Attack libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosophy - see if you can do it

[Nuklearius]

IMO there are two types of Libertarians, On one side its Monarchists/Hierarchists in denial and on the other side you have Freaks who are to degenerate even for the left.
It's a meme "passthrough" ideology.

 

[Superior Colliculus]

Imagine, say, that I was having a circle jerk with a korean hooker in a handjob factory.
Imagine, say, this hooker, was going at terminal velocity with her mechanized masterbaiter hand.
Say, perhaps, my foreskin were to be detached and launched into deep space, and go toward Andromada.
Then, suppose, an Alien Colony would take on my foreskin as a home, and a regular function of their residing lives.
Say, I, as a leading engineer in intergalactic astrophysics, were to go and retrieve my foreskin, would I be in violation of NAP (Non-Aggression Pact)?

 

[Attempt Turd]

With that, the challenge is issued.
If you are capable of attacking or even refuting the position as I outlined it, be my guest, I'm looking forward to some proper argumentation. And if not, the silence speaks for itself.

I used to be a libertarian but then I took an arrow to the knee.

The theory is correct. Negative liberties are still correct. Everything is absolutely irrefutable but it is still wrong.

Noone cares. People don't work that way. The core of modern right wing used to be libertarians that were mugged by reality. Among autistic rationalists in space with matter compilers the ideology might work. In reality with jews, arabs, spics and people who can't even grasp how a queue works it doesn't.

Go forth and live your life for 20 years and the come back and refute yourself.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

I used to be a libertarian but then I took an arrow to the knee.

The theory is correct. Negative liberties are still correct. Everything is absolutely irrefutable but it is still wrong.

Noone cares. People don't work that way. The core of modern right wing used to be libertarians that were mugged by reality. Among autistic rationalists in space with matter compilers the ideology might work. In reality with jews, arabs, spics and people who can't even grasp how a queue works it doesn't.

Go forth and live your life for 20 years and the come back and refute yourself.

That's like saying math is wrong because some people can't add 2 and 2 together. Or would find it more comfortable if the result were 5
Have you got any actual criticism that touches on the topic itself without denying the domain? Because "math is wrong because I deny math exists or matters" is not an actual critique of math

 

[Attempt Turd]

That's like saying math is wrong because some people can't add 2 and 2 together. Or would find it more comfortable if the result were 5
Have you got any actual criticism that touches on the topic itself without denying the domain?

Yes, absolutely. In a world of inumerates math is wrong.

Get back to me in 20 years after living in the world of inumerates.

NAP is mostly right but it's basically the golden rule. The /pol/ memes on anarcho capitalism are more insightful than Rand, Bloch, Popper and Mises put together.

Grow up.

 

[Frostnipped Todger]

As someone who has a great deal of affection for the concept of AnCap, I do think it is the ideal way for society to be, however there are some massive flaws in how it could possibly be executed that are difficult or impossible to overcome.

The most obvious experiment in what we would now call Anarcho-Capitalism was Commonwealth era Iceland, which functioned as a voluntary system of organisation for over 300 years, but ultimately fell because of consolidation of power among a few families. If it were to be instituted today, instead of the retards that get elected, we'd be ruled over by the Klaus Schwabs of the world instead. Global integration means that we would all be subject to the whims of someone who has never lived in our country, knows our language or culture, or even cares we exist. Check in on the EU and you'll see how that works. I swear I read this in Mein Kampf, but I can't find the quote anymore, so I might be misremembering... "all people should have a homeland, even if they are financially poorer for it".

