Time and time again, I see fellow anarchists avoid discussions by claiming that they don’t have to explain themselves because they are morally superior or some other ridiculous excuse. Let me put this to rest right now. I’m not saying that anarcho-capitalists are not morally superior. They most certainly are. But let’s take a look at the world in which we live here.
If an anarchist cannot explain how their system would work in every situation asked of them down to every last scrutinizing detail then they would certainly not be able to come up with a viable business plan for a protection agency / insurance company to present to potential investors. And if they cannot do that, then there will be no market anarchy because no one would set up the required commercial institutions to make it happen.
Investors don’t invest in something because it sounds warm and fuzzy or because it’s morally superior. They invest in something because it is well thought out and explained expertly in every detail. The old argument that the free market will figure it out won’t work anymore (nor did it ever work). Would you go to an investor and say, “Well, I don’t have a business plan but don’t worry, the free market will work it out.”? No, you wouldn’t, because they would respond in the same way that a minarchist responds on these boards.
There’s nothing stopping anyone from creating market anarchy right now. Lloyds already does all kinds of weird custom insurance contracts and is currently set up to handle this type of business. All anyone would have to do is come to them with a well thought out business plan and be able to explain how any situation would work and they could get a business like this started in some place where there wasn’t a government or where the government had little power (like maybe Somalia). So you see, you’d need some sort of codified set of rules, procedures, ideal agreements, protocol for various situations, etc. for an investor to look at before anything like this would happen. They won’t do it now because it would be a huge R&D cost to come up with the initial contracts, rules, agreements, etc. and they would see it as a high risk of not being a viable option since they would be starting from scratch. These things need to be figured out before a company will get started. They will not get figured out after a company gets started because they need to know these things before they start. That is where these discussions come in about whether or not this situation or that situation will work out under market anarchy.
Here’s the bottom line:
If a person’s goal is to see market anarchy used in the real world, then the burden of proof is on them because that is simply what it takes to make that goal a reality. Anything else is just a mental exercise of little importance.
Bottom line: the statist is the one claiming that only the state can provide some services, i.e. that some services can never be provisioned on the market. It is incumbent upon them to back their claim. Period.
Have you never worked for a corporation? Every move is carefully planned. You are proven wrong in this particular context hundreds of thousands of times a day all over the world as companies plan their next move.
Perhaps you are talking about planning out every single transaction that would happen or something crazy like this? That would not be relevent to this conversation but it’s my closest guess to what you are trying to say.
People’s actions influence the market, but the market also influences people’s actions.
You cant sit there and say “The free market will look like X.” You might plan to employ a certain business model, but who’s to say you won’t go bankrupt on the first day?
Everyone in the world can fabricate their idea of what anarchy will be but actualized anarchy will not actually look like any of them. It will look all of them.
Proof of what ? There are more than three hundred years of libertarian theory showing why violence doesn’t work. Industry and science have not been planned by politicians - civilization just grew despite the countless crimes committed by state officials. What’s left to ‘prove’ ?
This is absolutely true and when a business plans their next move, they can never be certain that it will work or go completely according to plan but they plan anyway. The point is not to predict exactly what will happen. The point is to have some kind of a plan - anything. The plan will be adjusted and things will turn out differently but there has got to be some initial plan. If no one can come up with any initial plan, then it never happens. Eventually someone will have to come up with a plan in order to implement market anarchy - it’s not the other way around no matter how much some might want it to be that way. This is why all these situations have to be addressed before market anarchy becomes a reality.
Those that say you can’t plan anything, do you really think a business will just say, “Well, it will all work out somehow. We’ll just do it on faith even though we don’t know how to handle this list of situations.”? I have to assume this is what you guys think until I learn different. And this is NOT the way businesses are run.
Proof that solid explanations exist of how to handle all the various situations that people come up with - that’s what. And yes, I agree that violence doesn’t work and that market anarchy is the optimum solution but that is not what this debate is about.
It’s erroneous to approach anarchism as if it is proposing a singular system or plan. It’s anarchism, not archism. Anarchists do not claim to be able to perfectly predict what the outcome of a spontaneous order will be. The anarchist isn’t necessarily making a positive claim, they are questioning the statist’s positive claim of the legitimacy and necessity of the state. Anarchism can be seen as a form of skepticism towards politics. The person in the position of being a skeptic does not face a burden of proof, as they aren’t really making positive assertions in such a role.
The statist makes positive assertions such as the necessity of the state, the legitimacy of the state, the exclusive ability of the state to provide certain services, the effectiveness of legislation, the utility of the political process, and so on. The statists cannot reasonably shield themselves from having to face the burden of proof for such assertions. The anarchist denies and invalidates such assertions with cold logic and consistancy. They do not propose a singular plan for the world or a large territory, as that would defeat the entire purpose.
The idea of expecting a philosophy to solve all problems everywhere in all times and places doesn’t make much sense, since no philosophy can pass such standards. It’s not more of an argument against anarchism than it is against statism. The anarchist does not necessarily claim utopia, only optimality. What is truly utopian is the idea that a political or economic model can possibly solve all problems or be universally implemented.
Anarchy should not be seen as a system that needs to be implemented since anarchy is the natural state of society an the only thing that’s needed to obtain it is to remove the coercive forces that restrain society.
Statism is a system and its implementation need positive action. Anarchism is just removing that unnatural system.
As I have already said, the point is not to plan what exact event will happen on some exact date. You certainly don’t do that in a business model. I’m not quite sure what you mean by “society model” but I imagine you didn’t mean that exact events are planned for exact dates in that either. So you’re comment does not make any logical sense.
Funny, there have been many countries that have gotten rid of their government and been in a state of anarchy for quite a while and yet no fancy insurance companies emerged. Anarchy is the default state but ancap is not. Somalia has been an anarchy for quite some time but it is NOT a market anarchy. No one would want to live in that country right now. They need protection agencies, etc. but none are magically appearing.
Yes, it would be. I am not. I’m talking about a prototype not some absolute. For example, a question might be: how are people protected from crime. An answer would be: “One way of doing this might be to have protection agencies that have an agreement to pay the victim restitution if a crime occurs. They then have the incentive to prevent this from happening and go after the people that do commit crimes.” You get more questions from there that can be answered similarly.
Notice how I didn’t say that this is the only possible way this can be handled. Notice how I didn’t name any exact times or locations. Nearly everyone on this thread has said that what I just did in the preceding paragraph was impossible, yet I did it, there it is. You can get more and more detailed from there with more and more questions. After a while, someone would have to come up with a pretty deep, complicated question to find some rare situation that may not be covered. At that point, the system looks viable on paper and someone can run with it.
Philosophical arguments as to why anarchists don’t have to answer questions is irrelevent. I’m talking about a practical matter here. In the real world, you can’t have ancap unless an investor has a plan or prototype or something to go off where they at least have possible examples of how different situations could be handled. If you are interested in ancap actually being implemented then all the questions do have to be answered - if not by you, then by someone else. If it’s just some fun little intellectual game then it doesn’t really matter if anybody figures anything out.