Toughest An-Cap Topic?

Economics Political Theory
41

you need light infantry, mortars/artillery, anti-armor, air-defense, tactical ballistic missiles, psychological warfare, engineers, and military intelligence apparatusi.

light infantry are highly trained and mature individual riflemen who can construct camouflaged fighting positions, deliver accurate fire out to 500 meters, patrol urban and rural area on foot, interact with your locals, and perform reconnaissance, forward obersvation, and direct fire weapons to defend territory against selected targets. infantry are the teeth and claws of any well-designed fighting force, and light infantry are trained well enough to perform independently and act in roles where they can stop a larger force with few to no casualties. see the dni archive at the project on government oversight for more details.

indirect fire weapons such as mortars and artillery allow forces that have knowledge of enemy locations to bombard them with heavier weapons. this also enables state of the art warfare techniques such as combined arms, stormtrooper assault, and indirect fire ambush.

anti-armor assets prevent your enemy from loading up into armored vehicles and driving past your riflemen and through your artillery barrage into your rear aniping out your supply lines and command post. engineers also perform this function through mines and obstacles.

air defense prevent the enemy from harassing you with aircraft all the time and dropping troops in your rear.

tactical ballistic missiles provide the long range punch so that your special reconnaissance and espionage assets can knock out high value targets before they get close.

psyops counter the information warfare campaigns of the enemy with your own battlefield rhetoric, because ideas are more powerful than violence.

engineers construct obstacles, fortifications, and supply lines. they also deal with mines and explosives.

military intelligence does intelligence collection, analysis, dissemination, and deniable operations.

you will note that no aircraft or armored vehicles are required. air defense and tactical ballistic missiles are the expensive ones. artillery is kind of expensive. engineers will probably need front end loaders and stuff, for tank traps. the point is that each countermeasure is an order of magnitude less expensive for the same effect. this even applies to psyop because, duh, austrians are the best at argumentation.

42

That’s fine on the defense, but pressuming you are nonetheless forced to concede some ground. How do you get it back in a counter-attack without mech and air support? Also, how do you synchronise the forces for the offensive?

43

Do business with Israel. If they are willing to do business with the Chinese military, then they should be willing to do business with anarchist scum.

44

For me:

Abortion, human naturity of anarchism and statism. And private defense.

45

your premier manuever warfare defense is a retreating series of killer ambushes, followed by a counterattack when the enemy is overextended. the answer to your question is that light infantry would screen along the flanks of the penetration and maintain contact (one of the fundamentals of reconnaissance-gain and maintain enemy contact) when the time is right (likely timing would be the decision of the assaulting forces, thats a maneuver warfare fundamental) they employ reconnaissance-pull rather than command-push when they select their breaches. the enemy is assaulted from unpredictable points, always where he is weakest. if the penetration is linear, you can imagine cutting them off and wiping them out, if the penetration is a bulge it might take longer.

humans can run at 12-15 mph. if we half that, meaning that guys are bounding, one up and one down, we can estimate that a tactical infantry advance against weak opposition might move at 5mph. obviously the same guys couldnt sustain that for long, but you could use unarmored vehicles in support just behind the lines.

synchronization. the best type of synchronization is event-dependent. then comes timing and signal, which each have advantages and disadvantages. with event dependent synchronization your artillery harrasses the enemy and drops smoke five minutes before they commence the rolling barrage, or whatever, and your men move behind the rolling barrage. this means you dont need a watch or radio.

forces actually dont need to attack at the same time. but if you want them to, you can have the soundof small arms fire be the signal. or, if you do a stormtrooper assault, they will all attack after the arty is over.

if youre attacking at night, the illumination or flares can be a signal. during the day, use smoke, radio, or explosives.

but if your light infantry has the training, they wont want to attack at the same time because they want to attack when the enemy in their sector is most vulnerable. this is a generalization. its going to be a tactical decision so it could change.

