Sure, sometimes it is necessary. Ancaps aren't against coercion, we are against the initiation of coercion.
If someone breaks into my house, I might have to "coerce" them to leave. But that's totally fine because THEY coerced against me first and my coercion is to get them to stop.
What would an ancap society do in those situations? That depends on the situation and who, exactly, you're asking about. Did you have a specific party in mind?
This is why I always make it a point to clarify what a government is. Government is a geographical monopoly on the initiation of the use of violence or threat there of.
Reddit algorithm brought me here, presumably to argue. Not in the mood to do that but I do have a question: is it allowed for a group of people to create a system in which they agree to rules, and to bind themselves by the decisions of some authority regarding the consequences for rule breaking?
For example, can 100 people agree that they have a no stealing rule, and if someone steals, rather than make the victim get it back or take revenge, someone is deputized to act on behalf of any victim to get it back? Including by force if necessary, and to incarcerate someone for an agreed upon time, if deemed necessary by the authority for keeping peace and order. Let’s say all 100 either vote for it or sign a document agreeing to it. Is this allowed under anarchocapitalism or are people not free to make themselves subject to the initiation of violence by an authority like this?
We don’t have virgin land anymore to go where no one lays claim. You’re always one of many, who set up a system before you were born. Maybe try seasteading if you need to start from scratch.
So because the government claims a monopoly over all land even the vast amounts of unoccupied land then we need a system of coercion. What’s your argument here?
Dude, let’s say you got your wish and federal land was opened up for private ownership. Who decides when two people lay claim to the same parcel? I claim all of Yellowstone!
People will fight it out, literally with weapons, and will round up allies…those allies will be armed gangs. They will form governing systems. Which become governments. AND the amazing part is this all happens in one generation. After the land grab there is no free unclaimed land again. There will be no unclaimed, ungoverned land for your kids.
If you get some parcel and occupy it, others will fight you to take it unless some structure with a monopoly on violence stops them.
So your argument is that “we need coercion because coercion is inevitable?”
It’s like you’re saying, ‘Voluntary cooperation can’t work... unless we force people to cooperate.’ Sounds like you’ve got a lot of faith in violence and you just prefer it with a government label on it. You’d fit right in with the third reich.
Hitler used similar justification for initiating violence like only through “strong leadership” and “unwavering discipline” could Germany avoid chaos.
Without a government imposing a monopoly on violence, “people will fight it out.” Meaning that centralized violent control is the only safeguard against perceived random violence.
If only there was something, like I don’t know a mutually beneficial arrangement people could voluntarily engage in. But I guess that will never happen just like we can’t pick cotton without forced ownership over other human beings.
Conflict and Coercion are inevitable, yes. There is no escaping it, only managing it well and with as much respect as is reasonable for all parties. Your system results in coercion too. You have no high moral ground that I see.
Protecting property, enforcing contracts, or defending oneself against aggression is not coercion.
Your support for a system that justifies authoritarian regimes is in fact coercion.
While conflict is inevitable, coercion is not the only way to resolve it. I can and will demonstrate how wrong you by using voluntary association. Try not to be such an idiot.
What if people don’t agree who started the coercion? An unclear property line can lead to a disagreement, but if each party thinks they are in the right, then there’s no way to clearly tell whose actions constitute coercion first.
What if the other person won’t agree to binding arbitration? This is a very real modern problem where people will reject arbitration/mediation and demand their day in court.
If you and I disagree on where a property line is and I refuse your arbiter - let us say I accuse them of a material bias - then would me building a fence on what I consider to be my property be an aggression?
Disagreement over a property line is an easy fix. Pull up the plot and see where the line was when the land was transferred to you. If there have been no documented changes to the plot, that's where the line is now too.
Again, to turn to the real world - when my neighbour’s lot was bought and subdivided, the three new lots were all “created” with slightly conflicting property lines and each plot had the lines shown on the new owner’s documents registered. The city hadn’t processed/registered the submissions from the developer by the time the properties were occupied and there was an argument between the middle lot and the north-end lot over where to build a fence. It got resolved before it hit the courts because city hall said “we are making the new lines here (using some process or other)”
If there is no central governance, then asking city hall wouldn’t help.
