Would Anarcho-Capitalism Be a Disaster? A Soho Forum Debate
Yaron Brook and Bryan Caplan debate the merits of anarcho-capitalism.
HD DownloadChairman of the Ayn Rand Institute Yaron Brook and George Mason University professor Bryan Caplan debate the resolution, "Anarcho-capitalism would definitely be a complete disaster for humanity."
Taking the affirmative is Brook, host of The Yaron Brook Show. He was the executive director of The Ayn Rand Institute from 2000 to 2017, and is now the chairman of the board. Brook has co-authored many books focused on capitalism and the benefits of free markets, including In Pursuit of Wealth: The Moral Case for Finance, Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality, and Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government. He was a columnist at Forbes, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Investor's Business Daily, and more.
Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, is taking the negative. He's The New York Times bestselling author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education, and more. He writes for the Substack Bet On It, and has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Reason, and more.
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Chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute Yaron Brook and George Mason University professor Bryan Caplan debate the resolution, "Anarcho-capitalism would definitely be a complete disaster for humanity."
Fun debate, but Anarcho-capitalism will probably never be the state of anything anywhere. And even if there's a brief moment where you could point at a place and say, "there, that's anarcho-capitalism", the joint's probably in transition to something else.
The unfortunate reality of pretty much every resource is an unequal distribution. No matter what you look at, there is a bell curve where some people/animals/entities have much of a resource and some have very little. In anarcho capitalism, that bell curve is largely driven by choice- some people have lots of comic books, some people have a couple, still others have none.
That voluntary, unequal distribution is fine and dandy until we talk about the resources necessary to wreck a market- guns and ammo.
I believe an anarcho-capitalist world is far more moral than the alternatives...but then, as you say, it won't last much longer than the first amoral rich man who realizes that he can take the entire system for himself rather than continue earning it.
"some people have lots of comic books, some people have a couple, still others have none. "
Trouble with capitalism is that people's comic books have comic books, ie wealth begets wealth. This is true for capitalists whether they are diligent, lazy, smart, stupid or whatever. This is also why 1% of the population own 99% of the wealth.
"1% of the population own 99% of the wealth" is because of crony socialism. As-if every socialist nation hasn't entirely demonstrated exactly that.
But nothing about capitalism says that everybody can't be a capitalist.
In large part, the reason 1% of the population own 99% of the wealth is that this is very convenient for government, so government has created rules that encourage this.
It's convenient because
1) With 'progressive' taxation, increased income inequality automatically increases government revenue.
2) Would you rather get a gallon of milk from one cow, or 10,000 mice? Taxing rich people is less total work.
3) Poor people's votes can be bought cheaply, rich people can pay bribes and employ your useless son or daughter, but what good are the middle class to politicians?
So we've got all sorts of rules that get in the way of the middle class becoming real capitalists. Tax laws that discourage distributing profits to stockholders, so that you can only get money out of your stocks by selling them. All the best investments being saved for "accredited", (IOW, "already rich") investors. Regulations that burden the creation of small businesses.
"This is also why 1% of the population own 99% of the wealth."
This isn't true.
Also if what mtrueman the commie said were true, we would expect to see wealth concentrated among a few people. But we don't. What we tend to see is that the people who have wealth change year over year. "Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in 3 Generations" is a common saying in finance- because most people who strike it rich do well for themselves and their kids, and by the time their grandkids are adults, much of that wealth is gone.
I mean, it’s mtrueman, so what do you expect.
National socialist carpet-biting and shrieks?
But the 1% can only keep their wealth to the extent that they offer a good or service that customers want to buy and only to the extent that their investments deliver the dividends, which in turn depends on the invested companies ability to offer things customers want to buy. The 1% never stay the same in a dynamic Free-Market economy.
Also, comic books are not fungible.
That is not a true statement. Ownership of the wealth ebbs and flows. People get rich, pass it down to their children and grandchildren and those are the ones to squander it. Many middle-class folks rise up and become rich regularly. It is getting harder because of the socialism taking over this country, Socialists and Leftists in America today want to be the ones who pick the winners and losers, so unless you're in their inner circle, you're out of luck.
Smaller Government + Freedom = Wealth + Prosperity.
Was going to say the same thing.
Which isn’t to say, as many seem to believe, that the current ubiquitous democratic nation-state is the culmination of the evolution of governance. We should probably chuck a lot of it and come up with something better.
Yeah, we know what kind of Year Zero shit you support, Episiarch/Bo Cara Esq.
