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David Friedman's work on this topic is interesting, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PnkC7CNvyI for example.

I think courts would be private as well, and you'd live in a jurisdiction of your choice.

I also think that jurisdictions that didn't enforce court orders from other jurisdictions would be black-listed by those jurisdictions. Furthermore, individuals from a black-listed jurisdiction would be stigmatized in, or barred from entering the jurisdiction that couldn't obtain their cooperation.

There has to be a cost attached to unreasonably uncooperative behavior.

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David Friedman appears to be a so-called “anarcho-capitalist”, which is not what this article is talking about. Anarchy is inherently incompatible with capitalism. Anarchy is the dismantling of hierarchies, the removal of rulers. Capitalism depends on hierarchies and lauds rulers.

Anarchism describes a way of organizing society in a cooperative way without government compulsion. The idea that it is incompatible with capitalism, which is inherently based on mutual cooperation, is something pushed retroactively by socialist anarchists.

Also, the idea that hierarchies of any type cannot exist within anarchies is more socialist revisionism. Most anarchist societies over history have had hierarchies in some form or another. Somalia and Iceland's periods of anarchy are two such examples.

What do you mean by capitalism? The sort of more formal idea that ownership of an asset entitles one to the production from that asset? Or the more informal (but widespread) general cluster of ideas around free markets and all that jazz.

I don’t really see how the former could work really well in anarchy. Like hypothetically say you “owned” a workshop that could make something useful for the community, they would probably collectively agree that… they should just walk in and start using it. What next?

On the other hand, it seems to me that the general idea of markets could be used. Like, if there was a community workshop, but you were unusually good at making shoes, and had a workstation at that workshop, presumably nothing would prevent you from trading your shoes to other people. The economic value doesn’t really come from the asset of the workstation in that case, though, it comes from your abilities, right?

It's common to equate capitalism (which is the economic reality) with free market (or economic liberalism, which is the underlying ideology, and never completely true in practice). Typical definition of capitalism is that it is a system where (a) significant amount of capital is privately owned and (b) significant amount of labor is traded in a free market (in other words, labor is a commodity).

I agree that it is common (I listed it as the second option for that reason), but I think it is not very precise, which is why I brought it up.

In particular — humans tend to cooperate, know we work better when we specialize, and have a natural sense of fairness (sometimes inaccurate!) so I can definitely see trade and markets happening under basically any system. I mean it has proven impossible to stop trade, if it isn’t in the open you’ll immediately get black markets.

But I can’t see a community collectively and voluntarily agreeing to respect property claims if they grow to the point that they are inconvenient.

It is this first bit; specifically the part where enough of the capital is privately owned that there's a significant class of people who have no choice but paying most of the wealth that they produce as rent to the owners. That's the power imbalance that unavoidably created a hierarchy, and why left anarchists deem capitalism incompatible with the core tenets of anarchism.

Free markets are a different story, since they do not require capital to be privately owned to exist and function. Left-wing free-market anarchism is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_anarchism

True, but you could also argue that limiting the condition (b) rather than (a) is also a way to address the power imbalance. Things like social programs, basic income, unions and cooperatives try to address (b) instead of (a).

Sure, and that's how you end up with authoritarian strains of socialism.

I don't think it's necessarily true, I mean making sure that private capital doesn't exist seems also pretty authoritarian to me.

I also think there is a value difference between socialism and democracy (decisions are made society-wide, by equal citizens participation) on one side and conservativism and authoritarianism on the other (decisions are made society-wide, by selected authorities/elites), even though from a liberal viewpoint (decisions are made individually by affected individuals where possible) they might seem similar (because in both the decisions are made society-wide). Measures against (a) or (b) can be designed and implemented both in democratic or authoritarian way.

And in fact, basic income is on the liberal-socialist, aka "anarchist", spectrum rather than on socialist-conservative, aka "communist", spectrum. (Both spectra offer different solutions than the current liberal-conservative, aka "capitalist", spectrum.)

