anarcho capitalism - a consistent philosophy

8/13/2019 Anarcho Capitalism - A Consistent Philosophy

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Anarcho Capitalism: A Consistent Philosophy

How often in your daily life do you use violence or force to achieve your goals? If youre

anything similar to me, you likely do not do this very often. Most of us dont rob, mug, assault,

murder, or rape to get by in our lives. We generally find violence abhorrent and those whocommit it criminal, while sometimes respecting those who refrain to use it, even in the most

daunting of situations (I.E. Gandhi). Why do we feel this way? Is it just our opinions that violent

aggression is wrong? Do we just find it too messy? In this essay I will try to explain my ideas on

property rights and their implications on a much broader scale than of just an individual. I will

describe a proto-framework for what I see as important in a just society, or the closest thing to

it, including some details about private law, courts, property rights, and self-ownership, etc. I

will draw upon comparisons from both modern political-economic systems, and from historical

examples.

I should begin by laying out the foundation for property rights, I.E. self-ownership.

When we are born, we rely on our parents care,and up until a certain age we are barely self-

aware. As this self-awareness develops, we attain the capacity for volition, for control, very

basically, the exclusive ability to manipulate/control ones own person or body. From this ability

comes the concept of self-ownership. Ownership would be defined as having the exclusive use

of something. From this, property rights can be established. Anything you use your body to do

is considered your responsibility, you own your actions, and you are the only one who can make

yourself think. Therefore, when you engage in labor, usually under contractual agreement with

some form of employer or customer (weather formal and on paper, or unspoken and obvious),

you own the results. Whatever gains, monetary or commodity, specified to you in that contract,

are yours. This topic will be touched on more later on, and I will show how I believe it has any

relation to the state. This brings us to the next concept Id like to introduce to you, the state.

The state could be defined as a group or party of people who have the legal monopoly

on the use of force in a given territory. From this Rothbardian definition you can probably

foresee my stance on the matter. I strongly contend that state institutions, both historical and

modern, have been largely a menace to the human race. A stretching black record of the state

can be traced back hundreds, even thousands of years. With monarchy, to theocracy, to

democracy, to republic, the groups of people who made up these institutions generally lived atthe expense of the people they ruled over, and many times violated their rights. From the

divine right of a crown, the theocratic priesthoods, the majoritarian tyranny of democracy, or

the oligarchy of a republic, in all varieties and fashions, these groups have pillaged economies

domestic and foreign, killed millions through the devastation of war and artificial famine,

consistently aggressed against and stolen from their citizens through taxation, and at the end of

the day they would all still claim that their authority is legitimate. If the state is simply made up


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of individuals, then why should they have the legal ability to violate property rights? Why can

the state send armed men to my home to take me away to prison if I refuse to fund their

destructive programs? I firmly believe that no man, state goon, or a mugger in the street, has

any automatic or legitimate claim to anyof anyonesproperty, this includes all forms of taxes,

especially the income tax or any direct taxation of labor, but also the forms of artificial inflationthat we see with fractional reserve banking systems, fiat currencies and centralized banks. With

this said, I see no difference between muggers and state agents. They both rely on the stolen

property of others to exist; therefore they must be concluded criminals, even if the majority

votes for it to be ok. Crimes are crimes weather the state or the majority deems them so or not.

As a regular individual, I cannot steal money from anybody, even the wealthiest man on Earth,

and even if I intended to give all of the stolen riches to the poor. We ca nt let the ends justify

the means, theres no telling where it will stop.Imagine a world where every person thinks that

theyre entitled to a nice carand a 300,000$ home.

Before we dig deeper into arguments against the state, Id like you to just ask yourself

three simple questions; 1) does the state derive its authority to violate rights from the people?

2) Do the people themselves have the right to violate the rights of others? 3) If the people cant

violate rights, how then can they give authority to another group to do this? This series of

questions was developed by the philosopher Jan Helfeld; it helps to show the absurdity of the

notion that the state gets its power from the consent of the people, or something similar.

There are many varying arguments against the state agency from many different

authors, historians, philosophers, economists, and other academics. These people include

Albert J. Nock, Murray N. Rothbard, Roderick T. Long, Stefan Molyneux, David Friedman andRobert Murphy. The arguments vary between moral, economic, and pragmatic cases. The short

explanation I gave of the state above would be considered, for the most part, a moral

argument. An argument that claims that the state fundamentally relies on immoral actions to

exist and that without it, there would be a worldwide decrease in human rights violations all

across the board. The economic arguments are probably the most compelling, since they show

evidence that essentially any government action in the economy is going to have more negative

consequences than positive ones. The people that associate themselves with such ideas are

generally referred to as Austrian School economists, including Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich

Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Dr. Walter Block. While not all of these people would be

considered anarchists, most, if not all of them would strongly advocate the government be as

small as conceivably possible and that it have no part in the economy.

