anonymous question

In addition to this post, I also recommend reading all posts tagged “court,” at least this one and this one.

To start, let me roll out a bunch of definitions related to your question. Often, providing clear definitions is enough, and the answer to the question becomes completely obvious.

• Property  – the relationship of an object to a subject, within which the subject disposes of the object at their discretion, and other subjects refrain from similar actions without the owner’s sanction.
• Ancap – a system of relations between people based on the principle of self-ownership, that is, ownership of oneself. In common parlance, we will also call an “ancap” a person who is ready to adhere to this system of relations.
• Law – a complex of practices for resolving conflicts between people.
• Court – a legal institution within which a conflict between parties is resolved by a third party. Under ancap, a court can resolve conflicts only within the scope of the authority delegated to it by the parties to the conflict.
• Prison – a legal institution within which the party that caused damage is isolated from the party that suffered damage. Under ancap, isolation can occur only with the sanction of the isolated party and only on terms agreed upon with them.

Now let’s provide a few examples of how law works in Ancapistan.

1. Two ancaps disagree with each other regarding which of them owns a certain object. They have stated their claims to each other, and after discussion, they agreed on who gets the disputed object, and who, for example, in exchange for waiving their claims, receives an agreed-upon compensation. The conflict is resolved.
2. Two ancaps disagree with each other regarding which of them owns a certain object. They have stated their claims to each other but have not reached an agreement. Then they agree with a third party in one way or another and delegate to them the authority to resolve the conflict. The court examines the situation, issues a decision, and the parties to the conflict execute the decision. The conflict is resolved.
3. Two ancaps disagree with each other regarding which of them owns a certain object. In an attempt to exercise their property rights over the disputed object, the parties begin to cause each other some damage. Not wanting the conflict to escalate, one of the parties finds a shelter where they are out of reach of the second party, and after this, the parties begin to negotiate about a court. The court examines the situation, issues a decision, and the parties to the conflict execute the decision. The conflict is resolved.

The shelter appearing in the third example is, in essence, a prison. For the service of providing security during the period of imprisonment, the prison owner may charge a fee from the client, that is, from the person who wishes to obtain shelter.

I do not think that under ancap, the service of imprisonment will be in such high demand that it would be profitable to build special, well-protected structures to provide it. Most likely, the service of providing shelter will be provided decentrally and will be more declarative in nature.

A guy is running down the street, all disheveled and bruised, and another guy is behind him, very agitated and wanting to bruise the first one even more. The first guy rushes to me and asks for help. I shield him from the second one and suggest that he move toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict. I have isolated one participant of the conflict from the other, and, in essence, this is no different from putting him in a pretrial detention center. The only thing that prevents the strong side in this conflict from continuing the crackdown on the weak side is the unwillingness to enter into a conflict with me as well. In the vast majority of situations, this is quite enough.

Will I take money for the service provided? I don’t know, it depends on the circumstances, depending on how much it distracts me from my own affairs.

In describing this example, I proceeded from the implicit assumption that ancap developed in a peaceful society through the gradual withering away of the state, which is why the described conflict, within which the need for shelter arose, looks quite “vegetarian.” Of course, if some Venezuela arrives at ancap through the complete and rapid bankruptcy of the state, then conflicts between people in the first stage will be significantly more numerous, and there may indeed arise a sufficiently stable, solvent demand for solid fortified shelters where the client would be provided with armed security services. But the probability of such a scenario seems very small to me.