> I mean making sure that private capital doesn't exist seems also pretty authoritarian to me.

Not really. It's really the other way around - the existence of private capital requires the state to enforce it. The only thing that makes, say, a privately owned factory actually "owned" is the fact that the owner can get the police to evict anyone trying to use it without the authorization, and drag any such miscreants to the courts. If society simply refuses to recognize private ownership of capital, and, as a consequence, refuses to enforce ownership claims, how is that authoritarian? There's strictly less use of force involved.

I would also argue that "democratic" and "authoritarian" are not actually opposites - it's entirely possible for a democratic majority to use authoritarian measures to keep the minority in check.

I think actually the inverse is true; that market socialist systems would quickly evolve into capitalist systems. The main reason is that the capitalist benefits from what economists call the free rider problem, while communal projects don't get the same benefits. And there is no way to prevent some enterprising individual from capitalising on it and outcompeting all of the socialist firms without an enforcement mechanism such as the state to punish them when they do so.

I think you're misunderstanding what anarchy is supposed to look like.

How does one capitalize in an anarchist society divorced from capitalism? As in, what does capital mean? What does it mean to profit?

How can one "outcompete" a "socialist firm"? When there is no money or private property, every firm belongs to everyone who wants it.

Why is a state necessary to punish hierarchies? Presumably in an anarchist world, people have learned to distrust and dislike hierarchies on principle, refuse to partake in it and join together to punish those who do.

> capitalism, which is inherently based on mutual cooperation

Competition is not cooperation. Profit is not cooperation. Privatization is not cooperation.

Anarchism describes a way of organizing society in a cooperative way without government compulsion. The idea that it is compatible with capitalism, which is inherently based on exploitation of labor and asymmetric distribution of returns favoring capital, is something being pushed retroactively by capitalist anarchists.

I disagree out of hand that capitalism is "based" on exploitation of labor, but even if it were, exploitation and differing levels of capital return are completely compatible with anarchism. Anarchism is not a synonym for utopia. People can do bad things or simply amoral things that you happen to not like within a stateless societal framework such as anarchism.

An anarchist society would necessarily dismantle hierarchies as they arose in an ongoing manner. If you tried to create capitalism in an anarchist society - that is to say, create a system of private property ownership whereby you could own the means of production and extract the surplus labor of a working class, without participating in the labor - that society should quickly recognize this is an unjust hierarchy that must be abolished to maintain anarchism. I think we have all experienced, living in a capitalist society, that such a system creates a very steep hierarchy where the wealthy have much more power than those without wealth.

Anti-statism is not axiomatic to anarchism, it results from it's opposition to domination and the principle of means-ends unity, and opposing the state is not a sufficient condition for being an anarchist. It's worth noting anarchism was an offshoot of socialism - to say that this is a narrative projected backwards from anarchosocialists is incorrect.

"everyone would simply choose not to enjoy the benefits of private property" isn't a very compelling argument. In fact, it's observably untrue. We can look at societies that forbade the ownership of private property and these systems always gravitated toward it in spite of state enforcement. People didn't gravitate away from it. Black markets thrived in these economies.

That's not what I meant by private property. Buying food on a black market is what I'd describe as personal property. By private property I'm referring to the private ownership of things which are used to provide a collective benefit, i.e., a factory, or an apartment complex.

May I ask how much familiarity you have with anarchist theory outside of anarchocapitalism?

Don’t even need only theory, researchers like Graeber and Wengrow have shown successful anarchical structures in the historical record, in large societies including after discovery or agriculture, see Dawn of Everything

As much of a fan as I am of Dawn of Everything, claiming that they have shown this in any conclusive sense is really pushing it.

DoE offers a different interpretation of archeological and historical evidence. Most of that interpretation, like the ones that came before it, are supposition as much as "showing".

