That something is difficult does not make it a “pipe dream”.
Difficult is the US team winning the world cup – that may occur within this century.
However establishment of a viable and significant ancap society is in another league because there is no precedent and nothing on the horizon has changed to engender optimism for this happening. For example, the only comments from the peanut gallery is lamentation that the statist are gaining power. When you are going in the opposite direction, that sounds like pipe dream stuff to me.
For example, if you believe that anarcho-capitalism is possible, there must be a set of indicators and causal mechanisms to describe how anarcho-capitalism will emerge and sustain itself.
In summary, you cant be an advocate for something to happen and not have a clue on what the causal mechanisms and indicators for how it will be realized in the real world.
Not every statist need surrender their power voluntarily: only a critical mass. Every advance of liberalism has involved a changing of minds and a large portion of society becoming less statist and relinquishing power over his fellow man by withdrawing the support he had in the past given in the past to overweening magistrates.
Are you saying that government has gotten less oppressive and powerful ?
And if yes, when did this trend begin?
And what is the trend today?
For example, anarchists are of the opinion that they can “educate” the masses to the benefits of anarchism – however, do they believe that statist will volutarily surrender the reins of information and communication. For example, do they think that the statists will surrender the monopoly of education without a fight?
In the latest issue of the Freeman, Lawrence Reed quoted the Polish Solidarity leader Wiktor Kulerski as follows:
“This movement should create a situation in which authorities will control empty stores, but not the market; the employment of workers, but not their livelihood; the official media, but not the circulation of information; printing plants, but not the publishing movement; the mail and telephones, but not communications; and the school system, but not education.”
The state currently has great influence over the mainstream media, not over “information and communication”. The state currently has a near-monopoly over school systems, not over education.
I like this assessment. It is proven everyday across the globe by the immediate establishment of black markets in virtually any commodity, good, or service when government taxation and regulation become oppressive, and these markets are generally impervious to statist control.
You could site it as the “game plan” for establishing control over statist systems.
However, why do you suppose zero anarchic societies have emerged from the myriad of black markets that have been established since time immemorial? If this was a viable way for anarchro-capitalist to gain power then presumably it would have happened by now.
There is no such guarantee. Which anarcho-capitalists have said there was? If a critical mass of society are not convinced of the merits of freedom, the dissolution of any particular state will very likely not be a boon.
More importantly, do we have a “critical mass” of ancap sympatherizes at the ready today if a society collapses? Moreover, tens of thousands of nations have become extinct, why do you suppose none of them developed into a lasting and viable anarcho-capitalist society?
And if it doesn’t matter what happened in the past, what feature of the present lends itself more favorably to the establishment of an ancap society?
We do not set out to create a nation. We set out to create a society.
Unlike the free market, society building is a zero sum game. You have to remove the present power structure. Unless you believe it is desirable for an ancap society to function within a statist framework, a highly dubious outcome by any objective measure. For example, you cant make an omelet without breaking an egg – ancaps are going to have to remove a statist regime from power or fill the void when one collapses. And I question whether they have the cojones to do so, otherwise they would have already done so.
Many ancaps (Murray Rothbard included) believe in the (violent, if necessary) disarmament of holders of nuclear arms.
You don’t think it is dangerous or destabilizing to disarm nuclear capable states by force?
How would the ancap society do this without inciting all out nuclear holocaust?
Note that the moment an ancap effort was made to disarm a nuclear power, that ancap nation would cease to exist. For example, what steps would an ancap nation take to deter or defend itself from a nuclear attack in the absence of mutual assured destruction or a strategic missile defense system?
Neither history nor military doctrine has proven that the military forces of centralized power are inherently inferior to the military forces of decentralized power. For any given “Alexander the Great trouncing Greek city-states” example, there is a" Greek city-states trouncing the Persian Empire" counter-example. (Of course Greek city-states were not anarcho-capitalist, but this gets at the whole “decentralized-vs.-centralized” thing.) Moreover any advantage centralized states gain in “decisiveness” they more than lose in economic growth which tends to get strangled by illiberal regimes. And any advantage decentralized states lose via “plurality” they more than gain in the economic growth made possible by liberalism. An illustrative example of this principle is the “decisive” planned economy and war machine of early 20th century Germany losing twice against the far-more-capitalist and individualistic (and thereby wealthy) countries of the west. Now a large anarcho-capitalist society, completely untrammeled as it would be by economic intervention, would be amazingly wealthy. And its economic flexibility would be such that, if a great demand for defense against belligerent neighbors merely showed up as a flicker in the price system, industry would be able to turn on a dime, and bring forth such a torrent of defense-related production, that it would make the dirigiste “decisive” belligerents look flat-footed in comparison.
