The Ultimate Guide to Disproving Anarcho-Capitalism Theory

RandPaulsBrilloBalls · 2ヶ月前

Rothbard already praxed around this problem in The Ethics of Liberty. The text is online somewhere. It's Chapter 14 you're looking for if you Google it.

Basically, here's the solution:

Children are property.
They are homesteaded by mom in the womb or whatever.
Mom can buy and sell them.
There will be child markets.
The child has no contract or property rights because it is property.
The child becomes an adult whenever it figures out how to run away and doesn't die.
This is the point at which the child takes "ownership" of itself.
Only at this point does it have contract or homestead or any other property rights or does the NAP apply to it.
Before this point it's just another thing, like a side of beef, or a dog, or whatever.
So see? There's no issue. If you just make all children slaves, the problem goes away. I suppose the landlord could ban children, just like he could ban waterbeds or wood-burning stoves or any other piece of property. But since children aren't people in ancapistan, worrying about their rights or how they jive with the NAP is pointless.

elsbot · 2ヶ月前

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision...When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.

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Luna1943XB · 2ヶ月前

The Ultimate Guide to Disproving Anarcho-Capitalism Theory

Just a link to /r/Anarcho_Capitalism would be sufficient.

ReOsIr10 · 2ヶ月前

Some comments:

First: I don't think the NAP has no basis in reality; in fact, I think it is universally true, regardless if you are talking about anarcho-capitalism, communism, social democracy, etc. Everybody agrees that you shouldn't agrees against other people (well, the vast majority of people do, at least). The problem is how you define aggression, which is directly tied to the entitlement system you believe in.

In the simplest case, if you believe in unabridged property rights, it would be aggression for me to walk across your property without your permission. However, if I don't believe in any property rights, then it would be aggression for you to stop me from walking across "your" property.

This is why, in my opinion, the ultimate debate comes down to "how does one determine the best entitlement system?", i.e. "why should we respect property rights above all else?" Common arguments include that it is the "freest" system, it produces the best results, or that it gives people what they deserve.

Second: From what I've seen, most ancaps think that the child should be given the option to accept the terms of the contract (once they are able to consent to contracts), or to leave. They don't consider this a violation of the NAP, as the child would be "aggressing" against the property owner. If you wish to make the state = super-landlord analogy, be prepared for responses like:

"Landlords can't imprison people, but the state does"
"The cost to leave a state is much larger than the cost to leave a landlord"
"The state didn't acquire its land legitimately, so the situation isn't equivalent to a landlord"
"There are independent Dispute Resolution Organizations to settle contract disputes between landlord and tenant. In the case of the state, the DRO is clearly not independent of the state (it is the state)."

The first problem only requires that states deport everyone who breaks a law.

The second is just a matter of scale, which I find unconvincing. Theoretically, a landlord could own a lot of land, and moving costs would be non-negligible.

The third is interesting. You could argue over what "legitimate" entails exactly. You could argue that today's landlord's are not legitimate. You could even concede the point, and focus on a hypothetical in which the state was legitimate.

Finally, I'm not sure about the fourth. You could try to argue that the judicial node is independent of the other two branches, but I doubt ancaps would accept that. Alternatively, you could try to argue that the contract you consent to with the state includes a clause that all disputes are resolved in the judicial system. If you consent to the contract, you consent to a non-independent DRO. If you want an independent DRO, you don't have to sign the contract.

Snugglerific · 2ヶ月前

There's a much simpler way to do this. The NAP, taken to its logical conclusion, is an argument against private property rights. If not all property is "homesteaded" in the Lockean sense, then some property is necessarily invalid. Let's take the example of the extermination of Native Americans by the Europeans. Here, the an-cap can go two different ways. The first is to bite the bullet, like Ayn Rand, and claim that the NAs did not "truly" homestead the land. This forces the an-cap to endorse horrific genocidal actions and make the absurd claim that mass slaughter was not in fact a violation of the NAP. Or, the an-cap can admit that the NAP undermines their own notion of property rights.

Mainstay17 · 2ヶ月前

What if a bunch of landlords decided to get together and form...you know, a kind of...uh, coordinating board or something to better go about doing what they want done? Then what if there were so many landlords that they decided to pick only a few landlords to serve on the board, through some kind of popularity contest...oh wait.

