interesting blog post on anarcho-capitalism

[Gast]

How retarded are anarcho-capitalists? Be honest.

Anonymous

Depends on the anarcho-capitalist in question. The “Anarcho”-Capitalists who don’t know what anarchy is are pretty retarded. The Anarcho-“Capitalists” who don’t know what capitalism is are quite alright.

There are a lot of people who come to the market-anarchist fold from a Randian-right political perspective. These people hold “capitalism” to be synonymous with “economic freedom”; I think it’s a poor word choice, but beyond that they’re right on the money. Murray Rothbard was a smart motherfucker, for instance.

I think one of the big disconnects is between the thinkers and the fandom of the movement. I think there’s a lot more (though certainly not total) intellectual honesty among the anarcho-capitalist scholars than there is among the forum general at, say, Mises.org.

I think this is true of left-anarchists as well, for what that’s worth. There are a lot of dumb people in that bunch. I think that there’s a tendency among people to adhere very strictly to the writing or teaching of some intellectual leader (we’re very much trained to do this), so that what happens is this ill-understood and ultra-condensed, ultra-quotable version of a nuanced political theory becomes dogma.

So there are people in the AnCap camp who actually UNDERSTAND what Rothbard was talking about, who UNDERSTAND that this economy we have is not what they themselves would call “capitalism”, and who have a principled objection to certain things… but “anarcho”-capitalists tend to latch on to some tiny quotable piece of their free-market rhetoric and from there presume to declare that the State stands in the way of Exxon-Mobil’s justly earned profits.

Which is, of course, nonsense. But they don’t really understand the position they’re taking, and they’re afraid to back down on it, and they wind up doing all sorts of intellectual gymnastics.. and they justify terrible, terrible things because to them, those things are “free market” and therefore beyond reproach. Like sweatshops or whatnot; there’s never any real conversation about how the State creates those conditions, because they believe that the free market created them; and if the free market created them, they simply MUST be sugar and lollipops and if you question them you are a Stalinist psychopath.

To be fair, some of that isn’t retardation, you know. I think even some “anarcho”-capitalists have latched very deeply on to the philosophical underpinnings, the “mine and thine”, the “thou shalt not coerce”, and know that they’re right. And they understand how that OUGHT to create right outcomes… and if it doesn’t, they defend them, because they’re missing the invisible statism but they know from principle that in the absence of statism there must be justice.

Like, okay, suppose you know that when you punch [number]+[number]= on your calculator, you get the sum of those two numbers. So you punch in 4+4= and you get 16. Now, you know that math itself is right, and you aren’t prepared to admit to yourself or anyone else that “math is relative” or “addition is a social construct” or whatever thing the progressives are throwing at you in an attempt to get you to renounce your belief in mathematics. But you don’t see that the “+” and “x” keys have been switched, you miss that detail, and so the only thing you know how to do is to defend the notion that 4+4=16.

I think there’s a LOT of that among AnCaps; the fundamentally right idea that a free market is good, but a fundamentally wrong idea about how free a market actually is, combining to form a defense of some very bad things on the grounds that they must be good things because freedom produced them.

http://anarcho-baker.tumblr.com/post/30035802914/how-retarded-are-anarcho-capitalists-be-honest

Any objections, additions etc. Discuss!

[cab21]

exxon mobile is a corporation formed by the government, how could it be free market or capitalism? who says the state stands in the way of the corporations justly earned profits? while without a state , there would be not taxes, there would also not be government protected corporations that get to write taxes and regulation rules and write themselves into contracts enforced by the government and paid by the taxpayer.

i don’t think everything created by a free market is good to each persons subjective tastes, but it would be mutual agreements between the people that make them and they live with any consequences intended or unintented. free market is not a utopia where everything turns out welland consequences are always good or intended.

i’m not sure about the state creating sweatshops, to me it seems lack of alturnatives or peoples reluctance to move or take alturnative choices creates them. i would figure someone could offer a job with any conditions they want/can, and people would be free to accept any job they want/ can

so the article seems to be “free market is good, capitalism is bad”? what aspects of capitalism are bad? is it the private ownership part? how would the free market work under public ownership?

