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How does a free society defend itself? I differentiate between nascent and established free societies. A 'free society' is an anarchic polity based on the consistent principles of sovereignty ('self-ownership'), property rights and the NAP. Could a free society effectively defend itself against a state? I personally think an established (i.e. second or third generation plus) free society would crush any state aggressor with 'soft power' means alone (e.g. asset freezes, boycotts, cyber warfare, etc.), but I am interested in what others think on the subject. On nascent or very new anarchistic societies, I think history shows that any such society will be crushed almost on creation, such as in the Catalonian Communes and the Free Territory in Ukraine. That is why no free society can come about through military or traditional revolutionary methods alone. It requires a gradual spread of knowledge about sovereignty and active non-violent pushes towards non-state solutions to societal concerns (e.g. local currencies, voluntary cooperatives, black markets and voluntary labour exchanges, among many other methods). Apart from well-armed individuals and militias, I think any collection of professional defence companies in a free society would greatly outmatch any state armed force. I base this assertion on the context from which these companies would operate. Free societies would be far richer than any state given the lack of taxation, fines, licensing, business rates and all the panoply of state money-sucking costs. There would also be heavy investment in defence, given it is a concern now and so would also be so in a free society. Find out more on my own view at: www.clarkead.co.uk. Cheers.

Many of the actual problems with Anarcho-Capitalism as a system for organizing human activity can be traced to the concept of Negative Externalities. The incentive structure created by Capitalism in general leads to exploitation of free resources, and often times individuals acting in their own best (short-term) interest results in the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons. Factory Farms They say when you're not the customer, you're the product. That's certainly true of farm animals. They are slaughtered to be sold to people for food. The milk and eggs they produce are sold as well. So what happens? Well, very simply, Capitalism on its own will cause exploitation of animals on a massive scale. Billions of animals are raised in ever more cramped conditions, forcibly inseminated and fed antibiotics. Little birds have their beaks cut off so they don't peck each other as they wallow in their own shit and filth. Now, they spend their whole life in these conditions. This is the epitome of coersion. And why has it become like this? Because those farms which take these measures can sell meat and dairy for a lower price than the ones which don't. In the market, many people want the cheaper sausage, however it was made. So there is a growing demand for factory farm output. Not only that, but the farmers form organizations to boost demand for their products such as the National Dairy Checkoff. They do this without government. Remember those "Got Milk" commercials? How about "Got Milk from a cow that barely moves and is fed hormones"? OK, maybe you can make some ethical contortions by simply excluding animals from ethical considerations, saying only humans matter. Certainly then you can claim that it's immoral to use any type of force to prevent factory farms from operating. When Capitalism takes its course, people will often choose the cheaper milk / meat, e.g. at McDonalds or KFC. Capitalism doesn't care about morality. And by excluding animals from considerations, you don't have to, either. In Europe, factory farms are banned, but that is an act of government, i.e. force. There is no way to do it within Capitalism. If you buy up all the factory farms and liberate all the animals (like they did with slaves, let's say) someone else can just start another farm and sell meat cheaper than you. So you don't get rid of this through Capitalism, because it results in cheaper goods. The only way is to band together as a society and use force to ban it. Antiobiotic Resistance But of course, externalities aren't just limited to animals. The factory farms figured out that antibiotics can make animals fatter and bigger, therefore bring more money. Once again, Capitalism selects for those farms which do such a thing. And now, as a result, this has accelerated the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. So here's a Negative Externality that can affect MILLIONS OF PEOPLE on a scale not seen since antibiotics were invented. Thanks Factory Farms. Now are we going to somehow take them to court and extract some sort of reparations? By now it's a bit too late. Perhaps it was better to have banned this from the start, and use inspectors and force to make sure it's not done in the first place. And that wonderful State Capitalist system of government-granted Patents of the Pharma community has failed to produce antibiotics at a quick enough pace. Meanwhile, other branches of Science and Open Source Software where people freely contribute to a snowball of knowledge has eclipsed for-profit companies like Microsoft and Brittannica. Wikipedia has way more than Britannica. Linux runs even on toasters while Windows runs only on a particular architecture, because they owned the closed code and didn't need to make it for any other. Imagine if drugs were developed on an open source ecosystem instead of a for-profit patent-fueled Pharma one. Prisoners A similar dynamic appears with private prisons. The prison that spends the least on each inmate, and works them to the bone, would make more money. And instead of the National Dairy Checkoff, they simply pay local courts to send them more kids, or lobby for minimum sentencing laws. Again, these situations would only be worse if we had MORE private prisons, because more people will care about saving a buck than about the welfare of prisoners. In Everyday Commerce One can say that Anarcho-Capitalism are a Wolf and a Fox (or a Wolf and a Lamb) deciding that another Lamb is for dinner. When A and B make an agreement (e.g. that A will employ B), you can focus on their voluntary choice to make that agreement. But what you don't see is all the other people C who face the consequences (e.g. B is a manufacturer of a robot, and C was a local worker who used to be employed). So when C makes an agreement with D, they are coming from the situation that was created by all the transactions where C had to face the externality. Therefore, even on a grand scale, Anarcho-Capitalism can be quite coercive to many people. (And is one reason why societies have instituted Welfare schemes or Unconditional Basic Income). Working Class Families Capitalism works well to distribute money to people when employers value their employees. Your grandfather's generation worked at a Corporation for decades, and one breadwinner was able to support a whole suburban household, complete with cars, kids etc. Loyalty went both ways, and your grandfather even got a pension after