The basic philosophy behind Anarcho-Capitalism

Great Debates
1

So let’s begin.

Anarcho-capitalism is grounded in the libertarian philosophy of natural rights and self-ownership. That is to say, that each man and woman owns his own life. To deny this is to admit that someone else has a higher claim upon your life than you yourself do, or that all six billion people on earth own 1/6 billionth of everyone else. Both of these possibilities are totally unworkable, and as such, the libertarian rejects those possibilities and accepts the axiom of self-ownership.

Further, man exists in the past, present and future. To take away man’s future is to murder him, to take away his present is to enslave him, and to take away the product of his past is to steal from him. Thus, we have hit upon both the three basic rights and three basic violations in libertarian philosophy…man has a right to life, liberty, and justly acquired property, and murder, enslavement, and theft, as violations of these rights, are immoral and unethical.

Further, the immoral nature of theft, murder, and enslavement doesn’t change based on the number of people committing the act. A group of ten people who murder you are behaving just as unethically as a group of one. The same follows for a group of hundreds, thousands, millions, and most certainly the majority of people in any given land area.

However, all this only refers to the initiation of force. If someone attempts to violate your rights you are in the right to respond to force with force. So from the axiom of self-ownership we reach the non-aggression axiom - that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else.

Which brings us to governments. First off, it is important to note that only one being is capable of action - humans. Governments cannot act…only the humans that make up the institution of government can act. So when I mention government doing x/y realize that it is just shorthand for the people running the government.

Currently governments engage almost exclusively in coercive activities. They fund their operations through taxation. They use conscription to acquire labor in order to conduct war.

Doesn’t sound all that bad, using those terms. But here’s the rub. Taxation is theft. Selective Service is slavery. War is mass murder. Remember, it doesn’t matter how many people sanction theft, enslavement, or murder…those actions are still immoral.

So then, the question becomes, what is government’s proper role in society? Moderate libertarians argue that the government should reduce its operations to the bare minimum, and only work to protect the basic rights of life, liberty, and property.

The anarcho-capitalist rejects this compromise. Rather, he believes that the free market can and will provide both security and arbitration more efficiently and with less coercion. The free market is the arena where humans interact through voluntary cooperation and in the absence of coercion, and as such it must be the basis for any moral society. Conveniently, the free market generally produces the best outcomes, so even from a utilitarian point of view anarcho-capitalism tends to be the most efficient system, and the system that maximizes freedom and prosperity.

That’s all for now. There are plenty more posts coming on AC, but I figured I had to start somewhere. Those of you who want to read more on libertarian philosophy can start here, at one of the first sections of Murray Rothbard’s For A New Liberty, the best introduction to libertarianism there is.

I would be shocked if you all didn’t have a ton of questions and criticisms, so fire away.

2

Define ‘own life’ and don’t just appeal to common sense.

3

Um…your existence? You? Your mind? Your talents? Your body? Your thoughts? All that which makes you human?

Philosophy isn’t my strong point. I just thought the concept of “your life” was self-evident. If it isn’t, or if you feel I’m miscontruing the meaning, then feel free to explain your own.

4

You might be less shocked if you knew that the board has had an active anarcho-capitalist for years (Liberal, formerly known as Libertarian) :slight_smile:

5

It is self-evident to each self. How do you resolve the differing interpretations, especially of the boundaries? If I am pissed at what you say, is that infringing on my rights to my own life and my wish to not suffer emotional hurt?

6

Liberal is a libertarian, not an anarcho-capitalist.

7

If there is no government, what’s stopping me from killing you, taking your stuff and raping your daughters? Not that I would do those things myself, but surely you’re aware that there are plenty of people out there who would and would do it quite cheerfully.

No government? Ask the Somalis how that’s working out for them.

8

It has always been my understanding that anarcho-capitalism, like minarchism, is a subgroup of libertarianism. Certainly what I remember of Liberal’s beliefs (the search function isn’t working for me at the moment) seem very much in line with anarcho-capitalism.

9

Liberalhas said quite a few times that he’s okay with a limited government, tasked to protect the rights of the citizenry and provide for the common defense. It’s all the other stuff it does that he dislikes.

10

I can’t speak for Lib, who I believe is taking a break from the board, but I’m pretty sure he is not against government at all.

11

No. Your “wish to not suffer emotional hurt” is not your life, and it doesn’t derive logically from the principle of self-ownership.

How can you really violate another man’s life? You can assault his person, violating his right to his own body. You can murder him, taking away his future. You can enslave him, taking away his present, or you can steal from him, taking away the product of his past.

But anyway, I find this line of argumentation kind of meh, if you aren’t actually going to refute the axiom or the logic that led to my conclusions.

12

It’s a common misconception to confuse Libertarianism with Anarchism. Libertarians accept government in a limitted role (courts, police, military to name a few).

I think we have one or two anarcho-capitalists on this board. Is **AHunter3 **one?

13

Ignorance is strength?
Oops, sorry.
I personally love the idea of free markets and full-blown capitalism, but I acknowledge that humans can very easily form into mobs that can destroy everything in sight at the behest of a charismatic leader. I like rule of law. Rule of law is good. Two legs bad.

14

Fair enough. (I’ll just note that that would make him a minarchist libertarian… there’s a wide range of beliefs that fall under libertarianism.)

15

Why not? If the sanctity of my physical body is agreed, then that includes my brain, as well. The mental state of being in emotional pain is carried out via a physical transaction acting upon my physical substrate, ergo hurting me is an assault on my person.