[Autolykos]

Welcome to the Mises Forum, Gast.

@Anonymous Coward

Depends on the anarcho-capitalist in question. The “Anarcho”-Capitalists who don’t know what anarchy is are pretty retarded. The Anarcho-“Capitalists” who don’t know what capitalism is are quite alright.

It’s clear from this that Anonymous Coward believes that words like “anarchy” and “capitalism” must mean specific things. But they’re just words. Strictly speaking, they can mean whatever one wants them to mean. So when he talks about “[knowing] what anarchy is” and “[knowing] what capitalism is”, he’s really talking about knowing what he means by those words. “Free market” is just as valid a definition for capitalism, logically speaking, as “a system where most people labor for wages”. But the definition of a word can affect the validity of statements made using it.

@Anonymous Coward

There are a lot of people who come to the market-anarchist fold from a Randian-right political perspective. These people hold “capitalism” to be synonymous with “economic freedom”; I think it’s a poor word choice, but beyond that they’re right on the money. Murray Rothbard was a smart motherfucker, for instance.

Here Anonymous Coward belies his earlier notion of “[knowing] what capitalism is”. If he thinks it’s just a poor word choice to define “capitalism” as “economic freedom”, then he’s implicitly conceding that there’s no logically necessary definition for “capitalism”. Now if he doesn’t like that particular definition of the word “capitalism”, that’s fine, but that dislike has no bearing on the logical content of the statements made using that definition. I don’t think he should have a problem substituting the given definition of the word (in this case, “economic freedom”) for the word itself.

As an aside, his casual use of profanity and words like “retarded” and “dumb” seems to be intended to cultivate a certain impression of him in his readers. Why am I not surprised?

@Anonymous Coward

I think one of the big disconnects is between the thinkers and the fandom of the movement. I think there’s a lot more (though certainly not total) intellectual honesty among the anarcho-capitalist scholars than there is among the forum general at, say, Mises.org.

I’d appreciate some substantiation of this.

@Anonymous Coward

I think this is true of left-anarchists as well, for what that’s worth. There are a lot of dumb people in that bunch. I think that there’s a tendency among people to adhere very strictly to the writing or teaching of some intellectual leader (we’re very much trained to do this), so that what happens is this ill-understood and ultra-condensed, ultra-quotable version of a nuanced political theory becomes dogma.

See above.

@Anonymous Coward

So there are people in the AnCap camp who actually UNDERSTAND what Rothbard was talking about, who UNDERSTAND that this economy we have is not what they themselves would call “capitalism”, and who have a principled objection to certain things… but “anarcho”-capitalists tend to latch on to some tiny quotable piece of their free-market rhetoric and from there presume to declare that the State stands in the way of Exxon-Mobil’s justly earned profits.

That raises the following questions: 1) does the state stand in the way of that? and 2) are any/all of Exxon-Mobil’s profits justly earned?

Maybe Anonymous Coward is implying that Exxon-Mobil (for example) benefits from the state more than it’s hurt by it. I think that’s a good topic to look into. Unfortunately, Anonymous Coward doesn’t do that here.

@Anonymous Coward

Which is, of course, nonsense. But they don’t really understand the position they’re taking, and they’re afraid to back down on it, and they wind up doing all sorts of intellectual gymnastics.. and they justify terrible, terrible things because to them, those things are “free market” and therefore beyond reproach. Like sweatshops or whatnot; there’s never any real conversation about how the State creates those conditions, because they believe that the free market created them; and if the free market created them, they simply MUST be sugar and lollipops and if you question them you are a Stalinist psychopath.

Anonymous Coward clearly sounds smug at this point, if you ask me. He doesn’t bother to provide any kind of reasoning for why such positions are “nonsense”. Maybe he thinks he’s just preaching to the choir, so he doesn’t have to get into that. I don’t know. In any case, I don’t know what he means by “sweatshops or whatnot”, so I’m not sure what else to say here.