If we can get to the state where one can look across the strait and actually see the realistic possibility of an actual working stateless society, then I would be thrilled!
Right now, however, any such hope rests in the realm of science fiction.
You pegged the problem —-> “democratic nation-state”
The USA is NOT a “democracy”; It is a *Constitutional* Republic.
This nation HAD/HAS something better; but it was ignored to support Democratic [Na]tional So[zi]al[ism]. Exactly the same ignorance to it you've just shown. When everyone can get on board with the definition of the USA (the US Constitution) and STOP trying to redefine it there won't be an "evolution of governance" into horrific consequence.
AFTER we are no longer shadowed by totalitarian slave states bristling with chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, and AFTER anarcho-communism has somewhere ended in something other than cyanide Kool-Ade, THEN mindless fantasies replacing rights with venal violence will perhaps not amount to capital treason. Right now, in remaining superstitious monarchies, women are slaves and dissidents chopped into mincemeat and flushed with nobody local daring to lift a finger or raise a voice. This is what Mises Caucus ham Dave Smith demanded in a recorded interview with Nick.
> the joint’s probably in transition to something else.
It will be conquered in 10 minutes.
It’s not a stable outcome in a competitive environment.
So it's never existed. It never will. Most people who understand it don't want it. Those who say they want it and understand it have no interest/capability of either doing anything about it or even selling a positive vision of what it could be. It isn't even a good riddle.
And yet people like JFear who don't understand it will forever opine on it, just as he opines on everything else that he doesn't understand. Like climate change, or masking science, or inflation, or crypto currency or...pretty much everything else.
You do a wonderful job persuading or even talking to others who disagree others who disagree.
Oh no wait. You're here in a place where everyone agrees and where you all clap like seals when someone preaches well to the choir.
But it gets the job done. The Kleptocracy job is to point to the Libertarian Party with its highly-leveraged spoiler vote turnout repealing bad laws right and left and say: "AHA! bomb-throwing commie anarchists like the ones hanged, beheaded, shot and excluded by every government since the French Terror with its pyramids of severed heads." The subsidized do-nothing failure pretending to make the case for a reversion to jungle Trumpanzees has never done anything in life but brainwash schoolkids. The goal is to equate the LP to the Tea Party, Klan, Hun, Terror, Guyana Church and tribal arboreal cannibals.
But the value of an LP is to be a real option for voters who are sick of the shit and want a real alternative. AnCaps don't help with that at all. Nor do LNC candidates prancing around in their underwear or Prez candidates with a boot on their head.
The LP isn't well served just being some punching bag for the DeRps who want to demonize the LP’s as spoilers for the other DeRp.
The first rule of anarcho-capitalism is if you have to ask if it will be a disaster, you don’t get a say in whether anarcho-capitalism will be a disaster or not.
The second rule of anarcho-capitalism is if you have to ask if it will be a disaster, you do not get a say in whether anarcho-capitalism will be a disaster or not.
Have Brook describe the government of "Galt's Gulch" which, apparently, Rand would have approved for a society of rational men and women.
The Galt's Gulch society added a single amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "And Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade." Anarcho-communists who imagine or pretend to believe they are Napoleon, mercantilists, cotton slavers, baby-savers, Army of God or Soviet looters are as useless as anyone already committed as criminally insane. The Constitution, Bill of Rights and elections are the three things all flavors of communist, nihihilist, looters expressly and emphatically reject. All their champions are failures even when they set up murdering dictatorships.
It's quite simple, establish an anarcho-syndicalist commune governed by the members, with a two-thirds vote being required for substantive issues and a majority vote being sufficient for purely procedural issues.
Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
But I got this sword from a watery bint.
So where can I find some lovely filth, Malady?
🙂
😉
boy - the crowd really got trigger happy with your comment there!
must be a certain demographic ... probably the one represented as the pig in the python [wink wink..]
Say no more, Squire! Say no more!
🙂
😉
Conceptually libertarian anarchy is probably a disaster.
It relies TOO MUCH on equating the state and government.
The state: a COERCVIE MONOPOLY government ONLY
I people know other reasons to desert the concept of government, someone say so!
See? It starts by tearing down syntax, spelling and grammatical coherence, and proceeds to the dismissal of rules of inference, causality and justice. Justice is the means of seeing to it that an initiator of deadly force is so dealt with as to dissuade another from commiting a like misdeed. A fourteen-foot drop on the gibbet before hundreds of onlookers works 100% of the time in the exemplar case, and way better than zero% for deterring wannabee copycats.