46

By synchonisation I didn’t mean ensuring that all your forces come into play at the same time, but that each component comes into play where and when it is the most needed. Since everyone is a free man and every unit is a free formation, in what ways do things get done? Do you have numerous councils and votes? How do you decide where to strike? If two seperate formations perform an opportunistic probing attack and are both doing well, how is it decided if the main body of the force will attempt a strike in both of these sectors, or just the one, and then which one? How do your forces resolve these questions? I know what would be the best move in such a situation in the tactical sense, what I don’t know (but do suspect) is how, in view of absence of central control, does coordination arise? How it comes to be an opportunity created by one formation gets further exploited by another? How it comes to be one formation supports the other? How it comes to be one formation relieves the other? In a centrally-directed army the answer is obvious, because they have a central coordinator, an ancap army pressumably would not.

Aren’t armored vehicles inexpensive, why would we strike them from our OOB?

47

Coordination in the economic sphere arises because you have market signals in the form of prices. Capital gets directed into enterprises where its utility will be maximized, because that is where the opportunity for profit is.

You see a big factory has a heightened need for something that goes for X dollars per unit, and if you calculate that raw materials, processing and transport will be chap enough that you can supply it to them for less than that, you do so and turn a profit.

But on the battlefield you do not have these dollar-shaped breadcrumbs littered on the ground, pointing you into a certain direction. There isn’t the possibility of economic calculation. Reinforcing an ongoing attack at a crucial moment, thus ensuring its success may win you glory, but it may never be quantified in currency.

After you’ve done it no one will come over and say it has been calculated doing so had now earned every member of your unit 750 dollars, whereas charging in the fray later that day would have only netted you 250 dollars, and standing aside would have cost you 5000.

48

This discussion has gotten quite intricate indeed…

49

in the most basic tactical level, the front lines nco controls all supporting arms and the individual infantryman fires when he perceives a threat. for employment of a sophisticated defense in depth, a theater commander is necessary. this is still going to come down to entreprenurial mindset, in that the entrepreneur is the one who risks his capital in the hands of a captain at arms. if anarchy is an idea whose time has come, captains of arms and entrepreneurs will fight and die until they succeed.

if you are referring to an anarchic militia that would organize more along the lines of a guerilla army, look up the “asian cloud battle array” I hope its on the web.

if you are referring to a professional military, individuals would have to be allowed to quit at any time. this would have a soboring effect on the command.

asian armies, and top notch units like delta force, have a process where in the after action report, anyone is allowed to critize anybody and these can be intense, emotional sessions but the troops opinion is often considered to be more important. those armies dont ask “why are we here?”

deciding where to strike is left to subordinate commanders. the higher echelons assign a sector and the squad leader decides the actual breach point.

thats a good question but the commander of the main body of the force would probably decide which way to go.

this is a problem modern military commanders face, because the face of warfare is turning this way even for state militarie the short answer is that intelligence is usually outdated by the time it gets to headquarters anyway, commanders must control their troops by training them to perform a certain way and letting them know the commander’s intent. the latter is referred to as “mission-type orders” in manuever warfare.

in training, event-initiated maneuvers are practiced, where the troops in contact learn to recognize those vulnerabilities and exploit them on their own initiative.

they dont provide strategic advantages commensurate with their cost, in my opinion. theres nothing wrong with mech force, they just tend to distract from the mindset that I prefer. I saw too many fat grunts.

50

well combat is the bizarro world version of that because deception is fundamental to combat. so its like the prices are always wrong according to a specific formula, and if you gain enough information about other sellers you can tell what the actual price is and buy them out. but if you miscalculate they take you to the cleaners.

51

The toughest question in my book is the one that I found myself asking. What can you can do about the fact that any given system benefits some more than others compared to a conceivable alternative? What do you say to people born to parents with little to no estate? There are some general irrationalities in the world, but some conflicts have no pure solution.

52

“An-cap”-like ideas seem to work whenever the use of violence costs more to the perpetrator then the prospective proceeds of violence use.

That's often the case. If I start my own band of bank robbers here in my city I will probably end up getting shot or in jail sooner or later. One can even argue that institutions seem to evolve in order to shift costs of aggression towards the perpetrators.

But that's not always the case. There are many situations where violence is very profitable to the perpetrator.