retirement. Today, we are over 5x more productive per capita (inflation-adjusted GDP divided by number of people) and yet the Working Class hardly has the same earning power. Today, both parents have to work long hours just to pay the rent or mortgage for the exact same suburban house and car and kids. For a majority of the population, Jobs have become 2 year stints and are moving further to a gig economy where each worker is totally replaceable. Most manufacturing has been automated, so the demand for human labor in those sectors has gone down. That's why rent has become so much higher. Now look at the incentive structure for the family. The resource is time and attention to your spouse. The dad gets a nice offer to earn 90% of what the grandfather used to earn (in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars). He goes and trades his time for that money, leaving less of it for his kids and wife. Now the mom wants nicer things for her kids – or perhaps a career of her own in the new shiny office workplace (not your grandfather's workplace) – and goes to work as well. So, even less attention for the kids. The kids are sent to public school, and the grandparents are put into nursing homes. Who wins from this? The kids don't, the grandparents don't, unless you count "professionals" taking care of them to be a step up from their own family. But the economy is booming and growing! The GDP is higher than it was before. Yet the time people spend with their kids and elderly is a negative externality. It's given up entirely organically through voluntary exchanges. And that affects how our society functions. Induced Demand Induced Demand is the phenomenon when more of a good being produced leads to greater consumption of that good. For example, constructing more lanes on a highway can actually make traffic worse, and vice versa. Malthus argued that as food becomes more available, people have more children, and pretty soon each person is right back to the same amount of food and material wealth as before. Since the 1950s it appears that we've been able to escape this "Malthusian Trap", but we may just have staved it off and are now living on a credit card. See below. In Capitalism, of course, the producer and the consumer both have incentives to keep increasing production until all the supply is exhausted. This can lead to really scary planet-wide effects for both us today and our children and grandchildren. Desertification As farmers use land to its maximum capacity, prices fall, and farmers acting in their own short-term self interest push harder, extracting as much as they can from the land, in order to keep making what they're making. The result is a total collapse of the land's ability to sustain food. Now crops barely grow and soil starts blowing away like dust. You could have seen this in the Dust Bowl preceding the Great Depression, and the Government paid farmers to NOT PLANT for a while, something that would not have happened if everyone just did what's in their own self interest. We know this because now the situation has been replicated all around the world. Now, far from reducing desertification, we have increased it at a rate beyond anything before. In China, for example, the Gobi desert is growing every year. In Africa, farmland that was once arable is now desert. In fact, the UN estimated back in 2006 that this will lead to a migration of 20 million people from Africa – and this was way before Angela Merkel's policies Collapse of Ecosystems Colony collapse disorder threatens wild bees. There are far less insects than before. Sure, it's nice that commercial beekeepers were able to keep the bees alive – this is one argument for private ownership of animals to prevent extinction. But, the extinction could very well have been a Negative Externality from unsustainable human activities. Certainly this can be said about overfishing or the extinction of species at an unprecedented rate. Is it a coincidence that this is the age of the most widespread Capitalism? It has certainly led to prosperity, but at the expense of consuming everything around it. Including finely tuned ecosystems. Fossil Fuels In the last 70 years, we are living in a time of the highest concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans, in MILLIONS OF YEARS. The cause is obvious: humans have released a lot of the CO2 trapped far underground in oil, gas etc. through burning them in our machines. As with the animals, proponents of fossil fuels need to engage in constant public contortion to deny simple data observations as a conspiracy by government scientists. They point to all the good that has been achieved with fossil fuels. They say Earth has been warm in the past. That's true, Earth has had both Greenhouse and Icehouse periods where palm trees grew near the poles, although evidence seems to show that during the Greenhouse periods, the areas below, say, Chicago, were uninhabitable by warm-blooded animals, certainly by humans. Going outside would be like going into a 170 degree fahrenheit sauna, the same sauna that has a warning not to be there for more than a couple hours. So are all those people living at those latitudes (including many developing prices) just "collateral damage" and are we gonna pay for our Negative Externality by dumping a few air conditioners their way? Or if their cities get flooded, are there gonna be private court cases to finally trace the causation to the people who contributed to this 20 years ago ... is that really the best way to deal with these problems? But of course, the greenhouse effect isn't the only problem with pollution. The constant smog from 19th century London, or 20th century New York, looked like this. Human cognition starts to suffer in a stuffy room with poor ventilation because of a buildup of CO2 to 1000 ppm or more. Right now the global ambient concentrations are already around 400 ppm, nearly one half of that. In some areas, it's worse. Summary Let's sum up. Has Capitalism brought us unprecedented prosperity? Well, technological innovation did (one can argue it could have proceeded even faster with open source software, science, collaboration instead of competition etc.) But let's say it was pure Capitalism. At what cost? The competition has led to negative externalities which are really hard to remedy using Capitalism alone. More of the same will simply make MORE negative externalities. Capitalism is resilient and resistant to messing with making products cheaper and more available, by any purely Capitalism-based means. But don't be fooled, there are externalities everywhere: Billions of animals at Factory farms suffering so meat and milk can be cheaper and more plentiful Desertification of farmland Pollution of the air and oceans Overfishing, collapse of ecosystems like the rainforest or lake Baikal Working class works harder and longer for less money Capitalism is a good system for certain things, but it is not a panacea. Negative Externalities exist. Induced Demand exists. These need to be recognized and addressed on a societal level, and not praying to the invisible hand to somehow make sure we survive the consequences of our ever-increasing unsustainable consumption.

