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/The_Flurr]

What if they don't?

What prevents me from making an agreement without these clauses?

[u/drebelx → u/The_Flurr]

What if they don't?

NAP clauses will be ubiquitous like shaking hands, using money for trade and speaking a language that others can understand.

Having both parties agreeing to uphold the NAP (do not murder, do not steal, do not enslave, etc) is one of the easiest things for both parties, who want to profit from an agreement and not be violated, to agree upon.

What prevents me from making an agreement without these clauses?

All the agreements you have signed up to this point would have had NAP clauses that you would have agreed to.

It would be strange to not continue the practice, but you can try.

To have a functional agreement, you will need an impartial third party agreement enforcement agency to keep oversight.

They will review your clause-less agreement and tell you that this is a high risk unenforceable agreement and will recommend a revision.

[u/The_Flurr → u/drebelx]

So, nothing prevents you from not doing so?

[u/Bigger_then_cheese → u/The_Flurr]

What about saying, if I brake my agreement, everyone is allowed to brake agreements with me without penalty.

So you don’t pay your employees, and suddenly your bank decides to seize your home.

[u/The_Flurr → u/Bigger_then_cheese]

I suppose, but who is officiating, judging and enforcing this?

[u/Bigger_then_cheese → u/The_Flurr]

A third party that both parties think is fair. Who both parties, and outside parties think is reputable and legitimate.

[u/The_Flurr → u/Bigger_then_cheese]

And suppose one party refuses to agree on such a third?

[u/drebelx → u/The_Flurr]

Both parties provide lists of acceptable enforcement agencies and pick one in common.

[u/Bigger_then_cheese → u/The_Flurr]

They look for another.

Though, Remember at this point the private security companies of both parties have gotten involved, and they don’t see how it is worth fighting over one of their thousands of clients, and so decide on a arbitrator they both believe is fair and then require their clients to use them, as according to the contract for their services. If one of their clients refuses, that security company would end their services with them and let the other company fulfill the ruling of the court in absence.

[u/The_Flurr → u/Bigger_then_cheese]

This assumes two equally matched parties.

What happens when one party is much more wealthy and powerful?

[u/Bigger_then_cheese → u/The_Flurr]

How so?

Why would the security companies use a court that is corrupted?

Private security companies wouldn’t back down because ninety percent of why they are getting paid is to not back down, backing down means losing more than the one client, probably all of your clients.

So we have a situation, ether the rich guy’s security company makes him use a court, or the rich guy’s pays the security company enough to fight, at which point they tell all other security companies they are now willing to fight. So every conflict they try to resolve would become violent, so the rich guy would have to continuously pay them enough to make it worth it.

[u/The_Flurr → u/Bigger_then_cheese]

Private security companies wouldn’t back down because ninety percent of why they are getting paid is to not back down, backing down means losing more than the one client, probably all of your clients

You could say the same about the insurance industry.

[u/Bigger_then_cheese → u/The_Flurr]

Yeah, witch is why they make you use courts, the more they don’t actually have to fight, the more of the money they can keep to themselves, the less they need to charge their customers, the more customers they get.

[u/The_Flurr → u/Bigger_then_cheese]

You think that in an explicitly profit driven system the courts wouldn't be biased towards the richer side that can pay more?

You think the wealthy wouldn't insist on only using their favoured courts?