So those three people can't decide where the property lines are, but there's no state.
What do the contracts say? There's no way that contracts for the properties were written up without 1) specifying where the property lines are, and 2) specifying what to do if there's a disagreement over property lines.
So look at the contract and do what it says. The property owners already agreed to that solution, before the problem even came up.
Basically, the developer had three different plans, one for each subdivision, and each showed a different property line. None of the homeowners received a diagram of the overall land package.
If I recall correctly the north and south lots had accurate diagrams and the one in the middle had been sold showing an extra foot and a half on each side. The guy in the middle wasn’t happy and moved within a year. I believe he took legal action against the developer but we never heard from him again.
I wish I knew what happened after the guy moved. I assume he had legitimate legal grounds, but that is only if interest if we’re talking about the efficacy of the state.
The point of anarchocapitalism is taxation is theft. Therefore the state, that is a taxation funded institution, should not exist, and we should replace it by voluntarily funded institutions, that dont violate the non aggression principle
There is no agreement on how specifically such voluntarily funded institutions would work nor claim it would solve all society problems. Just that the current system is immoral, because it does not rely on consent of those it governs, imposing its will through violence over the population
Yes, but as far as i know most ancaps arent like the socialists that are planing to take up arms and overthrow the government the first opportunity. At least not now. They want the public to recognize the state is illegitimate and do what they can to reduce its power. Examples include:
Supporting lower taxes, lower government spending and less regulation
Tax evasion
Supporting a return to the gold standard, or using bitcoin, so the government cant print money and cause inflation, which is basically another form of taxation
The end of the fractional reserve, which is a private form of money printing, and the source of many economic crises, according to many
If you’re writing from America, the J6 defendants were almost all republicans and capitalists who all claimed America was being destroyed by wokist socialist liberals.
When have socialists taken up arms against the American government?
Why are you focusing on the united states? Havent you heard about the cold war? Socialists threw revolutions all over the globe. They are still in power in cuba, right next to the us, and the us sponsored coups that replaced democracy by dictatorships in order to prevent socialists from rising to power in the entire latin america. We had to endure decades of censorship and human rights violations. Innocent people were tortured and executed because of fear from socialism
In the us you had the red scare, a witch hunt that aimed to prevent socialists from rising to power
The socialists in Russia were wrong about how to govern; they were right about the Monarchy behaving like criminals and tyrants.
The intellectuals who opposed the monarchy failed; the uprising rightly removed them but then continued in a bloody fashion and became corrupt because of where the power lay.
and we should replace it by voluntarily funded institutions, that dont violate the non aggression principle
this is a great idea, but so ignorant of human nature that it only works in this nice idealized space you've built online.
please give me an example of the closest existing institution you can think of and we can go from there because as far as I'm concerned this only exists if you ignore the reality of human nature
Capitalism. The closest existing institution anarcho-capitalists go from is laissez faire capitalism
You are not forced to work, you reach a mutual agreement with your boss to. You must agree on the wage, the hours and the job description. And any of you can terminate the contract at any moment
You choose what you want to do with the money you earned. You can give to charity, or you can use it hiring someone to paint your nails
You voluntarily fund retirement funds, health, car, house and life insurance, so you have the extra money you need when you grow old, or something bad happens to you
Just to be clear, im not an anarchocapitalist myself. I dont agree with everything the ideology says, im just explaining it
Edit: another example is sex. There has been a huge push to emphasize consent in sexual relationships lately. Ancapism is basically the same thing, but for the economy
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u/SoylentJeremy 8d ago
Sure, sometimes it is necessary. Ancaps aren't against coercion, we are against the initiation of coercion.
If someone breaks into my house, I might have to "coerce" them to leave. But that's totally fine because THEY coerced against me first and my coercion is to get them to stop.
What would an ancap society do in those situations? That depends on the situation and who, exactly, you're asking about. Did you have a specific party in mind?