Why I am an Anarcho-Capitalist

This day in age, a significant portion of society, perhaps more than the days of enlightenment and the real take off of free thinking and rationalism are self described supporters of the free market, this is true even in spite of the unrelenting and constant barrage and demonization of those who propose the motion that a free market mechanism would provide a superior system to the one that we have at the moment. However a great many of those who are “supporters” of a true free market economy often couple their “pro” free market statements with contradictions such as “ but we need government to provide physical security” or to “control and stabilize currency”

Generally those who align themselves with the Minarchist school of thought wish to assign government the control of the most important goods and services, many in favour of government monopoly on the production of money and nearly all support a government enforced monopoly on law and protection.

This isn’t to say that people who find themselves advocating for a minimalistic government with minimal interventionist policies rather than a full blown anarcho-capitalistic systems are less capable to comprehend the nuances of the free market, nearly all anarcho capitalists at some some point or another found themselves compromising without realising, the long term benefits of anarcho-capitalism.

As a general introduction I would like to provide a few basic economic principles that counter the assumption that government intervention is desirable

-Government as we know it is a prime example of monopoly, and anyone who has read an AS economic textbook would know that in the long run, monopolies generally tend to lead to higher prices and a poorer quality of good/service

-The nature of the free market mechanism is such that it is constantly allocating resources to genuine consumer wants and desires, regardless of the frequency of change of consumer preferences

-In contrast, government cannot compete with the efficiency of the allocation of resources that a free market mechanism provides, as Ludwig von Mises explains in Bureaucracy. Without the concept of profit or loss in their choices, and thus those in positions to allocate resources do not incur the cost or benefits of their choices. A government organisation has no idea what to produce, in what quantities, in what location, using what methods. Every decision is arbitrary. Essentially, when it comes to government provision of anything, there is a compelling case to be made that we should expect poor quality, high prices and a wasteful allocation of resources

There are many other reasons that the market (voluntary interactions between individuals/businesses/charities/) deserves consideration over the current state system, and why we ought not assume the state is indispensable without first seriously investigating to what degree human ingenuity and the economic harmonies of the market can get by without it, for example:

-The state acquires its revenue by aggressing and threatening peaceful individuals

-The state encourages the masses to believe there are two sets of moral rules, one set that is heavily perpetuated by state education, that involves the abstention from violence and theft, and another set of morals that applies only to government, which alone may aggress against peaceful individuals

-As somebody who has been both publicly (private) and state educated (the state has a 93% market share in education) I believe that the state encourages the belief that the state’s existence is morally legitimate and justified through its so called benevolence, and the world of voluntary exchange to be morally suspect, and has demonised the free market to the point where public perception is that true capitalists are selfish psychopathic individuals who hate the poor and disabled

-The government sector is dominated by concentrated interests that lobby for special benefits at the expense of the general public, whereas in the free market system can only succeed by pleasing the general public

- Governments teach their subjects to wave flags and sing songs in their honor and glory, which in turn contributes to the idea that resisting expropriations and enormities is treason

The list goes on indefinitely

It is understandable that people may not understand how law, which they assume must provided in top down fashion, could emerge absent the in the state, although there is plenty of good historical work demonstrating precisely this. But government had historically monopolised the production of any good or service, we would hear objections to the privatisation of that good or service. For instance, if government had monopolised the production of lightbulbs, we’d be told that the private sector could never possibly produce light bulbs. The private sector won’t produce speciality bulbs with only a limited market, since there would be little profit in that. The private sector will produce dangerous, exploding bulbs. And so on.

Since we have lived with private lightbulbs all along, these objections seem laughable to us. No one would want any of the scenarios that hypothetical critics warns us about

The fact is, competing sources of law have been common in the history of Western civilization. When the kings of old began to monopolize the legal function, they did so not out of some benevolent desire to establish order (which already existed) but because they collected fees whenever cases were heard in the royal courts. Naïve public public public interest theories of government, which no sensible person believes in an other context, do not suddenly become persuasive here

Murray N. Rothbard was fond of citing Franz Oppenheimer, who identified two ways of acquiring wealth. The economic means to wealth involves enriching oneself by voluntary exchange: creating some good or service for which other people willingly pay. The political means, said Oppenheimer, involves “the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others.”Murray N. Rothbard was fond of citing Franz Oppenheimer, who identified two ways of acquiring wealth. The economic means to wealth involves enriching oneself by voluntary exchange: creating some good or service for which other people willingly pay. The political means, said Oppenheimer, involves “the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others.”

How do those of us in the Rothbardian camp view the state? Not as the indispensable provider of law and order, or security, or other so-called “public goods.” (The whole theory of public goods is shot through with fallacies anyway.) The state, rather, is a parasitic institution that lives off the wealth of its subjects, concealing its anti-social, predatory nature beneath a public-interest veneer. It is as Oppenheimer said, the organisation of the political means to wealth. “The state is that organisation in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given area; in particular, it is the only organisation in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion. While other individuals or institutions obtain their income by production of goods and services and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of these goods and services to others, the state obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of prison.Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the state generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other actions of its subjects. The state provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property, it renders certain, secure, and relatively “peaceful” the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society. Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the state. The state has never been created by a “social contract”, it has alwasy been born in conquest and exploitation” wrote Rothbard.

Now if this description of the state is true, and I think we have good reason to believe it is, is merely limiting it possible or even desirable? Before dismissing the possibility outright, ought we at least to consider whether we might be able to live without it altogether? Might the free market, the arena of voluntary cooperation, really be the great engine of civilization we otherwise know it to be?

Experience has taught us that “limited government” is an unstable equilibrium. Governments have no interest in staying limited, when they can expand their power and wealth by instead increasing their power.

Unlike minarchism, anarcho-capitalism makes no unreasonable expectations of the public. The minarchist has to figure out how to persuade the public that even though the state has the raw power to redistribute wealth and fund cute projects everyone likes, it really shouldn’t. The minarchist has to explain, one at a time, the problems with each and every conceivable state intervention, while in the meantime the intellectual class, the universities, the media, and the political class combine against him to convey the very opposite message.

Instead of requiring the fruitless task of teaching everyone what’s wrong with farm subsidies, what’s wrong with Federal Reserve bailouts, what’s wrong with the military-industrial complex, what’s wrong with price controls — in other words, instead of trying to teach everyone the equivalent of three degrees courses in economics, history, and political philosophy — the anarcho-capitalist society demands of the public only that it acknowledge the basic moral ideas common to just about everyone: do not harm innocent people, and do not steal. Everything I believe follows from these simple principles.

There’s a joke that’s been going around: what’s the difference between a minarchist and an anarchist? Answer: six months. If you value principle, consistency, and justice, and oppose violence, parasitism, and monopoly, it may not take you even that long. Start reading, and see where these ideas take you.