My point was that centralized or concentrated military force is far more effective than decentralized or dispersed units. My argument was confined to military forces, not society in general. I agree that an anarchic society would be economically more efficient and wealthy. However, I also stated that prudent statist regimes would never let the anarchic society reach “critical mass” required to survive an attack. As a result, your assertion that a “large” anarcho-capitalist society defeating the dirigiste enemies presumes too much. Namely, how did it get large in the first place, for example why would a statist cartel allow it to get large enough to be a threat.
Lastly, can your anarcho-capitalist industry “turn on a dime” in 20 minutes – the time it takes any of the thousands of world’s ballistic missiles to reach a major metropolitan center anywhere on the globe?
Wealthy, maximally-capitalist societies will always tend to be the highest bidder.
If the power hungry statist are napping and allow this anarcho-capitalist enclave to get big enough to reach what you call “critical mass”. However, you presume to much when you assert that these regimes will allow the ancap society to get big enough to become a threat. For example, your argument is dependent on the actions or lack of action from potential adversaries over which you have no control.
That would be counter-productive to the far more effective “fifth column” strategies of convincing the population of such centers of the vast benefits of maximal capitalism.
What if a group of people don’t want your maximal capitalism? For example, tens of millions of moslems believe that sharia law is preferable to any form of anarcho-capitalism. And within the next 50 years, Indonesia, Pakistan, iran, turkey, Egypt, et al will have nuclear weaponry. How do you suppose to employ “fifth column” strategies against these faith based religious autocracies — think fast! Ballistic missiles are arcing above your population centers?
Moreover, for thousands of years a competition has existed by secularism and religion. Organized religion has oft times by taken over by statist elements. For example, how would “market forces” deal with the inevitable threat from statists who use organize and exploit religion to gain power.
Ancaps are not pacifists in the modern sense.
If you don’t have the will and the means to employ nuclear weaponry then you are a pacifist that is subject to predation by any nuclear power. Unless your ancap society can develop a deterrent or a defense against nuclear weaponry, the debate stops here! Because all I have to do as a autocratic is to threaten the ancap society with nuclear annihilation, and you will either comply or die.
Moreover, the statist may be corrupt, inefficient, and wasteful — but he is not stupid and he will not go gently into the night because of maximal capitalism. They will never allow ancap societies to reach the critical mass required for self-defense.
Although there is a way to surmount this weakness, I will leave it to you to discover it if you havent already.
Human beings are not fixed entities. Today’s statist can be tomorrow’s anarcho-capitalist. Ancap society does not threaten the statist as a man. It only threatens the function of “statist”.
The statist is a union of men (no pun intended) when you seek to undermine their power “function” ( and their ill-gotten gains) you undermine them directly — they will vigorously oppose you (crack open a history book). Indeed the most heinous acts of torture, murder, genocide in history have been by statists seeking to gain or preserve power. It is folly to think that a group of people who have murdered tens of millions will suddenly “see the light” and surrender power to maximal capitalism dogma.
“The average American worker enjoys amenities for which Croesus, Crassus, the Medici, and Louis XIV would have envied him.” (Mises, HA)
Had Louis XIV established economic liberty at the beginning of his reign, capitalist France would have poured a greater cornucopia of goods and services upon his head than his crippling taxes ever did. VERY few (if any) people benefit from the interventionist state more than they would benefit from capitalism.
Mises knew what he was talking about: there truly is a harmony of interests. Had Louis XIV established economic liberty at the beginning of his reign, capitalist France would have poured a greater cornucopia of goods and services upon his head than his crippling taxes ever did. VERY few (if any) people benefit from the interventionist state more than they would benefit from capitalism. Mises knew what he was talking about: there truly is a harmony of interests
I agree, where were you when I was arguing that capitalism within the framework of representative democracy had bestowed enormous benefits on its citizenry since 1776. I was labeled a statist for pointing this out even when I acknowledged that government was not the causal factor for this increase in prosperity.
However, there is something interesting in play here. If Louis XIV (and obama, bush, sarkozy, harper, merkel, cameron, et al) didn’t understand the benefits of maximal-capitalism, how are you going to educate the masses? Moreover, if the majority of intellectuals, pundits, politicians, clerics, academics, entertainers, and even economists don’t subscribe to the tenets of maximal capitalism — how do ancaps convince the masses who are inundated with reams of information on a daily basis.
How do you break through the noise when only a sprinkling of entrepreneurs, economists, and random nutcases like us are even aware that von mises, hayek, hoppe, rothbard, et al even exist.
Indeed less than 1% of the American people even know what an Austrian economist is much less agree with its tenets. How many decades, millennia will it take just to educate the majority of people that the Austrian school exists – and then the process of convincing them of its merits begins.