Comment by snitko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snitko | Hacker News Reader

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Think about how many things in our lives we do that governments don't control. We get married, we choose what to learn, what occupation to pick and what to work on, we choose whom to become friends with. All of those things are done in complete anarchy yet those are all very important things and decisions! No one in the western world who's in their right mind would suggest that it's a good idea for government to start controlling those things.

Now how come I can't choose what laws I can live by? I don't see people suggesting we all vote for one specific kind of car we are all going to drive for the next 4 years. Yet when it comes to laws it is considered normal that one group suffers because another, slightly more powerful group, wants them to live by their rules.

If you're talking about examples of societies with no government then there are a couple of those in history (Iceland and Ireland being two of them), but the more important point is that sometimes you don't have examples. If you went back to the 17-th century, would you find any example of a country where slavery was outlawed? Yet these days, it is gone almost completely and remains only in illegal forms.

>I don't see people suggesting we all vote for one specific kind of car we are all going to drive for the next 4 years.

There are huge regulatory hurdles to releasing an automobile, for good reason.

Insisting on absolutely no government sounds dogmatic. Surely we can have enough government to negotiate a truce between warring police tribes.

Let's say I agree that regulation is a good thing. I agree that even though I myself may not care for my own safety and want to buy a purely assembled car, I should not be allowed to impose danger on other drivers on the road and this purely assembled car may as well present such danger.

Now the central question here is not whether regulations are a good idea or not, but whether it's a good idea to allow those regulations be issued by one central authority. What if you had like 2-3 agencies inspecting each car manufacturer, then presenting their reports to road companies, who would in turn decide whether or not to allow certain types of cars on their roads? Wouldn't you say that this kind of competition would, in fact, reduce the possibility of corruption? What you have now is a monopoly on regulations, which usually leads to governments abusing this power to prevent certain players from entering the market for their own benefit (bribes from lobbyists for companies that already are on the market).

Road companies seem like a great example of a problematic scenario for anarcho-capitalism:

A hypothetical company called Roads LLC owns a 20km strip of road that goes through a tunnel in a mountain. Due to the geography, all alternative routes require an extra 200km detour. Let's also say, for the sake of argument, that you can't just build another tunnel either, because the mountain would collapse.

Since there are no direct competitors, the company is well-aware of the leverage it has, so it constantly keeps the toll price well above what the maintenance costs are, making huge margins.

So, I assume that your position is that this situation (quite inefficient from the customer's perspective) is better overall than having a government that manages that road, due to all of the other evils you perceive it brings. Even if there was a legitimate mechanism (the democratic process) for changing a particular inefficient government.

I guess my response is that governments seem like they could be efficient in theory, although most are grossly inefficient in practice. In contrast, anarcho-capitalism seems inefficient even in theory.

First, what you forget is that roads are not the only means of transportation. Such a road company would not be able to raise prices indefinitely because customers would either switch to air travel, river transport, or, I don't know, hyperloops, or stop using the road completely. Now what it could do is find the equilibrium price at which customers are still willing to use the road and not switch to a competitor. That might seem like a problem, because the prices would still be higher, but then you have to think back to the time when this project was conceived.

Imagine you are an investor who wants to build that important tunnel. If there is a demand, obviously you wouldn't be the only one. So each of you, investors, would come up with offers for the potential customers for this road. The one who offers the best conditions - for instance, fixed low price for the next 10 years - gets the most customers and proceeds on building that tunnel. If that investor later decides to cheat and raises prices then he would have to deal with law firms of his customers, which would potentially be costly.

So here you see how this potentially difficult situation can be resolved without the need for any government whatsoever.

I'm not an anarcho-capitalist but I'm sympathetic to their views :) and often discuss with friends who are .

Many flat out deny the existance of natural monopolies, for example:

http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf

Others argue that the hypothetical company would face competition by other means of transportation.

Finally, others who are not anarchists, speak of a libertarian government that would curb such abuses.

The Wikipedia article acknowledges your point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_roads

"n many parts of the world land use patterns mean that building two or more highways in parallel isn't practicable. Kroeger claims, "This would result in an incredibly inefficient use of land resources."[citation needed] When there is only one highway connecting points A and B, the main advantage of privatization, competition, disappears. In absence of regulation a private highway operator is likely to charge an exorbitant monopoly price, resulting in huge profit margins and few benefits for drivers."

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