Which leads to another issue; AnCap philosophy sees capitalism as the be all/end all of society. I often hear people in the movement mocking Trump voters for wanting their "factory jobs" back, even though we can get things cheaper from China. This completely misses the fact that there is a metaphysical good that comes from working, especially for men, and especially if that work is making physical products. This is like a more extreme version on what Ted Kaczynski called "surrogate activities"; you have any entire workforce who have no impact on the physical world, and no way to ground themselves in reality.
Even if global trade makes things cheaper and easier, there is a moral cost to living a life of ease. Orwell also wrote about this in The Road to Wigan Pier, when he wrote about machine technology, and his idea that life should be harder, not easier.
Finally, this idea:

Appropriation occurs when an agent emborders an unowned rivalrous good through purposeful first use (that is, when their action imposes a discernable boundary that excludes others from simultaneous use). The act must identify the good, integrate it into the actor's plan of action, and exclude conflicting uses.
Examples include cultivating land, building a structure, mining ore, or capturing a resource. Merely declaring ownership or walking past something does not qualify because no boundary of use has been established.

The fundamental problem with political systems is that they are thought up by people who live in cities, and subsequently have a bias against nature. In Rothbard's philosophy, working the land makes it yours (what he calls Homesteading). If someone values nature and the natural world, this is inherently ugly. I would rather not see every tree cut down for timber, and every mountain mined for minerals, because nature has an inherent value, which is unquantifiable. If someone wanted to aquire 100 or (50000) acres and keep it as pristine forest, that is just as valid as the man who wants to dig for gold, or grow potatoes. For me, this is the major sticking point: I value National Parks, and no amount of economic argument is going to make me want to have them all paved because it's better for the economy. I might be autistic, but I also took a bunch of acid.

Edit: fixed a little spelling

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

I appreciate your reply, but I think several distinct issues are being mixed together. Some are historical (medieval Iceland), some are predictive (who would end up holding power?), some are cultural (the value of hard work and making things), and some are about conservation and the natural world. They're all worth discussing, but they are distinct questions and should be evaluated separately.

The most obvious experiment in what we would now call Anarcho-Capitalism was Commonwealth era Iceland, which functioned as a voluntary system of organisation for over 300 years, but ultimately fell because of consolidation of power among a few families.

First of all, medieval Iceland is not anarcho-capitalism by any stretch of the imagination. I agree very much that it gets farther than many other societies in history, but as a German aphorism goes, a near miss is still a miss.

Spoiler: Thoughts on medieval Iceland

The Icelandic Commonwealth was far from an anarcho-capitalist society.
Iceland's national assembly was a centralized legislative body. There was no fully decentralized, contractual order where legal systems would evolve through competing arbitration providers. The chieftaincy system was a quasi-monopoly on legal and defensive services. Not aligning with a chief would get you declared an outlaw, effectively forfeiting their rights and property. These chieftaincy titles were also hereditary and could be sold, and this created a form of proto-feudalism where wealthier chiefs consolidated power by buying multiple chieftaincies. Arbitration and legal processes were not open to free market competition in the libertarian sense. Chieftains controlled access to arbitration and individuals had to rely on their chief's network for legal representation, this is literally an oligarchy. Plus, chiefs restricted foreign trade to maintain control over resources and wealth, stifling economic development and competition, preventing Iceland from developing the towns, guilds, and trade networks that you would see in a more free-market society.
Also, Iceland's eventual adoption of Christianity was a decision made at the national assembly and enforced across society. While paganism could be practiced in private, the state's endorsement of Christianity included mandatory tithes, infringing on religious freedom and imposing coercion.
The eventual submission to the Norwegian crown wouldn't have happened if the defense mechanisms and trade arrangements were genuinely decentralized, which would have mitigated such a risk.
I'll just say that the imperfections of proto-feudalist medieval Iceland don't disprove libertarianism any more than historical injustices under democracy disprove the value of self-governance.

Polycentrism in medieval Iceland was limited. Choosing a chief sounds libertarian on paper, but the system quickly became oligarchic as wealthier chieftains created monopolies on legal and defensive services. "Voting with your feet" becomes meaningless when your choices are constrained by monopolistic consolidation. Iceland's chieftains suppressed competition through coercive control over arbitration and trade. This isn't "no true libertarianism" - it's evidence that partial implementations fail to realize libertarian principles.

