Anarcho-capitalism and the need to Defend freedom and Liberty via National Defense Force

Miscellaneous Newbies
1

I am starting a new post to discuss Anarcho-Capitalism. This discussion is a continuation of a discussion that was started on Fiat Currency and the need for 100% Reserve Banking. The original discussion can be found at:

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/a-case-for-central-banking-safe-storage-of-electronic-money-100-reserve-digital-cash/9568

Here is a snippet of the discussion:

Fine, cite specific examples then. An appeal to “all of history” isn’t really an argument.

Sure. Americans left King George the 3rd, who was taxing them 2 or 3 %, and decided to tax themselves 35~45%. All governments exist to tax. There is no easier target than a nationalistic and socialistic electorate.

How?

Why?

No WWI and no WWII, why would the Nazis be an issue?

Socialists truly are the scoundrels of our times, but how many countries did the communists actually invade?

You mean the war the Americans started?

Austrian economics is not libertarianism, but many of us in this community, which doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of the institute or its scholars, are radical libertarians. So any premise about government intervention, is not generally going to get much review because the premise is often rejected here.

If we’re doing value free economic analysis, then it’s strictly an unemotional (so no pandering to foreign boogeymen) analysis of the market vs. the state.

In order to have a central bank or fiat money, you need a state which subverts market processes. Which then leads one to ask, if the premise is that we NEED central banks and we NEED fiat money (100% reserve or otherwise) and both require subverting the market, then why would we need markets at all? If markets have any virtue, then why must we use the monopoly coercion of the state to subvert some but not others.

In other words, what makes fiat money and central banking so exceptional to things like food and medicine and education and entertainment and so on? What are their unique characteristics that require force because the market will not choose them freely, and if they would not be chosen freely, isn’t that an argument that they are not in fact “needed”?

2

Socialists truly are the scoundrels of our times, but how many countries did the communists actually invade?

It does not matter one instance is enough to justify a ready, armed and alert defense force for a community/people/nation/country.

But lets go back in history a little more. How about the mongol invasions? Europe, Middle East and India were absolutely no threat to them. Yet they invaded and enslaved and taxed!

What about the British takeover of India? India never threatened anyone.

3

on the other hand, having states for military defence against external invasion was not effective for those countries invaded and occupied by the mongols.

4

I think this reply by LS sheds some light on how an An-Cap “zone” (as I call it) would defend itself. If the people were NOT nationalistic and socialistic, the invader would have problems after the initial military “victory”. The ongoing occupation of the An-Caps would cause a severe drain on the empire’s finances. The An-Caps simply will not submit. Just as we cannot anticipate free market solutions to problems currently handled by government, we can’t anticipate how the An-Caps would fight this war. Perhaps they would infiltrate the empire’s economic system, covertly converting the empire’s own citizens into An-Caps. The empire would be fighting on two fronts. Perhaps the empire would look at this “zone” and decide not to invade. We simply cannot know how an An-Cap zone would defend itself. When it comes to free-market vs. statist, I think we know who wins every time. Why would it be different in dealing with a statist (by definition) invader?

5

European civilization did not have any difficulty destroying foreign invaders before the creation of the modern state, through systems of mutual protection.

6

They might do something the American military state can’t even imagine. They might negotiate for peace.

7

Very interesting answer. What you are describing is pre-Islamic Arabia (before 600 CE). This has actually happened in history. Both the Roman Empire (to the west of Arabia) and the Persion Empire (to the east of Arabia) did not invade Arabia because they were very An-Cap-ish. Very difficult to subdue and simply would not submit (little bit like current day Afghans). They were tribal and de-centralized and higly skilled traders. But they did not make much economic progress (it seems) compared to the Romans and the Persians. Does An-Cap-ish behavior lead to less material progress, less material comforts, less material security, less time perhaps to devout to advancing scientific and other knowledge?

8

Have you considered the possibility that there would be no invasion? Think about it.. what would the conditions be for a large ancap zone to be viable? If this zone has already successfully sustained itself, this already implies that the state failed to prevent this development. If it was not able to prevent this blatant undercutting of its dominance, what makes you think that it would be able to invade? If you think about world statism as an occupation, like the American occupation of the Middle East, then the rise of an ancap zone is itself a battle in this ongoing war, and an indication that freedom is finally beating slavery. The emergence of an ancap zone would imply the decline of statism worldwide. I’m an optimist when it comes to the decline of statism, so I think that once an ancap zone is established, it will go viral. Especially with cyberspace undercutting violence at every turn.

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm:

…meaning, to me at least, that once an ancap zone is established, the idea that an invasion is inevitable is largely a non-sequitor.