As far as I know, there has never been a government to truly live up to its promises, or

to solve even one of the many still prevalent social or economic problems. Because of this

perpetual failure seen in almost every single state experiment, I contend that the best, most


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rational way to a free society, is through a philosophy called Anarcho-Capitalism, also called

Anti-Statism. With this ideology, property and civil rights are strongly advocated and in a

purposed society based upon it, they would be extended to their fullest degree. The Non-

Aggression Principal, which is an axiom that states it is illegitimate and unjustified to violently

initiate force, theft, or aggression onto anybody elses person or property, would be one of theprimary principals in which to live by, a universal claim that applies to all men in all situations

outside of self-defense (which there could possibly be a degree of dispute, but this will be dealt

with later when I discuss private courts).

If we are to create a cooperative, rational, acceptably peaceful society, I espouse that

we must prioritize liberty for each individual, instead of concerning with such abstractions as

the masses, of common welfare, or some other highly decorated rhetoric. If we go the

complete opposite direction from Anarcho-Capitalism, to something like collectivistic socialism,

where property rights and capital goods arent private(they are state, or collectively-owned),

we see a potential for horrible economic failure and possibly millions of deaths. This ideology

concerns itself with the masses, or the people,rather than with the liberty of the individual,

with disastrous results. Many Socialist or Communist experiments have led to the demise and

impoverishment of millions of innocent people, which can be traced to state failures in

running the economy, a task that no group of people can ever accomplish. In Economic

Calculations in the Socialist Commonwealth Ludwig von Mises provides an overwhelming

amount of economic evidence to show that socialist economies are doomed to fail, and that as

you increase state intervention into an economy, you increase the problems that the society

will have. This isnt simply theoretical evidence, which there is plenty of; there is ample

empirical data of the negative results of complete state power that is seen in varying degrees ofcollectivism.

To see this in action today we can look to the United States welfare program, or the

social security program, both massive state projects that now are completely deplete of

funding, trillionsof dollars in debt, leaving thousands of state-dependent citizens. The problem

here is not this specific attempt by this specific state, it is consistent with history in that where

we see state intervention, we see economic failures and many more problems created than it

remedied. The idea of the state extracting resources aggressively through taxation and

spending it where they deem fit is totally counter to the non-aggression principal, which

economically, translates into the unhampered free market, something that I claim can, has, and

does bring wealth and prosperity to a given society. Austrian school economists are also of this

view; they advocate a system of free enterprise.


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There are many from the United States left, or from Keynesian-type economics, who

claim that the free market can have deleterious effects and that state intervention is beneficial

and at times, absolutely necessary. While some of these concerns are well founded, I will

attempt to explain why they are wrong. One of the first things youll hear from a statist in the

face of Anarchism is that in a fully private economy, firms will merge to form monopolies orcartels; they will begin to raise prices through the roof, and rule the world. I find this, as do

many Austrians, to be untrue. Most of the few monopolies to form in the 20th

century U.S.,

(where there were some vestiges of laissez-faire) such as Standard Oil, either relied on state

actions to come into being, or really didntdo much harm to consumers, and actually drove

prices down in some cases. Even before things like price controls, tariffs, exclusive contracts,

tax subsidies, tax impositions, guaranteed credit, grants, licensing, minimal prices, permits,

patents, certifications, bail outs, and nationalizations were prevalent in the U.S., established

companies (like AT&T, or RCA) used state regulation to either create or maintain their cornering

of the market by creating barriers to entry for new competition and small, growing businesses.

In Standard Oils case, their prices consistently went down, so it was not a problem for

consumers. In an unhampered free market (free of coercion, not free to do whatever one

pleases), a cartel or monopoly will likely create incentives that run counter to their existence.

