Yes! Thank you! It's all in Plato. Ancap is a nice ideal, but who knows if it works? But a monarchy is far better than an oligarchy or democracy. Let's fix one thing at a time, no need to tackle government when we haven't figured out social media.
Discussion
everytime I see hodlbod post I learn new English word
😂
I had to look up ancap and I got "Australasian New Car Assessment Program" before I got anarcho-capitalism
Lol 😂
You’d probably enjoy a decent chunk of ancap philosophy and ideas Mike, much more than the new car assessment program at least 🤣
I spent far too much of my late teens and early 20s studying anarcho-capitalistic ideas. I just never ran in to the shortened form "ancap" back in those days.
BTW I concluded that anarcho-capitalism is no different from what the world already is, and as you can see it doesn't work very well.
You concluded that a world dominated by big governments with corporations in their pockets, effectively 50% taxation on people, and unelected international bureaucrats making decisions no-one wants, is anarcho-capitalism?
Are you serious?
Ancap is (correct me if I am wrong) where people choose which Justice Organisation they want to belong to because there is no centralization, and there are multiple, and they fight it out when they have differences. That is what nation states are.
I assert that whatever your imagined ideal system is, it will evolve/degrade into what we have now.
Yours is a rather oversimplified version of anarcho-capitalism. It refers to an entirely voluntary society.
So yes, you would voluntarily choose justice systems (likely offered via insurance companies who would provide arbitration and security services), but you’d also voluntarily choose your money (legal tender disallows this) based on markets, there’d be no entity taxing you for “free” shit that governments hand out but rather there would be co-ops and other systems that you could join/opt into so you’d only pay for services you want to consume.
There wouldn’t be these arbitrary bans on things like online poker, communities could forbid it but if the market wants to provide it they will and there’s no man with a gun to take you to prison for violating a nonsense rule.
It’s more like a 180 from the world as it is now where everything is imposed upon you through multiple levels of government top-down, where you have zero choice in the matter, can’t affect those decisions increasingly as power is more distant and have no recourse to opt out.
Rules would be bottom up, localised and community oriented to match their values with an ability to opt out by moving. Higher levels of governance would exist but they’d again be fewer, voluntary and set by the market. Think of things like internet standards, humans need to cooperate so we’d still have rules like that but we’d be free to not follow any we don’t like and alternatives can emerge (no IP, legal fiction stuff blocking).
The argument that it would devolve into what we have today isn’t correct - todays borders are themselves a figment and constantly changing, look into the secessions in Oregon/Idaho for one example.
I would agree there would always be centralisation tendencies for sure, but the consolidation of power coming off that base would be much less likely. We don’t have that base though, we’re starting from the other end so it’s not a fair comparison.
Anarcho-capitalism is really the natural state of mankind, these figments we’ve created to abstract power are unnatural and that’s why they inevitably breakdown over time.
I could write a book about my thoughts on this, but let me just give the core summary. Any population of human beings that is representative of actual human beings and not specially crafted will have a subset of people who seek to profit from criminality. Left alone (and even with quite a bit of interference) they will form into gangs and dominate the non-criminal people as well as fight each other in tribal wars.
The only way to free a people from such a Hobbsian state of affairs is via the formation of the Leviathan, the powerful government and police force that is more powerful than the most powerful of the criminal gangs. This necessarily has a monopoly on force, or else it operates just like yet another gang. If it succeeds in its monopoly on force, even if it starts out composed of the most noble souls, it will draw criminality into itself as people who seek to profit from criminality see an opportunity to do so by corrupting it.
Once such a leviathan exists, it will morph in predictable directions which will run roughshod over your beautiful anarchocapitalist state.
Luckily it leads to a state that is much less violent than tribal warfare. Unluckily is is never anarcho-capitalistic.
Every description of anarchocapitalism I've heard of fails to address the reality of this situation. Of course I'm probably ignorant in this arena, but this was my general conclusion back in my 20s when I considered anarcho-capitalism.
For more detail, read Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.
I’ve read Leviathan so yes I understand these points.
> This necessarily has a monopoly on force, or else it operates just like yet another gang.
This is where it falls down - that monopoly on violence will inevitably devolve into the same ‘tribal warfare’ you fear, they are no different to a gang, such is the nature of monopoly. Once the men with guns realise they’re the only men with guns in a certain area, they run roughshod. Afterall, who is there to stop them?
Now you might think it’s more civilised because we anoint a ‘President’ or ‘Prime Minister’ and they seek a “democratic mandate” but that’s just ignoring the underlying reality - they’re simply the most powerful ‘tribe’ or ‘gang’ of a given land. It’s not as if other tribes/gangs don’t exist which have their own smaller competing monopolies, the overarching nature of coercion present in these systems means they will inevitably arise - it’s the incentives inherent in the system.
Now an Anarcho-capitalist system isn’t without flaws, I’m not arguing it would be utopia. The argument is the dynamic would be different if coercion weren’t present in the system.
If your insurance provider, the entity likely to take up defense and justice (which is the primary motive of States in the first instance) has alternatives, then they have to compete.
