Great article. The main objection to Anarcho-Capitalism is the same as you have previously stated in previous articles: when the cost is low, anybody can believe anything. When the cost is high, it takes significant evidence to make people take the plunge. When Bernie Sanders talks about socialism, for example, people immediately look to where it has been tried. Usually they conger up images of gulags, NKVD officers pounding confessions out of people. Senator Sanders has had a tough time differentiating his version of socialism from what is now anchored in people's minds.
I agree with Anarcho-Capitalism, but I also understand that 2% of the people's buy-in isn't enough. The problem is the creation of the first working model of it that people can understand, thus lowering their "cost" of agreement.
I nominate Haiti as the test bed for ALL such "working models" devised by crackpots, big thinkers, and economists such as Bernie, Yglesias, and Caplan. If it works there, it'll work anywhere. And if it crashes and burns (it will), what's the harm? There'll always be another best thing ever to try...and there'll always be Haiti.
Haiti's had their government totally collapse, they're currently being ruled by gangs with no one group having a monopoly on violence. If private defense firms are a concept that can work, there's no one with a monopoly on violence to shut them down in Haiti.
My understanding is that they tell clients that if they don't pay, they will be attacked by gangs, including themselves. But if they do pay, they won't be attacked by them or any other gangs.
If private defense firms could work, you'd see them emerge to protect clients from the gangs. Instead, any new groups offering protection are themselves gangs.
Since the gangs run coercive "protection" rackets rather than offering protection service for a price per voluntary, mutually-consensual transactions Richard Bicker is mistaken, is he not, in asserting that anarcho-capitalism is in flower in Haiti?
I agree with your comments but "Senator Sanders has had a tough time differentiating his version of socialism from what is now anchored in people's minds." a. Not among college students or younger generation. b.Any "version" of socialism that does not work, is not his version, by definition. His version, by definition, works--it only leads to good things. In other words, fairy tale socialism.
Rather supporting your theory is the observation that for most of human history even governments were very small and localized, containing fewer than a million people. City states were common, tribes and small kingdoms abounded, and empires were as much loose agglomerations of tribute paying states as they were single entities. The functional scale was quite small and there were many providers, despite those providers asserting monopoly dominance within their sphere as a matter of course.
Did we stop because it was super bad, or because the scale economies changed, or for some other reason? What has ever stopped because it was super bad?
There exist currently something similar to defense firms in anarcho-capitalism, organized crime rackets charging protection money. We often do see just an handful of organized crime groups operating in any given area, and they do often go to direct violent conflict with each other.
What reasons are there to believe defense firms in an anarcho-capitalist America would behave differently than cartels in Mexico, or the Five Families in New York in the 60s?
For one, the strategy of buying politicians and working with complicit governments would be less feasible.
It's also not obvious to me that the only analogue today we have of private security is cartels, when we have.. you know, private security firms. Both here and abroad, security contractors for international freight, et cetera. Some municipal governments can and do subcontract law enforcement to agencies like this. The abstract possibility of their violent conduct, and the presumption that they'd be checked by other state police from a different jurisdiction if so, seems like evidence for Caplan's view rather than against it, given he doesn't seem inclined to reify a distinction between public and private institutions.
Private security firms are rarely/never the primary security force today, they provide temporary extra security. But if there was an actual regular organized crime racket extorting people, public security forces would be sent in. But sometimes, like in Mexico, the public security forces aren't strong enough to stop the Cartels. And private security forces aren't strong enough either.
Agreed; this isn't a pie in the sky thought experiment, you can see how it practically operates across the globe, and it's terrible! There's no way it isn't terrible! It's terrible every time and in every circumstance!
It's almost hard to believe it's educated people making these statements. Travel a bit! See the world! The shitty bits!
I love the idea of it working, it's a fun thought experiment, but speculating on it is like writing science fiction. It's not actually representative of reality and shouldn't ever be a serious policy proposal.
Have you considered the sloth and inefficiencies of a monopoly v the nimble energy of a new entrant - Sclerotic blob v vibrant and adaptable?
