Some honest questions for proponents of #anarchism, specifically of the individualistic sort (ie, #anarchocapitalism):
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What do you make of the lack of [significant experiments in the real world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities) (note that most examples on that page are collectivist societies, communist #libertarians, etc — not experiments where all property is private)?
I get that a modern nation doesn't sell a region or a province to a group of like-minded individuals to let them live and interact as they please, and that even if that were possible, such community would still depend on the “outer world” for lots of important things.
Still, isn't is suspicious that there aren't at least a bunch of long-lasting, functioning libertarian experiments where members voluntarily ditch outer courts and laws, shun subsidies and quotas of any kind, rely on an inner grey market to conceal income and wealth as much as possible, rely solely on voluntary agreements among them, etc?
With so many passionate supporters worldwide, why isn't that happening, at least to the extent it's feasible within the framework of existing jurisdictions?
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@tripu
> Still, isn’t is suspicious that there aren’t at least a bunch of long-lasting, functioning libertarian experiments where members voluntarily ditch outer courts and laws, shun subsidies and quotas of any kind, rely on an inner grey market to conceal income and wealth as much as possible, rely solely on voluntary agreements among them, etc?
>
> With so many passionate supporters worldwide, why isn’t that happening, at least to the extent it’s feasible within the framework of existing jurisdictions?
short answer: because the much larger body of statists send people with guns having no problem with shooting others for not participating.
if you need a central enforcing thing you have just another oppressive system.
e.g. with private streets you need a contract to use them which may include "needs a certificate and insurance". those things aren't unfixable problems, they often only appear this way as we only know how it's done currently.
mutualist cooperations where people have ownership worked pretty well in the past.
anything without ownership ("anarcho"-syndicalism/communism) requires coercion and is not anarchism.
you really only need ownership, universal non violence and _if_ you are attacked by someone not adhering to that the right for proper self defense. everything else follows from that.
I don't understand your answer.
To reiterate: what exactly is preventing a group of hundreds or thousands of like-minded anarchocapitalists from implementing their ideas in a small closed community (within the boundaries of the law imposed by the parent jurisdiction)?
They could trade among themselves using zortskilfs as currency; hire, save and invest using zortskilfs; and convert to/from USD only when they absolutely need to interact with the outer world (eg to buy goods they can't produce internally). All that economic activity would be hidden from fiscal authorities, thus tax-free, since they all reject the authority of outer fiscal authorities and courts of law and nobody would denounce or sue their comrades.
Members in need of, say, a doctor, a teacher or a driving instructor would use the services of other members (regardless of whether they have the degree or are licenced to work).
Comrades who suffered illness or injury would rely on inner mechanisms (charity, a mutual insurance company) or simply resign to their bad fate — anything but relying on social services, well-fare, subsidies, etc.
Members could have guns at will. As long as they're used only internally and other members don't sue or snitch, that should be OK for all.
Violence, trespassing, theft, etc within the community would be handled internally (private court, fellow arbitrator, etc), not via State or Federal law, public courts or prisons, etc.
Why aren't they doing all that?
@tripu
> To reiterate: what exactly is preventing a group of hundreds or thousands of like-minded anarchocapitalists from implementing their ideas in a small closed community (within the boundaries of the law imposed by the parent jurisdiction)?
the boundaries of the parent jurisdication, starting with taxation continuing with other laws about what you can own etc.. you'd have a constant drain of value without anything in return because of taxation.
also, they'll find a reson to fuck with you. no guns for you. no drugs for you. no explosives for you. no distilling alcohol. no growing of tobacco.
after all, what would happen if people notice that anarchy works? can't allow that!
_but_ for a limited amount of time and in limited ways these things work rather well. i went to small/medium music festivals where people were motivated to work together and not be a trouble to others and it worked maybe only because there is much money put into it upfront? still nice!
> _“You’d have a constant drain of value without anything in return because of taxation”_
Taxes would be avoided to a large extent if such community worked as I explained, obscuring much of inner economic activity. (Some taxes are evaded _outside_ libertarian utopias, after all.)
You say “drain” of value. What about the alleged increase in value (as per libertarian ideas)? What about all the things members could do on their own, and with each other, in such a community?
> _“They’ll find a reson to fuck with you”_
The onus is on defenders of #anarchocapitalism to prove that all those things have been tried in libertarian communities, and how _exactly_ the State or outer authorities stopped all that.
I get back to my short list of examples above.
> _“For a limited amount of time and in limited ways these things work rather well”_
If libertarian ideas work only within the very narrow confines of a music festival (a couple of days or a week at most, with only a few hundred quids per person at stake, limited to very specific activities), then it's further proof that libertarian ideas wouldn't work for society.
@tripu
> The onus is on defenders of #anarchocapitalism to prove that all those things have been tried in libertarian communities, and how exactly the State or outer authorities stopped all that.
why does the idea of people being just left alone need a proof? hell, we are on a science instance, for things like mutualism or voluntaryism you literally only need the few principles listed in my previous post.
to defend the existence of a state with armed goons coercing you into obedience you need many more assumptions in place.
i think it's rather self evident that the idea which requires fewer assumptions about the reality and humans is more likely to be correct.
> Taxes would be avoided to a large extent if such community worked as I explained, obscuring much of inner economic activity. (Some taxes are evaded outside libertarian utopias, after all.)