As soon as a group of businesses decide to form a secret cabal to raise prices, it creates

incentive for either new competitors, or existing firms to undercut them, and steal their

customers, while also taking some of their profit share. It is quite easy to see that at times, the

state has bolstered certain businesss market share by inserting obstacles in front of the new

competitors that the original firm never had to deal with. To quote the Canadian

psychotherapist and philosopher Nathaniel Branden on this topic:

One of the worst fallacies in the field of economicspropagated by Karl Marx and accepted by almost everyone today, including man

businessmenis that the development of monopolies is an inescapable and intrinsic result of the operation of a free, unregulated

economy. In fact, the exact opposite is true. It is a free market that makes monopolies impossible. It is imperative that one be clear an

pecific in ones understanding of the meaning of monopoly. When people speak in an economic or political context, of the dangers

evils of monopoly, what they mean is a coercive monopolythat is; exclusive control of a given field of production which is closed to a

exempt from competition, so that those controlling the field are able to set arbitrary production policies and charge arbitrary prices,

ndependent of the market, immune from the law of supply and demand.

uch a monopoly, it is important to note, entails more than the absence of competition; it entails the impossibility of compe tition. Tha

coercive monopolys characteristic attribute-and is essential to any condemnation of such a monopoly. In the whole history ofapitalism, no one has been able to establish a coercive monopoly by means of competition on a free market. There is only one way to

orbid entry into a given field of production: by law. Every single coercive monopoly that exists or ever has existedin the United Stat

n Europe or anywhere else in the worldwas created and made possible only by an act of government: by special franchises, licenses

ubsidies, by legislative actions which granted special privileges (not obtainable on a free market) to a man or a group of men, and

orbade all others to enter that particular field. A coercive monopoly is not the result of laissez-faire; it can result only from the

brogation of laissez-faire and from the introduction of the opposite principlethe principle of statism.


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Despite the immense amount of evidenced arguments that would support my claim,

only one response is needed to the monopoly-fearing statist. If they find monopolies to be such

a frightening prospect, why would a massive monopoly on the use of force be exempt from this

fear? Also why would this monopoly somehow be excluded from the problems they claim any

other coercive monopoly would bring? I cant answer these questions with certainty, but itwould seem that the people who make such claims are totally lacking of a proper historical

context of the state institution. They dont see in through the eyes of a libertar ian, as an

invading force infringing on the rights of the people it rules over. They hold a very lovey-dovey

view of the state, that it is the ultimate protector of the people it governs, that historically the

state is just here to look out for us little guys and poor people, with a few bad apples along

the way who simply made mistakes, declared a few wars, caused a minor economic panic here

and there. If you were to ask Albert J. Nock about this, he would tell you the opposite of such a

notion is true. From his 1935 book, Our Enemy, the State, Nock writes:

As you can see, Nocks historical viewpoint fits in with the claims I had made earlier, as will

writings from people like Herbert Spencer, Franz Oppenheimer, and Frank Chodorov.

To give an example of what Im talking about, Ill discuss the American Revolution verybriefly. While most Americans would tell you that the U.S. revolution was conceived in liberty

and from the burning desire of the founding fathers to protect individuals rights, I have a quite

different view of history. Pre-revolution North America was still a colony of the English Crown.

There were several English corporations whom were each granted a charter from the

monarchy. These corporations were proto-state institutions whom operated on a territorial

basis. They were early examples of what was to come in the colonies. They coined money,

regulated trade, taxed, and provided defense. They had the legitimate use of force over a

certain territory of land, granted by the English throne, traits we will later see in the U.S.

merchant-state.

The economic atmosphere of this period comprised of an array of special interest

groups competing for the exclusive access to the land that people labored on (sound familiar?).

Colonial America had a very conducive environment for the land speculation profession, given

the vast amount of unsettled territory, like a home-steaders paradise. Homesteading is the

notion that a person mixing their labor with a certain area of land creates legitimate property

The condition of public affairs in all countries, notably in our own, has done more than bring under reviewthe mere current practice of politics, the character and quality of representative politicians, and the relative

merits of this-or-that form or mode of government. It has served to suggest attention to the one institution

whereof all these forms or modes are but the several, and, from the theoretical point of view, indifferent,

manifestations. It suggests that finality does not lie with consideration of species, but of genus; it does not

lie with consideration of the characteristic marks that differentiate the republican State, monocratic State,

constitutional, collectivist, totalitarian, Hitlerian, Bolshevist, what you will. It lies with consideration of the

State itself.


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rights for that person. If they can settle and tame an un-owned plot of land, fence it in, make it

habitable, etc., they then own that land. The few remnants of feudalism that made its way to

the colonies quickly failed, since serfs would just go get their ownproperty to live and labor off

of.