If anyone is interested but doesn't want to read a 700pg book, this is a 1hr lecture from the authors that hits on a lot of the key ideas. https://youtu.be/EvUzdJSK4x8

How will you prevent people from owning some means of production?

Congratulations, you're not an anarchy anymore and are now a socialist dictatorship imposing authoritarian limits on what people can do, for the "common good".

You can put power in a "democracy" to make sure everyone is equally poor or spread it in the individuals composing a free market and accept a natural level of unbalance.

Any type of anarchy which doesn't involve capitalism as the basic tenet to drive decisions on what gets done has no way of working, unless all citizens behave perfectly.

It's not so much that you need to use violence to stop people from privatizing the means of production, as much as that you don't use the authority and capacity for violence of the state to enforce private property rights. In the absence of a such a threat of violence, abolishing the privatization of a community resource can be put to a vote, and then you can just not respect this person's claim to private property. If no one respects the claim, it doesn't exist. Until such a time as this can be achieved peacefully, we are not ready to live under anarchism.

Capitalism creates an imbalanced distribution of resources by enforcing a certain set of property relations. It isn't a law of nature. Like Gandi said, poverty is a human invention that can be abolished by humans.

Everyone might be equally poor but they'd be equally rich too. We have a massive economic capacity, largely misused to produce things of little value. We can provide for everyone. Capitalism creates no incentive to provide for everyone (as it serves capitalism well to have an underclass who will readily accept poor working conditions to survive), and market failures are frequent. Consider that public transit is much more efficient than everyone having a car, but that there is very little incentive to create good public transit systems under capitalism, not because they don't do their job well, but because they're difficult to run profitably.

I think of the transition from capitalism to socialism as similar to the transition from feudalism to capitalism. If you offered someone with a basic education and a decent job the opportunity to take a land tenancy as a serf under you, they would refuse.

Ownership of private property extends to a larger and larger population with each upheaval of the world's economic systems. The end result is socialism, where private property is owned by everyone, and is thus public. Why would I give you private ownership of what is, under socialism, partly my land?

I think the more credible critique of anarchy is that it is too hopelessly idealistic to occur any time soon.

> I think the more credible critique of anarchy is that it is too hopelessly idealistic to occur any time soon.

Certainly this is beyond the foreseeable future, but I don't think this is actually a good way to critique a vision for society. I believe it is important for us to pursue bold utopian visions, even though they are not achievable in our lifetime. Just because we do not reach it does not mean the exercise isn't valuable; it provides a guidestar to help us to see how society can be improved today.

There is also the concept in anarchism of prefiguration [1], in which you build your ideal society in miniature from within the context of the society you exist in. So for example, we're currently discussing capitalism; we probably won't live to see the end of capitalism, but we can create a microcosm of a better world in the form of a worker's cooperative. This is much more achievable and it allows for us to put our ideas to practice in a sort of "societal laboratory".

Tangentially, I personally have a hypothesis that tech companies are stifled by hierarchical decision making that stops different parts of the organization (eg sales and engineering, or different teams within those departments) from properly collaborating, and creates maladaptive behaviors. For instance, I've seen situations where different parts of the same company feel that need to lie to each other in order to get their needs met, because the systems of prioritizing work weren't functioning properly, but the politics of the company made it impossible to call out these issues.

My hypothesis is that horizontally oriented tech companies, like worker's cooperatives, would outcompete hierarchically oriented companies, all else being equal (eg, if they had equal access to investment [which they don't]). I would like to test this hypothesis by creating such a company.

If anyone is interested in this topic and would care to correspond with me about this hypothesis, including/especially people who are critical of this idea, I'd love to hear from you. Email is in my profile.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefigurative_politics

You would give private ownership because of the same reason anything happens under capitalism. Because you are compensated what you think is a fair price.

There are lots of critiques of anarchy. This isn't my only one or my best one. I am only pointing out that anarchism and private property and trade are fully compatible.

Democracies often protect free speech, but a democracy without free speech protection is completely conceivable. This is concept I am trying to explain.

