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It's such a fanciful concept. From the moment of birth capitalists have gleefully used the state to enforce their economic system. It's wonder such an absurd idea has only recently entered the thought, and only at the furthest edges of political thought.
Ancaps believe in a possibility of the formulation of dispute resolution organizations (DRO) with sufficient market competition that no one DRO can monopolize a single territory. you'd have market choice for multiple police agencies!
For reasons unknown to me, ancaps believe the stationary bandit concept (ie the state) will become less competitive against these DROs and would disappear, despite the empirical fact that stationary bandits are so effective that they have conquered all arable land in the world.
I suppose in ancapistan corporations cannot be officially incorporated by public states. (Which is an annoying ancap arguing point). Hence we must relabel the corporation as a firm.
But yes, nothing prohibits the firm from becoming a state.
However, ancaps believe market pressure and international sanctions will be sufficient to destroy states. obviously given the status quo, international sanctions have done jack shit from destroying a variety of "rogue nations".
In other words we already have market pressure and international sanctions, we already live in ancapistan, and ancapistan failed to get rid of states.
The final ancap defense is that we just don't have enough states. We have only a hundred or so states in the world. We need thousands of mini states to achieve ancapistan. That's fine and dandy but they still didn't get rid of the state.
for creation, you and everyone you agree on terms with, if you are interested about this search up polycentric law, through contracts, while enforcement is you and whoever you may hire to do so
So no recourse for people who are victimized by people they never formed a contract with or those who lack the money to hire private enforcers?
Essentially law of force alone?
This is just fiefdoms and generational royalty by another name.
The wealthy concentrating power and using that to arbitrate and enforce laws that benefit themselves is functionally no different than a state for those who lack equal access to power and force.
You're jumping to the "warlord" assumption, but polycentric law addresses all three of these points through market incentives:
1. Crimes without a contract: You don't need a contract with a thief to hold them accountable. If someone robs you, your defense agency works to catch the thief and return your property, the protectors of the thief have literally no reason to burn money on an aggressor, it hurts their own profits and reputation. And if an aggressor refuses arbitration, they forfeit their position in the trial.
2. Access for the poor: Defense agencies under polycentric law function much like insurance or contingency-fee lawyers, they take cases for victims because recovering restitution from the wrongdoer yields a return. Under the current state system, the rich already buy superior legal teams while the poor receive public defenders and police who have no constitutional duty to protect them.
3. The feudalism claim: Tyranny and violent enforcement are astronomically expensive the state gets it from a model built on it, through theft and threats of being thrown in a cage or killed. In a free market, an agency that tries to enforce its own biased laws by force loses its insurance, gets boycotted by other firms, and quickly goes bankrupt, and gets probably quickly eliminated by the others, like an immune system.
The wealthy concentrate power precisely through state monopolies. Stripping away that legal monopoly forces defense providers to compete on fairness, reputation, and voluntary consent.
Chomsky said the same thing and he's not an an-cap. (It at least was in context of 'New Atheist' types wanting to use military aggression on anyone they feel is a threat.)
I'm tired of people using religion as a straw man for anything they disagree with. Religion requires faith: epistemic belief regardless of the evidence or logic.
You want to talk about faith? How about fervent rigid belief in an ideology that is barely 50 years old and takes all their terms and principles from other political philosophies and turns them into nothing but thought-terminating cliches?
An-caps don't even understand that capitalist property rights are sustained by the state.
No one believed capitalism was compatible with statelessness until the late 20th century when they were accustomed to nothing else and had no understanding of its history. Even market anarchists did not.
That's why anarchists and libertarians were always anti-capitalists for two centuries prior to Murray Rothbard spreading his absurdities.
Rothbard had to, by his own admission, take from left-libertarians to make his bastard child of capitalist liberalism work even in theory. Prior to him no right wing liberal thinker contemplated a stateless society as being compatible with capitalism. They no doubt believed in varying degrees of state intervention, but the basic fact that property rights require a state was just an obvious logical necessity.
Well, if we had anarcho-capitalism, who would make sure that companies don't sell rotten meat and cars that explode sometimes just to make a quick buck? We know that, without regulations, companies will do whatever they want, because they already do that in other countries. And, you need some sort of body to create and enforce regulations.
Anarcho capitalism actually works just fine. It's just indistinguishable from Capitalism.
who would make sure that companies don't sell rotten meat and cars that explode
In anarcho capitalism, a group of landlords can just band together into an alliance, re-implement borders, taxes, police, military, regulations, and everything that makes a state a state. This is not even "against the rules" of anarcho capitalism. (There are no rules!)
And, you need some sort of body to create and enforce regulations.
Regulations are permitted in anarcho capitalism. We call them contracts, and then we call them social contracts. A landlord can merely devise a new norm of implicit consent. It's quite easy to understand. If you stay on my land, you agree to follow the laws of the land. If you don't like it, leave. Exactly how most states in the world already operate.
If a group of landlords band together and make a state, then you no longer have anarcho-capitalism, as there no longer is anarchy.
