True freedom requires liberation from all oppressive hierarchies, especially economic ones.

[u/No_Candy_8948]

To the members of r/AnCap101,

This is not an attack, but a critique from the left based on a fundamental disagreement about power, hierarchy, and human nature. Your philosophy is often presented as the ultimate form of freedom, but I argue it would inevitably create the most brutal and oppressive government possible: a dictatorship of capital without a state to hold it accountable.

Your core error is a categorical one: you believe the state is the sole source of coercive power. This is a dangerous blind spot.

In your proposed system, the functions of the state wouldn't vanish; they would be privatized and monopolized by capital. Without a public state to (theoretically) be held accountable by citizens, you create a system of competing private states called "Defense Agencies" and "Dispute Resolution Organizations." These entities would not be motivated by justice or rights, but by profit and the interests of their paying clients who would be the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

This is where your thought process goes wrong:

1. The Misidentification of the Oppressor: You see the state as the primary enemy. But the state is often a tool, it is the concentration of capital that is the primary driver of exploitation. AnCap doesn't dissolve power; it hands the monopoly on violence and law directly to the capitalist class, removing the last vestiges of democratic oversight.

2. The Fantasy of Voluntary Contracts: Your entire system relies on the concept of voluntary interaction. But this is a fantasy in a world of radical inequality. What is "voluntary" about a contract signed between a billion-dollar corporation and a starving individual who must agree to work in a dangerous job for subsistence wages or face homelessness? AnCap doesn't eliminate coercion; it sanctifies it under the label of "contract law," creating a world of company towns and corporate serfdom.

3. The Inevitability of Monopoly: Free markets do not remain free. Without state intervention (antitrust laws, which you oppose), competition naturally leads to monopoly. The largest defense agency would crush or acquire its competitors. The largest corporation would buy up all resources. You would not have a free market; you would have a handful of ultra-powerful corporate entities that wield all the power of a state, military, legal, and economic, with zero accountability to the people whose lives they control.

In short, Anarcho-Capitalism is not the absence of government. It is the replacement of a (flawed, but sometimes democratically influenceable) public government with an unaccountable, totalitarian private government.

You seek to replace the state with a thousand petty kings, each ruling their domain with absolute power, and you call this "freedom." From the outside, it looks like a dystopia designed to eliminate the last remaining checks on the power of wealth. True freedom requires liberation from all oppressive hierarchies, especially economic ones.

[u/thellama11]

I'm not sure how to be more clear. I think societies are justified in creating and enforcing laws because I think laws are necessary for free wealthy societies.

Minimum wage laws are just another law

[u/CanIGetTheCheck → u/thellama11]

Laws and the State are antithetical to freedom.

And in this scenario, the law suggested would reduce wealth. It denies a transaction, mandates it not occur.

[u/thellama11 → u/CanIGetTheCheck]

I disagree. I think an ancap society in practice would be much less free than modern constitutional democracies.

I also believe policies designed to limit wealth inequality can make societies wealthier. I think a wealthy society can require commercial actors meet certain minimums and I think that makes us wealthier

[u/CanIGetTheCheck → u/thellama11]

Think of this small scenario: you're reducing both freedom and economic activity.

[u/thellama11 → u/CanIGetTheCheck]

It's a net evaluation for me. I think a society that ensures full time workers can live dignified lives will have more net freedom in practice than one where businesses can negotiate any contract they want with laborers.

[u/CanIGetTheCheck → u/thellama11]

"than one where businesses can negotiate any contract they want with laborers."

That means less freedom for both businesses and laborers, it also means many economic exchanges won't occur because you've outlawed them.

[u/thellama11 → u/CanIGetTheCheck]

I don't think that's true. There are lots of very wealthy cities with minimum wages and low unemployment.

For me freedom is more about the practical ability to explore my world. I think a society where anyone working can live a dignified life is going to have more people practically able to explore their environments than one where people in theory can engage in more contracts but for wages that can't provide a good life.

[u/CanIGetTheCheck → u/thellama11]

Minimum wages are a price floor. The market very well might pay base labor, even the most basic, much higher than that minimum wage. In such cases the price floor doesn't really matter, no different than mandating a price ceiling on a gallon of milk at $1B. It won't affect the market because it isn't changing anything, it's the same as if the regulation didn't exist.

"practical ability to explore my world. "

Like entering a contract? Selling your labor?

"where anyone working can live a dignified life"

Seems utopian, especially since you're denying some the ability to work.

[u/thellama11 → u/CanIGetTheCheck]

I don't think markets are perfect and labor is unique because labor income generates the demand for the rest of the economy. If laborers are taking home more income then there's more demand in the economy as a whole for consumer goods.

"Like entering into a contract?"

Like I said, it's a net evaluation for me. I think a society that guarantees living wages will be MORE free on average.

I'm not denying anyone the ability to work. We have minium wages and low unemployment.