That's not a very conventional view of democracy. Without freedom of speech, how would we conduct rigorous debate and come to an unforced consensus? Voting can happen without freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean it was a meaningful election or that the democratic apparatus is more than a fig leaf for a dictatorial regime.

Anarchism isn't magic, it's entirely possible that an anarchist society fails and becomes capitalist. Just like democracy isn't magic and can fail and become a dictatorship. But that doesn't make these things compatible. My body will one day fail and I will die, but I don't consider my life to be compatible with organ failure.

I'm gathering your definition of anarchism is, "everyone does what they want, except forming a state, and therefore everything is compatible with anarchism?" Because that's not what anarchists are talking about, the classic quip being, "no government doesn't mean no governance."

The definition of anarchism I would use, given in this video essay [1], is (paraphrasing) a body of theory, method of critique, and set of practices to implement a society free of hierarchies of domination. Given that capitalism is a hierarchy whereby the wealthy are able to impose their vision on others (a concrete example being when Charlie Munger donated $1.5B in order to implement his vision of an ideal college dorm at UC Santa Barbara, one that encodes his particular ideological values) I can't see a way it is compatible with anarchism.

[1] https://youtu.be/Ag9EcQsqP_8

Transitioning from feudalism to capitalism in its liberal form meant freeing people and providing them more rights and liberty.

Transitioning from that to socialism would mean taking freedom away. Despite what some claim the dictatorial nature of the 20th century's socialist countries is not accidental, it is inherent to socialism.

I'd argue that a violent revolution to sieze state power and use an authoritarian regime to implement socialism will always result in an oppressive regime, but that socialism does not, in itself, lead to authoritarianism or oppression. There's nothing inherently oppressive about a stateless, classless society where the means of production are owned collectively. And you can get there by giving people more rights, by democratizing more and more parts of society and giving people the right to access the essentials of life like health care, food, and shelter. I think someday we'll look back on this time in history and think it was absolutely crazy that health care wasn't considered a fundamental right.

> where the means of production are owned collectively.

This, right there, is inherently oppressive because it removes individual liberty and initiative and it requires enforcement. The same goes with lack of private property.

That's why, in fine oppression is inevitable.

In this same way as I think "implementing socialism" has to start by violent means.

I think some people are so idealistic that they don't, or don't want to, realise this.

Now, what liberal countries have done is to take some socialist ideas and to implement them as social policies within the liberal capitalist system. That is very different from socialism and a working approach.

There's a quote, with many variants and attributed to many people, which I think holds a lot of truth: "Any man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head.".

You have the freedom to move your body in whatever way you please, until the point where your fist contacts someone's nose. I don't think anyone would argue this is oppressive. In the same way, everyone had a right to participate in whatever kind of economic activity they please, until that becomes holding hostage the tools society needs to provide for itself.

There's no law of physics which says society has to be changed through violence. In my lifetime I've seen the rights of LGBTQ people extended dramatically, and it hasn't been through violent means.

Regarding whether violence is necessary to "enforce" a lack of private property, please see my response elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33965787

You're free to view me as too idealistic, you're entitled to your opinion and it doesn't disturb me, but I'd point out that the other side of this coin is being so cynical that you become blind to how society is changing and underestimate what is possible to achieve. Personally I think it's better to air on the side of optimism; I'd rather try and fail than to despair, and while cynicism can often have an aloof detachment that feels very intelligent, I think it's skin deep.

I don't know what LGBTQ rights have to do with socialism. If anything they are the progression of enlightenment liberalism.

Overall, I think your reply somewhat proves my point about idealism and denial of reality. And that's fine in principle but can have dangerous consequences (road to hell is paved with good intentions kind of thing).

It's an example of a successful social movement to bring about positive change without violence.

You're entitled to feel however you like, if you want to express that as an argument I'm happy to respond to it, if you don't feel so moved than that's fine too. But if I don't know what about my response makes you say that, there's not really anything more for me to add.