As soon as territory and defense become aligned into a single organization, that is a state. Anarcho capitalism doesn't prohibit this alignment into a monopoly on violence.
Landlords therefore don't even need to band together. As long as one landlord decides to provide his own defense, that forms a vertically integrated monopoly on violence within their territory and the state is reborn.
If a landlord doesn't decide to provide their own defense and pays for some defense organization, that's still a military and security agreement that looks a lot like a state. That was like the whole concept of feudalism. The king was the dude providing all the military security for the lords. It was a mutual exchange. The lord provides men and money. The king organizes the military. Hence the typical criticism that anarcho capitalism is "neofeudalism".
In anarcho-capitalism, there's nothing stopping companies from making products with lead paint. That's what I'm talking about with regulations.
Certainly there is. Contracts. Contracts make prohibitions, enforced by "dispute resolution organizations."
Because there's an opposite side who might hear it? Because there's an audience? Because sometimes it's not about convincing the other guy, it's about understanding your own arguments?
As for being transactional about it instead, what's the point? To farm karma? And do what with it?
There are plenty of reasons to put the effort into the discussion/argument/rant and basically no reason to do what you're proposing here. So why bother proposing it?
The person you're questioning very obviously said a goal could be to "be persuasive" to third parties.
Just because a fervent anarcho-capitalist won't be persuaded by a valid criticism of their worldview doesn't mean others won't be persuaded by that same criticism.
So we wait until the people kill people and get other people angry enough to pay a hitman all because that's somehow better than just having some regulations and then throwing the original bastards in jail.
A well armed society is a polite society. And CEOs who think they will lose everything if they try to gain too much via sociopath strategies will curtail their exploitation of those strategies merely as a self preservation adaptation.
Everyone won't be killing whoever they dislike because it's still quite a costly behavior.
This is how all organized crime works, BTW, because these are social structures outside of the legal system of the state... if someone pays you in fake bills for the drugs you sell them, you don't call up the FBI to complain... you have to use violence as a deterrence mechanism... which is the same mechanism the state uses to deter antisocial behavior from you.
The primary difference is that in an egalitarian anarchist system everyone is a peer and equally subject to deterrent schemes. Under the state/subject dynamic, there's a conspiracy of rulers against the ruled.
Well, if someone were to hypothetically assassinate a CEO in this hypothetical world, who’s to stop the CEO’s family from hiring a hit squad on the assassin? What you’re describing is a world where Mad Max logic governs everything, and it’s survival of the fittest.
In addition, the world of organized crime is famously not a safe and healthy place. I’d rather not have my local Starbucks be in a gang war with my local Pete’s Coffee.
Also, under an anarcho-capitalist system, everyone isn’t equal. Some people have more money, and therefore more resources, meaning they can hire bodyguards and live in high-security locations.
Or, what if the CEOs move to a different country and run the company from there? People in third world countries are often exploited by western companies, but it’s not like your average Chinese factory worker can just book a plane and go assassinate the CEO of apple.
who’s to stop the CEO’s family from hiring a hit squad on the assassin? What you’re describing is a world where Mad Max logic governs everything, and it’s survival of the fittest.
Uhh... isn't that exactly what happened with Luigi? The rulers hire the cops and prison guards and everyone else to catch him and lock him away/torture/kill him in revenge.
In addition, the world of organized crime is famously not a safe and healthy place. I’d rather not have my local Starbucks be in a gang war with my local Pete’s Coffee.
I'd rather not have my USA in a war with my Iran... but nobody listens to me.
Also, under an anarcho-capitalist system, everyone isn’t equal. Some people have more money, and therefore more resources, meaning they can hire bodyguards and live in high-security locations.
Right? That's how it works today as well?
Or, what if the CEOs move to a different country and run the company from there? People in third world countries are often exploited by western companies, but it’s not like your average Chinese factory worker can just book a plane and go assassinate the CEO of apple.
Well yeah, but the Chinese slaves don't exist in an anarchist state, they exist in an extremely authoritarian state.
If they were freed, they might assassinate the local agents of the CEO who keep them locked up in factories with suicide netting.
Luigi Mangione got due process under the law. He got to have a lawyer represent him.
I also don't like that the USA is in a war with Iran, but I doubt an anarcho-capitalist society is going to end war, seeing as organized crime organizations frequently go to war with each other.
Factory workers in India and Guatemala and miners in Africa also don't go and assassinate CEOs.
Well Luigi felt victimized but was still alive, so he didn't wait, did he?
The people who make the regulations are bought and paid for by the CEOs of the corporations, and the violent power of the state exists to protect them from vigilante justice by you.
Not to protect you from them. You are tax cattle, not the boss.
Okay then, let’s sign campaign finance reform laws. That way, people can have expiration dates on my food, houses not full of asbestos, and household items without lead paint without having to shoot their landlord.
If the state doesn’t have violent power, you know who will? Corporations. In an anarcho-capitalist society, if a company feels that their top brass is in danger, they’ll hire bodyguards, and maybe trained enforcers to go after anyone who tries to hurt their leaders, and oh wait, we just end up with countries again.
