I don’t need to answer at length here, because the “Antistate” channel did it for me in a post titled “Why Panarchy is Ancap”. In general, this is the reason why I, being an ancap, write quite a lot about panarchy.
To what is stated in the article, I can only add the following consideration. Panarchy as a system where everyone is under their own governments, but governments compete for citizens, and entry and exit are free, is an unstable state of society. Quite quickly, a significant number of people will accumulate who have not entered into client agreements with any governments at all. They cannot be forced to go under someone’s wing; all that remains is to try to sell them some services. Thus, panarchy will gradually become pure ancap for many, where absolutely all goods and services are offered on a free competitive market. I would say that this could lead to the development of government service aggregators, where everyone can pick an option for themselves, or perhaps do without it entirely.
If some greedy people honestly bought a lake into their ownership and decided to take all the fish out of it for quick enrichment, they will get the fish, sell it, and then they will have to find some other use for their lake. They could breed some other kind of fish there, use the water for irrigation, build a water park nearby — there are plenty of uses for a body of water. These guys are within their rights.
If these same greedy people decide to take all the fish at once from someone else’s lake, then the owner of the lake will, of course, try to oppose this, if not during the process, then certainly demand compensation after the fact. This is not a state fishery inspection where you can wiggle out with a bribe or connections — quick enrichment will not happen.
Finally, they could find an ownerless lake in the deep wilderness, claim it as their own, and take all the fish in the lake at once. But here is the problem: the lake is in the wilderness, which means problems with transporting the catch. They would have to use expensive transport like a helicopter, likely in more than one trip, and this again means that super-profits will not happen; transport costs will eat up all the profit. Therefore, a lake in the wilderness is useful for recreational fishing and selfies against beautiful views, but not for industrial fishing. If, for some reason, the transport costs are not so high, then the new owners of the lake have no reason to fish out all the fish from their lake at once when they can do it regularly without depleting the resource. They aren’t some poachers who are forced to feed on stealthy raids. They honestly claimed this lake as something nobody wanted, and now they will honestly exploit it.
Exactly the same applies to hunting animals, logging the taiga, and so on. It is precisely the ability to not worry that the state will come tomorrow and drive you off your plot that allows one to moderate their appetite and exploit the resource carefully enough. It’s a pity that the entire taiga in Russia is state-owned; now even putting out its fires has become economically inefficient.
Opposition to the honest homestead of the state sturgeon
In the movie “The Big Short,” there is a moment when the character Mark Baum goes to a rating agency (RA) to ask “has there ever been a time in the past year where you (the RA) didn’t give the triple-A (AAA) rating requested by the banks?”. To which Georgia (an RA employee) responds: “If we don’t give them the rating, they’ll go to Moody’s (another RA) two blocks away.”
The RAs understand everything, but continue to violate their own rules for fear of losing clients to a competitor.
But what if a similar situation arises under conditions of private courts, where courts issue unlawful decisions or, say, decisions in favor of large clients for fear of the client leaving for another private court?
Armchair Hater
In the situation you are considering, we see how poor system design produces incorrect results. A bank pays for the rating agency to give it a high rating, and the rating agency fulfills this market order. Beyond that, anyone can simply disregard this information because it says nothing about the bank’s reliability.
There is a free market. Companies operating on it provide various services. The company’s task is to convince the consumer that it is a good choice. The consumer’s task is to find out which company is truly a good choice. Exactly what the company provides—food, scientific research, or, say, conflict resolution—is completely irrelevant.
A company has two possible strategies. First: by figuring out consumer preferences, deceiving the consumer into believing that the company meets those preferences. Second: by figuring out consumer preferences, bringing its services into alignment with those preferences. The consumer also has two possible strategies. First: thoroughly study the market and make an informed decision in favor of one of the companies. Second: choose the first company they come across, work with it, and if it turns out to be dishonest, make every effort to ensure its management regrets it. These are the extremes I have described. A real strategy will be a combination of the two.
Thus, the company creates a market demand for studying preferences and for information (whether true or false), and the consumer creates a market demand for studying offers and for sanctions against fraud.
