An-caps' abdication of responsibility

Actually, having thought about this more, I think it is basically just a misunderstanding.

The point of most of the quotes you posted in the OP was that, when people ask something like, “How would punishment be handled in anarchy?” the answers involving theories of proportionality and such, while not totally irrelevant (perhaps), are certainly not an answer to the question of how things would be handled. The usefulness of such theories now is to explain to the skeptic that there can indeed be workable legal arrangements in an anarchy. The place of such theories once in anarchy would likely be to influence legal theorists at private courts and the consumers that patronize them (whether such theories would have positive impact I will not get into here), but I don’t think that is usually what’s being asked in the threads you are referring to.

Also, the idea of advocacy is a very odd one. If we disambiguate the term, it seems to have two components (color coded for use below; otherwise indicated for those that can’t see the colors).

ADVOCACY:

  1. Getting people to see things by helping them avoid reasoning errors, giving them correct information covering all angles, and helping them see the logical implications of what they already believe (akin to the praxeological approach) (this does include ought-from-an-ought arguments)

  2. Empty rhetoric, flawed arguments such as “is-to-ought” ones, and persuasion of the dark arts variety - why? because if anything in this component is otherwise, we count it as an example of (1)

I am yay/boo all sorts of things: I would like to see less IP and tariffs; I would like to see more nullification and secession. But that is because I see IP and tariffs as only existing (at least, in as strong a form as they do) because we have states. In the statist context, where we have the vast machinery of coercion to either use or allow to be used against us, empty rhetoric is perhaps useful for getting the state off our backs. Hoppe may actually be helping by advocating his flawed argumentation ethics because it may convince some people - although they will be liable to defect in the long run if they examine their views more carefully; but hey, in the long run we’re all dead - even though I seriously doubt it.

I may still advocate [as in 1] against IP once we are in anarchy, but I do not think advocating [as in 2] has any use in anarchy, even if we assume it might have some use now.

But this advocacy [1] is of course just helping people to think better. This is crucial to understand: when I make my anti-IP arguments, or any argument for that matter, I continually make a conscious effort to better the listeners’ clarity of thought on the matter. That isn’t just something I do as a bonus, that is my whole method of convincing people. Basically my view is that if people thought more clearly we wouldn’t have states, and we would for instance have only very weak or nonexistent IP except in peculiar social milieus where it was truly supported. I am confident that getting people to think more clearly is the way forward, and in most contexts I find it unelucidating to call that “advocacy” since it doesn’t disambiguate 1 from 2.

After all, insofar as we are right that most everyone would be better off stateless, everything we do to get people to think more clearly must on average move them toward our position.