sith_wampa

Here is a short guide to help you understand your own views and the views of others. Ancoms see factories as oppressive, and believe working there is not a choice, because a capitalist society compels you to earn capital to survive. Working somewhere entitles you to the profits that result from your labor, even if you have made agreements otherwise because the agreements were not voluntary. They believe that enforcing private property violates the rights of everyone else. Ancaps see your choice to work as voluntary. Nobody forces you to work. Nobody forces you to work at a particular place. You are not forced to own anything, nor are you entitled to anything that was not contractually agreed upon. They see collectivism as oppressive unless all parties have voluntarily agreed. This is the most important difference to understand. Your definition of property largely determines what side of the fence you fall on. True anarchism is when you are not forced to into either private or common property. You can choose to live in a place that has whichever you prefer, or some combination, or some other system. The entire Ancap vs Ancom debate becomes Anarchist vs Statist once you decide one system must be universal, because they start from a subjective definition of property.

/thread dsayers: If multiple parties sign a contract for joint ownership, how is that invalid?

Ancoms usually draw a distinction between "personal property" and "private property", where personal is the things you are immediately using, and private would be something like land. Usually they say personal is ok but private is not, although some say property is totally wrong. Here is a scenario that I think is plausible. Say you have a store. Your competitor is larger and decides to legally purchase all of the land surrounding your store. Are you violating their property rights when you leave your store to go home? And more generally, how does the NAP apply to trespassing?

I understand anarcho communism as the voluntary common ownership of the means of production. The following is a quote from some ancom I was debating. "Ancapism is a contradiction in terms. I will explain why. A state is a monopoly of force in a given area. With property you have the monopoly of force in a given area. So what is the difference? Think about it. It seems as if ancaps just want to be the rulers of their own state. And are mad that they aren't the current rulers of said state they live under." Now I have ancoms say to me "capitalism requires a state" all the time. But this is the first assertion that I have been unable to refute. All I can say is that you are not forced to be on anyone's property, however if all land is owned, it's like telling someone "if you don't like this country then you can leave it." Does anybody have a good response to this assertion?

So I have recently been studying what communism actually means, because the apparent contradiction seemed really obvious to me and I wanted to pin it down. In basically every historical example, communism has been synonymous with the state. But if we define communism as purely "the common ownership of the means of production" then there is no need for a state. People can consent to common ownership. That part checks out. What I think is unavoidable is the creation of hierarchies. Some people are going to be better at their jobs than others, and some people are going to have more to say about business decisions than others. The way I see it, if you consent to being part of a company with a hierarchy, then morally that checks out. But if somehow a hierarchy was forced upon you, ie the state, that would be immoral. In the case of the parent-child hierarchy, I think it is reasonable to say parents have special moral responsibility because it's not possible for the child to consent.