Suppose there is an initial situation in which everybody lives in anarcho-capitalism. The anarchy has been beneficial and there will naturally be an average “class” with an average income, perhaps in a Gaussian bell-like distribution. However, as always, the economic resources are not abundant and most people can’t afford very expensive goods that they would like. Moreover, freedom of speech and of organising is preserved.
The question is: what would stop this majority average-income population from forming a rogue PDA through cooperation and behave like a socialist state, harassing the wealthier ones? Perhaps assume the distribution of wealth allows the majority to suppress the wealthy minority with minimal losses.
The free market, human nature, sympathy, and self-defense. It could never really happen like that, worst-case scenario would be the middle-class, attempting to overthrow the rich using guerilla warfare(possibly with a socialist mindset), unfortunately for the middle-class, this will be unprofitable and expensive and will result in chaos. eventually the chaos dies down and nothing really was accomplished, except a loss of wealth for all.
But it is just a what-if question, so an answer is just not really possible.
What’s to stop the harassed ones forming their own PDA to protect themselves? If the rogues hope to extract $X in “taxes” through their harassment, it’s worth spending anything up to $X to stop them…if they’re socialists and X is whatever they earn above the average, that leaves nothing for the rogues to extract even if they could
Assuming a Gaussian distribution of wealth, the harassed ones are few and their financial resources are roughly equal to the mob’s (which is comprised of many more people). They could be overwhelmed by the total resources of the mob (manpower, money etc.).
It is fair to assume the mob won’t calculate its possible returns in a lucid manner as long as they’re driven by a demagogic leader (just as it happens in democracy). Depending on the wealth distribution’s kurtosis, they may or may not be rational. But rationality isn’t a driving factor, since we assumed the rogue socialist PDA would form through cooperation alone (e.g. the rogue PDA doesn’t measure performance in market share, as it does not have clients).
If you assumed the financial resources available to the “rich” is roughly equal to the mob, they’re not going to be easily overwhelmed. Also keep in mind why they’re rich: they’re going to be the owners of much of the productive capability of this society, and better able to utilize it, etc. - so their PDA will be better-equipped than the competition (and if the “war” goes on for a while, the socialists will be in an ever-worsening position; even starting with significantly fewer resources, they can still win). So I think not likely.
Huh? So a state’s aggresion is bad, but if aggresion happens within an anarchy you say “so what?”? I was trying to evaluate how an anarchy could cope with such a situation.
I get your point. Yeah, I imagine the “rich” are more able to stockpile weapons. One other argument I thought about is that some of the “average” are employed by the “rich”, which makes mutiny less likely.
What I’m looking for with my question is to determine how stable an anarchy is and why there are no or few examples of anarchic societies (even historically). I agree that an anarchy in our times is more likely to succeed because of many factors: more evolved markets, cultural diversity, technology and so on. But I’d like to hear more about this.
Because they would all be killed and anyone with a clear mind would see that this is an objective not worth pursuing, thus undermining any effort to unite the average people in one single war horde.
The idea is that war is only profitable or feasible when it’s funded by coerced taxes. If a PDA diverted funds to a war, that would raise it’s cost as well as probably put it’s clients in danger, and it would lose support and clients very quickly. Actually, because this is a very basic concern, they would probably have guidlelines laid out about to only go to war or use force under very certain conditions.