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Hey guys, I have a blog on Wordpress called vforvoluntary which matches my profile name. It covers a wide variety of issues related to politics, economics, philosophy, etc. Check it out if you want and share it with your friends. I would particularly recommend reading The State: The Opiate of the Masses and The Non-Aggression Principle: A Principle So Crazy You Probably Live By It as they capsulize anarcho-capitalist views in general. I am also working on a blog post that will explain how an anarcho-capitalist society could work. Check it out using the link below: https://vforvoluntary.wordpress.com/

Hi FDR gang, I was wondering if anyone knows of any books that further discuss the concept of DROs/private insurance agencies. I've listened to all of Stefan's podcasts on DRO's and read his anarchy books and those were very helpful but I'd like to explore this concept even further. Does Robert Higgs write about this topic at all (I'm currently working my way through Crisis and Leviathan)? Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks, C

So glad to see other gamers here! When ever I play Minecraft (Typically modded ex: Voltz) with my friends we usually split off into multiple "nations" based on our beliefs/interests. These nations typically have 5 people living in them and will periodically go to war. The nations also have times of peace and trade with one another. To explain a typical game, I will have a friend that chooses to create a Communist Nation (Arstotska), another a Fascist Nation (Austratt), and me typically a Voluntarist Nation dubbed "Libertaria". All of these nations follow these economy types. For example, in my nation we have no centralized government like in the other two. Protection and services is provided by businesses and corporations. There are no Taxes, but there is a charity donation in which people donate supplies voluntarily to construct roads and build walls. Libertaria typically has the largest and wealthiest economy. However we usually lack a strong offensive but make up in defense ( Following non-aggression). We promote self-protection of property and suggest that private citizens build their own defenses if they wish. This is always really fun but also almost always ends in broken friendships LOL. My friends have an adequate knowledge of economy and government but not enough so that we can create the picture perfect idea of an anarcho-capitalist society. Crap always ends up in voting, then eventually a power grab. I would like to try creating a society like this in either vanilla or modded to put FDRs knowledge of free-market principle and anarchy to the test. Would anyone be up for something like this? It would be a great learning experience to see what a voluntaryist society might look like.

I hope I've not broken any rules by posting this here, I didn't see any rules against this. I'm in the process of making a browser-based mmorpg game made with websockets and HTML5/javascript. I'm at the point of needing the GUI started. It will be pure javascript/HTML in order to appeal to a wider audience. (using the same technology as mozilla's Brwoser Quest: http://browserquest.mozilla.org ) Graphic design would be awesome as well (not required). The game has a few unique features where players get to play in an ancap-style sandbox kind of world. I am unable to financially compensate you for this. The only benefit in it for you is the enjoyment of working on a project with like-minded individuals, and if the project ends up actually getting finished- I'm happy to split the profits (we can work this out if you're down on doing the project).The current team consists of myself (python programmer working on the server mainly), and my friend who is working on balances, play-testing, and will deal with the legal stuff down the road (incorporating and other annoying statist business crap). I spend less than 5hrs a week on this, so it's not a high-pressure project. Please message me if you're at all interrested, if you have any ideas, or suggestions on where to find someone who might fit the above description.