This results in an eternal conflict between the shell and the armor (or, if you prefer, the prisoner’s dilemma). The consumer needs independent ratings; the producer is interested in buying a “tastier” rating. The consumer needs a court that will recover damages from the producer for poor quality; the producer needs a court that will acquit them. At the same time, the consumer is not obligated to be a saint either; they might use a product, break it, and then return it as if it were defective; they might receive a product and lie that it was never received; they might pay with counterfeit money…
If the market is regulated from above on an exclusive basis, then both consumers and producers direct their efforts toward corrupting the regulator and inducing it to act specifically in their interests. If there is no centralized regulation, then the most important factor influencing decision-making becomes the practice of successful interactions with a specific counterparty—in other words, their reputation. I have written before about what an ideal reputation system for me might look like. So far, the market mainly features very clumsy systems for analyzing consumer behavior, but these are not needed by me as a consumer, but rather by those who want to push their goods onto me. Systems that would track the behavior of producers just as thoroughly are still far less developed; they are replaced by makeshift solutions from various organizations with the word “oversight” in their names.
In the doctrine of anarcho-capitalism, it is assumed that insurance companies can perform all these oversight functions much more qualitatively. Whether this is actually true, or whether the market will offer us even more sophisticated tools, we will find out once we discard the makeshift solutions.
The market is learning its letters; soon it will start speaking coherently
As far as I can tell, Roma have an extraterritorial jurisdiction that is not contractual. You cannot simply show up from the outside and enroll as a Romani person. This jurisdiction may enter into informal contracts with other mafia-style extraterritorial jurisdictions, or remain in a state of nature relative to other jurisdictions.
What are the characteristics of the Romani community? It is a fairly ordinary nomadic tribe that has preserved a number of archaic traits, specifically, the fact that they do not consider outsiders to have legal standing. Regarding their own, the Roma are guided by principles of respect for property that are customary and clear to any ancap, plus some quirks regarding the regulation of personal and family life, which, however, are characteristic of many other ethnicities. As for an outsider, they can be cheated, robbed, or even killed; this is not considered immoral, is not prosecuted within the Romani jurisdiction, and the only regulator is utilitarianism: if you get too arrogant, you’ll have to move camp sooner than you’d like.
However, let us transport ourselves to a bright future where ancap dominates a fairly significant territory, and the Roma appear there. To start with, under ancap, land is either no one’s or private. Therefore, for a camp to settle, they will either need to find a piece of unclaimed land, which usually means some distance from populated areas, or rent a plot.
Rent land to the Roma for living? Why not, if you take money upfront and have enough strength to evict them from the place by force. So, if the Roma want to live closer to their foraging base, they will have to deviate from their principles and shell out. This is exactly the same attitude they will mostly encounter among everyone else: only secured transactions. There is nothing terrible about this; after all, some crypto-markets work this way even now. Transactions between strangers always need mechanisms that allow them to be carried out despite the lack of trust between them. The simplest such mechanism is a trusted intermediary—a third party monitoring compliance with the terms of the deal.
Of course, if the Roma behave under ancap as they are used to, after some time the question of liability for contracts, which they tricked trusting citizens into and failed to fulfill, may arise. Since ancient times, the camp’s simple answer to such claims has been: move camp. Technical progress, however, reduces the costs of pursuing a debtor faster than the costs of moving. Nevertheless, chasing nomads and shaking debts out of them is a hassle, so I would suggest that those intending to deal with the Roma under ancap use one simple tool: a deposit.
Deposits are already actively used now, for example, when you check into a hotel. It is collected upon check-in and covers the approximate amount of your possible liability for damages in the room. Checked out without notice, stolen something—losses will be covered by the deposit. Checked out normally—received your deposit at the reception. Exactly the same thing can be practiced when renting a camping site or a building plot to a camp: you take the rent for a month in advance and a deposit equal to the annual fee. Any monetary claims against a member of the camp are either settled personally by the violator as part of an amicable agreement, or if they manage to agree with the plaintiff on an arbitrator, through court—otherwise, the claim amount is simply deducted from the deposit. Lived for a year without exhausting the deposit—well done, for the next year the deposit can be slightly reduced.
And if a particular camp manages to cause losses exceeding the deposit and immediately moves away, the deposit in the next location may turn out to be significantly higher.