Funny; They both ended up at the same place because Caplan went from Anarchy-Capitalism to Minarchy.
Surprisingly Yaron definitely wins the debate though. Anarchy-Capitalism would only not be a disaster in the land of no-one is ever selfish and greedy. In the imperfect land of reality government must ensure Liberty and Justice for all and Yaron specifically calls out current government being dismissive of their own purpose and working for criminals instead.
I'm a little familiar with Caplan, and while I like him, from the familiarity I have with him, there is no fucking way he's an anarcho-capitalist. So I was a little perplexed as to why he was defending the notion that Anarcho-capitalism wouldn't be a disaster.
Is what we have now a disaster?
Yes. [Na]tional So[zi]al[ism] once again has proven to be a disaster.
It wasn’t “different” this time either.
It's past time to restore the good old US Constitution.
Only when compared to Switzerland.
Anarcho-Capitalism cannot happen unless it is voluntary. It's something, like government, that can be imposed.
Whether it can work in practice is another issue, but assuming that society reorganizes itself into an AnCap society, then it will be voluntary.
As such it cannot be a "complete disaster". Doesn't mean their won't be problems. Problems are a fact of the universe. But if it's not working out so the extent that it's a complete disaster, then it will go away.
p.s. I use the word "society" in the sense that there is indeed a common culture among the collection of individuals in a region. I mean, duh. Please no Objectivists whining that there is no such thing. "Society" is an emergent order arising from the aggregate of individuals. Stop it with stupid word games.
Society doesn't spontaneously reorganize itself, it follows historical developments.
But it's probably not a stable system; meaning, an anarcho-capitalist system will turn into a progressive social welfare state over time.
It's not a "whine," it's an objective reality. It's there when you sleep and there when you wake. It'll be there when and if you're ready.
🙂
Smells like Democrats in here.
If you can't answer all of my hypothetical scenarios before hand then your hypothetical system won't work. Despite the fact that no current system, economic or political, has ever been born fully-formed. And also despite the fact that our current economic and political systems don't address every problem before hand.
So, you can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat.
That depends on the population implementing it.
In early 19th century America? Probably not.
In early 21st century America, after a century of progressive indoctrination and destruction of civil society and free markets? Yes, it would be a disaster.
Yaron Brook talked about both extracting violence from society and a government monopoly on force.
In my opinion, these two things are necessarily mutually exclusive.
Government is part of society. By a government monopoly on force, you haven't extracted violence from society, you've just concentrated control over it into a few hands.
Thus why the founders wrote the 'objective' law over their Government (US Constitution). Without it there is no means to Individual Liberty and Justice.
I can’t find who said it but I’ve heard it said that men would have to become Gods before they could become Anarchists.
In other words, men would have to have Omnibenevolence to be Perfectly Just, Omniscience to know all circumstances for Perfect Justice, and Omniscience to implement Perfect Justice. And men would have to be Immortal, so they could not be harmed by the acts of any other being. Makes sense.
Well, since Gods do not exist, M’Lady, men need a Government to protect their Life, Liberty, and Property and that Government has to be kept in check to safeguard against malevolence, error, and incompetence.
Score one for Yaron Brook and The Ayn Rand Institute.
"In other words, men would have to have Omnibenevolence to be Perfectly Just, Omniscience to know all circumstances for Perfect Justice, and Omniscience to implement Perfect Justice. And men would have to be Immortal, so they could not be harmed by the acts of any other being. Makes sense."
Not to me.
Why is perfection required for anarcho-capitalism, but not for all other forms of governance?
Because Anarchy would require everyone to govern themselves justly. A pipe-dream. Anarchy isn't a 'form of government' it's actually no government.
"Because Anarchy would require everyone to govern themselves justly."
There have been many stateless periods in our history. Periods where people were able to exist with other people - somehow...
"A pipe-dream. Anarchy isn’t a ‘form of government’ it’s actually no government."
That is why I wrote "governance" not government. Although I know many erroneously conflate the two as you did, they are not the same thing.
Anarchy just requires private organizations to do the governing, something they can do in a way that is just as comprehensive and effective as political institutions are doing in state-based societies.
The big difference is that political institutions give you votes merely for existing and that they are global and inescapable; private organizations give votes only to contributing members, but you can choose among many.
So like how the mob/gangs operates? I wonder what will be the result when the two competing ‘private organizations’ disagree on the terms of justice between members.
Think I’ll stick with an ‘objective’ written Supreme Law / Principle Constitutional Union (that forbids Socialism) of Republican States and wish everyone else would too so it could actually exist instead of trying to redefine it as buying votes in a Union of Privatized-Socialist Anarchy’s.
