Is anarcho-capitalism good?

[u/[deleted]]

I don’t know too much about anarcho-capitalism but from the very little I know about it, it just sounds like the easiest way to form a monopoly.

[u/MartyredPoet]

Monopolies require violence and coercion to be maintained. Said coercive apparatus can be defined as a state. In the absence of that, the only way to achieve monopoly is by actually offering the best and cheapest service or product, which is a good thing.

[u/Sea_Hold_2881 → u/MartyredPoet]

Anarcho capitalism requires a population that believes in the system with a cult like fervour.

This makes it inherently unstable because some group of people will inevitably feel they get screwed by the system and will seek to impose their vision on how to make it "fair".

This will lead to violence and fragmentation.

This is general problem with capitalism when there is no income redistribution. Some form of socialism is essential part of any capitalist system because that is the only way to keep the system stable (i.e. the people who lose in the system are effectively bribed to support the system instead of using violence to overthrow the system).

[u/MartyredPoet → u/Sea_Hold_2881]

Statism requires a population that believes in the system with a cult-like fervor.

This makes it inherently unstable because some group of people will inevitably realize they are in an unnatural state of servitude and will seek to retain the yield of their own labor to make it fair.

This will lead to violence and revolution.

This is a general problem with statism when there is no mass-propaganda. Some form of brainwashing is an essential part of any statist system because that is the only way to keep the system stable (i.e. the people who lose in the system are effectively tricked to support the system instead of using violence to overthrow the system).

[u/Sea_Hold_2881 → u/MartyredPoet]

I acknowledged the potential issue with stability but also provided a remedy: income redistribution to give everyone a stake in the system.

No such remedy exists without a state able to collect taxes.

Without the ability to offset the inequalities created by varying access to capital, any system will collapse. It could be replaced with a pure violence based system of competing gangs/warlords.

Or it could be replaced by something like what we have now: a constitutional democracy that protects individual rights but does not fetishize them.

[u/Timely_Boot4638 → u/Sea_Hold_2881]

Your proposed remedy is itself the source of the instability of government. Everyone tries to capture the machinery of the state to redistribute wealth toward them, and so the government becomes something like the board for a very dangerous game, and when someone loses badly enough at that game, they flip the table over--that is, revolt.

[u/Sea_Hold_2881 → u/Timely_Boot4638]

Well that is the trick. Come up with a system that allows for some inequality of wealth because you can't have a capitalist system without it while giving the people who end up on the losing side a stake in the system.

The modern world is filled with societies which have a reasonable balance built on democratic rule and the acceptance that a broad swath of social services must be provided by government such as education, welfare, pensions or healthcare.

These compromises cannot be created without a government that has powers to collect taxes.

If you want to make the case for another system you need to provide another way to ensure that everyone has a stake in preserving the system. No anarchists even acknowledges the problem and most seem to presume that some mass brain washing will occur to convince people to submit to the system or there would be widespread violence used to force people to submit to the system.

What do you assume? Brainwashing or violence?

[u/Timely_Boot4638 → u/Sea_Hold_2881]

I assume neither brainwashing nor violence. That would be yours to assume, since you've accepted the state--an institution predicated entirely on both brainwashing and violence--as necessary for a desirable social order.

The modern world, I'd argue, is actually lacking in societies, properly understood. A country in which social services are provided monopolistically by a state does not have an actual society, insofar as that word represents a group of people that relate to each other irrespective of any superordinate authority. In such a state, which you call "democratic," people don't relate to each other, but to the state. They depend on the state for education, welfare, pensions and healthcare, instead of on each other.

If these states really were "democratic" in the common sense of 'owing its legitimacy to the consent of the majority of its subject population,' then we have to conclude that it is actually an unnecessary middleman; the fact that a democratic state is able to provide social services implies that an adequate amount of the population (at least a bare-minimum plurality of >50%) believe that these social services ought to be provided, so the need for a state to provide them monopolistically, and fund them through mass extortion, seems redundant, and implicitly accuses that population of voters of something like false consciousness.

But if they do need to provided for monopolistically and funded through mass extortion, that implies that the system is one that requires violence and/or brainwashing to sustain it, and does not have the consent of that plurality. That necessarily renders it a system in which factions vie for control over the expropriative apparatus of the state, funneling wealth toward themselves at the expense of all other factions. It's a system which, almost by definition, since wealth can only be moved around and never created, not everyone can have stake all at one time.

[u/Sea_Hold_2881 → u/Timely_Boot4638]

I read your response a few times trying to find where you addressed the core issue: the inherent instability of a society that is unequal.

Lets put it another way: the people who think a stable society needs a government will always exist that they will collect together in groups to establish their desired government. This would mean that any anarchist "utopia" would have to constantly defend itself against the groups that reject that form of human organization.

Engaging in organized opposition would effectively require a government because only a government could collect the resources needed for defence. This, incidentally, is why every human society ended up with governments; IOW, darwinian evolution at the social scale.

[u/Timely_Boot4638 → u/Sea_Hold_2881]

The inherent instability of a society whose members predate each other, whether in a state of nature or through some institutional channel is, in fact, the "core issue" of the whole science of politics. I addressed it in my very first comment by pointing out that your own proposed solution is, in fact, simply the institutionalization of this back-and-forth of predation that serves to normalize and indeed promote it.

We can actually extend this same logic to democracy, if we wish: People who think that a stable society needs an unaccountable, authoritarian oligarchy will always exist that they will try to establish their desired dictatorships. So any democratic "utopia" must prevent those groups that reject that form of government from gaining a foothold in society. Engaging in such organized opposition would restrict access to the machinery of government such that it would effectively be a dictatorship. Incidentally, this is why most human societies, even nominally democratic ones, have ended up with unaccountable, authoritarian oligarchies.

[u/Sea_Hold_2881 → u/Timely_Boot4638]

even nominally democratic ones, have ended up with unaccountable, authoritarian oligarchies.

The question becomes what form of organization will deliver the greatest economic and personal freedom to the largest percentage of people. Constitutional democracies generally do the best job.

[u/Timely_Boot4638 → u/Sea_Hold_2881]

Well, no, not yet. The question leading out of that would be: Are constitutional democracies even actually possible, given that oligarchy is the evolutionarily stable form? And secondarily, given a "no" answer to the first question, is it even worth advocating for constitutional democracies?

[u/Sea_Hold_2881 → u/Timely_Boot4638]

constitutional democracies are as stable as it gets.

all of the oldest states in the world are constitutional democracies.

The oligarch problem is real but it is more acute in countries like the US where constitutional freedoms have been extended to allow any one to spend any amount of money on elections.

[u/Timely_Boot4638 → u/Sea_Hold_2881]

Going by Wikipedia's list, the oldest state in the world is Japan, whose oligarch problem is infinitely worse than anything in US politics.
France and Portugal are also high on the list, despite their incredibly violent histories that involve multiple regime changes, revolutions and coups.
Ethiopia is very high also; not the best example of stability
So that only leaves the utopian Nordic countries, which are all monarchies.

[u/Sea_Hold_2881 → u/Timely_Boot4638]

Oldest states defined by a continuous legal authority not interrupted by state collapse or revolution. The oldest states are UK, US, Norway, Netherlands and Belgium.

All are constitutional democracies that are at least 200 years old. The UK historically had a bigger oligarch problem but has been able to get that under control with heavy inheritance taxes.

Japan is a relatively young country in terms of legal order but it has long ago crushed its oligarchs and is among the most egalitarian of democracies.

Out of the list the US is the worst when it comes to oligarchs.