The consistent instillation of a culture of honest trade will gradually lead to the morality in the Romani community becoming more universal, and cheating an outsider will become “low class.” All other culture can easily remain, as culture is a good export commodity.
Assuming that an organized crime group (OCG) could appear, engaging in banditry and robbery. As an example, I can provide such a situation: a citizen (territorially, since there is no state as such) decided to grow and sell vegetables and fruits, but in the absence of large starting capital, all his funds go only towards cultivation and care; he cannot afford security, as a result, an OCG with taped-over license plates and masks could drive up to him, and… I can only imagine such a situation: this citizen will sell his goods and services at a special market, where he will pay (tribute/taxes) for its protection. So the question is: how is it possible for a small business to grow under ancap conditions, given that criminal groups will arise that will rob and kill, and who will be interested in catching them?
анонимный вопрос
All growth in human well-being is based on the division of labor and its capitalization. The division of labor increases productivity because each participant in the system of division of labor does what they are more efficient at and does not do what they are less efficient at. The capitalization of labor is, in essence, the same division of labor, but not only among the immediate participants of the production process, but also across time and space. That is, it is not simply “Vasya digs holes, Masha plants seedlings,” but “a factory once produced a shovel somewhere, Vasya bought it, and now he digs holes faster — and Masha plants the seedlings.” A bunch of people participated in the division of labor, this labor is encapsulated in a conventional shovel, and as a result of such a division of labor, productivity in planting increased.
The flip side of the division of labor is that it is not always possible to organize it so that everyone does what they are best at and does not do what they are worst at. A bad manager (and a good locksmith) may end up being the boss of a bad locksmith (and a good manager) simply because of the way things historically unfolded — the career ladder, personal connections, and so on. The larger the business, the greater the probability of such inefficient sections appearing in it, reducing overall productivity. Also, since within one company the relationships between its employees are not market-based, the division of labor and the division of profit in it can differ greatly. These factors are amplified when scaling a business.
Small business is a form of organization with a low level of division of labor and/or a low level of its capitalization. It is effective only in those areas where the negative effect of scale is higher than the positive one. But no one knows in advance and cannot calculate all these effects — market knowledge is dispersed in nature and is acquired only in the course of activity. Therefore, new small enterprises will always be formed and old large ones will collapse.
And now, after a long theoretical preamble, let’s talk about solving the specific problem of protection for small business.
The capitalization of the business is low, so the entrepreneur grows and sells the product himself. Theoretically, he could protect himself from encroachments as well. For example, it is quite conceivable that a person sells the product he grows exclusively to friends and acquaintances, and as a result, simply remains invisible to a potential external aggressor. Trust is also a form of capitalization. A person invests effort into gaining connections, and then uses those connections to safely obtain profit.
Another possibility of using trust to ensure security is associations of small producers. Each invests relatively little in self-defense means (knowingly insufficient for independent protection against a typical gang), but at the moment of attack, combines their efforts with other members of the association and puts up a confident fight. The cry “they’re beating our people!” has been tested by centuries of practice and works splendidly.
A third possibility is also related to an association of producers, but the division of labor is added to it. A village hires seven samurai. No single peasant alone would be able to hire even one.
You described the fourth possibility yourself: producers purchase a safe sale service from the fairground owner.
The fifth possibility is to specialize only in production and sell the grown produce immediately to a wholesaler, who will come, buy, and take the goods away themselves. This is currently actively practiced by small agricultural producers in Russia, but not out of a good life, and often such a buyer is able to ensure a local monopsony, that is, a buyer’s monopoly. In other words, here is the obvious threshold that the division of labor in agricultural production hits: every producer is interested in selling the products personally to the final consumer, without losing money on intermediaries.
Under ancap, several systemic factors that hinder an agricultural producer from contacting the end consumer are abolished. First, in the absence of taxation, costs for accounting and record-keeping in retail sales are sharply reduced. Second, in the absence of urban planning regulation, the possibility of organizing trade in the city is sharply simplified — in essence, it is regulated only by consumer preferences (the consumer themselves, and not an external regulator for them, makes the choice between the cheapness of the product and the quality of service). Third, entrepreneurial initiative to ensure one’s own security is also not restricted by such a systemic factor as the state.
