Dear Anarchists

For another example, look at how the various independent nation states interact on this "anarchistic" globe. America and Russia are both strong enough "security agencies" to dominate all others, yet they still find it in their interest to limit (at least somewhat) aggression.

Two very fundamental properties of the natural world suggesting anarchy won't devolve into feudalism, is that it is always easier to militarily defend than to attack, and that people demonstrably work harder and more efficiently when they themselves see more of the gain from doing so.

The former will tend to impoverish those "security agencies" bent on territorial expansion vis-a-vis those not, suggesting their efforts will soon succumb to lack of resources.

The latter suggests any region under feudal control will fall behind competing regions not under feudal control. Increasingly over time. Inevitably then, to the extent that even the feudal overlords themselves will no longer be better off than regular Joes living freely. And since anarchy by definition does not limit procurement of military resources, how long could a self proclaimed feudal lord expect to be around in such circumstances?

One unresolved issue I have with anarchism, is that most proponents seems to assume a limitless and timeless, almost static, external environment, or at least one that cannot suddenly disappear. I have never really gotten a good answer to what will happen when every Joe can build as many earth melting nukes as he wants. And with an 8 billion and rising number of Joes, I would think at least some accidents are bound to occur. But I have to admit I am not the most well studied in anarchistic literature, so there could well be something I am missing. Any anarchists here have a good answer for that?

You state,

"1) Once you are fully Anarcho-Capitalist you would hire agencies to "take" property and agencies to "protect" it. If I disagree with you over who owns a piece of property -- you'll hire yours and I'll hire mine and there is no-authority that can stop us.

2) Courts are "hired" too -- So, if I don't agree with your court of arbitration; there is no authority to settle the issue.

3) Anarcho-Capitalism works in the short-run. Public views the proposed exchange -- A private mediator is agreed upon -- and the Transaction takes place. The contract would allow the mediator to have oversight until the transaction ends.
However, if the "property" involves land -- how do you grant under-water river rights, or on-land-top river or stream systems? What about under-ground minerals. The escavation could poison under-ground water -- without a Gov't Court system how do you "force" the correct action short of hiring a private protection agency (to whom you answer by hiring your own). War."

Taking your claims one at a time:

1) Such clashes would be minimal in an anarchist society, as Rothbard has explained, because the street owner would have his guards, the storekeeper his, the homewner his, etc. Realistically, in the everyday world there would be little room for direct clashed between police agencies. But suppose two neighbors get in a fight and each calls his own (and different) police company. It would pointless, irrational and physically self-destructive to for the two police forces to shoot it out in the street. Instead, every police company, to remain in business at all, would announce as vital part of its services, the use of private courts or arbitrators to decide who is wrong.

2) Say person A accuses person B of robbing him and that person A is a cutomer of Court X while person B employ Court Y. And suppose the two courts eahc find in favor of their respective client. How to resolve this? Will their respective Marshalls shoot it out in the street? No. As with the police, such behavior would be irrational and self-destructive. Therefore, an essestial part of any court's service would be to provide an appeals process. Thus, every court would agree to abide by the result of an appeals procedure, decided by a voluntary arbitrator. Any court that refused to abide by an agreed upon appellate decision would quickly go out of business as it could not provide the dispute resolution it was employed to provide. Of course, the parties could agree to more than one appeal but it seems reasonable that once the same decision is arrived at by two courts the decision should be binding.

3) Your concerns about water rights don't apply. There already exists a great body of law addressing rights to watercourses, groundwater, mineral rights. As long as such law is based on principles of objective law and upholds property rights in such matters, how do you see a problem with free market courts ruling on such matters. Your response of "War" is unwarranted, as explained in answer to 2), above. I submit that a free people will work out methods to peacefully handle disputes in the absence of monopoly government.

You clearly have been talking to the wrong "Rothbardian scholars" as the case for competing courts and police has been concretized – by the individualist anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker, over 80 years ago, by Murray Rothbard, and by a host of other less prominent theorists. I personally have on several of these Anarchism threads referred readers to www.freedomainradio.com where anyone can obtain free downloads of Stefan Molyneux's books, Everyday Anarchism and Practical Anarchism. These books provide much more detail than what I have here provided on exactly how Dispute Resolution Organizations (DRO's) in an anarchist society can handle all contractual and criminal conflicts in a much more efficent manner than do the current government monopoly courts. Molyneax also has hundreds of free podcasts that go into great detail as to how and why an anarchist society is far superior to minarchism. You've been on these threads a long time. Surely you're aware of these sources. Have you referred to them?

You state,

"Remember the definition of Anarchism is No-Authority -- which requires Voluntarism to resolve conflicts and protection must be 100% reliant on Self (not others -- otherwise you develop gangsterism; which is what those competing protection agencies would become)."

This is just plain silly. Free market anarchism does not rely on "100% reliance on Self". While voluntary dispute resolution is admirable, that is not a requirement of anarchism. We simply oppose the existence and ill effects of government characterized by granting itself a legal monoploy on the use of force. As to your assertion that free market dispute resolution agencies would degenerate into "gangsterism", that claim has been exploded in related threads in the past, and I, in fact, demonstrated why it is not tenable in an earlier post within this very thread. Perhaps you could take time to read it and respond. I, at least, explained why the claim that free market police will become gang warfare is absurd. You have not demonstrated why it is valid. You simply make an unsubstantiated assertion.

The rest of your post regarding "profit drivers" and consumer-based anarchy" I find confused. Contra your claim that to "maintain a free-society you must not protect workers or producers (owners) -- You must only protect the consumer" I will simply say that that to maintain a free society there must be 1) wide-spread acceptance of the truth that freedom is preferable to government control, 2) private property and 3) objective law based upon principles of liberty that will uphold property rights.

marlow

This is your best post that I have read EVER Octo. Its fantastic!

I think one important point is that in an anarchist society, the richer you are the more power you have. I have always said that the biggest flaw in capitalism is its inability to avoid rewarding its enemies. The best capitalists seem to often be the biggest enemies of freedom(though a fair share of them are James Taggart clones, to be sure).That is not necessarily true in the minarchist society, which allows for (good) the individual person, ideology and philosophy to play a role in power struggles and (bad) creates an industry of lobbyists relative in size to government power.