@Anonymous Coward

To be fair, some of that isn’t retardation, you know. I think even some “anarcho”-capitalists have latched very deeply on to the philosophical underpinnings, the “mine and thine”, the “thou shalt not coerce”, and know that they’re right. And they understand how that OUGHT to create right outcomes… and if it doesn’t, they defend them, because they’re missing the invisible statism but they know from principle that in the absence of statism there must be justice.

Like, okay, suppose you know that when you punch [number]+[number]= on your calculator, you get the sum of those two numbers. So you punch in 4+4= and you get 16. Now, you know that math itself is right, and you aren’t prepared to admit to yourself or anyone else that “math is relative” or “addition is a social construct” or whatever thing the progressives are throwing at you in an attempt to get you to renounce your belief in mathematics. But you don’t see that the “+” and “x” keys have been switched, you miss that detail, and so the only thing you know how to do is to defend the notion that 4+4=16.

I think there’s a LOT of that among AnCaps; the fundamentally right idea that a free market is good, but a fundamentally wrong idea about how free a market actually is, combining to form a defense of some very bad things on the grounds that they must be good things because freedom produced them.

Well, what is this “invisible statism” that “‘anarcho’-capitalists” are allegedly missing? What does Anonymous Coward think are the philosophical underpinnings at work here? He talks around a lot of things, as if he expects everyone in his (intended) audience to be on the same page as him. But I, for one, would really like him to substantiate his position(s) a lot more.

[ClaytonB]

How does any of this matter (genetic fallacy)?? Be honest.

[John_James]

lykos is right about the words thing, as people use terms like “capitalism” to mean different things. (Which is why it’s always good to define your terms…but some people don’t agree.)

Other than that, I do understand where the coward is coming from on the “advocating things they don’t necessarily understand”…however I haven’t really come across many ancaps that fit that bill. It’s usually minarchists and self-proclaimed “conservatives” and “constitutionalists” who simply go along with blanket ideas of “free market” and “conservatism” without really understanding the philosophical or economic underpinnings…which actually makes sense to me. For one thing, one essentially requires a lack of understanding of these things to be able to hold the contradictory and ultimately statist ideas that even minarchists subscribe to.

And for another, it would seem logical that in general one would only rationally come to a position as “radical” as anarcho-capitalism through a decent amount of study and consideration…the kind of things that would eliminate a lot of the ignorance the coward is talking about.

I honestly don’t find many “conservatives” who are better-read and have a better understanding of philosophy and economics than an ancap. Indeed I wouldn’t be surprised to see a correlation between an increase in the one, and a closer and closer ideological stance to the other.

I’m not sure who these “‘anarcho’-capitalists” he’s talking about are, but I can’t really say I’ve come across them. In my experience ancaps are basically ex-minarchists who simply gained a better understanding of the things the coward claims they don’t. And even if I come across one who isn’t as well read as you’d expect, he’s generally incredibly inquisitive, and always looking for more information to study…always questioning things and working it out…certainly not the blind acceptance this coward talks about.

I’d also be interested to hear of these ancap scholars who haven’t in one way or another been associated with LvMI. (Of course it’s possible with his mention of Mises.org he’s only talking about this forum specifically, but still. It seems like a hit on the affiliates of the organization.)

[Neodoxy]

What the hell is champion talking about? I’m really anti-dogmatism and I still can’t figure out what he’s talking about…

For istance the fact that we don’t live in a free market is like Austrianism 101 around here, and I have no clue what he’s trying to say with that calculator thing… Then again I’m tired and I really don’t care.

[Wheylous]

Eh. Nothing special. S/he is right to point out we don’t live in capitalism. Also, there is a small point to be made about sweatshops - at times they’re made necessary by foreign government stealing land. Still, though, it seems that they provide a non-coercive alternative (seems).