>
> You say “drain” of value. What about the alleged increase in value (as per libertarian ideas)? What about all the things members could do on their own, and with each other, in such a community?
you have taxes which make these things hard like property tax etc. to pay these taxes, you have to create value and exchange that for the outside money. then you have to pay taxes on _that_. this goes on and on. the state just forces so many big and small payments on you, that you don't have a realistic chance of establishing such a community without breaking any laws. as soon as you _do_ break the magic laws, you'll have people with guns at your doorstep robbing you.
> If libertarian ideas work only within the very narrow confines of a music festival (a couple of days or a week at most, with only a few hundred quids per person at stake, limited to very specific activities), then it’s further proof that libertarian ideas wouldn’t work for society.
i never said they _only_ work in these situations, i only said that those were the closest instances to a free peaceful market anarchy where "the law" is largely absent that i've witnessed.
I talk about “prove” and “defend” in the sense of arguing convincingly (or better: demonstrating in practice) that a certain set of political and economic ideas are feasible and conducive to human well-being and flourishing — or at least that they are _better_ for that than _other_ sets of ideas.
“People being just left alone” sounds simple enough. But that is not #libertarianism, because many necessary ingredients are missing there (individualism, private property, the #NAP, voluntary contracts, etc). Also, it is trivial for anyone to formulate a political system with even fewer “assumptions” that we would all agree would be disastrous in practice.
Parsimony is definitely a virtue in descriptive natural science, but not necessarily in prescriptive social science. We're not discussing why homo sapiens came to be what it is, we're discussing what are the best ways to organise complex societies.
I “defend the existence of a state with armed goons coercing you into obedience” (not that I would phrase it that way) only insofar as that's a better state of the world than some given alternative. We don't know of a better alternative to liberal capitalistic social-democratic nations. Whoever defends that a different system would make a better society as a whole needs to provide much better arguments than “my idea requires fewer assumptions”, because the stakes couldn't be higher.
You know what else is “natural”?
The will of the strong upon the weak. Dying of diarrhea. Falling prey to a predator if one's short-sighted. Rape and pillage. Many degrees of servitude and slavery. Spoiling the river for everyone else downstream.
All that is far more natural than respecting the property of others and “contracts”. All that predates ideas such as ownership, non-violence and voluntary agreements, and is found throughout the natural world in both human and non-human animals. Yet we don't defend those things as good in any sense.
It's the “appeal to natural” fallacy what you're invoking.
@tripu that isn't what natural law means.
natural law means deducing principles like ownership from things other than "the king said so" or "some politicians decided that".
But that's exactly what I did.
I deduced principles like pillage, theft and war from things other than “the king said so” or “some politicians decided that”. I deduced then from natural selection, survival, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and the fact that those “principles” got us humans so far until relatively recently forms of government, the law, human rights, etc were introduced.
Your own source:
> _based on a close observation of **human nature**, and based on values intrinsic to human nature that can be deduced and applied **independently of positive law**_
Oppression of the weak, rape, and expecting pain and death due to mysterious illnesses fit that definition perfectly.
(And that's precisely my point: rights based on natural law can be wrong.)
“If everyone decides upon egoism and stands by it” is too big an “if” to base the viability of the system upon it.
What if many (or even most) people do not practice perfect selfishness, and feel the moral urge or the religious imperative to act to prevent what they see as disastrous outcomes, *as is actually the case in the real world*?
@tripu then they are free to do that and the egoist wouldn't have much say?
Because they will do that in ways that the egoist sees as interfering with him; as not "leaving him alone".
It would be great if people always engaged only in mutually-desired interactions, and otherwise had no effects on one another.
Given that that is not a thing that happens spontaneously with any reliability, what should we do about it? I think that's the question. The anarchocapitalist answer seems to be something like "nothing, it'll be fine," and that seems implausible?
@tripu
> “People being just left alone” sounds simple enough. But that is not #libertarianism, because many necessary ingredients are missing there (individualism, private property, the #NAP, voluntary contracts, etc). Also, it is trivial for anyone to formulate a political system with even fewer “assumptions” that we would all agree would be disastrous in practice.
those things are natural rights until you invent someone taking them. voluntary contracts are the natural state. ownership is the natural state for things you either create or extract.
stirner argues that if everyone decides upon egoism and stands by it, things would be fine.
> Parsimony is definitely a virtue in descriptive natural science, but not necessarily in prescriptive social science. We’re not discussing why homo sapiens came to be what it is, we’re discussing what are the best ways to organise complex societies.
social science has a problem with replication _and_ is done according to the "democratic" system. i'm not aware of research for a better societal construct. there seems to only ibe research for how to fix the shortcomings of our current one.
> I “defend the existence of a state with armed goons coercing you into obedience” (not that I would phrase it that way) only insofar as that’s a better state of the world than some given alternative. We don’t know of a better alternative to liberal capitalistic social-democratic nations. Whoever defends that a different system would make a better society as a whole needs to provide much better arguments than “my idea requires fewer assumptions”, because the stakes couldn’t be higher.
you have people you never legitimized taking things from you by force. if that isn't a racket then i'm not sure what is. if the mob does trash your restaurant after not paying up it's an unjust crime. if you don't pay taxes paying the people who rob and beat you (as last consequence) you are the criminal somehow.
how would _you_ call it?
you seem to limit the choices to has been tested and not failed by now. there are plenty of democracies which failed though. why not try something else without someone in power?