What would stop a successful organisation in an anarcho-capitalist society from becoming a coercive organisation, the equivalent of our current state?
Competition.
The same thing it’s (not) stopping it now: collectivist sheep changing their subjective valuations (preferences) into ones of individualist (free) people through learning (austrian) economics. Today, we’re living in the “anarcho-capitalism” commensurate with the level of such knowledge within the human herd – the level reflected by their present subjective valuations.
The organisation would be very unpopular but it is possible that a new state like organisation could try to form but that risk, is not a reason that should prevent the attempt of ending government. It would require a lot of resources to attempt to force people to pay for taxation. If they ended the current system and taxation then people would not be some what voluntarily paying taxes anymore. Then it would be like a new organisation today, while we currently have a tax system, trying to force people to pay tax. It would be just as difficult for a new organisation to start asking for taxes today, as it would be after ending the state.
Have you had the opportunity yet to read any of the dozens of other threads about this? Also several articles can be found in the archives at mises.org going over this. If your sincere in your curiosity I would start there rather then casually asking here.
We have to repeatedly answer this question at least once a month.
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Armed rebellion by the subjected people
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Competition between other defence firms
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Any organization private or public which keeps an eye on the defence company
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Any Communal organizations which were against the company
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Motivating the soldiers under their control to take part in the revolt. It’s one thing to fight for god or country, and a totally different one to, in an advanced and modern society, become little less than a bandit. How many people have you ever met who could join the army could fight to establish a monarchy like that commanding America pre-revolutionary war? It would be the similar if they were fighting to reimpose a state in a stateless society.
I think the only force truly powerful enough to stop this from happening is human biology… humans have to evolve to the point that they won’t tolerate subjugation. The more I think about it, the more I think that servility is a bred-in trait. The biological effect of slavery and its other more subtle variations (e.g. imperial domination, medieval serfdom, central-bank serfdom, colonization, etc.) is that the most servile are rewarded with the greatest wealth and, therefore, have the greatest capacity for reproductive success. In the case of overt slavery, it is most obvious, since the master chooses the best male - as measured by productivity and obedience - to breed his females. But even in less overt systems of slavery, it is the ass-kissers who get the governorships, monopoly grants, regulatory advantages, tax loopholes and other political favors. They are rewarded with wealth which translates into wives, mistresses and children. Today, we have the greatest wealth transfer ever in history from the productive and independent to the servile and dependent in all the forms of welfare and other transfer payments that exist. This means that human biology is being more greatly distorted today than ever before. The long-term consequences of this cannot be good.
Clayton -
I think what allowed governments to form in the first place were simple divisions of labor, where there wasn’t much resistance to the formation of states. In a more modern division of labor, such as ours today, I think that some form of long-term revolution could bring about anarcho-capitalism, and I think that our extensive division of labor would prove competitive enough to disallow a state to form again.
“I think that our extensive division of labor would prove competitive enough to disallow a state to form again.”
I’m sorry I just don’t understand why, could you elaborate?
I’m sorry I just don’t understand why, could you elaborate?
The state is legitimized today because it already has the power to redistribute wealth. If we assume that it didn’t have this power, there’s no reason to assume that a state would emerge out of the market to provide this ‘service’ of redistribution. There would be no benefit to the majority of individuals. Security would be provided privately, as would education, and other services presently provided by the state.
How would a state emerge? By what means would a bureacracy gain a monopoly on power over a specific geographic area in a society with an extensive division of labor?
Anarcho-capitalism seems to not be heeding history in the assertations that people prefer liberty over safety. In that respect, it seems naive.
If we look at the end of the Roman Republic and its transition to an the Empire we see that it is quite easy for one party to take control, even at the expense of liberty. After Caesar’s death Antony refused to acknowledge Octavian as Caesar’s heir, this is what happened next:
‘The Senate in fact, with Cicero to the fore, took up Octavian, hoping to use the magic of his name, Caesar, to win the soldiers and people away from Antony. Octavian let himself be used, for his own purpose. He got what we could out of collaboration with the Senate, including the consulship before he was twenty, and then made a deal with Antony.’1
It’s clear that the acsension to power is often subtle and in this case, often can come about from a set of lose-lose circumstances. The Senate had to use Octavian to stop Antony, but in doing so, they set him up as imperium*,* or emperor.