Iceland predates anarcho-capitalist theory by centuries and did not instantiate or uphold the exact set of ethical/legal norms I'm defending. So pointing out that "Iceland eventually centralized" does not refute the principle any more than "Rome became an empire" refutes republicanism as an abstract theory.

instead of the retards that get elected, we'd be ruled over by the Klaus Schwabs of the world instead.

This only follows if someone acquires coercive jurisdiction over other people. A rich foreigner does not get to become your ruler by being rich, foreign, influential, or economically powerful. In a society that upholds libertarian ethics, the only legitimate way to acquire authority over another person's property is through legitimate ownership claims and contract. If someone bypasses that and uses coercive means (incl. fraud) then they are not acting as a capitalist within libertarian ethics. They're an aggressor, no better than a mugger with a knife, and may rightfully be met as such.

Check in on the EU and you'll see how that works.

The EU illustrates what you get when you implement the exact opposite of anarcho-capitalism. The EU is a political institution with regulatory authority over people and territory, using the kind of coercive jurisdiction that blatantly violates libertarian principles.
Anyway, foreign influence through trade, media, culture, investment, or association may be good or bad depending on the case, but it is not some kind of rule over people unless it becomes coercive control over person and property - and anyone and everyone may use lethal force against aggressors.

Which leads to another issue; AnCap philosophy sees capitalism as the be all/end all of society.

Have you got one specific example of an anarcho-capitalist theorist making that claim?
My take is that capitalism (properly understood as stateless free market capitalism rather than crony capitalist corporate slog) is the economic pattern that naturally emerges when people respect property, free association, contract, and non-aggression. By no means is anarcho-capitalism about "thou must maximizeth thy money at all costs".

This is like a more extreme version on what Ted Kaczynski called "surrogate activities"; you have any entire workforce who have no impact on the physical world, and no way to ground themselves in reality.
Even if global trade makes things cheaper and easier, there is a moral cost to living a life of ease. Orwell also wrote about this in The Road to Wigan Pier, when he wrote about machine technology, and his idea that life should be harder, not easier.

I don't dismiss this as a cultural concern. If someone values craftsmanship, local production, national continuity, hard work, or making physical things, by all means they are free to pursue it. There is nothing anti-libertarian about preferring a harder, more concrete, more locally rooted life.
The red line is coercion. Nobody is free to force other people against their will to live harder lives because they find hardship spiritually or culturally superior. You and anyone else can absolutely build that life, fund that life, associate with people who want that life, buy from local producers, create guilds, communes, villages, private towns, cooperatives, farms, workshops etc. But what you cannot do is force the unwilling into it.

If someone values nature and the natural world, this is inherently ugly. I would rather not see every tree cut down for timber, and every mountain mined for minerals, because nature has an inherent value, which is unquantifiable. If someone wanted to aquire 100 or (50000) acres and keep it as pristine forest, that is just as valid as the man who wants to dig for gold, or grow potatoes. For me, this is the major sticking point: I value National Parks, and no amount of economic argument is going to make me want to have them all paved because it's better for the economy.

Conservation is a use of land, and so is exclusion. Maintaining a forest, refusing to mine, refusing to cut timber, creating a private preserve, funding a conservation trust, or buying land specifically to keep it undeveloped are all perfectly compatible with the property rights I outlined.
"Nature has value" is not a problem whatsoever for anarcho-capitalism unless you're adding "therefore I may coercively control land that I do not own".
Currently, national parks are state-held territory funded and controlled through coercion. In a free society, their preservation would need to be grounded in ownership, contract, easement, covenant, donation, insurance, conservation trust, private association, or some other non-aggressive mechanism. That is not the same as paving everything because "the economy" demands it. In fact, treating "the economy" as one big collective machine to be optimized from above is much much closer to statist thinking than libertarian thinking.

I think the points of disagreement you're raising are not really with libertarian ethics, or with a society of people who respect libertarian property norms, as such. They seem to be with a caricature where "ancap" means rootless global profit-maximization, aesthetic destruction, and rule by billionaires. And I'm with you calling such a society ugly. But that society does not correspond to the position I outlined.