States today don’t have to compete. They just put a gun to your head and extract. You say it’s not violent - well try not paying your taxes, or not paying court mandated child support, or opposing your military and then tell me they’re not violent.
Removing coercion from the equation and shifting towards voluntary interaction is possible. We manage to arbitrate contracts outside the State all the time because people long ago realised it’s mutually beneficial to cooperate inside an agreeable framework than to subjugate themselves to an entity with monopoly over a space.
The State is not the best form of structuring society, they’d just have you believe that because it’s in their interests to do so.
The conclusion misses the entire point.
Actually if u look into history , it worked always well, but everytime "good" states took control of that area bcs of power.
here good examples- my favorite is medieval iceland and "non" wild west, but also that one from Italia is rly interesting bcs of that coffe leaf marker.
https://mises.org/library/medieval-iceland-and-absence-government
https://mises.org/library/not-so-wild-wild-west
https://mises.org/power-market/republic-cospaia-anarchist-renaissance-city
Humans have an innately hierarchical nature, but who says we have to unite under some "wannabe" big daddy who casually devalues money, has a monopoly on violence (police, military), and yet has a monopoly on many political functions.
And as we can see, the monopoly on politics on the medieval island played a major role in why it fell apart. ("Politicians" began to make decisions in their favor to the detriment of all).
Because as we see from modern times of capitalist democracy, politicians don't like to make unpopular decisions because it will cost them votes. So populism becomes a winning strategy.
I think we will gradually get to a minarchy and then it could slide down to AnCap.
It's a multi-generational run, but I really think, for example, market ancap Europe would be better off than capitalist America in some random hdp calculation.
At the end of the day, at some point our past generations had to get rid of kings, slavers, dictators and usorpators.
Have a great day guys here in thread and btw, try to read that mises articles a attached here if u got some free time to spend, it is rly interesting, trusssttt.
If I have time I will, thanks!
That first article is excellent until it states that having a private police force would be a better system because "How can a firm maximize profit without fulfilling the consumers' demands?"
You need only look at the Ecorps we have today to see how profits are made without fulfilling consumers' demands. They think the best way to fulfill them is by creating them in the first place and profit from that indirectly.
Other than that the article is on point.
Oh maybe i just dont get u for the first time, u meaned it like that is a possible other way to fulfilling demans then a private forces?
I get you now, but here in my Czech Republic it kinda sucks with Police under a monopol of state.
They are starting to be less relevant as a time flies and ppls are smarter and smarter and only poor low minded ppls are devalued in this system, while in a free market system there would certainly be a company that would try to treat these people differently and both sides would still win. Win win
Sure, I forgot to add a very important footnote:
Fuck the police in general.
It works with modern ecorps like this bcs costumers doesn’t have any power to push them.
But in the world of market, i thing there would be a lot more competition and customers will have more opportunities for the punishing a arbiter than does fulfills his promises of costumers.
Did were on Iceland some “Iceland official police”?
No, bcs they don’t needed it, as a article says
“How were people held accountable if they did commit a crime? In much the same way as the current United States civil court system works today. Criminals were forced to pay fines. These fines did not go to the state, but were restitution. If the criminal could not pay the fine imposed on him, then he could go to his godord or a group of family and friends, or some other alliance, and have them pay the fine for him, or if no one would represent him, he could work the fine off via slavery. The poor were at no disadvantage. The poor could sell their right to justice to someone, such as a chieftain or another respected peer, who could collect or make right upon the victim.”
"punishing a arbiter than does not fulfills his promises to the costumers"
At some point , i thing #Nostr protocol could be part of this slow evolution, but guys programmers, we fucking hella need an edit on Nostr :D I would prefer that facebook editio, where u can see the original post and then a edited version.
A lot of NiPs need to come :D
I believe even today police officers in Iceland do not carry guns at all because there is no need. But privatising police forces do not automatically make them more accountable and/or reliable. The police force as an institution is probably useful to society in whatever form it's constructed but on the street in practise the police are harmful probably in the major part of the world, no matter if they are private or fiat police.
Thats a good point!
Don't you think this is an inherent flaw in ancap? People want order and authority, ancap creates a vacuum, and if that necessarily results in centralized authority being established, ancap isn't stable.
In ancap system autority can be marker and “bigplayers”.
And about that order, i did not see a order in these systems that are aplied right now.
If you would be allowed to do what u want unleash your not hurting anyone(principle of nonaggression).
So maybe it will be bigger order then now, bcs normal casual people will be allowed to just spend and enjoy their lives and have order in their perspective and “bigplayers” will be allowed to enjoy their game a lot more too.
Market fixes all.
Basic question like how would be roads builded are too much easy to answer, but more complex question like what about Real estate cadastre when u dont have “big brother” are harder to explain, but possible.
Haha when you look at it closely, i actually think oppsite of that what u wrote sirr.
I think that ancap or some similar type of system would pop out that vacuum we life in right now🤯
Hellya, I love nostr a lot more now than before this ancap thread, there is a lot of better discussion then on old Twitter.
I got in 89% mocked all the time on tw when I mentioned a ancap.