I read and heard some arguments (from Brainpolice for example) that an an-cap society would lead to neo feudalism.
I’m interested in what the folks over here in this forum have to say. Care to share you thoughts or refutation?
Cheers!
shrugs
One of Mises Institute’s finest, William L. Anderson, put it quite nicely when he said, “There are no utopias, not even libertarian ones.”
I am not an “ancap”. I just believe it’s necessary to know what are the flaws of any kind of public action. Do I want to offer a solution? No, I am not a political activist.
There is no such thing as an ancap society, because ancap by itself does not refer to any particular set of values. There’s Christian societies, Muslim societies, Shi’ia societies, tribal societies, and other kinds of systems where people are raised under firm authority of old values. Social democratic, nationalist, and communist societies also idealize a particular kind of person and use strict education system to make you into that person. Capitalism does not require you to believe anything.
Whatever I know of ancapism is that it simply states that insurance and reinsurance supporting contractual protection should be used to prevent overproduction or underproduction of security and vigilance. Such an arrangement could easily be implemented in the modern world without usurping any functioning system, and I don’t see how that forces feudalism onto anybody.
Feudalism was a security arrangement based on barter, where smaller lords plead their services as fighters to bigger lords in return for protection of their own lands. It did not allow for a division of labor in security beyond the lords retaining paid warriors to secure their personal estates.
These paid warriors were eventually replaced with regiments hired by lords, which were then merged into centralized militaries where nobles retained the pretense of being the owners of their regiments until the purchase of commissions was abolished and the military fully centralized.
More than likely in ancaptopia most large capitalist organizations would keep a substantial security staff (as they do now) which would be available for war in cases of emergency, but general security would still be purchased under cash-based contracts.
I think a bit of historical background is in order.
Germanic tribes rebelled against the Roman Empire and conquered large sections of it. Typically the military commanders that they had elected were considered to be the new owners of the conquered territories. Of course, they couldn’t manage all of it, given the technology of the day, so they rented portions of the conquered land (fiefdoms) to fellow tribesmen. These tribesmen could then rent portions of their fiefdoms to other tribesmen, and so on. With renting the land came certain obligations, such as regular rent payments and the promise of defensive loyalty. The monarchs retained de facto ownership of all the land, but directly possessed and managed only a relatively small part of it (the royal demesne). This, in essence, was feudalism.
A somewhat similar state of affairs could arise under anarcho-capitalism. In some areas, all land could come to be owned by a minority, who then rent out parts of it to other people, and so on. Only the minority of people in such areas are landowners, while the rest are tenants. However, the tenants would retain the freedom to move and rent elsewhere.
If I had to venture a guess, I would say the idea is more about the concentration of wealth and power into fewer hands, making the population beholden to the lord or capitalist for their livelihood. And not so much about the security aspects of it.
Whether or not it’s true, I know not. But I would think that’s what the argument is about.
This is sort of what I have refered to in such an argument. The problem I see is that even the freedom to move and rent elsewhere seems to become a rather superficial freedom if at the end of the day it amounts to saying that you have to submit to the absolute dominion of some land owner or another, even if you nominally have a choice among geographic regions. In short, this risks repeating the “love it or leave it” argument and I don’t think it works in this context either. I fail to see how a so-called “private city” that is owned by either an individual or some organization, with concentrated power, isn’t a defacto monarchy (in the individual case) or oligarchy (in the organizational case) and functions much like a state. I call it “neo-fuedalism” because the picture resembles a cambrian explosion of totalitarian mini-states in which the “rent” may as well be called a “tax”.
If the owners are renting the land would they be willing to sell at the right price? It seems that once the said owners have gained control of the land they are the permanent owners of the land and they will only rent the land.
I think a more interesting question than whether or not Ancap leads to neo-feudalism, is whether neo-feudalism is likely to be better or worse than the current political systems (including those outside of the “developed countries”). Brainpolice, what have you?
Why would the mini-states be more totalitarian than current nation-states (especially when they would be operating under greater competition for customer/serfs)? Why wouldn’t we get a bunch of little Singapores instead of mini-USSRs?
The more I think about it, the more I think that tyranny, in itself, is not the root problem of social ills. Hence, liberty is not the ultimate solution to social ills. The root problem is the widespread toleration of moral (and hence, legal) double-standards. In other words, the world’s religions have it basically right: society sucks because people are widely immoral. The trouble is that religion is also often an enabler of this immorality.
Clayton -
Are you getting at the “its not stealing when the state does it”, “it isn’t murder if they are wearing uniforms”, kind of double standards or something else?
This is sort of what I have refered to in such an argument. The problem I see is that even the freedom to move and rent elsewhere seems to become a rather superficial freedom if at the end of the day it amounts to saying that you have to submit to the absolute dominion of some land owner or another, even if you nominally have a choice among geographic regions. In short, this risks repeating the “love it or leave it” argument and I don’t think it works in this context either. I fail to see how a so-called “private city” that is owned by either an individual or some organization, with concentrated power, isn’t a defacto monarchy (in the individual case) or oligarchy (in the organizational case) and functions much like a state. I call it “neo-fuedalism” because the picture resembles a cambrian explosion of totalitarian mini-states in which the “rent” may as well be called a “tax”.
In an-cap you have three choices, love it, leave it, or buy and change it. You can pool resources and start your own city anyplace and anytime you want.
In democracy you can:
Love it
Leave it
or buy it and change it
So, what’s the difference?
The difference is that people can force a mandate through a vote that limits your options and doesn’t necessarily allow the above 3. Of course, this is in the context of libertarian property rights. I suppose in a democracy, we could vote to kill 20% of the population and that would be OK because it was democratically decided, to hell with property rights or self-ownership.
In democracy, there is no permanent title. Your neighbors can always take your property away. This creates a disincentive to “own” and an incentive to use the political means to take someone elses property. The final stages of democracy are a race to the bottom.
What would be an alternative? I ask, because we already have this condition right now, except there are mega states which suppress mini states, and monarchy (individual authority) is for all intents and purposes, a relic.
In democracy you can:
Love it
Leave it
or buy it and change it
So, what’s the difference?
You can’t actually buy cities in democracy. They are not on the capital market.
Precisely. Now apply that to “Only we may decide what the law is” and you get the drift.
Clayton -
There might be more Medieval Times restaurants.
I was under the impression that the contemporary view is that the traditional understanding of “feudalism” is dubious. It was basically the 16th century’s misunderstanding of what society was like in 12th century, which was then reinforced by people like Marx.
Susan Reynolds book Fiefs and Vassals is considered an important work in this area. From the Amazon.com description:
Reynolds demonstrates convincingly that the ideas of fiefs and vassalage as currently understood, far from being the central structural elements of medieval social and economic relations, are a conceptual lens through which historians have focused the details of medieval life. This lens, according to Reynolds, distorts more than it clarifies. With the lens removed, the realities of medieval life will have the chance to appear as they really are: more various, more individual, more complex, and perhaps richer than has previously been supposed.
I’m not an expert in medieval history, but if this is true then it seems questionable to suggest that an anarcho-capitalist society will develop into some kind of new feudalism since “feudalism”, as is commonly interpreted, may have never existed. And, if it has never existed then fears that it will come into existence need to be supported by more than an appeal to questionable historical record.
It would be like arguing against the development of artificial intelligence because of what happened in the movie Terminator. It could a fun topic to speculate on with friends over a beer, but shouldn’t be the object of serious consideration without the proper evidence.
Thank god.