 

[ThoughtfulBeatdown]

I can't attack or refute libertarianism, because I myself am a libertarian. I'm glad theres still some of us out here. Ever since ron paul lost 2012 it sometimes feel like were an endangered species.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

I can't attack or refute libertarianism, because I myself am a libertarian. I'm glad theres still some of us out here. Ever since ron paul lost 2012 it sometimes feel like were an endangered species.

The state is the biggest recruiter of anarchists in human history, and clown world is getting sillier with every single passing day

 

[Frostnipped Todger]

medieval Iceland is not anarcho-capitalism by any stretch of the imagination. I agree very much that it gets farther than many other societies in history

It is the closest to a real-world example we have. Perhaps Articles of Confederation era USA would also be an example, but I'm not that familiar.

People took land and worked it to maintain property rights.
People had the right to defend their person and property against any who would infringe upon them.
People had the right to voluntarily choose their own representatives.
Until almost 100 years after the adoption of Christianity there was no taxation.
Law enforcement was private.

David Friedman has written some good articles on the parallels between this form of government and the ideal of AnCapistan.

Iceland predates anarcho-capitalist theory by centuries

There were communists before Marx too. An idea can exist before the term for the idea does.

A rich foreigner does not get to become your ruler by being rich, foreign, influential, or economically powerful.

While this is theoretically true, a rich foreigner who has the ability to control access to land, food, and communications probably could. Like all theories, AnCap has issues when it comes into contact with reality. We have no real check on avarice, malice, or just plain stupidity. I watched friends of mine die from heroin because I didn't have the right to force them to stop, though I wish I'd abandoned my principles so I could see them now.

Have you got one specific example of an anarcho-capitalist theorist making that claim?

Rothbard in "Man, Economy, and State" (I think). The quote is "Anarchism is the purest form of Capitalism, and Capitalism is the purest form of Anarchism".

Conservation is a use of land, and so is exclusion. Maintaining a forest, refusing to mine, refusing to cut timber, creating a private preserve, funding a conservation trust, or buying land specifically to keep it undeveloped are all perfectly compatible with the property rights I outlined.
"Nature has value" is not a problem whatsoever for anarcho-capitalism unless you're adding "therefore I may coercively control land that I do not own".
Currently, national parks are state-held territory funded and controlled through coercion. In a free society, their preservation would need to be grounded in ownership, contract, easement, covenant, donation, insurance, conservation trust, private association, or some other non-aggressive mechanism. That is not the same as paving everything because "the economy" demands it. In fact, treating "the economy" as one big collective machine to be optimized from above is much much closer to statist thinking than libertarian thinking.

According to Rothbard, land becomes property when it is transformed. Merely sticking a fence around it would be a very generous description of "transformation".
But on the rest of your point: yes, taxation is theft.

I think the points of disagreement you're raising are not really with libertarian ethics, or with a society of people who respect libertarian property norms, as such. They seem to be with a caricature where "ancap" means rootless global profit-maximization, aesthetic destruction, and rule by billionaires

The points of disagreement I'm raising are about implementing Anarchism. The theory is fine, and I'm on your side when it comes to the ideal society. The issue is that in an anarchist system there are no guardrails that can be erected to prevent predatory practices, because making all other options to difficult or expensive is not a violation of the NAP. You can choose to let your children have less than everyone else, but that's not how people normally operate.
If you've read anything about Anarchism (and I assume you have), then you've read Bakunin. As we learn from him "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely", or even more aptly for this conversation "if you put the most fanatical revolutionary in charge, and invest them with absolute power, within a year they'll be worse than the Czar" (I may have slightly butchered that quote, I haven't read him in years).
You are coming across (and I don't mean this as an insult) a lot like a young communist who insists that "eventually the government would no longer be required and true equality will be achieved". If we could kill everyone and repopulate the world with liberty-minded individuals, that's a different story, but here in reality, we have to deal with retards.
To reiterate; I'm into the idea, and I think the best way forward would be to push anarchist principles into public discourse, which has obviously had an impact in the USA with the proliferation of Constitutional Carry and Stand your Ground/Castle doctrine.
Like a Christian who will never be a saint, I have to go through the world knowing that my "perfect" system will never be introduced, and probably isn't perfect anyway.