I remember well the panic of a local ahhh "Father Figure" who had collected ahhh "Insurance Money" and then a farm was raided by unknowns and he and his organization had to do something for the money they collected. His brand was shattered when a school teacher and his daughter used a drone to find the missing animals and equipment. They did not supplant him. They did ruin his brand and stopped paying "Insurance Money."
The implication is that if you want anarcho-capitalism you cannot try it out in a small village as a proof of concept, you have to try it on a big enough market. That's a big additional leap of faith for an already radical proposal.
I suspect that anarcho-capitalism (I prefer the term “voluntaryism”) will be an emergent phenomenon of the upcoming Metaverse: smart entrepreneurial people will migrate their commerce away from traditional nation states into online “Network State” communities and economies as discussed by author Balaji Srinivasan.
...who will then rely entirely on large, centralised governments to maintain all of the infrastructure keeping the individuals alive, the internet online, and maintaining a sufficient monopoly over violence so as to make the concept of private property and contract meaningful.
In Europe there are 44 states currently, and one of the reasons that the economic explosion occurred was the fact that they were was not just one.
The states were competitive militarily and in order to finance this they had to be able to extract more. This led to a gradual liberalization, begrudgingly accepted by the entrenched elite.
So even back then in Europe you could have had, who knows, 100 defense companies? They also would serve overlapping regions. One town could be served by a few and the next one over by different ones.
Status quo bias seems to have something to do with it also. They haven’t had to exert much effort to keep the monopoly in place, or even propagate much of a rationale. They allow private security and arbitration. We just have to mostly pay our taxes and not pretend we can ignore their commands.
Great article. The main objection to Anarcho-Capitalism is the same as you have previously stated in previous articles: when the cost is low, anybody can believe anything. When the cost is high, it takes significant evidence to make people take the plunge. When Bernie Sanders talks about socialism, for example, people immediately look to where it has been tried. Usually they conger up images of gulags, NKVD officers pounding confessions out of people. Senator Sanders has had a tough time differentiating his version of socialism from what is now anchored in people's minds.
I agree with Anarcho-Capitalism, but I also understand that 2% of the people's buy-in isn't enough. The problem is the creation of the first working model of it that people can understand, thus lowering their "cost" of agreement.
I nominate Haiti as the test bed for ALL such "working models" devised by crackpots, big thinkers, and economists such as Bernie, Yglesias, and Caplan. If it works there, it'll work anywhere. And if it crashes and burns (it will), what's the harm? There'll always be another best thing ever to try...and there'll always be Haiti.
That's interesting, why Haiti?
Haiti's had their government totally collapse, they're currently being ruled by gangs with no one group having a monopoly on violence. If private defense firms are a concept that can work, there's no one with a monopoly on violence to shut them down in Haiti.
Are these gangs hired by clients who voluntarily pay an agreed price for promised protection? Or do they simply extort payment by threat of force?
My understanding is that they tell clients that if they don't pay, they will be attacked by gangs, including themselves. But if they do pay, they won't be attacked by them or any other gangs.
If private defense firms could work, you'd see them emerge to protect clients from the gangs. Instead, any new groups offering protection are themselves gangs.
Since the gangs run coercive "protection" rackets rather than offering protection service for a price per voluntary, mutually-consensual transactions Richard Bicker is mistaken, is he not, in asserting that anarcho-capitalism is in flower in Haiti?
I agree with your comments but "Senator Sanders has had a tough time differentiating his version of socialism from what is now anchored in people's minds." a. Not among college students or younger generation. b.Any "version" of socialism that does not work, is not his version, by definition. His version, by definition, works--it only leads to good things. In other words, fairy tale socialism.
Rather supporting your theory is the observation that for most of human history even governments were very small and localized, containing fewer than a million people. City states were common, tribes and small kingdoms abounded, and empires were as much loose agglomerations of tribute paying states as they were single entities. The functional scale was quite small and there were many providers, despite those providers asserting monopoly dominance within their sphere as a matter of course.
