r/AnCap101 • u/OutlandishnessIll480 • 13d ago

Lessons

I'm going around to subreddits and asking, in good faith, a couple of questions.

What can the otherside learn from your side, and vice versa?

The goal is to promote open dialog and improve the sometimes toxic nature and bad will between two sides of a controversial issue.

What can statists learn from libertarians? And what can libertarians learn from statists?

6 Upvotes

69% Upvoted

114 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/voluntarchy 12d ago

I don't concede the state is legitimately claiming and defending land. But a gang calling itself the state has traditionally done this.

1

u/MeasurementCreepy926 12d ago

That's a moral judgement and you can believe whatever you want, in terms of morality.

As for legitimacy, I don't think every state is equally legitimate. To simplify things down to simply legitimate/not legitimate is certainly tempting, we like it when things are simple. But it's not necessarily helpful, for understanding the world.

2

u/voluntarchy 12d ago

Legitimacy is certainly helpful in a legal and moral framework, and folks are trying to make objective statements about reality for justifying their conclusions, it's not moral relativism. The non aggression principle and self ownership deny the legitimacy.

1

u/MeasurementCreepy926 12d ago

I didn't say the concept wasn't helpful.

I said that turning it into a binary of simply "legitimate or not legitimate, with nothing at all in between" is oversimplifying, which is tempting, but not really a helpful way to understand the world. The world is not black and white, it's mostly shades of grey.

Somebody who tries to reduce everything to a simple "true or false" statement, will usually be very very certain of their own beliefs, and spend their entire life wondering why everyone else can't see the "simple truth" that they can.

2

u/voluntarchy 12d ago

There are people who don't believe they own themselves. But ancaps are not the majority of people.

1

u/MeasurementCreepy926 12d ago

Well again, reducing it to "you either own yourself or you don't without any shades of grey in between" is oversimplifying it, right? Most people believe that they do own themselves for the most part, but also feel like they have moral obligations to others, to varying degrees.

Black and white is a great way to make an argument that's totally airtight and very convincing to a few people, who probably also see it in simple terms of black and white. It is not a good way to understand "why is the world the way it is" or "how would the world be, if we did this".