The early colonial merchant-state (the only type of state we have ever known) was

beginning to bourgeon into a fairly prosperous economy. The somewhat lagging behind English

merchant state (coming on the scene later than the U.S. brand because of the existing state

already long established in England) began to realize the potential that was held in the U.S.

speculator market, and decided that they wanted in on the action. From here they found that

imposing harsh taxes and restrictions on land trade and speculation in the U.S. would be

lucrative for them, though this did not come without deep resentment from the somewhat

wealthy land traders and merchants whom were benefiting greatly from the amount of

uncharted, unsettled land. Many of the men that would become the founding father

statesmen came directly from the land speculation trade. This resentment toward the English

state was one of the sole motivators of the U.S. Revolution. While there were a substantial

amount of select intellectuals and ideologues of the time that spoke of individual liberties and

freedoms, there was still a large influence on the behalf of a kind of special interest group

discussed above, each looking to set up, or participate in, a state apparatus in which they could

benefit themselves and their associates. Governments get much of their power from owning all

of the land within a certain boundary; the people who labor and live on that land are taxed.

This has been truth both historically and in modern times.

It is readily apparent that there were some ulterior motives at play here other than thatof liberation of individuals. Special interests, from the very beginning, were a vital motivation

for a large number of the founding fathers, not individual rights. The constitution, as Albert

Nock will also contend, was largely rendered in abeyance within a decade after its signing.

Liberty, rights, nor freedom were on the minds of many our highly regarded founding fathers, it

was the upper classes of the colonial merchant-state looking for a way to fully establish access

to the, until this point, restricted and unsettled territories. In spite of the stories we are told

about the valor and glory of the U.S. revolution, it was largely a failure, since the principals

claimed to be upheld by the U.S. government, via the constitution, were trampled over as

quickly as they possibly could be. Soon after the U.S. revolution, which possibly would more

properly be called a coup, we begin to see many factors develop that underpin some of the

economic and governmental failures weve seen in recent years, such as attempts to establish a

centralized bank with fiat paper currency.

The land speculator interests that once motivated the ruling class are now seen in

different forms centuries later in the financial market and banks, people involved in the trading


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of large sums of money, sometimes with bets placed on those transactions. There are strong

lobbies in this area as there once were in the land trade. Once laissez-faire gains momentum in

a society, it almost always encourages growth of the state and its powers. The more wealth the

market creates in a society, the larger the state will try to become. Through increasing taxation

and barriers to entry, the upper and political classes are able to increase the state in size and atthe same time grant special privileges to corporations and banks. That is what many would call

crony-capitalism, not the free market.

This brings up yet another argument against the existence of a government, even a

limited one. As a market becomes unrestricted, it creates wealth in society, which spurs

interests within the state to figure out ways to build up their taxing power and authority to

control the economy in their own favor. While I have only focused on the United States in this

section, I believe that this story is somewhat common to the way many statist nations

incentive-structures work. In brevity, the state uses private industry and the tax payer income

to get its funding, while simultaneously uses scare tactics on citizens to convince them that they

need help, which they then force onto them along with a price of their choosing, which plays

into market forces not doing their job, which creates overall economic turmoil, which then

causes ever more concerns that justify MORE government intervention, and so on ad nauseam.

If left to continue, this may escalate into something of a full-blown economic disaster, with a

dilapidated fiat currency, a nightmarish national debt coupled with unfunded liabilities for

unsustainable, destructive social welfare programs.

So far we have established a couple of fundamental things; self-ownership and property

rights are directly related, the states use of coercive taxation is fundamentally a violation ofthose rights, and that consistently the state has had the means, incentives and the mechanism

to exploit the people they rule over. I mentioned the importance of focusing on individuals

rights, rather than the social welfare or other such abstracted terms which allow the state to

justify their immoral actions. Similarly, there are also claims of social contracts. These are

somewhat baseless propositions, because a contract inherently implies that two or more

parties engaged in voluntary consent, a concept which the state has nothing to do with. Being

born within in a certain geographical location would hardly count as consent, especially when

the only other option is to go to some other country that also has a coercive government that

will subject you to the same kinds of things.

It is of some importance here to point out a few of common misconceptions. Firstly, the

terms anarchism or anarchy are notsynonymous with chaosor disorderAnarchy simply

means without rulers. Its common for people tomiss a single letter in that phrase and think

that it means without rules, but as I will attempt to show, this does not necessarily follow.

Another misunderstood topic is in regard to Capitalism. It is sometimes portrayed as


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exploitive and sometimes conjures images of fat, mustached men, in suits with top hats.