And that's why people form gangs and mafias, armies and martial aristocracies, political machines and parties. All of these are incarnations of enterprises in the business of violence distribution.

What the ancap folks don't explain is how every single form of aggression will cease to be an exploitable economic resource in their vision of the future.

I agree, violence chief use is generally to cancel out external violence, and that's why you can have defense businesses that are not necesseraly aggressors.

But the cancellation is not and won't ever be perfect (perfction is too damn costly), therefore, there will always be some business for aggressors.

And the modern state is just a very organized and efficient form of territorial aggression.

53

after several days of reflection I have a more detailed answer for you.

first of all, the question for the procurement bubbas would be “why would we buy armored vehicles and how many do we need to achieve that purpose?”

the purpose of armored vehicles is generally to protect your infantry and other troops from small arms fire and fragmentation while you move them from place to place. your advantages are protection, speed/range (mobility), and the ability to mount weapons like anti-tank missiles, heavy machine guns, and mortars. you can also carry more supplies, and do your own logistic runs in some cases.

ok, disadvantages- cost over unarmored vehicles, maintenance, detectability, and dependence. it costs money to add armor to a vehicle. it costs more than just the armor, as the suspension, drivetrain, and brakes need to be big enough to handle the added weight. this cost is factored into the purchase price of an armored vehicle. vehicles require maintenance, and armored vehicles require more maintenance, so you need more people in support, therefore your combat/support ratio of troops changes for the worse. tracked vehicles oftentimes require 8-12 man-hours of maintenance for every hour of operation. vehicles are detectable and ceteris paribus armored vics are more detectable than unarmored vehicles. this higher profile means missions often have to be carried out on foot or chances of failure are greatly increased. the unused vehicles sit around some base, necessitating security and more real estate, increasing the profile of your bases as well.

the last drawback refers to the human tendency to become accustomed to things that make jobs easier. if your guys get accustomed to using vehicles for missions, this gain in capability carries a corresponding decrease in their dismounted capabilities. then when you need to do foot patrols your guys arent as good at it.

hope this explains my point of view.

54

Malachi do you know how to build an EMP generator?

55

@OP: If I were to play devil’s advocate, I would argue that the State is actually part of human nature and, thus, a natural law position requires that the State - with all its imperfections - be incorporated into a truly complete moral/social theory. This is a formidable position, IMO, because I think it’s partly true. Over the generations, there can be no doubt that we have adapted to the State and, to the extent that we have so adapted, it has become a part of human nature.

As for how I would argue against this devil’s advocate position, I would try to set it up in terms of the primal diet folks… yes, the human digestive tract has adapted somewhat to the consumption of grains, but it is a very recent, imperfect and sub-par adaptation, and we are still best suited to the ancestral diet which was high in protein and derived the vast majority of its energy from fats, not carbs. Yes, we have adapted somewhat to the State, but it is a very recent and, thus, imperfect adaptation. We are still best suited to the tribal/village social order and we need to stop trying to jam the square peg in the round hole… the system must adapt to us, not the other way around.

If I were to play devil’s advocate not for logical consistency but for popular appeal, there is little, if anything, I would do differently from how TPTB currently press their case. We need roads. What about the children? Oh, and those god-hating terrorists. Who will save the trees… and the whales? And then there’s the woman whose life was turned around by public assistance and went on to be CEO! Etc.

Clayton -

56

no I do not, or perhaps “not yet.” why whats up?

57

Dunno, it just seems you have a lot of military know-how. I think that EMP Generators might become a very sought after device considering the increasing prevalence of drones in American domestic forces.

58

well thank you, and I do, but its mostly* on the infantry side of things. and youre right. emp is just way too high up on the tech tree for me, right now. maybe its easier than I think. but I’m not an electrician. or a magnetician.

  • I can speak on strategy and warfighting because those things are universal and infantry is the tip of the spear so its a lot easier to separate truth from fiction in this context from that (infantry) perspective.
59

I think the toughest an-cap topic by far is “how to get there from here”.

60

“I think the toughest an-cap topic by far is “how to get there from here”.”

Obvious answer:

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