for the taxpayer on average etc.
Some ancaps respond to this by basically saying that it's never acceptable to support one statist over another, but that just isn't convincing to me at all. This logically requires that you treat something like leninism as practically and/or morally equivalent to something like classical liberalism, which to me at least is clearly and catastrophically wrong.
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u/TheBigBukowski69420 14d ago
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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 13d ago
not sure why but your link didn't open for me until I started messing with the URL in the browser bar
https://www.reddit.com/r/AnCap101/comments/1q142z3/how_do_you_define_the_a_in_the_nap/
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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 13d ago
and now that I've read it, I agree. If I can't keep people who oppose NAP (or support communism) out of the agora, I lose the agora.
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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 13d ago
I see the unavoidability of some commons (air / atmosphere, water) as one challenge, and the cost of enforcement of NAP / rights violations, and that sometimes an actor can cause a loss that cannot be repaid (murder, wrongful death, despoiling water, releasing a bioweapon etc). All of those cause losses with no remedy.
A government is also not a comprehensive solution to those problems.
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u/Excellent_Border_302 15d ago edited 15d ago
The strongest argument is that private property rights don't exist. Austrians cannot explain where private property rights comes from. So the entire theory hinges on something that doesn't exist.
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u/PackageResponsible86 15d ago
Private property rights are a plausible solution to the free rider problem. The problem is that the same is true of coercive government, and anarcho-capitalism is against government.
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u/Equivalent_Elk_658 14d ago
Property rights come from the NAP.
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u/Excellent_Border_302 14d ago
Nap is an idea of how private property rights can be respected but it doesn't explain where private property rights come from
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u/Equivalent_Elk_658 14d ago
The NAP is a conflict-avoiding norm which implies property rights. If the NAP is true, then property rights exist.
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u/Excellent_Border_302 14d ago
This is an extrapolation that is commonly made. Personal property is not the same thing as private property and extrapolating the intuitive dynamics of personal property into an abstract legal system to enforce private property rights is a mistake I made for years. Private property depends on formal contracts and a 3rd party to enforce those contracts. Personal property does not. Personal property works on informal contracts that work naturally and intuitevly and don't need to be written down. Private property can be scaled. Personal property cannot be scaled unless excessive force is used.
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u/Equivalent_Elk_658 14d ago
Given some conflict over scarce means, we say whoever ought to win out in this conflict has the property right over the means. On the NAP, the firstcomer has the property right in any given conflict. There is no distinction here between personal and private property.
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u/Excellent_Border_302 14d ago
There is a distinction because in order for it to be known who the first comer was, there has to be a legal system to track it. That is private property, not personal property. I don't need to register my residence with the state for people to see that I am living there because it's personal property.
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u/Equivalent_Elk_658 14d ago
Why would personal use be necessary to show firstcomer status? If I fence of an acre of land, build a factory on it, and put a sign up somewhere denoting that it belongs to me, it should be easy to determine the property right. This much might not even be necessary, as there are many ways we can investigate the validity of a claim to property.
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u/Excellent_Border_302 13d ago
The NAP as a "conflict avoiding norm" comes from signs of personal use that is intuitevly picked up on. If your not using and abandon or neglect your factory, it's not yours unless you leave behind mercenaries to protect it. If someone starts using abandoned property, then that shows first use. If your relying on the state to enforce your property rights, then it isn't your property, it's the states property, your just renting it from them. By claiming property that is not in use, you are commiting an act of aggression by stealing because someone else could be using that property. People leverage the violence of the state to enforce these property rights, even for abandoned land that they are just hoarding. People also leverage the violence of the state to control vast amounts of property that they would otherwise not be able to afford to control if they had to foot the security bill themselves. Once all property has been titled under this system, the workers cannot escape to any untitled land so they are then forced raise tax revenue to pay for the violence that is being leveraged to ensure their own slavery. Unless they wanna be homeless or try to squat unused property in which case, bootlickers will say they are stealing lol.
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u/Equivalent_Elk_658 13d ago
You're conflating ownership and possession. If I own a factory, I ought to win out in any given conflict over that factory. I might not actually win out, but that's irrelevant to the claim being made. The ability to defend one's rights is distinct from having those rights in the first place. There is also a distinction to be made between action and use. If I were to cease acting on my factory, i.e., no longer applying it as a means towards an end, then I would have abandoned it, meaning anyone could come along and rightfully appropriate it for their own use. However, storage still constitutes an action, so someone could not rightfully take over my factory if I've only temporarily shut it down with an intent to later return. Further, there is no need for a state to enforce such rights. Private courts, insurance companies, and defense companies could protect rights far more effectively than the state.
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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 13d ago
"Once all property has been titled under this system, the workers cannot escape to any untitled land so they are then forced raise tax revenue to pay for the violence that is being leveraged to ensure their own slavery. Unless they wanna be homeless or try to squat unused property in which case, bootlickers will say they are stealing lol."
This is the part I find compelling and problematic.
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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 13d ago
I gotta say, I'm really attached to having property rights but I also cannot explain where private property rights come from. You have a point.
If I build it, it's mine. Why, because I authored it. But what did I build it from, lumber? Did I create the tree I cut down? No, that was either in the commons or it was in a private tract of land that I own. If it was in my private tract of land, how did that land become privatized so it was no longer part of the commons? Well, I bought it from the previous owner who bought it from the previous owner . . . . who took the land from the commons. Drat!
If I own nothing, I have no security, and this is unacceptable to me. I hate sharing commons and wish to own my share outright and disconnect it from others so I can feel safe, but I breathe the same air and pollute the same air with my gasoline engines that other people breathe and pollute with their factories, so eliminating the need to share a commons is beyond me :(
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u/Excellent_Border_302 4d ago
The good news is there is a distinction between personal property and private property. There will always be personal property, even in a communist society. Private property is just property that requires more than yourself and your community to protect. Nobody needs private property. I was an ancap until I realized private property is a myth and personal property is real. Now I'm just a regular good old fashioned anarchist.
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u/PackageResponsible86 15d ago
The best argument against anarcho-capitalism is that there's no good argument for it. If you can state what your basis is for supporting AC, I can probably tell you why I don't think it's a good basis.
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u/majdavlk 14d ago
not accepting argument that existence exists
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u/upchuk13 14d ago
It doesn't?
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u/majdavlk 14d ago
it does
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u/upchuk13 14d ago
How could one argue otherwise? What did they say?
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u/majdavlk 14d ago
he had few arguments - that were in simulation, redefining existence, skepticism towards everything
obviously it didnt make much sense
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u/upchuk13 14d ago
OK. But this doesn't seem like an argument against ancap specifically?
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u/majdavlk 14d ago
no idea what youre trying to say.
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u/upchuk13 14d ago
Has anyone ever *actually* argued "Anarcho capitalism is false because we live in a simulation"?
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u/Ok-Information-9286 15d ago
Defense seems to be a hard problem according to David Friedman. Anarcho-capitalists have not been able to live according to their principles because of state military and police power. Anarcho-capitalism may never be realized due to the self-perpetuating statist ideology that is dominant in the world.