9

Have you guys (Austrians) ever read what happened after the Roman empire collapsed? Historians consistently say that much chaos followed. Pax Romana was lost. It seems to me that An-Cap-ness leads to un-sheathing of the sword. No one’s in charge? Who is in charge? Do thugs rule? Do people do what they can get away with? What are the rules? the ten commandments? Are there no courts? No judges? No jails? Is everybody trying to enforce their own personal law?

10

Actually the Barbarian lords established kingdoms that lasted for centuries. You must be talking of the chaos caused by the Roman Empire itself.

11

Statism itself is the embodiment of chaos. How many people were murdered in the twentieth century as a result of rampant statism? The numbers range from 167 to 203 million, according to this website: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm

Quite the contrary. Power (statism) leads to the un-sheathing of the proverbial sword, not freedom (“an-cap-ness”).

Not in an ancap society. Our history is full of the atrocities that result from the idea that someone must be “in charge.” You might also take note that the desire to be subordinate to power is the desire to be enslaved.

In a statist world, most definitely. Can’t you see it all around you? Some guy drops a bomb and kill nearly one hundred thousand people, and he’s called a hero. This is the proverbial personification of statism. In an ancap society, there would still be crime, but criminals would not have the state to use to their advantage like they do today.

The market will fulfill these needs, just like it does every other need.

Isn’t that what’s occurring already? The power behind statism is that it provides a platform for criminals to impose their own personal law on the rest of us far more effectively than would be possible in an ancap society.

12

A popular misconception is that the state provides order. The state provides AN ORDER, but the state does not exclusively provide ALL ORDER.

Order emerges in the marketplace. Think about how many interactions you have with other people in a week, that do not require the intervention of the state, or any licensing. Everything from simple greetings to complex commercial exchanges to the use and maintenance of sophisticated capital goods and software (knowledge).

Ancap is not the absence of order, it is order from the market. Order which satisfies the people living within it.

If you want an example of multiple orders, look no further than the 200 some odd countries of the world. Those are all different orders, with different politics, people and laws. Within them are thousands of states, provinces and prefectures. Within them hundreds of thousands of towns, cities, shires and villages.

13

States did not exist during the period in which the Mongols invaded Eastern Europe.

The ironic part is that the barbarian lords invaded the “chaos” of the Roman empire in order to enjoy the fruits of being in the Roman Empire! Furthermore, you do not see such chaos in the Eastern Mediterranean, in which the Eastern Roman Empire was still firmly in control. That is not to deny that the corruption of the Western empire has no influence on the chaos of that era, but to deny that the barbarian invasions had a decisive role is a foolish analysis.

The Battle of Vienna occured in an era in which the European nations more resembled states than the medieval fiefdoms of centuries past. Really, the Battles of Lepanato, and Vienna were fought by more or less a contemporary version of the modern NATO that was designed in order to unify European states against the Turkish threat just as NATO united the states of the Eastern Atlantic against the Warsaw Pact.

14

I still don’t really get it!

Are you guys saying that un-state-ness itself can provide a good creative un-predictable yet effective defense without a formal large well funded ready standing army?

Austrian-ism (or least Libertarianism) is like a religion with no central nervous system (no official central church, no official pope, no official clergy, no official hierarchy).

It is like the Linux or the Open Source world in software. It is there, it is useful, it works, people use its products to do real work and get real benefits cheaper and faster. It is free for all environment yet it is not at same time and is not chaos or at least people know how to deal with the chaos effectively. Un-official consensus driven standards do develop and are followed but there is no need or the desire to enforce/force anything on anyone. It is self-evolving, self-organizing, self-adjusting, self-disciplining, with rules which adjust quickly to the weather.

15

The Kingdom of Hungary was not a state?

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But I have a lot of respect for you trying. Honestly, it is refreshing to see someone make an honest attempt as you have. Thank you.

Statelessness. Yes, look at Iraq, Afghanistan vs. Britain, Afghanistan vs. USSR, Afghanistan vs USA, Vietnam…

Not a church. A school of ideas.

You get it. [:)]

17

It’s not clear whether the Barbarian “invasions” were invasions in the modern sense of a military invasion. Many of the Barbarians were on the Roman Empire’s payroll as it was collapsing and its population draining away. When the money ran out to pay them, they had to find a way to pay themselves. However, it’s probably more accurate to call it a migration than an invasion, much like Latin Americans are migrating in the USA, serving in the military, and so on.

The states may have been united but they were not centralized through a single taxing agency. The same principle applied during the medieval era. It was in everyone’s self-interest to cooperate in the destruction of the invader.