I’m trying to find out what principles determines if a person is an anarcho-capitalist. The most obvious would be opposition to the state in all its forms, because taxation is force. But after reading the mises.org forums for a while, I’ve also heard that it would also mean supporting seccession all the way down to the individual level, secession without having to move (although I’m unsure if that only applies to certain miniarchists rather than anarcho-capitalists). My only background in political philosophy is the Objectivist role of government, which I agree with on some level, but also see no reason that private companies can’t take care of all the things a voluntarily-funded government would do (i.e. protecting rights).
Non-aggression principle.
Is that really all there is to it? I don’t see it to be necessarily true that a government violates rights if it does not use taxation and it explicitly protects rights with a properly defined constitution. I can certainly imagine a minarchist supporting NAP. Or is a minarchist who supports the NAP just inconsistently applying it?
Yup. Simple enough for anyone to grasp.
How will a government without taxation fund itself?
The NAP leads to other conclusions, like individual sovereignty and individual secession. How will the government adjudicate over people who do not recognize its authority?
Yeah to the latter.
A government would use donations. A government could request a certain amount of money (like a membership, even). Like a private company would.
People who do not recognize government’s authority do not need to participate in any of its functions. They could even declare themselves not part of it and live their life however they want. They may inadvertently be helped by a government if someone violates their rights, because no government would want a rights violator running free. Those who do participate in a rational government would be glad to know that a government will only “do something” when rights have been violated. Monopoly on force is only maintained because people living under its jurisdiction agree to not form another entity that will deal with rights violators beyond self defense measures.
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Monopoly on force is a violation of rights. You can’t claim a monopoly on anything and still claim to support natural rights.
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Without a monopoly, and with people not needing to participate, or fund, or accept the government, that is not a monopoly. You have just described anarchy. The anarchistic term for such an organization is a private defense agency or PDA.
What is the difference in the government you propose and a private company? It sounds like you proposing a super company who would offer a bundle of services to anyone willing to pay for it like a cable company does with phone service, Internet, and TV. Instead your government would bundle roads, a defense agency, public parks eta. Is it really practical for one company to offer such a wide variety of goods and services that really have nothing to do with one another?
With a government monoply on force who would defend an individuals rights from the government?
How can this be assured? What happens if a band of individuals decide the government provided defenses is inefficiant? Are they free to protect themselves or will they be forced to continue using the government provided defense service?
I would imagine if the government began to actively violate rights (as all existing governments that I know of do), then you combat it like anything else that violates rights; denouncing it and then developing your own territory elsewhere to actually get away from it (If someone is trying to violate my rights, I wouldn’t even want to be near them). Such a situation would be an emergency, and you would not respond to it like normal, day-to-day situations. The same way you’d protect yourself from a company that may for some reason suddenly begin arbitrarily killing and imprisoning people before they realized what happened (blitzkrieg style). The only way to prevent this is voluntary funding, but if it does happen by some unlikely “perfect storm” of events, you would probably need to take radical measures (like a revolution even).
The fact that I do say “like a private company would” probably indicates that I think that a government is either unnecessary (which means there isn’t a particular reason for it to exist), or I"m mislabeling what I am thinking of. Protect themselves from what though? Self-defense would always be justified, so if a government did protect rights, it would allow self-defense. If you don’t like the provided service, then you would declare yourself as not part of the government and try to run your own instead, or stop funding it until it is fixed. I might simply use the term government because most people imply it to be the “thing that protects rights”, as do I.
Just to be clear, “my government” would only have a police, military and court system. Nothing else. Not roads or public parks, that’s for sure. The “best PDA” would have all of those systems integrated (police without a court would be pretty unstable) through some agreement with other companies or as a single company.
to be libertarian compatible your government must tolerate competition. to the extent that it does this, it is just a private business like anything else, and theres nothing particularly ‘governmenty’ about it, aside from that its business touches products and services that were historically monopolised by the state. to the extent that it doesnt do this, it is evil and unjustifiable. so you probably wont justify it. heres hoping [;)]
Denouncing an aggressor and moving on doesn’t seem realistic to me. Like you said all governments violate individual rights. So if you simply pack up your bags and move to a different area each time a government violates your rights you will be living life as nomad.
Protect themselves from the government. Without competition in the area of defense the government will offer a poor quality product at monopoly prices. If individuals have the choice to choose between a host of defense agencies and the government how is the government different from the other defense agencies. Why do you call it by the special name of “government”
What you are describing here is completely legitimate but I wouldn’t call it a government.
Again why do companies that provide these services merit the special name of government?
That primarily is the reason why I could not completely understand the Objectivist conception of government (although I do agree with everything else about Objectivism, but that’s a story for another day), since it really just seemed like an “easy to swallow” understanding of a PDA so people don’t completely freak out that everything is privatized.
Objectivist governments are different from private defense agencies in as much as they hold a monopoly on the use of force (albeit usually with deferences in the form of gun rights) and on the formation of legislation.
Precisely. In talking to people over the past few months I have found that a lot of them understand anarchy to mean chaos rather then thinking of it as serious political theory. Many people think a world absenct of government is a world absent of law and this is simpily not the case. The government isn’t the glue keeps society of falling into total ruin. Rather it is a testement to how much people is willing to take in the name of order.