Of course, without a state, entry into the market for small-time bandits will also be simplified. In the example of the much-discussed Somalia, we see that entrepreneurs there have to invest quite a lot in their security, and yet its level remains low. Therefore, not only the relative size of investments in security is important, but also the level of capitalization in this sphere. Institutions that increase trust in society, a developed and diversified labor market providing potential bandits with plenty of opportunities for honest earnings, the purely technological cheapening of security — all these are measures that make the “war of all against all” scenario under ancap less likely.
Work can be done on this already now; there is no need to ask the state for permission.
The specificity of the force market: it is very difficult to understand whether a bandit or a guard is before us. Most likely, both.
Since the majority of Russia’s population are “hereditary” statistists with deep subconscious demands for a leftist agenda (I was like that myself, and I’m the one who broke away from it), I believe that ancap cannot be achieved through political methods alone. Propaganda for statistists leaks from every crack, and it relies on middle-aged and elderly people (as people with already formed views), while for the youth, very dangerous ideas of “patriotism,” “service to the state,” and all this pro-statist nonsense are promoted almost from kindergarten. This is exactly where a countercultural method is required. In youth, it is much easier and more interesting to go against the current than when you already have something to lose. And reading heavy economic theory…? Few will manage it. Many are repulsed by politics, even though people may be ideologically for freedom (which is why they are repulsed, as current politics are against freedom). In short, we need more counterculture (because the state is in the minds), more agorism (especially in legal spheres—it needs to be shown that freelancing for crypto or fiat, and direct buy-sell deals on Avito and similar resources are good and profitable!), and more decentralization in everything, especially with the approaching total information and biometric control by the state.
It is possible to live, at least partially, according to ancap, and the goal is to convey this to a receptive audience. What do you think?
анонимный вопрос
Libertarianism is very strongly tied to ethics. The same people in the same conditions can either create bloody chaos or a cozy community with respect for private property, freedom of trade, and the values of good neighborliness. Of course, ethics are inevitably developed through the practice of interaction. There is no central authority, there is an opportunity to buy weapons—and with every armed conflict, the survivors will accumulate both the skills of living without a central authority and the skills of respecting others’ rights. But humans did not create culture so that every new generation would have to make its own mistakes entirely on its own.
Fictional plots educate worse than direct experience, but they still do it. Some will respond better to movies, some to novels, some to jokes, and some to memes. The wider the cultural layer, the more people it will hook. Moreover, the cultural transmission of ethical values will allow ancap to be instilled in certain individuals even within a statist society.
And besides artistic culture, there is perhaps the most important mechanism for transmitting values—the ethical statement through personal example. If you are offered “white” employment, you can make a disgusted face, ask how the employer isn’t ashamed to spend the payroll fund to feed the state, and demand to be employed “under the table.” If you like a small lawn near your entrance and want to plant flowers, don’t forget a sign saying “converted to private property by the resident of apartment X by right of original appropriation”; you can even reference Rothbard for solidity. When borrowing money until payday, suggest drafting a short contract specifying: who borrowed it, when it will be returned, at what interest rate, and what sanctions apply for untimely return.
In other words, it is very useful to show that this was not only possible, but that it works best. Draw boundaries between your own and not your own, respect the rights of others, avoid appealing to the state—and be a successful person while doing so. That is when ancap will form around you on its own.
My wall—my rules. And the door—well, I just homesteaded it for good measure, no one else claimed it.
If you look threatening enough, people will not dare to attack you. This simple consideration gives rise to rather complex spontaneous orders. We see them in the behavior not only of humans but of many other biological species. Even plants try to portray themselves as something very dangerous that is better left untouched. Similarly, libertarians tend to put animals on their banners that have succeeded in applying the doctrine of deterrence, such as the rattlesnake or the porcupine.
A vivid demonstration of the doctrine of deterrence in the animal kingdom
In military theory, the doctrine of deterrence began to gain popularity in the 19th century and became the dominant view after the appearance of nuclear weapons. The original reasoning was simple. It was necessary to ensure that waging war would be inherently disadvantageous. Since the goal of war, according to Clausewitz, is a peace that is better than the pre-war state, then the means of waging war must be made as horrific and large-scale as possible, so that no one would even think that a country could obtain an economic gain as a result of war. True, a contrary consideration was voiced in parallel: that war, first, would divert many working hands to the front, and second, would provide industry with military orders, which means that workers would receive a sharp increase in wages—thus, they have every reason to desire a great war. And although the First World War showed that, for some reason, famine and poverty began instead of an increase in well-being, this did not prevent Keynes from appearing shortly after with his ideas that during a crisis one must spend more, as this is the best way to achieve wealth.
