Firstly, I wouldn’t say that I think an AnCap society would be this way, more that I do not know what an AnCap society would be like. It was the same kind of logic (personal ‘philosophy’, if you like) that drew me away from atheism (or rather positive atheism) and forced me into the realms of agnosticism (I do not feel that I can positively assert that a God does or does not exist)
However you asked me why I might suspect this would be the case (that AnCap would be worse). Well, I suspect this might be the case purely for the suspicion of how in certain (but not all, might I emphasise) case scenarios individuals would solve disputes in the free market without an authoritarian structure that has built its body of objective reasoning based upon hierarchical structures imposed ‘from the top down’ onto others.
In the following scenario, I would consider an individualist legal system to be preferable to a collectivist one:
(Individualist solution)
Me and a friend go to a club, there is a CCTV camera owned by the club. Me and my friend have a row about something, so we decide to go outside and solve the issue through discussion. My friend says something which annoys me; I snap and launch a physical assault against him. In scenario (a) my friend decides not to seek justice; he said something that was (by his own individual reasoning) unacceptable and hence my response was justified (again by his own reasoning). He does not pursue the case any further. In scenario (b), however, he decides that I went too far and he asks the club for CCTV evidence (they have the incident recorded) and takes the matter to court (private legal system or state owned legal system, it does not matter). I am fined £x for making the agression against his individual rights. The only other solution would be that my friend is unable to act himself (lets say he is mentally vulnerable or that he has not paid for legal insurance and cannot pursue a legal case) another individual (my friend’s friend, brother, uncle, aunty, etc.) acts on his behalf (presuming my friend has given his consent for this), taking me to court.
There is another possible case scenario and that is the possibility that I killed my friend and he was therefore unable to launch a prosecution (even if he had so desired). However, I assume that in this case, maybe the club owner (upon reviewing the CCTV footage) or someone who witnessed the attack would be able to launch a prosecution.
(Collectivist Solution)
The state finds out about the case through CCTV footage and makes the decision to prosecute me on my friend’s behalf regardless of whether or not my friend had forgiven me and decided not to pursue the case any further. For me, this stance is totally immoral; it is based on utilitarianism, the idea of ‘the greatest good for the greatest majority’. The individual’s (in this case, my friend that I assaulted in a row) rights are no longer important. He doesn’t have a right to justice; ‘society’ does. Not only is it immoral but it is also a highly inefficient method of dealing with justice; the state cannot handle every single dispute that happens. It is obviously much easier to let the relevant individuals in any given situation handle their own affairs (and take the circumstance to court if need be).
Well, out of both the above situations, I find the individualist solution preferable, purely because there is no ‘common good’ that will benefit all man kind (my friend might find it more personally beneficial not to have me in prison, assuming we are still on good terms et cetera). But there is a significant difference in the case of adult disputes and problem case scenarios involving children, namely my friend’s capability of making a rational choice; children do not have the capacity for rational decision making, as I explained earlier. The other differences are that I am not forcefully detaining my friend (he is free to launch a prosecution) - whereas parents have the ability to forcefully detain their child without anyone else’s knowledge - and my friend is not being psychologically intimidated from me - abusive parents have the ability to apply bullying tactics, scaring the child away from trying to change his own circumstances (hence, when someone asks the child if he is happy with his family’s parenting he might say ‘yes’ but really, he thinks ‘no’). I would take the same stance that I do in the case of child abuse and defend state intervention in the case of a man that was mentally vulnerable (e.g. if the man had severe down syndrome).
The alternative, I suppose, would be the reliance on third bodies to launch prosecutions on the behalf of those without sufficient means to do so themselves (whether for financial - cannot afford legal case, physical or mental purposes).
Now, there is one point I have not addressed so far and that is “how can we know whether an incapacitated body is coercively being kept from attempting to launch a prosecution on his own behalf”? Under statism, the state has power to inspect (big brother - CCTV, state funded child cruelty agencies and so forth). In the free market, individual rights are respected and it is illegitmate for a third person to try and inspect the household of any family. This obviously has its pluses but it also has its minuses then, because it means that there will be an increased number of cases which are not known about. Remember, I’m not arguing that the state can ‘know’ about all cases of the physical detainment of an incapacitated body but legally, it has the legitimate authority to inspect such cases (the market does not). Now, Clayton made a good point and that was that members of the extended family would have the power to intervene under anarcho-capitalism. The only objection I would have to this is, how can you ensure that they would have the power to do so (intervene) in the market?
This is one of my main grips with private legal systems and why I am still undecided about anarcho-capitalism. I had these objections in my head all along but I was finding it difficult to express them in this kind of fine detail.
There is one thing that we agree on, however, and that is that child abuse would be present in both anarchist and statist societies. It is just my personal belief that there are a (severely limited) number of cases in which state intervention is preferable to that of free market solutions. I believe that it was Adam Smith’s belief that state intervention in the market was justified provided that the net benefits outweigh the net costs (or overall burden) on ‘society’ - yeah, yeah, I know, individualism blah blah blah. This is my position as well; I think that state intervention is justified in certain circumstances where the negative effects are not worse than they would be had state intervention not happened. How we know when state intervention is preferable is another discussion.
No. I think that abuse is unjustified to the extent that it incurrs negative utility (which cannot be measured as such [ranking of values] and can only be subjectively judged by the individual experiencing the pain).
This is true (the government has many faults) but the question is whether there would be more or less violence without the state. I believe that if there would be more violence, then the existence of the state is justified even if taxation constitutes theft but I know that others would disagree. Also, another point is, does the state need to be improved or abolished to achieve ‘the most desirable outcome’ (which is subjective, I know but I can’t think of another way to phrase this other than returning to my theory of “risk analysis”).