That said; Nothing in the USA forbids the Democrats from starting their own contract voluntary Socialist Private Enterprise. It’s just never been done because they haven’t figured out how to fund it without fake-fiat printing and "armed-theft".
Anyone with the slightest delvings into history has seen that anarchism, communism, nihilism, Jacobinism, socialism and France's Red Terror are exactly the same thing down to four decimal places. Circa 1905 Congress by law wisely forbad the entry of such lunatics into These States. By framing the context to offer Torquemada, the Klan, Christian National Socialism and George Wallace caudillos as the only possible alternative (while deliberately destroying the Libertarian Party) the parasites have gulled suckers into neutralizing that only sane, democratic and voluntary law-changing alternative. Slitting your throat perfectly or imperfectly is hardly different.
Strange that my delvings into history are replete with periods where there are no kings, queens, or ruling classes. Entire continents filled with people that had no central government for centuries at a time, probably longer. But I guess when you conflate "civilization" with "government" you are going to end up with all kind of omission errors.
It was short lived. The “graze your greener pasture” immigrants fixed that. :)… I agree; self-governance is ideal but it’s still a pipe-dream. The criminal mentality has to be controlled because it violates justice.
Because, like other forms of Anarchism and Totalitarianism, Anarcho-Cqpitalism proports to be a perfect way to order society.
By contrast, Miniarchist Libertarianism and it’s economic implantation of the Free-Market do not proport perfection, only to to be the best that human beings can do.
A Libertarian society still requires “Eternal Vigilence” to maintain. And a Libertarian society requires knowledge and action to fight ignorance in order to maintain it in a state of civilization.
It’s been a terrible struggle for humans to get as far as we have in all the hundreds of millennia on this Planet towards making more people free in just the Western portion of the World. It’s still a struggle today to keep freedom from totally slipping away. Genuine Libertarianism is not Utopian by a long shot.
“Anarcho-Cqpitalism proports to be a perfect way to order society.”
Does it? I see straw poking out of the edges here…
An Anarcho-Capitalist named Bad Quaker once told me that I’m “overthinking” about Anarcho-Capitalism. That is a sure sign that Anarcho-Capitalism is a Utopian and indeed a cult-like ideology.
I would never tell anyone exploring new ideas that they are “overthinking” Libertarianism!
Rather, I would encourage them to think further and find examples in their own life of things that they can do without government and examples where things turned out good when you were left alone and set free.
In fact, someone needs to publish a Libertarian version of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. It could be billed as the great potty-trainer of the Children of Statism, a house-breaker of Jackbooted Dobermans and Siberian Huskies, and a dietary aid to help embibers of Freedom to “stay regular,” as the old folks call it. It could be filled with easy-to-read and thought-provoking pro-Libertarian writings from everyone from Lao-Tzu and Socrates to The Founding Fathers and The Abolitionists to the Austrian and Chicago Schools of Economics to Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Penn & Teller, George Carlin, and many more!
It could even have instructions and pages dedicated to making paper airplanes; origami eagles, snakes, porcupines, and goats; papier mâché for piñatas of criminals and tyrants to beat down and redeem candy loot; how to make fire tinder for campfires, and even how to ruffle pages into usable toilet paper in a Shit Hits The Fan emergency!
And the book jacket could say: “You’re sitting here doing this much left alone! What else could do if you were left alone more?”
🙂
😉
There is no “perfect way to order society”. How you order society depends on the skills and culture of the people comprising society.
21st century Americans and Europeans are incapable of existing in a libertarian or anarchist society because they have been groomed and indoctrinated into statism and an inability to be self-reliant for more than a century.
But that's not a fault or intrinsic shortcoming of libertarianism or anarchism, it's a fault of these cultures.
What will the Anarchists use to prevent the criminal faults of these cultures from invading their turf?
Correction: Omnipotence to implement Perfect Justice.
Anarchists want absence of a political state, not absence of governance.
Without a political state, you are governed by institutions in which membership is private and voluntary.
Your local governance would be handled by something that looks very much like local government does not, except only property owners can vote.
Defense, healthcare, retirement, etc. would all be handled by insurance companies and cooperatives, many of them member owned and self-governing. Again, you get to vote and must contribute, but you get to pick your poison.
I understand the private provision of food, clothing, housing, utilities, sanitation, healthcare, retirement, even fire prev3ntion and protection, and to some extent security.