...and that was awful. The past was awful, insecure, violent. Yes it happened, and we stopped because it was super bad.
Yea, monopolies on violence are pretty awful in execution, as it turns out.
Did we stop because it was super bad, or because the scale economies changed, or for some other reason? What has ever stopped because it was super bad?
There exist currently something similar to defense firms in anarcho-capitalism, organized crime rackets charging protection money. We often do see just an handful of organized crime groups operating in any given area, and they do often go to direct violent conflict with each other.
What reasons are there to believe defense firms in an anarcho-capitalist America would behave differently than cartels in Mexico, or the Five Families in New York in the 60s?
For one, the strategy of buying politicians and working with complicit governments would be less feasible.
It's also not obvious to me that the only analogue today we have of private security is cartels, when we have.. you know, private security firms. Both here and abroad, security contractors for international freight, et cetera. Some municipal governments can and do subcontract law enforcement to agencies like this. The abstract possibility of their violent conduct, and the presumption that they'd be checked by other state police from a different jurisdiction if so, seems like evidence for Caplan's view rather than against it, given he doesn't seem inclined to reify a distinction between public and private institutions.
Private security firms are rarely/never the primary security force today, they provide temporary extra security. But if there was an actual regular organized crime racket extorting people, public security forces would be sent in. But sometimes, like in Mexico, the public security forces aren't strong enough to stop the Cartels. And private security forces aren't strong enough either.
Agreed; this isn't a pie in the sky thought experiment, you can see how it practically operates across the globe, and it's terrible! There's no way it isn't terrible! It's terrible every time and in every circumstance!
It's almost hard to believe it's educated people making these statements. Travel a bit! See the world! The shitty bits!
I love the idea of it working, it's a fun thought experiment, but speculating on it is like writing science fiction. It's not actually representative of reality and shouldn't ever be a serious policy proposal.
This is my point. Unless we can see a working model, the cost of our agreement to something untried is too high.
Have you considered the sloth and inefficiencies of a monopoly v the nimble energy of a new entrant - Sclerotic blob v vibrant and adaptable?
I remember well the panic of a local ahhh "Father Figure" who had collected ahhh "Insurance Money" and then a farm was raided by unknowns and he and his organization had to do something for the money they collected. His brand was shattered when a school teacher and his daughter used a drone to find the missing animals and equipment. They did not supplant him. They did ruin his brand and stopped paying "Insurance Money."
Location - an Eastern European Country.
The implication is that if you want anarcho-capitalism you cannot try it out in a small village as a proof of concept, you have to try it on a big enough market. That's a big additional leap of faith for an already radical proposal.
You got it.
I suspect that anarcho-capitalism (I prefer the term “voluntaryism”) will be an emergent phenomenon of the upcoming Metaverse: smart entrepreneurial people will migrate their commerce away from traditional nation states into online “Network State” communities and economies as discussed by author Balaji Srinivasan.
...who will then rely entirely on large, centralised governments to maintain all of the infrastructure keeping the individuals alive, the internet online, and maintaining a sufficient monopoly over violence so as to make the concept of private property and contract meaningful.
In Europe there are 44 states currently, and one of the reasons that the economic explosion occurred was the fact that they were was not just one.
The states were competitive militarily and in order to finance this they had to be able to extract more. This led to a gradual liberalization, begrudgingly accepted by the entrenched elite.
So even back then in Europe you could have had, who knows, 100 defense companies? They also would serve overlapping regions. One town could be served by a few and the next one over by different ones.
Status quo bias seems to have something to do with it also. They haven’t had to exert much effort to keep the monopoly in place, or even propagate much of a rationale. They allow private security and arbitration. We just have to mostly pay our taxes and not pretend we can ignore their commands.
"...the state doesn’t care about economic rationales. As long as it can credibly threaten to put new entrants in jail, its monopoly endures."
sure, just look at the 'deep state' responses to Pres.Trump at home & Pres. Putin abroad - no way jose!
WHAT?