The anarcho-capitalist model seems naive in it’s un-warrented claim that no one can be bought, or that a set of circumstances, won’t bring a transition from liberty to dictatorship - as was the case in Rome, albeit a rather limited liberty.
If a corporation has 20bn at its disposal, one would have to be a fool to suppose that it wouldn’t use that money for its own purposes. Just think about how many people can be silenced with 20bn. There was one video I saw which argued that contracts would be kept, otherwise any party breaking the contract would be discredited; again, I think this is naive. In a society where money is the goal, and everyone wants it, money buys anything.
1: Wells, C., The Roman Empire, Second Edition, Fontana Press
I have never read anything in anarcho-capitalist literature that asserts people prefer liberty of safety.
I have never read anything in anarcho-capitalist literature that suggests that no one can be bought.
This argument has been had a miilion times over between minarchists and anarchists. I think any ancap scholar would concede that it is absolutely possible that a given set of circumstances might transition a society from liberty to dictatorship. The question is over what institution would minimize those odds.
Stop watching youtube videos and try reading a book or journal (not a blog).
You seem to imply that an anarcho-capitalist society would lack coercive organizations. I think that’s a mistake, at least as far as my definition of “coercion” goes. There would be coercion in an anarcho-capitalist society just as there’s coercion in statist societies. However, I and other anarcho-capitalists believe that, in the former kind of society, aggressive coercion would be very widely (if not universally) considered illegitimate, leading to a minimization of it.
(Apologies if this has already been brought up.)
I would say that it is inevitable, power would eventually transfer back to a heirachical leadership of some kind.
Stop being such an elitist; Socrates didn’t write any books.
Just because something is considered illegitimate, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Human rights abuses are considered illegitimate now, yet they still occur.
I’m sorry but you’re attacking a straw man. I never said that aggressive coercion would never occur in an anarcho-capitalist society.
True that, sorry I misread in my haste. Do you think that aggressive coercion would lead to some party monopolising power; since afterall, you admit that agressive coercion will never, never occur in an A-C society?
Heirarchy is not the same as a dictatorship and is not synonomous with state. Corporations are heirarchical as are families. So I’m not sure whether you really meant that heriarchies are inevitable or central dicatatorial states are inevitiable.
I didn’t mean to come off as an elitist, sorry. Its not that books have an inherent virtue, but that they can go into depth regarding the concerns you have whereas a 10 minute youtube video just can’t. Arguing against a pretty vast and established political philosophy from youtube videos is like arguing against christianity after listening to a handful of sermons.
You seem to be reiterating the straw-man argument at the end of your post. I never asserted nor “admitted” that aggressive coercion will never, ever occur in an anarcho-capitalist society. Certainly it will occur at times, but it will be viewed as crime. Hopefully the occurrences will be minimized - it’s my belief that they will be.
That said, do I think aggressive coercion would lead to some party “monopolizing power”? I assume you mean the party in question would monopolize the settling of disputes within a certain area of land and/or among a certain group of people. While it’s always possible for such a state of affairs to re-emerge from an anarcho-capitalist social order, I can’t say whether it necessarily would. The future is always uncertain.
That’s why I said sorry for misreading you; but I don’t think I reiterated the straw-man argument. You did admit that
agressive coercion will never, never occur in an anarcho-capitalist society:
‘I never said that aggressive coercion would never occur in an anarcho-capitalist society.’
The use of ‘never’ acts as negation; double negation would cancel itself out, so that is the equivalent of saying:
I said that aggressive coercion would occur in an anarcho-capitalist society.
I agree that the future is always uncertain, to us at any rate. But given the nature of capitalism and human greed under capitalism, I would say that it is quite likely that a monopolising power will re-emerge. That’s my point.
‘Heirarchy is not the same as a dictatorship and is not synonomous with state. Corporations are heirarchical as are families. So I’m not sure whether you really meant that heriarchies are inevitable or central dicatatorial states are inevitiable.’
Yeah, I meant some central dictatorial heirachy is inevitable under capitalism.