Anyone interested in a serious discussion about the Chomsky videos and his scathing views of anarcho-capitalists? What they're advocating though they don't know it is pure corporate tyranny, he says, along with a lot of other shaming and finger-wagging, as well as some points that deserve to be addressed. http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/faq/sp001627.txt https://www.youtube.com/user/TheChomskyVideos?feature=watch I'd be very interested in learning how to logically, with a calm passion instead of snarky irritation, address his points. Can anyone help me out with this?

Imagine states as big, big corporations, and they simply offer services in exchange for money. Except that they happen to have the internal policy that if you are on their own territory (private property), they make the taxes mandatory. However, it is more efficient to pool resources if you have many clients. Also, the clients express their CONSENT by STAYING IN THAT country. But there still is competition between states. You are free to move to the state which offers you the best service for the least money. The states which listen to what people need and inform them what they're getting into are the ones which more people will consider worth migrating to. And if you really think about the "mandatory tax" part, perhaps it's better that way, because it's much, much more expensive to live on your own on a deserted island. So the tax is just the profit of the state. EDIT: also solving the free rider problem. Even in Somalia, while it was anarho-capitalist-ish, you HAD to belong to a clan in order to have any rights, even though you were free to migrate between them. States work best when small and adaptable to what their people want. And it's better to have many small states so people more easily migrate. So, do your job by telling people who don't like it to either migrate, or to fight for lower taxes or division.I am no longer an anarcho-capitalist, but a minarchist. Can you convince me otherwise?

I took my liberty to point out what ideas do I get during my plentiful listenings to Stefan's radio show. I think Stefan's great with psychological and philosophical themes, but when it comes to the economic system itself, I can see there's a work for me. I can't improve what is perfect, but I can show a mirror to what I think is flawed - but fun! I did my best to keep the comic strips tasteful and intelligent and maybe even funny. However, be sure I'll post them on many occasions when I need to illustrate a point, literally. I'll add more when I get any other ideas. 10 in the first day is good enough. Please mods, if you like the topic, make it sticky To all the offended parties I profusely apologize.

I recently wrote an article over at my blog called 7 Misconceptions About Libertarians. It's based on one of those GIF posts over at BuzzFeed, but I kind of targeted it to anarcho-capitalism and game some real answers. Tell me what you think.

This past week I started attending my first year of law school in Ohio. I became an anarcho-capitalist/voluntaryist about 8 months ago, which was a few months after I decided to attend law school. I examined how I felt about my decision to continue down this path and while I know there are going to be many career paths and decisions closed to me, I still felt/feel that this is the correct path for me, where I can use my skills and my mind in the most productive way possible and hopefully I can find a niche where I can advance or exercise many of the principles of philosophy we discuss here at FDR. However, even I didn't realize just how into the belly of the beast I was headed. I have been sick for about 2 weeks, so I wasn't able to really prepare myself as fully as I had hoped and the emotions and thoughts have been coming one after another. It's true what they say-you can't unlearn what you have learned going down this anarchist path, and you can't unsee what you have seen. While it is an exciting field, the fellow students often brilliant and thought provoking (as are the teachers), and the subject matter and dreams of grandeur, wealth and purpose permeate the halls, I can't blind myself to the blood underlying the system. Every time a profesor speaks of regulations, laws, taxes, statutes, etc. without flinching, acting like they are just words on paper and aren't words with the power of guns aimed at peoples' heads, I cringe twice. When they speak in awe or reverance of politicians, judges, etc. with glowing language for the good they do, for the good our nation has done in the realm of liberty and legal freedoms (which in its small defense is more than other "nations") I can't join in, because I see the pain underneath it all. And the desire to forget, to bend on principle, to "play the game" ill be there, every day, for the next 3 years and beyond. It hasn't been bad yet, but making it through the classes, the internships, the bar, etc. while maintaining my integrity may be the hardest thing to do, and the desire to sell out in some small ways, to paint myself as just a very conservative, libertarian leaning student who still fits within the normal "allowed" spectrum is something I will have to wrestle with. I don't know what will happen if someone (especially a prof) asks me point blank what my religious views (atheist) or political views or familial views are-in that instant, should I stand on my principle and shoot myself in the foot in some ways, or should I find a diplomatic answer and trade the integrity of a fleeting conversation inn the moment for the ability to achieve greater goals in the end. I don't know how this year will go, nor do I don't know what decisions I will have to make or how they will turn out. If any has entered law school as an AnCap before (or changed partway through as well) any advice, tips or just your story would be most, most helpful, and anyone else with advice on how to conduct yourself with integrity in similar situations would be helpful and appreciated as well.