Zifnab25 · 2ヶ月前

You nailed. I almost think we should sticky this.

nureng · 2ヶ月前

You're exactly right. The current international order is the ancap paradise that the 'anarchists' over at /r/Anarcho_Capitalism have been dreaming about.

mhl67 · 2ヶ月前

The biggest flaw is that libertarianism is built on reifcation, ie, Libertarians will generally not focus on the superiority of their system as its perceived moral values. But they are trying to derive universal morals out of property rights, which makes no sense as property rights arenta real tangible thing but an idea which only has practical significance because society backs it. Property rights are not some inherent thing you get by doing or holding something, they only exist because people agree they exist, and therefore there is no deontological argument you can make for deriving a moral system out of property rights. You can only start arguing about the NAP if we assume there is some inherent right to property, but its not possible to construct that argument since property rights are not a real thing, but in this case a reified concept.

buylocal745 · 2ヶ月前

Problem number 3...Non use. Our residents want to have a greenspace to walk around in. Under ancap theory, someone could homestead the area because we aren't 'using' it. However, this is obviously a logical problem. If I, as a property owner, want to pay to not use something and you take it from me, is that not a violation of the NAP? Where does my property rights end and your homesteading rights begin?

Not an ancap by a longshot, but I can see the response to this one being that the greenspace is being productively used by the tenants of a community. I feel like ancaps could easily argue their way out of this one by simply widening the scale of what is considered productive, from the actual production of goods/services to something like producing well being/community/sense of ease by the landlord. This would also play really well into their hand considering their fetishization of capitalists/landlords as moral actors.

OctaShot · 2ヶ月前

I'm not an ancap so correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the NAP supposed to be a personal moral guideline and not a universal one? I'm sure that in that scenario, the people involved would talk and reach a reasonable conclusion.

In an ancap society, the landlord could make absurd laws on his property. He could say, "no creature with 2 feet under 4 feet in height is allowed on my property" thus banning babies (and midgets) from his property. The person who is renting then has the option to either not have a baby or leaving. If there is a dispute over a possible violation of the contract that the landlord and tenant signed, then it would be resolved by an arbiter.

Is this wrong?

gliph · 2ヶ月前

I'm sorry for saying this, some slut got knocked up

"I'm about to say something sexist, but it's OK because I warned you."

Why would you say it like this? Slut-shaming is fucked and it has nothing to do with your argument.

painaulevain · 2ヶ月前

Only crude ancaps believe the NAP is a first principle, the kind of idiots who can't even understand Rothbard.

-who_is_john_galt- · 2ヶ月前

Now, here comes the first flaw in ancap theory. Imagine one of our tenants gets pregnant, and has a child. There are two conflicting trains of thought. The first is that the child is immediately under the landlord's contract terms, because the landlord shouldn't lose his property rights because, and I'm sorry for saying this, some slut got knocked up. The second is that the baby should be given the option to sign the contract on its own free will, or be kicked out, because otherwise it didn't consent to the rules and that makes them illegitimate. Remember, both of these solutions are in and of themselves violations of the NAP.

The problem would be solved by not allowing kids to be born within the property boundary.

But that doesn't make the problem away, it only shifts it elsewhere.

So the conclusion is that kids born on property have to follow the rules set for tenants and parents would have to pay the rent or risk having their child evicted.

phoenix--insurgent · 1ヶ月前

The ancap and libertarian prize logical consistency above all else. This is because they adhere to a pre-scientific mode of thought but that's another story for another day. Anyway, the problem here is that logical consistency isn't the end all and be all of a problem. Lots of things are logically consistent and yet still wrong. Consider, for example, the humble murder mystery novel. This has to be logically consistent to be a successful genre novel. Figuring it out is part of the joy of reading it. However, when you finish the book, does anyone really believe an actual murder has taken place? The ancap does. That's how they think. Literally, they are engaging in pure thought experiment all the time.

Which is why they redefine terms like capitalism, for instance. If it means "voluntary exchange" then they can leap over the actual history of capitalism (which is indeed very problematic for them, as their fallback position of "corporatism" attests to). It matters not whether any particular market transaction in reality has coercion involved (i.e, is an iPhone an example of a product produced by the market/capitalism?). It matters not whether capitalism itself adheres to the NAP or, in fact, that capitalism and markets violate the NAP all the time. Indeed, capitalism's origins are in a massive and ongoing violation of the NAP. What matters to the ancap is only that in theory the idea of voluntary exchange is logically consistent. To do this, they will often attempt to erase all context from the conversation. The ideal example for the ancap, of course, is two people exchanging a thing without context.

Ancaps are religious thinkers. They believe in a paradise lost (voluntary exchange before the state), a fall from grace (the evil state shows up, ruining literally everything), and a return to paradise (the free market god returns to earth and slays the state). This is, of course absurd. Two men on an island is a homoerotic fantasy, not a anthropological citation. But facts don't matter to the ancap, those dinosaur bones were put there to test your faith. All that matters is that there is logical consistency.

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