 

[Taser Confetti]

Arguments based upon objective morality are spooks. At the end of the day society is based upon a group of like minded people going “I don’t like X and I’m willing to kill you over it” and that’s perfectly fine.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

You are drifting exactly into the distinction I made all the way in the past in the OP. Normativity versus implementation versus historical analogy.
If your position is "the theory is fine, but I don't think it can be implemented among real people" then you have not refuted the ethical argument. You have seemingly conceded the normative point and moved to sociology, strategy, and predictions about human behavior. I agree those are real topics, but they're outside the scope of this thread.

More importantly, you have not actually substantiated your pessimistic implementation claim. Simply asserting that "real people" would not make it work is merely a prediction that itself requires evidence and explanation. What specific incentive structure fails? What mechanism necessarily produces the outcome you are expecting? Why would those same human flaws not create equal or worse problems under a state?
Until those questions are answered, "it won't work among real people" is just an intuition. Even if implementation were on topic for this discussion, the burden would still be on you to demonstrate the failure rather than merely assume it.

It is the closest to a real-world example we have.

That does not make it anarcho-capitalism.
Like I said, a near miss is still a miss. Just the fact that there are some parallels does not establish that it's identical. Or, just because you have four limbs, a spine, a nose, eyes, and ears, you go to the veterinarian because you have some parallels with a bulldog?
Medieval Iceland can be interesting in some respects as a partial historical analogue, but if the system contains centralized legislation, quasi-feudal chieftain structures, inherited/bought legal privileges, restricted trade, compulsory religious/legal impositions, and eventual submission to a crown, then it simply is not the system I outlined.
And before anyone gets "no true socialism libertarianism", this is the basic point that, if an ethical/legal order is defined by zero legitimate exceptions to property rights, then a system with institutional exceptions to property rights is not that thing.

There were communists before Marx too. An idea can exist before the term for the idea does.

Sure. But what matters is not that the word existed, but whether the relevant principles were actually instantiated.
If someone before Marx advocated for communal ownership, then I'd say it's fair to call them a proto-communist. But if someone merely has a few social or economic similarities to communism while retaining private property, markets, hierarchy, and inheritance, then it would be sloppy to call that communism.
Same here: Iceland had parallels, but it was not anarcho-capitalism.

While this is theoretically true, a rich foreigner who has the ability to control access to land, food, and communications probably could.

Your entire point stands and falls by whatever the word "control" means here.
Did he peacefully acquire ownership or contract claims? Then he is exercising control over his property, and others are not entitled to override that just because he is rich or foreign.
Did he acquire control through aggression, fraud, conquest, state privilege, or coercive monopoly? Then he is a rights-violator and may be resisted as such, just as you would defend yourself from a mugger.
You keep describing threats that only become anti-libertarian if they involve aggression and then treating them as if they refute libertarianism. They just don't. Either they fall under property/contract or they are aggression.

Like all theories, AnCap has issues when it comes into contact with reality. We have no real check on avarice, malice, or just plain stupidity.

Compared to what?
Certainly the state is not a check on avarice, malice, and stupidity. The state concentrates those very flaws and makes them orders of magnitude worse via legal immunity, tax funding, compulsory jurisdiction, and monopoly violence. As I have said multiple times before, if humans are flawed, then that is an argument against giving any class of humans legalized authority to rule everyone else.
Anarcho-capitalism does not require humans to become saints. It just says "thieves, murderers, fraudsters, invaders, and coercive monopolists do not magically become legitimate when they wear uniforms, win elections, write statutes, or call themselves 'public servants'".

I watched friends of mine die from heroin because I didn't have the right to force them to stop, though I wish I'd abandoned my principles so I could see them now.