While there have been, and still are exploitive businessmen (surely some of them wear

mustaches), this is not an inherent or fundamental trait of laissez-faire capitalism itself. In fact,

you typically will see this kind of behavior mostly from the breed of corporatist, state-

capitalism, that is prevalent in possibly allmodern capitalist countries (and even some marketsocialist nations as well). Voluntary trade or employment between two or more parties can

hardly be called exploitive, since by definition it relies on consent. This is what laissez-faire

(lay-zay-fair) is all about, voluntary interactions between individuals and firms. There is much

controversy surrounding the issue of creating a market in human organs, the state will not have

it because they think it means you are commodifying the human body, and that this helps to

show how evil capitalism can be. (Not to mention, this market could save the lives of a

staggering amount of people who both need organs themselves, and who are poor and have

organs to sell, possibly to feed themselves and/or their children). But what kind of labor isnt, in

a way, commodifying your own body? Capitalism does not commodify peopleper say, but their

services. All that this means is that their services are valued, that all people have the means to

make their own way. Thisis freedom; thisis a critical part of capitalism which allows the market

to lead to a prosperous and wealthy society. Businesses can do whatever they please, as can

individuals, but we are proposing a system that creates corrective measures and incentives to

cooperate through punishing bad behavior, and rewarding good behavior. So sure, a business

can exploit its workers, but this business will fail. The Soviet Union wasnt full of idiots, they just

were lacking of a system that weeded out inefficiency, as Walter Block would say.A person

can kill someone, but they will risk their own life in the process, and are likely be punished in

some way. Actions have their consequences, and this is what makes individuals so different

from one another, bad people do bad things with negative consequences, good people do good

things with positive ones, as tautological as it sounds, its a very foundational aspect of

understanding market forces and the incentives they create for individuals and firms to act in a

way that isnt destructive or harmful to their neighbors, consumers, employers/employees.

If we are to make a comparison between past and potential government actions, where

they are free to impose regulations, tinker with and destroy the economy, start wars, and steal

money through taxation, to the potential actions of businesses in a stateless society (or even a

statist one for that matter), you begin to see the state in a different light. No other group in

human history has been able to organize mass slaughters like state agencies have during timesof war. No business that is subject to free market forces could everattempt to provide you with

low quality services, send you to off to fight and possibly die in aggressive, imperialist wars, and

then deduct the cost of these endeavors, which theydecide, directly out of your paycheck! But

theyre just protecting our person and property, they say, but by waging mess aggression

against persons and their property? This sort of logical absurdity is commonplace in the

mainstream mentality, encouraged by the mass media, propagated by the faulty economics of


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groups like the New Keynesians, and maintained by state officials who want to continue living

off of the privately-owned labor and production of others.

You might be wondering, what in the world is thing youre callingAnarcho-Capitalism?

Most of us are only familiar with the statist brand of this system, which I have purposed is

immoral, dangerous, and has overall negative effects on the populations that are subjected to

its actions. Anarcho-capitalism is similar to State-Capitalism in that people are engaged in the

production and sale of goods for a profit. There are three axioms you can discuss in regard to

free trade (first explained to me by an intellectual named Jeffery Tucker); cooperation,

emulation, and competition. Cooperation is the ability for two or more firms to act together in

a productive way, which benefits them both. Modern industry is incredibly interdependent on a

variety of firms cooperating to produce goods each step of the way, especially high-tech goods.

This idea is exemplified in an article called I, Pencil, written by Leonard E. Read, which

discusses the fact that no one person is capable of creating a pencil and that a large amount of

cooperation between businesses must happen in order to bring a pencil into existence.

Emulation is the concept of taking what is currently popular in a given market, putting your own

spin on it, making it better in some way in hopes of out-selling your competitors. This is all done

in rational self-interest, which brings us to competition. Competition, when boiled down to its

essence in respect to the market, could be described as firms striving for excellence, trying to

provide better services than the next firm. These three concepts are part of what makes laissez-

faire capitalism, which would maximize cooperation, such a desirable goal and generator of

wealth in a given society.

The most obvious difference between state-capitalism and its stateless counterpart isthat Anarcho-Capitalism advocates the abolition of the state agency. Individual private property

rights will be of utter importance in this system, especially when it comes to conflict resolution.