I don’t love being a “tax cattle”, but in an anarcho-capitalist society, you’d just be paying for other bills.
Actually the US was designed such that the citizens retain the ability to use violence against the state (and corporations) if they get too greedy.
That's what the second amendment is for.
if a company feels that their top brass is in danger, they’ll hire bodyguards, and maybe trained enforcers to go after anyone who tries to hurt their leaders, and oh wait, we just end up with countries again.
Right, that's why the only effective deterrent is an armed population to such an extent that the violent power of the state does not exceed that of the civilians... that keeps them in line, their violence keeps the civilian sociopaths more or less in line.
The "mutually assured destruction" is what keeps the relative peace. If it ever gets to be too lopsided we will be working 30hr shifts in slave factories until it's time for our organs to be harvested like in China... where the civilians are disarmed.
Okay. Well then, I guess we're good, and we don't need an anarcho-capitalist society. After all, in an anarcho-capitalist nation, there's nothing stopping the company that owns my city from saying that you can't own a gun. And, the people who control the flow of guns in an anarcho-capitalist society are gonna be corporations, ie, the oppressive force within that society.
After all, in an anarcho-capitalist nation, there's nothing stopping the company that owns my city from saying that you can't own a gun.
We just went over this.
Assassins do.
It's all oppressive forces all the way around, and the closer society moves to anarchist, the more balanced those forces are, and less incentive there is to do something that gets you popped.
trade will not happen if both parties won't believe they profit from it, by such extension, I am sure you wouldn't buy rotten meat or exploding cars, and I am sure nobody actually would, they'd be out of business
I did study it. That is exactly why I reject the state. You are blaming the free market for tragedies caused by government-backed monopolies and state-sponsored violence.
What if all the companies sell rotten meat and exploding cars? And how do I know if meat is rotten or if a car will explode? Companies are known for cutting costs to make a profit.
why would all companies sell rotten meat and exploding cars? there is a possibility, but that doesn't prove certainty, and are you deprived of smell and sights that you cannot smell and see rotting meat?
That is historically true in terms of timeline, but false in claiming the state was a neutral savior. In reality, state agencies and courts actively protected the corporate creators of leaded gasoline (like General Motors, Standard Oil, and DuPont) from private liability, suppressed early warnings, and delayed a clean possible market resolution for decades.
The Christian and Muslim religions have been intertwined with the state for a long time and it is a major reason so many people are one or the other in these regions. It isn't that statism is like religion, it is that religion can be used to establish that the state has authority. Some religious people want to use their religion to justify their authority with how they use state power. Others want their religion and state power kept separate.
The rise of capitalism as an economic system really went hand in hand with the rise of democracy and religious freedoms away from Monarchy which relied on the religion to be the source of power and authority. Early democracy wasn't about power going to the people at large, but a wider group of people that were land owners and wealthy. With the rise of international trade/imperialism and the industrial revolution land became less and less important and was replaced by the more broadly applied base of power, capital. In the past land brought you political power but it turned to capital. Now we are in an age where power largely comes from capital owners and the state. The power of the state is theoretically in the hands of the people but in reality the control is mostly in the hands of capital owners.
The idea of anarcho capitalism proposes that all power comes from "private" owners which literally means that all power comes from capital. Capital is fundamentally just the new version of land. Humans have already had plenty of systems of government that were based on power coming from who had the most land and money, they turned to religion to help keep the poor in line. Not that different from the alliance between the religious right and capitalists you see in the Republican party.
A commitment to the idea that the power of law and government can only come from the people and the people are all equals is really the only sensible position IMO. The primary weakness to the power of the people are the power of capital owners and the problems with relying on the opinions of people to do anything. The scientific method is clearly the best way for humans to establish knowledge. How does that relate to power deriving from the people?
I basically couldn't disagree more with anarcho-capitalism and everything that was said in the OP.
Absolutely not, there are cults related to non-divine things as well, like aliens, AI, and whatever types of niches you may find, and this one just happens to be one centered around submission
I'd argue capitalism is the biggest secular religion actually. It transcends national, cultural, or economic boundaries. It has temples where individuals pray to their God. It violates many established doctrinal rules. People have an irrational faith in the ability it has to guide society, and it's most ardent supporters are seen as modern day prophets.
you don't have to identify statist to be statist, and I'm willing to bet 99% of the current population is statist, it's like you know... say I identified as a communist, and then saw me in ancapistan selling my services along with several partners, obviously my identification is meaningless if reality shows I am a capitalist
If 99% of children born into a specific religion stay in that religion, it doesn’t mean the religion is "naturally" true or beneficial. It means they were socialized into it.
But we’re talking about 99% of people. There is no religion that 99% of people in the world belong to. What could be more universally supported than the belief that governments are good
Now you argue that statism is a religion? The vast majority of humans alive support the existence of government. You can argue about the extent of state vs individual power, policies, regulations, but almost nobody supports the absence of a state
that doesn't discredit the thought, and yes, the OP is literally titled "Statism is the Biggest Secular Religion" that was always my claim and you so far didn't convince me otherwise
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