During the interwar period, the Douhet doctrine spread, suggesting that an opponent’s will to resist could be easily broken by indiscriminate strategic bombing of production facilities in the rear—again, military theorists harbored the thought of how obvious economic senselessness of a confrontation could prevent the start of a slaughter. But the Second World War vividly demonstrated that losses only contribute to cohesion, and a total war begins far beyond any pre-war rational calculations.
After the end of the Second World War, humanity immediately began preparing for a new war, this time a nuclear one. Nuclear powers conducted active tests of new weapons and delivery systems, developed doctrines for their use, and built bunkers to shelter government bodies and headquarters. And then, finally, the most important event of the 20th century, in my view, occurred: the Cuban Missile Crisis. For the first time in human history, two powers, fully equipped for war, having launched their propaganda machines at full throttle, having mobilized troops, and having irreconcilable contradictions in their development doctrines implying the complete defeat of the opponent—did not dare to start a war and launched de-escalation. What happened? The governments of both countries clearly realized that if war began, they would become the first targets and would be destroyed with almost complete certainty. This realization proved to be enough.
It became clear exactly what should be the basis of the doctrine of deterrence. Not an economic blockade and sanctions, not the readiness to bomb a country back to the Stone Age, but only the guarantee of the destruction of the leadership. As long as the head of state can sacrifice his subordinates, he will be ready to fight. As soon as he himself becomes a piece on this chessboard, his motivation for war decreases sharply.
As is known, a new, previously non-existent product usually first becomes an object of fabulous luxury, but gradually, thanks to its attractiveness and the super-profits generated by its production, it attracts investment, becomes increasingly mass-market, and its price drops. Eventually, the product becomes virtually accessible to everyone.
The product “deterring the opponent through the guaranteed destruction of its leaders” was very expensive, and initially only superpowers could afford it. However, over time, on one hand, the circle of nuclear powers expanded, the cost of nuclear weapons decreased, and their consumer qualities grew; on the other hand, people’s tolerance for military losses decreased.
A good illustration of this trend was the last conventional war between civilized countries—the Falklands conflict. It is interesting because during the war, both sides more or less carefully observed the norms of international law relating to the laws and customs of war, and the conflict itself was clearly geographically localized around the disputed zone. In other words, the parties could no longer afford a total war, were forced to exercise restraint, and quickly transitioned from the hot phase of the conflict to diplomacy.
When high-precision weapons appeared, the great powers began using them to eliminate the leaders of opponents in underdeveloped countries. However, this, on the other hand, further lowered the entry threshold into the circle of countries that could afford a doctrine of deterrence through threats to leaders, since this no longer even required bypassing IAEA restrictions, as Israel did in its time, according to unofficial information.
However, progress in the relevant technologies does not stand still; high-precision weapons continue to become cheaper, and now we are frightened by something like this:
It is obvious that sooner or later, cheap, long-range, high-precision, anonymous weapons will be available to a very wide circle of subjects, including private individuals. And this means that humanity has come very close to the libertarian dream—to ensure guarantees of non-aggression from the state.
In February 2019, the first act of full-scale seasteading in history took place. A couple of bitcoiners, American Chad Elwartowski and Thai Nadia Tepdet, established a small residential platform 15 nautical miles off the coast of Thailand—that is, outside territorial waters, but within the two-hundred-mile exclusive economic zone. In April, the Royal Thai Navy destroyed the platform, which according to maritime law constitutes military action against a sovereign power. Thus, states once again demonstrated that maritime law works only between sovereign subjects, which are only states, and not people.