16

I remember there was a self proclaimed AC on the board but I don’t think s/he lasted long. I can’t even recall the user name now.
My problem with my more extreme bretheren is that I just don’t see how such a system is workable in the real world. Unfortunately people don’t always act in their own best interest, they don’t always have the same access to information to make good choices, and they tend to like to cluster around a strong and charasmatic leader type and burn things. They are easily swayed and tend to go into mob mentality mode if they are frightened.

The only way I think AC (or true faith Libertarianism) could work is if it was on a small scale with an elite population who had all bought into the core principals. By extending it out to the wider population I think the result would be abuse if not total chaos.

-XT

17

Incorrect. The government is a gigantic machine/organism, built from sentient components. Both the govenment itself can act ( and does, anytime someone does something solely because of a government order or law ), as can it’s human components.

So we don’t have to ourselves. It is impossible to run a large society without coercion, and it’s far less destructive and tyrannical as a rule to have a single controlled authority, instead of millions or billions of individual would-be authorities. Without a government, the only law is the law of the jungle, and there are only two sorts of people who matter : predators and victims.

Which is coercive, but not theft. Merely by living in a civilized society you benefit from the government; if you don’t pay, you are stealing from the rest of us.

Some places yes, some no.

No, it’s making you pay your fair share in keeping society running, instead of letting you be a parasite.

You’d see what real coercion was like without a government, when you were rounded up and enslaved. Or simply robbed and killed. Without a government, there is no free market, only theft and slavery.

People are coerced economically all the time, especially without government protection. Not to mention there is no free market without one.

The free market has never had a problem with slavery, bigotry, looting, genocide, conquest, fraud, and thousands of other evils.

Enough can drive you insane, or drive you to suicide, or make you wish you were dead. A philosophical system that holds property rights over the right not to be driven to insanity and suicide is fundamentally warped.

As far as I’m concerned, libertarianism/anarcho-anything is simply an especially self-righteous form of evil, especially in it’s purer forms.

18

I do not agree with this first axiom - how is the “unworkability” of the bolded premise grounds for its rejection as a foundational axiom? When discussing anarcho-anything, you’re talking about a theoretical “perfect world” political construct anyway, so we can throw utilitarian value assessments out of the door from the get-go. Nor does “workability” have any bearing on morality. I am free to assert that “no man is an island” is as valid as your egomaniacal system, and reject the founding premise of your entire worldview. You owe Society as much, if not more than, Society owes you. “Self-ownership” is, IMHO, a valid axiom when talking about freedom from being murdered and enslaved, but breaks down when you try and drag property ownership into it.

Also, anarcho-capitalism doesn’t address the “property is theft” aspect of current Capital. At least, I’ve never seen its adherents address the problem of recompense for the historical offenses that lead to current property, nor the inequitable distribution of current resources.

This is why, although I agree with some flavours of anarchism as theoretical constructs and possible small-scale government models, anarcho-capitalism leaves me cold. I think it has no business calling itself anarcho-anything, it should call itself “X-treem Libertarianism” and be honest.

19

I see AC more as a moral philosophy rather than a political theory. Also reinforced by the number of times you used terms like morals, ethics and rights etc. in the op. In Danish there is a saying: Politics is the art of the possible – AC fails the test. AC, like communism, is a utopian dream that presupposes man is otherwise than what he his. That 1) The AC foolishly assumes all men share his own moral and ethical ideals – itself a form of coercion. And like a dogmatic religions man, he often reacts very negatively to having his ethics challenged. 2) Removed the force of the state, the AC assumes man in general will respect what the AC arbitrarily defines as moral and ethical. I don’t give a whit what you define as rights, if I’m sufficiently tempted, or just feel like it, I’ll take your stuff for myself. 3) The ideals of AC supposes man only has rights and privileges (in form of e.g. ownership) and no demands. You see a drowning man, nothing in the ideology of AC demands that you rescue him – even if you could do so at absolutely no risk to yourself. War is mass murder he says - not stopping a slaughter of the innocent, is permissible and moral neutral. According to the AC, we are not our brother’s keeper. This is not an ideology I share and see no reason why it should be raised to the universal or forced down my throat.

20

There are many kinds of Libertarianism, all of which claim to be the True sugarless porridge-eaters, so to speak. Anarcho-Captialism is generally associated with American libertarianism, while Europe tends towards libertarian socialism.

I think WillMagic’s distinction between past, present and future is a useful one, since it highlights where US and European-style libertarians diverge most significantly: the relationship between “past” property-accrual and “present” slavery. For if you somehow come to own (ie. command monopolistic use of) that which I depend upon for my very life, I become your slave.

Thus, Euro-Libs see taxation not as theft or slavery but as a means of preventing the slavery engendered by allowing individuals to own so much that others literally die from owning too little (and, indeed, tax avoidance is classed as theft in every industrialised democracy in the world, as you’d find out if you tried it!). Now, of course, it’s a fine balance to achieve since too much taxation retards progress, which effectively increases the size of the pie in total and saves future lives (eg. new medical treatments). But too little taxation has those poor saps dying anyway, and what use is that progress if only the richest few can afford the new stuff while the innovations which could save those saps were discovered decades or centuries ago and were simply not affordable?

Thus Euro-Libs consider that there is such a thing as economic coercion: if one is born into a world where you’ll die unless you obey the commands of the person who owns that which will save you (while they might well have been born into hereditary ownership of such), then the civilised course is to somehow ensure that the first child doesn’t literally die from that lack of property ownership which was effectively an accident of birth. Thus, civilisation sets a small fee for the right to monopolistic use of this or that: it could be said that we rent everything off everyone else, subject to conditions chosen by everyone else.

The rent is called Taxation. The conditions are called Law. The choice is called Democracy.