That is tragic and not a refutation of the principle.
The fact that you deeply want to save someone does not by itself create ownership over their body. If they are unconscious, incapacitated, overdosing, or unable to consent, then rescue or medical intervention raises different question. But if a competent person chooses self-destruction, then the fact that the choice is horrible does not automatically give third parties a standing right to coercively control him.
That is one of the hard edges of self-ownership. You may hate the choice, you may plead, persuade, beg, threaten to disassociate, intervene socially, offer help, remove yourself, or structure your property around non-use. But "I love you and therefore I may own you for your own good" is just not a coherent ethical principle.

Rothbard in "Man, Economy, and State" (I think). The quote is "Anarchism is the purest form of Capitalism, and Capitalism is the purest form of Anarchism".

Even if I grant that quote (I'm not going to check, I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt here) it does not prove the claim I asked you to support.
You claimed that anarcho-capitalist philosophy treats "capitalism" as the be-all/end-all of society, in the sense of rootless financial profit maximization overriding nature, craftsmanship, hardship, culture, and every other value. "Anarchism is the purest form of capitalism" does not mean "money is the only value" nor "forests must be paved because profit". It means that capitalism, properly understood, is the social order of property, contract, free association, and non-aggression.
So the original challenge still stands. Show me one case of an anarcho-capitalist theorist saying that financial gain is the supreme end of human life and that non-economic values are invalid.

According to Rothbard, land becomes property when it is transformed. Merely sticking a fence around it would be a very generous description of "transformation".

As much as I deeply respect the man, Rothbard is not the final word on every detail of homesteading theory.
The issue is objective embordering / first appropriation (homesteading). An agent establishes a discernible boundary of control over an unowned rivalrous good and integrates it into a plan of action. That is something that can be satisfied by conservation.
A private forest reserve is not "doing nothing". Maintaining wilderness, excluding timber harvesters, preventing mining, preserving habitats, making boundaries, funding patrols, creating covenants, and managing access are all concrete uses of land.
If the argument you're making is that nature has value, I agree, but if you say "therefore I may coercively control land I do not own", no.

The issue is that in an anarchist system there are no guardrails that can be erected to prevent predatory practices, because making all other options to difficult or expensive is not a violation of the NAP.

Not once have I ever argued from a sloganized NAP. I outlined a property-assignment theory grounded in conflict avoidance.
Plus, "no state" does not mean "no guardrails". All it means is that no institution, regardless of what it is, gets a standing legal privilege to aggress. Guardrails may absolutely include ownership, contract, restitution, defense, insurance, reputation, arbitration, covenant communities, exclusion, boycott, and retaliatory or defensive force against aggression.
But what you don't get is a magic button that prevents all bad incentives while itself being immune to bad incentives. The state is not that button.

You are coming across (and I don't mean this as an insult) a lot like a young communist who insists that "eventually the government would no longer be required and true equality will be achieved".

Nah. Communism requires abolishing private property while still somehow avoiding conflict over rivalrous goods, and that is why it collapses into coercive administration.
The position I outlined does the opposite. It starts with the basic facts of rivalrous goods, possible conflict, volitional agents, and the need for coherent and objective property assignment. In no means does that require universal virtue, universal agreement, or a final solution to the question of human stupidity. It says that, when conflict occurs, there is a coherent standard for who is aggressing and who may defend.

If we could kill everyone and repopulate the world with liberty-minded individuals, that's a different story, but here in reality, we have to deal with retards.

No. In no way is killing everyone and repopulating the world the project, the ideal, or even remotely implied by the argument.
The existence of bad, stupid, malicious, addicted, irrational, or predatory people does not refute libertarian ethics. It is precisely why conflict-resolution principles matter.

my "perfect" system will never be introduced, and probably isn't perfect anyway.

