Тег: Weapons

Who exactly will guard the inviolability and maintain non-violence in a libertarian paradise?

After all, if I am just a small entrepreneur, a local gang could seize everything I have. And there would be an unthinkable number of such gangs due to the crude nature of humans and an unwillingness to work. Am I supposed to rely only on a gun in my pocket?

Tigrenok

I analyzed this topic in great detail in the script for the Libertarian Band video on the conditions for the stability of anarchy; you can even skip reading further and just watch the video instead.

If you happen to find yourself in an impoverished society where robbery is significantly more profitable than peaceful labor, then you, as a small entrepreneur, will indeed have to rely on both your gun and a good “roof” (protection)—you will spend a very significant share of your income on protection in one form or another, and the cost of your distrust toward everyone will be factored into the price of the goods you sell, which consumers will have to pay for. Thus, your life will be poor and dangerous, and you will be seriously outperformed in labor productivity by your peaceful neighbors—and it will remain this way until a certain critical mass of people in society crawls out of the swamp of poverty: money provides confidence in tomorrow, meaning it expands people’s planning horizon. In this way, they unlearn the principle of “you die today, and I’ll die tomorrow” and switch to a “let’s let each other live” mode.

In any case, regardless of your starting conditions, you will not be able to transition to a peaceful, stable, stateless society until you are personally ready to defend your individual freedom. That is, as you quite correctly noted, rely on the gun in your pocket. A gun in a safe that you do not dare use, regardless of what happens, will not help you at all.

How will a country without a state represent itself to other states?

Choosing a private representative? An armed population is great, but tanks, planes, and missiles—who sells them, who buys them, and consequently, who stores them? And obviously, how does a private individual profit from this? Donations? Or will they offer to protect a certain part of the population? Quite strange. Military personnel will go, for example, into various PMCs and become mercenaries, but what about deterrent weapons? A private individual will be paid from the outside, and that’s it. Kaput. Cosmopolitanism is cool, but this scenario is quite real. Again, terrorist attacks carried out for the purpose of intimidation, or due to disagreement with the population based on certain criteria. Who will investigate them? Private security organizations that engage in security activities? People who are interested in what happened? Quite likely. What about firefighters, who are supposed to arrive after the fact? They arrive, but the homeowner is gone, or simply doesn’t exist because the plot of land is a wasteland. Let it burn? Will the city saved from the fire pay them via donations? “Donations” is a crude word, but essentially, if people aren’t obligated to pay for it, they will more likely pay into insurance, and the insurance companies will handle it? Consequently, each insurance company will have its own ties with firefighters, etc. Okay, I answered that myself. But as for weapons of mass destruction and heavy military equipment, it’s still unclear.

Royal hacker

It is quite difficult to answer such broad questions, so I will focus on the very first part.

Indeed, there is a rather peculiar service that seemingly only a state can provide to a person: the service of representation before another state. States do not consider citizens of other states to be subjects of treaties. They negotiate with other states, while citizens and companies act as objects of agreements. This applies to trade tariffs and regulations, visa regimes, and the extradition of criminals. How can the market respond to such rudeness?

Fortunately, states can make decisions regarding foreigners not only in a bilateral but also in an autistic mode. For example, issuing an order that products receiving certain certificates are not subject to customs duties. This means nothing prevents the company issuing the certificates from working with influence groups in those countries that are of interest as a sales market. Similarly, some consortium of travel agencies could work with lobbyists regarding a visa-free regime for buyers of certain tour packages. In general, the task looks difficult but solvable, although it seems more likely to me to obtain visas by purchasing some convenient citizenship (and the more wealthy apatrides wanting to travel there are in the market, the more various small island states will compete for them, and due to the volume, the price of the matter will quite quickly drop to a quite acceptable level).

It is more difficult with the pursuit of criminals. I once wrote about the functions of a prison under ancap, arguing that the criminal needs it primarily as a refuge from retribution. If a criminal has the opportunity to flee to the territory of a state, they effectively receive the same refuge, just without being locked within four walls. On the other hand, the state in terms of protection is a prison for the poor. That is, protection exists, but it is purely nominal. So, if someone hiding on the territory of a state manages to be discovered (which is a quite feasible and legal task for private detective agencies, which they can perfectly perform on the territory of a state), then one can either enter negotiations with them or deal with them in one way or another, since state structures are unlikely to be able to or want to protect them. Finally, one can threaten the criminal not with retribution, but with deportation to the state whose citizenship they acquired to cross the border, and there they can be judged by a state court. A mediocre solution, but threatening to hand one bandit over to other bandits for retribution if they don’t compensate for the damages is more or less permissible.

The rest of your long question is mainly devoted to issues of the use and sale of heavy weaponry. Nothing prevents a private company, operating on stateless territory, from producing weapons and legally supplying them to the territories of states if appropriate contracts are concluded with buyer companies (defense ministries can also act as such). Of course, national armies usually follow standards, and if a specific tank model has been adopted for armament, pushing through a procurement decision for another model is quite a hassle. But these are issues that are already being solved without state patronage, so under ancap, arms companies will handle this—they aren’t children.

As for the purchase of heavy weaponry by some hypothetical ancap PMCs, I personally do not believe in the market justification for such purchases, but I cannot provide clear arguments. Perhaps a few PMCs on stateless territory will go all out; after all, a tank biathlon is a quite monetizable show, something to keep them occupied in peacetime.