Now let’s fantasize. Seasteaders continue to mind their own business peacefully: Chad continues to please the public with statements like “I hope my lawyer will be able to reach a reasonable agreement with the Thai government,” Nadia is waiting for political asylum in the USA. Meanwhile, a small drone drops a bomb on King Rama X, after which an entry left by an unknown person appears on the bitcoin blockchain, stating that any head of state who dares to prevent free people from settling outside the jurisdiction of the state will be destroyed in the same way. A few months after the Thai crisis, the seasteading institute announces its intention to establish a residential platform 15 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam…
Not every state is ready to trade a king for a party-goer
I think not much time will pass before people realize that placing platforms in neutral waters is already boring—look how many have been stuck there—and they will start announcing the secession of their own land-based territories, predicting, in case their sovereignty is not recognized, a sobering retribution against the head of their state by anonymous well-wishers who are simply close to the ideas of freedom and are therefore ready to defend them throughout the world…
Then more. People realize that sovereign territory is an atavism, that sovereignty can be extraterritorial—and they will begin to declare their independence from the state, without even bothering to leave its borders. Get insurance from an anonymous fund for sobering up etatists—and live your life, without taxes and repressions. A tax agent arrives—you show him your insurance policy, his face changes, he apologizes and leaves. Everything is orderly, peaceful, ancap-style.
What is needed for such fantasies to become a reality?
A clear understanding that states begin to speak the language of law only with those behind whom they see power.
Decentralized asymmetric defense. It is impossible to protect a territory from the state; it is not even worth trying. One can only create a threat to the decision-makers on the opponent’s side—the higher the better. Of course, moral pressure should also be exerted on the executors, but making them bitter is extremely harmful: they should not see you as a deadly enemy, otherwise you risk arriving at a total war instead of deterrence. A bitter enemy no longer needs propaganda; he hates you personally and is ready to rip your throat out.
A strike against key state figures should come not from those attacked by the state, but as anonymously as possible.
Exactly what means are used for deterrence is, for the most part, unimportant, as long as the restrictions are met: the weapon must provide minimal risk of collateral damage, have decent range, be as accurate as possible, and be as cheap as possible. It does not even have to be lethal; an educational effect can be achieved without such radical measures as killing. This could be the disclosure of critical personal data, such as a family’s home address, the draining of money from bank cards, slashed tires, or a bag of feces on the head instead of a bomb—after all, many analogs to the porcupine’s needle can be imagined in the modern world!
Widespread advertising is needed. Actions within the doctrine of deterrence should be vividly highlighted, skillfully directed, and ideally place the targets of influence in the most idiotic position. It is public shame that works most effectively both against public elected figures and against dictators swelling with a sense of their own importance.
Modern democracies actively use the blurring of responsibility, where certain non-legal laws are passed by collective bodies. However, here lies not only strength but also weakness. It is relatively easy to protect one supreme commander-in-chief, but try constantly guarding an entire battalion of parliamentarians! The doctrine of deterrence opposes collective decisions with collective responsibility.
Of course, the doctrine of deterrence will not work with everyone; there may always be a particularly stubborn functionary who is indifferent to all your warnings. The same tactic as for public campaigns will work here: you simply need to switch to a superior, so that he will order the overzealous subordinate to stand down. In general, when constructing a strategy for deterring an opponent, all developments in conducting public campaigns can be adopted almost in full.
Yulia Latynina likes to repeat that society is structured just like an army, and one influences the other. An unintended consequence of exactly how civil society will deter an institutional aggressor will be certain changes in the structure of society itself. A maximally decentralized principle of coordination and a strive to achieve goals through indirect means will inevitably foster in society a system of those very extraterritorial contractual insurance jurisdictions that I have already talked your ears off about here on my channel. That is exactly how spontaneous orders work.
The most weighty objection against the doctrine of deterrence is as follows: Yes, of course, society can terrorize poor, frightened bureaucrats in the wet dreams of European hipsters. But these hipsters will sing a different tune when conditional “collectivos” start killing them at night—the state has a much richer arsenal of means not only for legal prosecution but also for proxy violence.
Yes, indeed, the state can very easily raise the stakes in this game, and soft “deterrence by denial” with its bags of feces and other attempts to ensure reputational damage will stop working (if the opponent’s leader cannot win beautifully, he may retreat, or he may decide “to hell with it, I will win ugly”), after which civil society will eventually have to adopt hardcore “deterrence by punishment” and use lethal means. But here it is important not to slide into total war, to conduct purely pinpoint actions and actively broadcast to the outside world through the voices of uninvolved parties: “What are you doing? Why are you driving these poor people to despair? Do you find it hard to make insignificant concessions? Why do you need this war?”