What kind of downright weird standard is the demand that a social system be "perfect" before it can be taken seriously?
States are not perfect, neither are democracies, markets, families, churches, courts, communities, nor human beings. Are you seriously going to say that libertarian theory fails because it supposedly cannot eliminate every vice, tragedy, or bad decision? If so, then I ask you to apply that ridiculous standard universally. To me the relevant question is whether the system's principles are coherent and whether it handles inevitable human imperfections better than the alternatives.
The question is not "can we create a world with no bad people?", but, "when people act, what standard identifies aggression, defense, ownership, restitution, and legitimate response without contradiction?"
That is the question this thread is about.

---

Arguments based upon objective morality are spooks. At the end of the day society is based upon a group of like minded people going “I don’t like X and I’m willing to kill you over it” and that’s perfectly fine.

If your position is merely "I personally don't care and I'm willing to use force", then there is nothing to discuss.

 

[Male Idiot]

Theory, ethics, all shit good on paper.

All totally useless in real life.

I could come up with a scenario for any utopia but if it can not be implemented it is not useful.

Like if every liter of jet fuel would make your rocket go at 1km/second.
You would need only 300,000 liters to reach the lightspeed.

This of course doesn't work because acceleration doesn't work like that.

 

[ilovecornsyrup]

I still mostly consider myself libertarian, but there are holes in the ideology that are clear and bother me.

Say that er abolish the state and thus the military and police. Various non-state actors would take its place. The result would be conflict and warlordism as different outlaw groups get emboldened.
There is no guarantee that the actor that wins is morally good and not, for example, a cartel. There is also no guarantee that this actor will not reinstate a monopoly on violence and regress into tyranny.

Nevertheless, say that we end up in a society with various private actors capable of enforcement and defence. What happens if another nation, say China, chooses to invade? They will have a massive military advantage due to being centralized. The reason why the US military is so successful is due to its high level of coordination which is impossible for a bunch of groups with different goals and values to achieve.

Its not enough for these private actors to be morally neutral, but they must be morally good. If, say a homeless woman gets raped, she will not be able to pay anything to achieve justice. Someone has to decide to help her out for free. Then there's also the fact that decentralization means that two actors can have two different interpretations of a crime and who's guilty. If there isn't a central judge to sort it out, they will either start a conflict or do nothing.

There is also the fact that poverty would still exist and it would suck to be poor. I believe that charities are usually more helpful than welfare, but there would still be a hole in the system that people would fall through. The fact is, the most at-risk people in society are considered unsympathetic. Addicts, hobos, gang members, psychotics etc. Apart from bleeding hearts no one cares. Within authoritarian ideologies, the state can intervene and ensure a basic standard of living for these people like say the USSR did, even if it means institutionalization.

Speaking of addiction, I assume that drugs would be legal in ancapistan. Even if you believe that drug legalization would benefit a society (debatable), you can't deny that it would harm its surrounding states because ancapistan would become a major exporter of narcotics, in a similar way that China and North Korea don't have major drug problems but cause drug problems in the US.

Poverty and greed bring a lot of despair, when people are desperate they will sell everything they own. And when they own nothing they will sell parts of themselves away until all that's left is a hollow shell. Other utopian ideologies like communism at the very least ensure that poverty will be eliminated and that everyone has a basic standard of living. Even in an ideal world libertarianism does not ensure that. Now consider practice and all the evil there is in the world.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

there are holes in the ideology that are clear and bother me.

Say that er abolish the state and thus the military and police.

I could not care any less about whatever ridiculous cartoon version of "libertarian ideology" you're having issues with.
Nothing I said in the OP entails abolishing law enforcement or defense. Engage the position I outlined in the OP or don't bother.

 

[ilovecornsyrup]

I could not care any less about whatever ridiculous cartoon version of "libertarian ideology" you're having issues with.
Nothing I said in the OP entails abolishing law enforcement or defense. Engage the position I outlined in the OP or don't bother.

By military and police I mean state military and police. If you read any further you would understand this. If you want to keep the state's monopoly on violence, I don't see how that's ancap in the slightest.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

By military and police I mean state military and police. If you read any further you would understand this.