You may be curious as to how this could happen in the absence of the state. How would people

solve their disputes without a monopolized court and legal systems? Is it possible? How will

property rights and contracts be enforced without the centralized authority of a state? These

are very reasonable questions that I will attempt to provide an answer for, or at least provide

enough information to kick start your ownthoughts and ideas on the matter. I will do this in

part by presenting a potential dispute between two parties who have a large disparity in

wealth; it also indirectly deals with free market environmentalism. Beforehand, I should

introduce the concepts of Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs) and Private Defense

Agencies(PDAs). DROs would be similar to a modern private arbitration agency, or court, that

would attempt to resolve disputes in a fair and just manner. The most effective, fair, and

experienced judges and representatives would be chosen by the market by peoples

interactions with them and the degree of satisfaction they received from the services they

purchased. This way, customers would have a way of knowing who is reliable and competent,


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and who isnt, by the reputation of the company recorded by Rating Agencies, which I will cover

shortly. Similar private arbitration firms exist today for disputing parties from different

countries with different laws. The verdicts of these courts are not enforced by the guns of a

state, but in a nonviolent, non-authoritative way that deals mostly with incentives to stay in

business. As well as this potential scenario, I will also try to address some common objectionsto this idea overall.

In this proposed stateless society, everyone would have the same amount of power, the

same rights, the same moral traits and characteristics, the same amount of authority. DROs or

PDAs would not have any more power to actively infringe on others' rights than any individual

would have in a situation of self-defense. With this said, Id like to give an example of a

situation where these agencies could resolve a fairly complicated dispute in a variety of ways,

most involving non-violence.

A corporation is polluting a river upstream from your property, the business owns theportion of the river they are dumping into, but the pollutants are making their way to your

property, thus infringing your rights. Pollutants are destructive and can decrease the value of

your property. You are far less wealthy and have no means or capacity to stop them on your

own. You then would call your DRO. The DRO will make attempts to contact the business to

inform them of their violation of your property rights. It's likely the agency will require the

plaintiff (you) to provide ample evidence or proof of wrongdoing. They will present this to the

business. If the business complies, then the issue is resolved. If the business either disputes the

claim or ignores it, there are further measures that can be taken. The conflict might interest the

business to then contact its own arbitration agency to then attempt to resolve the dispute. Ifthe business simply ignores the original attempt at resolution, a PDA would then be called in to

resolve the matter. If absolutely every other attempt at civil discourse fails, (which the agency

would likely pursue, since violence is very costly and harmful to their businesss image of

legitimacy, etc.) the PDA would enforce the decisions of the arbitration agency to defend the

property rights of the plaintiff, which must be proven to have been violated. If the courts

decided so, the defendant could pay damages to the plaintiff. If someone didnt have enough

money to pay, they could work off the debt. This entire issue would be recorded and put into a

public database, free for all to see. This brings us to a new concept, rating agencies.

Rating agencies, which could be structured similar to the modern credit rating system,

would record the disputes or conflicts between all varieties of groups and individuals who

engage in contractual agreements, especially firms offering services. If a business were actually

willing to ignore the claims of a plaintiff through a DRO to the point of violent enforcement of

the plaintiffs property rights, the business in question would have a highly negative rating, and

would ensure them less customers and thus fewer profits. The incentive to resolve disputes in a


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civil manner is in place. This relies on the fact that people prefer not to interact with a person or

firm who they think might attempt to harm them or their property in some way, and would

instead avoid them. The same right a man has to defend a person being assaulted on the street

is the right that allows a man to employ a defense agency to enforce his rights when or if

violated. Therefore it can be concluded that this is not the type of legalized coercion that isfound with the state, but a way for less powerful individuals or firms to protect themselves

from would-be criminals or predators. A defense agency would not find incentive in aggressing

against innocent people on behalf of a high paying, wealthy customer, since this would also end

up in the rating agencies databases, and likely cause them to lose any future business with

reputable characters who wish to avoid exploitation.

There will still be crime in this society, but there will be preventative measures in place

which would help to decrease the amount of overall crime. A defense agency, which is not

much different from an insurance agency in regard to incentives, has complete interest in

reducing the amount of risk of criminal aggression there is for their customer. This means they

have incentive to ensure crimes are not committed against you. You could contract them to

provide (just as a broad example) crime insurance. The company would have an interest in

helping to prevent any crimes committed against you, since the process of dealing with a

dispute is much more time and resource consuming than taking preventative measures would

be. All sorts of crimes, even bigger-scale white collar crimes, would become far less common as

they are today, since what we currently have in place, quite outrageously I might add, does

nothing to ensure criminals are not prevented from committing crimes, but only punished on

the taxpayersdime in state prisons. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics there are at

least 1,612,395 people incarcerated in the United States, likely a low estimate. About 1/4thofthese criminals are non-violent drug offenders who engaged in a victimless act to break

unjust, racist laws that are arbitrarily chosen by decree of the state. The punishment techniques

still employed in these prisons are borderline medieval and really do nothing to repay any

losses that the criminal may have incurred on their victim; they in fact do the opposite since

many prisons are tax-payer funded. Maybe the worst effect of this is that about 50% of

incarcerated individuals have children, who now are missing a parent.