The whole point of the doctrine of deterrence is for the opponent to decide: the game is not worth the candle. Even in the most neglected cases, this is a perfectly solvable task.
In the absence of a state, the very existence of orphanages is quite unlikely — it is hard to imagine a person who would need so many children. Few families decide to have more than a dozen. The need to mass-place a huge number of homeless children arises only after major wars, but ancap guarantees that if anything, there will certainly be no major wars — there are no opportunities for such a concentration of forces; it is economically pointless. Under normal conditions, the demand for children exceeds the supply — and if the state does not put a spoke in the wheels, children who are not wanted by some adults quickly end up with other adults ready to take care of them.
Under ancap, things should also generally be better for people with disabilities than under a state. Judge for yourself. Since there are no mandatory fiat currencies, a person is fully capable, without possessing specific investment skills, of saving for old age simply by putting money aside, preferably deflationary ones like bitcoins. Then disability occurs, and even if for some reason they were not insured, all that remains is to open the piggy bank.
Of course, there are children with disabilities, and not every one of them is as talented as Sanya from Dagestan. But, as is easy to see, the state is not intending to care for them anyway. As for society, in the absence of centralized robbery, it has far more opportunities to ensure a decent life even for expensive children with disabilities. There are too few of them for it to truly strain people inclined toward spontaneous acts of kindness.
After all, you have no guarantee that the pseudonym Ancap-chan does not hide a similarly disabled person. You send me money not for what I lack, but for what I give you: interesting reflections expressed in a decent style. Thanks to the fact that I do not have to pay taxes on your donations, they are spent entirely on good deeds. Thank you for not abandoning me.
Here I will once again refer to Evgeny Kvasov and his post about roads. In short: the most natural owner for a street is the owner of the real estate that the street passes by, because the value of the real estate directly depends on the quality of the communications.
If there are many real estate owners, they have many reasons to agree on how to maintain the road, and not a single reason to create obstacles to passage — this sharply drops the value of their assets. A situation in which the houses along the street belong to some people, and the street itself to others who have no relation to these houses, is possible, but in that case, the company managing the street must have clearly fixed obligations regarding the operating mode of the street.
Houses always come first, and the street arises later, specifically so that one can move from the house to some other location. Residents may tolerate a temporary closure of the street for some alternative use if this closure is coordinated with them and they are paid for the inconvenience. But normally, they will always demand free passage and access, and strongly oppose any arbitrary action that hinders this very passage and access. Any checkpoint will be a negative externality for them, and that is already grounds for a lawsuit. Maintaining checkpoints will be quite expensive. They won’t pay off.
Now, under a state — that’s a different matter. Here, houses may belong to people, the street to the municipality, and traffic on it be regulated by the central authority. With such an approach, collisions are inevitable, where the interests of the residents are not taken into account.
Can it be called radical anarcho-capitalism? Its combination with crypto-anarchism and counter-economics tactics has a known power, especially at the dawn of cutting-edge technologies like open-source p2p markets. Please write your point of view on this type of ancap. Agora! Anarchy! Action!
Insurgent
Agorism is not a type of ancap. It is a complex of methods for achieving it. In my rather old post about ancap and minarchism, I mentioned two different approaches to building ancap: the political and the countercultural. The countercultural approach is exactly what agorism is. It is a very consistent belief that the state, as an institution, cannot be destroyed using the methods of the state. Reforms can greatly reduce state influence on society in general and on the economy in particular. But the more the state is weakened, the less it interferes, and the less motivation there is to see the matter through to the end; a parasite that hasn’t been fully poisoned will only die if the organism somehow rejects it. Therefore, one way or another, the final stage of outgrowing the state as a complex of institutions will be agoristic.
Those who call agorism some special variety of left-wing anarchism are likely approaching their typology from the other end. There are left-wing anarchists who practice building communes and direct action, and there are agorists who practice informal market communities and direct action—surely these are related currents. But what is related in them is anarchism, not leftism.