Okay, then I'll read two sentences further. To wit:

The result would be conflict and warlordism as different outlaw groups get emboldened.

Mhm, "non-state enforcement exists, therefore warlordism".
Show me how the OP entails the absence of law, defense, arbitration, restitution, or armed resistance against aggression. Or stop pretending that your implementation fanfiction is a refutation of the property-assignment argument.

 

[ilovecornsyrup]

Mhm, "non-state enforcement exists, therefore warlordism".
Show me how the OP entails the absence of law, defense, arbitration, restitution, or armed resistance against aggression. Or stop pretending that your implementation fanfiction is a refutation of the property-assignment argument.

You are putting words in my mouth. If you break down the military into various groups led by private actors with their own motives, it's likely for conflict to arise for some time. My point though was that a decentralized or privatized military will always be inferior to a centralized state-led military in a conflict.

I don't see why you would even respond if you are not going to read the other person's argument.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

You are putting words in my mouth. If you break down the military into various groups led by private actors with their own motives, it's likely for conflict to arise for some time. My point though was that a decentralized or privatized military will always be inferior to a centralized state-led military in a conflict.

I don't see why you would even respond if you are not going to read the other person's argument.

I am not putting words in your mouth. What I'm doing is summarizing the position you presented.
"Private actors with their own motives might conflict" does not refute the OP and "centralized state militaries are superior" is not a demonstration of any contradiction in libertarian property theory. State militaries are also composed of individuals with their own incentives, the structural difference is that they operate through taxation, legal privilege, and compulsory authority.
Nothing you have said identifies a false premise in the OP or a contradiction in the underlying theory. Instead of discussing the ethical framework, you are discussing institutional outcomes. That is a different argument entirely and does not refute the argument in the OP. If you want to argue about institutional design instead, do it in a different thread.

 

[Frostnipped Todger]

I'm doing this in bits, because I have to go to work...

you have not refuted the ethical argument

I'm on your side little nigga. I have no issue with the ethics.

Simply asserting that "real people" would not make it work is merely a prediction that itself requires evidence and explanation. What specific incentive structure fails? What mechanism necessarily produces the outcome you are expecting? Why would those same human flaws not create equal or worse problems under a state?

Read Bakunin.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

For example:
I used to be in the punk scene, and I have watched many people turn from nice, gentle dudes to arrogant groupie-fucking morons in the space of months, simply because they got a little popularity. These were people who knew their feminist theory, and would be offended if you said they were acting like dicks.
This is obviously a small example, but everyone knows the line "fame changes people". This is what they mean. People get addicted to the Dopamine rush of having power (here used in the loosest sense) over others.
Look at almost any cult, they almost all start from a place of goodness, and they almost all warp into something malevolent.

These problems are exactly the same under a statist system, but they manifest in a worse way because power is more easily centralised.

That does not make it anarcho-capitalism.
Like I said, a near miss is still a miss

You're literally doing "real communism has never been tried" here. If you have close facsimile, you can start to deduce where there might be issues with implementation.

Did he peacefully acquire ownership or contract claims? Then he is exercising control over his property, and others are not entitled to override that just because he is rich or foreign.

Forget the "foreign" part, it literally doesn't matter.
But; let's say a fella buys up all the news media in a country. He peacefully offers above the asking price for every newspaper, TV station, and radio station. The sellers are happy with their arrangement. Then this guy (let's call him Mr Murdoch) exerts editorial pressure on the media outlets to tell everyone that an experimental gene therapy is actually a proven vaccine. The people (mostly because they are sheep) start pressuring friends and family to take said therapy, even to the point of ostracism of loved ones, because they are whipped into a paranoid frenzy.

In the end it's shown that the therapy actually caused a great deal of harm, but nowhere along the way was force exerted.

Certainly the state is not a check on avarice, malice, and stupidity

Agreed. In fact the outcomes are actually worse.

I'll try to get to the rest of your response after work, but no promises, I have to pack for a hunting trip tonight.