Yesterday, I read the tragic news that US President Donald Trump had his Twitch disabled, and Stefan Molyneux, whom I translate, had his YouTube disabled. After all, what a mess this creates—our opponents will say—here you are, wanting to rid us of the state, after which power will pass to mega-corporations; state censorship can at least be defeated democratically, but what can be opposed against the whims of a corporation owner? You say that the market and the institution of reputation will work against this, but the owners of media platforms don’t give a damn about their reputation in the eyes of their ideological enemies, and they only get more money because they fight those they position as a global evil.
Furthermore, they continue, you say that private discrimination will lead to the emergence of alternative platforms that will serve those who were discriminated against by others. But Twitter banned people for Nazi views, and indeed, an independent platform called Gab was created in opposition to it, where anyone could speak without any censorship, and what happened? It is being disconnected from payment systems. How do you like this triumph of ostracism and private discrimination, gentlemen ancaps?
At the same time, it is hard not to notice that this case differs greatly from the corporate wars depicted in caricatures of ancap. For instance, in the most famous parodic description of anarcho-capitalism, the subject is a war between mega-corporations McDonald’s and Burger King for market share—serious business sharks seeking only money.
In our world, however, the enmity of corporations toward customers is not about money, or at least not directly about money—but about ideology. What introduces such a strange correction? It is not hard to guess—it is the state.
In a free market, you get the maximum number of customers when you start satisfying them better than your competitor, but in a state, you have an additional powerful option—to ban the competitor. However, in a democracy, you cannot simply declare that this company should be given a tax break because it feeds the ruling party, and that one should be banned because it feeds the opposition. Instead, you can declare that the competitors are evil incarnate, literally Hitler, and a hundred other epithets—and therefore they deserve shame, condemnation, censorship, and ostracism. The state distorts market incentives. Always. From the towers of high theory, this may look like harmless private discrimination, but from the ground, it is perfectly clear that we are dealing with good old political struggle.
The market by itself does not defeat the state, only in combination with an ideology that asserts the values of individual freedom. Otherwise, it leads a subjugated existence, being over-regulated by those in power and subjected to arbitrary interventions under the guise of morality, behind which political reasons often stand.
Therefore, the recipe remains the same: defending the values of freedom, promoting them, and constantly searching for new bypasses that are, in principle, not subject to external dictate. And after mega-corporations protected by the state, corporations under ancap will seem to you like innocent lambs.
And we’ll all feel great when Money comes marching home…