Jails or prisons in an anarcho-capitalist society would likely be private and considered

debtors prisons, where the criminals would work off their, quite literally speaking debt to

society" and pay some form of restitution to their victim. There are nearly endless ways in

which market innovation can vastly improve upon these services and rehabilitation techniques,

which currently and historically have been provided at extremely poor and stagnated quality

from various state or government institutions.


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There is opposition to this idea for a few varying reasons, one being that the laws in this

society will not be uniform to begin with, and that this will cause a lot of problems with

enforcing the verdicts of different courts by different defense companies. To that I'd have to

point out that it isnt uncommon for market forces to make uniformity when needed, and

diversity when not. To take a few minor examples, things such as ATM cards, DVDs, poweroutlets and plugs are typically standardized when they potentially could have all developed

incompatibly with each other. The reason this doesnt happen is that market incentives drive

against it, that standardization in certain areas is desired, theres no reason why this would be

different with private law. As disputes get resolved by these private agencies, common rules

would be laid out. Its likely that each firm would somehow agree on some certain general

rules. This cooperation might not come in a totally active way, but possibly a passive one

through the process of a multitude of disputes being resolved, and the resulting verdicts of

those used for future reference. It must also be mentioned that laws/rules from nation to

nation, from one home owners association to another, or between two businesses, in many

cases, arent uniform. This doesnt mean that these groups will be engaged in warfare in the

streets when they reach a disagreement, disputes between groups that each hold different

rules are generally resolved in a non-violent way, the other option is much more costly and

time consuming.

There is another argument, commonly made by the Randian school of thought, that

there must be a pre-existing legal system in order for a market to form properly. Though this

seems to be a good point, this is not how things seem to have happened historically. Somehow

those lawmakers and politicians have to eat, acquire clothing, a home, really any kind of

material possessions. There must be some form of market that predates the state legal system,though the two develop alongside each other. In this society, it'd be no different since the legal

system is PART of the market.

The claim that these defense agencies are going to disagree so strongly on certain issues

that it will compel them to go to war with one another is somewhat absurd. First of all, war is

an extremely costly endeavor; the only time you will find a group of people ready and willing to

go to war is in the government, where the funding for the war in question comes not from their

own pocket, but from the public, the tax payer. So considering the fact that war is extremely

costly in a material, economic, and humanitarian way, it's also very costly to your image as a

business, which in this society is of vital importance. If somehow this business wants to fight

their own private war with their own (and investors) money, they will certainly not last very

long as a business. Nor would it be likely that they would or could attempt to pillage the society

for all of its wealth, since the rest of the people have their own means of defense, and likely

could stop them in their tracks. This is not the story with how government works; they can

pillage society all they like as long as they make the right promises to the right people. To call


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upon a dichotomy commonly discussed pertaining to business and state, even if I were

somehow compelled to choose between a state agency as defined above, and a monopolized

industry on a good/service, always will I choose the monopoly, since a monopoly on a good

couldnt possibly live up to the destructive force of the legalized, legitimized monopoly on

violence that defines the state. To bring down a monopoly on a good, you dont have to rallythousands of people, educate them and persuade them to take on your beliefs, or attempt

some sort of coup de tat or revolution. These things are reserved for the sacking of a state. An

organized boycott, a whistleblowing media campaign about the unethical practice of a

company, rating agencies, and other free market forces would probably be sufficient to bring

down even a large monopoly or cartel within an industry.

If there were some high risk case of conflicting interests between a business and a

judge, or anything of the like, the disputing parties could each delegate a trusted representative

to speak on their behalf, such as a lawyer. To further distance the arbitration from the people

involved, the two delegated representatives could agree on a judge of their own choice, rather

than the actual disputing parties, as to further ensure conflicting interests are not forces that

would potentially influence an arbitration of a dispute. The disputing party and their

representatives could all decide on a judge, or each could select their own judges who would

have to reach a verdict together to resolve the dispute. Jurors could be selected from the

customer base of the dispute agency, and they could be offered price premiums or deals so

they would show up. Endless potentials for solutions would be available in such a system,

things that the market would surely provide if people saw it beneficial. These services are

denied to us presently, thus the court system further stagnates, things like plea bargains are at

an all-time high, and justice has never been further from being provided. While this briefexplanation may not answer every objection, it does provide an idea of what this system would

look like, and hopefully give some insight as to how it would work.