(If you do elaborate, I won't see it until tomorrow because I'm going to log off for the evening now.)

> This, right there, is inherently oppressive because it removes individual liberty and initiative and it requires enforcement. The same goes with lack of private property.

Private property is also inherently oppressive, you need to violence to maintain it.

> In this same way as I think "implementing socialism" has to start by violent means.

In a capitalist society, sure. To start implementing capitalism you also have to start with violence.

> Private property is also inherently oppressive, you need to violence to maintain it.

I'd also add that those with an interest in profit often end up using resources that are held in common, to the detriment of everyone else, which doesn't seem fair. But such is our politics where profit is more important than many other things.

Why should a billionaire get to buy millions of acres of beautiful natural land exclude everyone else? There are places where land belongs to everyone, where you can get a 99 year lease to use it for your lifetime, but not forever, and places where everyone has a right to roam, and land can't be walled off from the public. Why should a farmer make money depleting river waters and aquifers, and the rest of us have to pay higher water bills? Why should an industrialist be able to profit while polluting that same river? Or a media company pollute our minds and public discourse for their profit? Why should mining companies make money from a natural resource at the expense of future generations who won't have access to those resources any more? Etc.

Capitalism depends on allocating capital goods to their long-term highest and best use. While this may often involve what is effectively a power hierarchy, there's nothing necessary or inherent about this. Many observers would say that large hierarchies in real-world economies are an outcome of undue government influence, for example.

Ancaps are just fascists, full stop.

I had a lovely conversation about cryptoassets with someone who held ancap views (we didn't exchange labels but I'd wager they'd embrace this one) earlier today. You can't tell if someone is a fascist based on their ideological label (outside a few obvious exceptions like, "I'm a Nazi," sure), because as a rule fascists don't want to be identified.

That's fair, but also ancaps are universally fascists. Anarchocapitalism gets rid of the state, safety nets, and police in favor of private security forces employed by whomever is wealthiest. If you want Elon Musk operating the police, then by all means.

But that sure sounds like a recipe for CEOs to become autocrats.

I think that's just like, having problematic ideas. There's definitely some ancap/libertarian thinkers that give me the creeps. But most of the ancap/libertarians I've spoken to are against coercion and authoritarianism.

Let's not paint with a broad brush, it's unfair to the people we're debating with (most of whom aren't fascists) and it just makes us look like fools who see fascists behind every idea we don't like. Which makes it difficult to argue that specific people really are fascists when we need it.

Except if you believe in unfettered capitalism with zero government oversight, there's no other possible outcome than "the rich run the police".

You'll get no argument from me on that point. But you would get an argument from an ancap, and then you could have a discussion. A lot of people want to imagine a better world but can't imagine a world without capitalism. I think you'll find that lots of them have simply never tried, because they've never seen anyone else do it. They might not be as entrenched as you're thinking.

> jurisdictions that didn't enforce court orders from other jurisdictions would be black-listed by those jurisdictions.

*Cough* ICC *cough*?

s/jurisdiction/country/g

That's similar to the definition of countries, international treaties and frontiers.

Although while there are no involuntary de jure hierarchies among countries, de facto there are.

Sort of like jurisdictions in America that have legalized marijuana or declare themselves sanctuary cities in direct opposition to federal law.

It might be worth mentioning that parent post is the anarcho-capitalist flavor of anarchy, which solution would sound like a dystopia to an ansoc or anarcho-communist person such as OP.

I'm pretty skeptical about whether these private courts would/could work in the long term, but it is fascinating to read the theories.

In some sense they already exist in modern society. Most insurance companies arbitrate in private courts for instance. Public courts are too slow and inefficient.

Public courts are slow and inefficient by design. The principle (and practice imx) is that most cases should settle before ever taking up much of a public court's time. Making public courts faster would reduce the incentive of the parties to avoid externalising their failure to agree onto the public.

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