However, all of that depends upon upholding Individual Rights to person and property and the sanctity of contracts, and anything that involves use of force has to be governed by rules that respect those rights. This means some forms of Government or none of it lasts.
Our current "government" is based on political power, geographic, and membership coerced through threats of violence. None of those are necessary for governance, laws, or to preserve persons, contracts, or property rights.
"Some kind of government" can also be based on economic power and voluntary membership. That's the libertarian/anarchist vision. It is "anarchist" because the term "government" is usually reserved for political forms of governance.
What happens when, "you are governed by institutions in which membership is private and voluntary" stated mission is to conquer and consume that institution over there?
So just call our current government the Democrat-member 'private governance' institution who's members vote to conquer and consume the earnings of that other Republican 'private governance' institution. And there you have it.
Your still not acknowledging the need to ensure an 'objective' Supreme Law of principles that will ensure Liberty and Justice for anyone. It will be an endless battle between 'Private Institutions'. In fact the middle east is rather entertaining this premise as we speak.
It's a fiction that this is how the world works. Even within the US, there are many classes of residents subject to many different jurisdictions and rules already.
I have multiple citizenships and lived and worked in countries where I wasn't a citizen. The libertarian/anarchist vision is effectively just making that the norm and adjusting it a little.
That is, in an anarchist world, citizenship is a voluntary relationship between a "virtual nation" and individuals; you pay taxes to these virtual nations, possibly receive certain voting rights and ownership, and receive certain services, including arbitration and insurance. "Host nations" would be physical locations and their "citizenship" (your ability to vote etc.) would be determined by the rules it sets (usually, property ownership like in an HOA).
Wars and conflicts between virtual nations and/or host nations wouldn't work any differently from the way they do now, except that the complex interrelationships and lack of defined geographic areas would make such conflicts much less likely.
As I was saying, hundreds of millions of people across the globe effectively already live under some version of this, but it could be (and may well become) the usual arrangement for people across the world.
So the ‘Democrat’ virtual nation and the ‘Republican’ virtual nation under the geographical Host Nation of the State. The ‘Democrat’ virtual nation wants the earnings from members of the ‘Republican’ virtual nation (Affirmative Action) and insist the Host Nation collects it cause they have NEEDS.
I fail to see any difference at-all short of labels. Will there be a ‘Democrat’ police force and a ‘Republican’ police force? Will the RPC have to handle the riots of the DPC? Doesn’t sound more peaceful to me. Sounds like the middle east.
I think perhaps still you're dismissing the actual purpose of a monopoly of gun-force and trying to name corporation-services/subscriptions virtual nations and arming them which falls right back into the socialist narrative where the gun-forces own all the resources. I'm still of the opinion that the separation of State and Corporate allowed the very checks and balances required to ensure Liberty and Justice sadly in today's Anti-USA environment that's hard to identify anymore.
But I will add; That isn’t how lawless politicians in the USA is setup anymore. The ‘Democrat’ virtual nation has been granted THEFT of the ‘Republican’ virtual nation and that was their plan all along.
Anytime someone starts to mouth-off about Universal Healthcare just ask them why don’t they go start a Nazi-Club (virtual nation) for Democrats (the ones who want it) that supplies Universal Healthcare because nothing in the USA Supreme Law forbids that (not a legitimate purpose of gov-gun monopoly) and it’ll set their heads spinning because under the covers of their denial-ism is the real purpose it has to be nation-wide. It’s the strongest national-arms “armed-theft” of everyone they are after; not just those that want it. They want your money without having to EARN it.
...And in a *real* (not Nazi-Conquered) USA the purpose of the monopoly of gun-force was to ensure the Liberty and Justice of the 'Republican' and 'Democrat' virtual nations from either being ROBBED by the other unjustly but instead today it does the exact opposite.
It has gone lawlessly-rogue precisely because it doesn't even pretend to be ruled by the Supreme Law but instead thinks whichever [WE] mob can gather the most votes WINS the pot of every-citizens labors. The [WE] gangland of the Divided States.
The legalization of murder and institutionalizing of war to please girl-bullying mystics has ALREADY wrecked the libertarian party. Bomb-throwing communists in libertarian drag ruined the only alternative use of the suffrage to exert leveraged control over the policies of both halves of the looter Kleptocracy now hijacking the constitution to reenslave women. This is AFTER the Tea party and the electoral count mobs demonstrated the uselessness of violent, petulant, woman-hating mobs. Their equally traitorous allies, meanwhile, have frozen construction of new electrical power plants these past fifteen years.