But surely we need someform of government, you might say. Surely we would all perish

if there werent a monopoly on the construction of roads. Claims like these are consistently

made by statists of all breeds. They believe that society will crumble without the firm

authoritative hand of the state to guide us along and help us to spend our money. This sort of

argument really holds no water against criticism. Austrian economists like Mises and Hayek

speak about something called spontaneous order. This is the idea that people in a free

market will usually find ways to order themselves according to their rational self interest in

what they believe is best for them, their wants and needs gauged by producers and

entrepreneurs, and fulfilled (depending on the freedom of the market environment).

The question is not what form of government we need to implement, nor how large of

one, the question here is truly weather we, as a society, want freedom, or slavery. Do we truly


14/15

own ourselves, our actions, and the fruits of our labor? Does all of our rightly-gained property

truly belong to us, or are we in perpetual debt to a group of people who claim legitimate

jurisdiction over this property? Theyll tell you that its a voluntary interaction, but try notgiving

it to them and see what the result is. Theyll send armed men to your home, throw you in

prison at best, and shoot you at worst. Imagine if the state, instead of providing welfare to thepoor through taxation, mandated that all welfare recipients would be expected to extract the

money from citizens the way the IRS does through taxation. Would this reallybe much different

from state wealth redistribution? I would have to argue that no, it wouldnt be. Extracting

rightly gained property from non-consenting individuals is theft; it always has been and it

always will be. It doesnt matter what veil of benevolence you drape over it, nor how many

social contracts you claim Ive signed, the state is an immoral, impractical, and overall

destructive institution. Consistently the state has aggressed against foreign and domestic

citizens, minority groups and lower classes. To continue existing, they will always have to do

this. They rely on the exploitation of the masses. Next time youre watching the news and hear

about the latest news in politics, I hope you think about what youve read here.

In a brief amount of time, and in a fairly topical manner, weve coveredself-ownership,

property rights, the immorality of the state and of taxation in regards to those rights, a short

explanation of the U.S. Revolution, and the basic workings of a proposed private legal system. I

also addressed a variety of objections made by potential statists. I attempted to lay out these

ideas in a basic, straightforward way in this piece and hope you give them equal respect as you

would give to anyone elses.The vast majority of us will agree that we would like our property

rights to exist and be respected, yet wouldnt hesitate to disregard everything Ivejust said. It is

this sort of logical inconsistency that Id like to try to target and correct. Before I close, Id like to

call upon one last quote from the late, great, Albert J. Nock, a true champion of the radical

American anti-statist tradition, from his book, Our Enemy the State; where he discusses

the inevitable collapse of anystate institution.

Anarcho-Capitalism isnt just some theoretical ideal; its a genuine long-term goal to reach for.

Societies come and go, their systems tried and tested. Many have failed, some have flourished,

but none have ever been truly free. Some day on the horizon I would hope to see some of the

ideas discussed here implemented and experimented with, I believe positive results would

"Our pride resents the thought that the great highways of New England will one day lie deep under layers

of encroaching vegetation, as the more substantial Roman roads of Old England have lain for generations;

and that only a group of heavily overgrown hillocks will be left to attract the archaeologists eye to the

hidden debris of our collapsed skyscrapers. Yet it is to just this, we know, that our civilization will come;

and we know it because we know that there never has been, never is, and never will be, any disorder in

naturebecause we know that things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be

what they will be."


15/15

quickly show. In the simplest terms possible, this is just a matter of taking your inherent,

inalienable rights and going all the way with them, extending them to their logical end. It is

realizing where our principals actually lead us, not flinching or being frightened away from

them, and retaining them with an iron-clad grip. In all hopes of a bright future ahead of us, in

spite of the current world situation, I hereby conclude my introduction to Anarcho-Capitalism, aconsistent philosophy.

(If youre interested in learning more about this subject, visit www.Mises.org and search

anarchy , orvisithttp://feeds.feedburner.com/FreedomainRadio-Anarchism.)

-Will Porter 8/11/2012-
http://www.mises.org/http://www.mises.org/http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreedomainRadio-Anarchismhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/FreedomainRadio-Anarchismhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/FreedomainRadio-Anarchismhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/FreedomainRadio-Anarchismhttp://www.mises.org/

anarcho capitalism - a consistent philosophy

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