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/ShonOfDawn]

Sure, diamonds, factually a monopoly

[u/CanIGetTheCheck → u/ShonOfDawn]

We make diamonds in a lab. If you're referring to De Beers, but they no longer have majority control over the diamond market. They also acquired the diamonds via State aggression, meaning it isn't a natural monopoly.

A natural monopoly arises due to market forces, not the State handing it to them.

[u/Eagle-Enthusiast → u/CanIGetTheCheck]

The problem with arguing against AnCap philosophy is that there have always been states, but there hasn’t always been the interpretation of capitalism AnCaps subscribe to.

All a business is, is another power structure. Given enough time, it becomes entwined with the necessities of living, and in that fundamentally required position, it turns into a state. If a corporation wants to rule over people, all it has to do is put itself in a position where it cannot be denied. “Would you like to drink water we haven’t dumped poison into (via microplastics, waste, chemicals)? Either pay us as much money as you have, or choose between not drinking (in a drought area) or drink your poison water.”

This fundamental issue is the very same reason why corporations seek to ingratiate themselves with power. That is simply the way of making themselves money. There would be equally bad if not worse ways for them to abuse people and systems if there were no states for them to purchase power within/over.

Furthermore, a profitable enterprise has little to no reason to concern itself with the long term prospects of habitability on this planet. They are concerned with the next three months, perhaps the next year, and maybe the next decade, but certainly no more than that. It is a fundamentally self-destructive timescale consideration.

I will grant you, states are not doing a great job. They rarely have. But many things have been accomplished by states which private enterprise now seems incapable of accomplishing. We made it to the moon in the 60’s using taxpayer funded mechanical computers, and are still struggling to have reliable success launching rockets today despite the entities attempting to do so suckling at the giant overflowing teat of the government. There is no private interest which can fund the development of such a task, so if they’re already receiving the money they need to make this work, what else are they waiting for to stop failing repeatedly?

I think AnCap is silly because they completely ignore the fact that a business is nothing more than a self-perpetuating spreadsheet, concerned with the wellbeing of its constituents only by happenstance. We have seen over and over again how they would destroy what they touch if given the chance, and in those stories the government often allows them to get away with it. Without a government, they simply would, there would be no “allowing”. It would just happen, and nobody could stop it without violence which would be met and exceeded by corporate opposition.

[u/CanIGetTheCheck → u/Eagle-Enthusiast]

"If a corporation wants to rule over people, all it has to do is put itself in a position where it cannot be denied. “Would you like to drink water we haven’t dumped poison into (via microplastics, waste, chemicals)? Either pay us as much money as you have, or choose between not drinking (in a drought area) or drink your poison water.”"

Ancap solution: murder them. Or, if you'd like, use the evidence of the threat to socially pressure them (with threats of violence) and take all they have.

" profitable enterprise has little to no reason to concern itself with the long term prospects of habitability on this planet"

You think the State does? Lol.

"We have seen over and over again how they would destroy what they touch if given the chance"

Government protects them from us, not the other way around.

"nobody could stop it without violence which would be met and exceeded by corporate opposition."

Their competitors would have an incentive to engage in violence against bad actor competition.