@serapath what do you call someone who follows both of those arguments? And believes that the problem is the government and the capitalists are in cahoots?

Because... okay, because capitalism as we know it is only possible if there is a government to operate a property system, so these are two sides of the same coin.

Anarcho-capitalism is theirfore founded on the idea of a really good government which has one job and never steps beyond that. But if ancaps believe competent governance is impossible, how could they ever implement anarcho-capitalism?

capitalism as we know it is only possible if there is a government to operate a property system

Anarcho-capitalism is theirfore founded on the idea of a really good government which has one job and never steps beyond that.

this is incorrect. i can enforce my own property rights. if you try to steal from me i'll threaten you with a gun, if you proceed to attempt to take my property by force, i will kill you. this same principal applies to any land that i am using, my home, and my place of work.

i can hire private security if i need to using some of the money that i would currently spend on taxes and fines that fund state police forces.

@Dominic where are you getting the idea that anarcho-capitalism advocates for a state of any kind?

i can hire private security if i need to using some of the money that i would currently spend on taxes and fines that fund state police forces.

yes, a protection racket! this is how you end up with a state ;)

If you wanna "enforce your own property rights" by having way less private property, great that is how I understand anarchy.

To me, "capitalism" suggests some people having control of large amounts of accumulated value "capital" that they then use to invest in further profitable ventures. Which sounds like having a large amount of enforced property.

If you think of this differently, I'm curious to hear about it.

@customdesigned that is a really interesting suggestion about fiction! fiction has to make things more concrete! so you actually spell out things how you think they would happen.

After posting to this thread late last night, I realized how much I hate this colour-coded anarchy. Who said I'm meant to be all anarcho-capitalism, all anarcho-syndicialist, or all anarcho-primitivist?! anarchy is just about having the most fun I think that is gonna be a combination of those - and yes, including anarcho-primitivism! Way easier to get the state off your back if you are prepared to live in a mud hut.

It's also very telling that these stories are set in space. Overthrowing the state is way too hard, so just go where the state isn't. Move into the mountains or the swamp! people have been escaping the state this way as long as states have existed! even yoda! I bet there is a good swamp near you!

Lol, given that some branches of the corporatist networks probably cover the swamp and solar panels are cheap, a software developer can even take their means of production with them...

@CustomDesigned @dtluna this is why it is important to define terms when you are trying to have an honest debate.

this thread is a lot better than the one @substack started because we are actually starting with a discussion rather than a huge list of quoted statements. so thanks @serapath.

"Power corrupts" is confirmed by brain scans of people in power - the creeping corruption is visible, the milder forms are called "empathy fatigue", as being responsible for so many people makes it increasingly harder to care personally (a similar condition is seen in "caring" professions).

this is probably the main reason why i think the decentralization is important. i really can't care about that many people at once. everyone has different limits, but i don't see them being very large in general. it isn't that i have a difficult time caring about people, quite the opposite in fact: i want to act on my feelings! however, my abilities and resources are limited. i can't realistically help everyone who needs help that i encounter.

tribalism is a big part of the human experience that a lot people view as negative, but, like any other broken part of our character, it isn't something that we can change or fix. at least not with the technology we have at hand. for that reason, i think it is important to embrace humans as they are: selfish, shortsighted, discriminatory, caring, thoughtful, empathic. we have strengths and weaknesses which all need to be accounted for.

the questions i ask are less like "what system has the best outcomes?" and more like "what sort of system will allow me an mine to provide ourselves with a safe a comfortable life?". there is an important line here separating my circle from the rest of the world. this circle has a limited size and i am unable to personally extend meaningful trust outside of it.

a community is a group of overlapping and intersecting circles of love, trust, and cooperation. these also have a limited size and tend to split after a certain point. at this scale, we can't expect trust to dominate our interactions. to simplify, lets treat a community as a singular entity. so we have a bunch of actors that don't trust each other, who may wish to engage in economic activity.

on a larger scale, some groups of actors may find reasons to be aligned with each other for cultural or ideological reasons. this alignment could cause them to act as a unit under certain circumstances as well. at this point things start looking a lot like nation states, right? this structure is not based on power or domination, but trust. so, to reiterate:

1. individual: personal relationships form a circle
2. community: overlapping individual circles
3. culture: loosely affiliated communities

here, trust becomes more diffuse as the scale increases. individuals are mostly self-determined and they have a community of trusted peers who have an interest in helping them succeed. the problems start when another system decides to sit on top and replace community and culture with Nation. trust is now placed in Nation, rather than in our community. normally, trust is a two way street, but Nation doesn't use those terms. The System speaks in terms of Loyalty and Obedience.

so i wonder, how to we strengthen community and culture to prevent Nation from destroying and dominating them? i think ssb is a good start. by scoping our systems to human scales, i think we will start seeing more positive interaction models on the internet.

That is not what I meant by the question, not how you technically record ownership, but what ownership means and who gets to decide.

ownership is an abstract concept, it doesn't really exist outside of the actions that create the idea. basically, i get to decide what is mine. if there is a conflict (multiple claims to a single resource) it has to be resolved in some way. this is where record keeping systems and other types of agreements come into play.

All present private property was expropriated from somebody else by violence, conquest, enclosure, and subjugation. How can a system of land ownership ever be just or fair if it rests on the historical development of the forceful dispossession of communal and indigenous land?

so you're saying i'm responsible for the actions of my ancestors? lmao my property was all obtained though voluntary exchanges. it would appear that we have learned something from history because at least i can't obtain whatever i need through voluntary means, which is an improvement over the past. if we want to go back to the "original claims" (whatever that means) it would take another series of violent authoritarian actions to "reset" the world back to whatever primitive state you are alluding to.

@substack

violence, conquest, enclosure, and subjugation

i agree that these are unethical means to obtain property. i don't see, however, how this makes property unethical. if i am using some farmland that i obtained in an ethical manner though some voluntary exchange (or perhaps i rent), how would you go about abolishing my property rights without resorting to violence? would it be unethical for me to get the lads together and kill you for trying to appropriate my land? this is our livelihood, mind you. without the farm we have nothing, but i think we provide a valuable service to the community and we spend our profits locally, except for things that aren't manufactured nearby. is our capitalist farm really so bad that you have to come take it away from us?

@xj9 if you wanna be ancap - you might enjoy living in a boat. firstly, the bounds of property is very clear - I own this boat you own that boat. I can pretty much do as I please. There is far more scope for getting yourself into trouble than there is for fucking up other people's shit (contrast this with driving on the roads, anyway, the state mostly builds the roads so that's not anarchy) Often, other people will help you get out of a sticky situation, but no one is really obliged to do that, however, they have probably been in a similar situation before. There are different layers where the social relations have very different modes. Between vessels it's extremely volentary free association, but within a vessel you need a high degree of consensus. The traditional way of governing a vessel is basically a Benevolent Dictatorship, however the captain needs to sleep some times so there should really be at least one other person aboard qualified to lead.

Space Anarchy would be a lot like this I think. The life support system is a natural unit of sovereignty - am you really gonna be happy if people within your airlock are carrying shooting weapons? There is a very strong mutual benefit to not getting any leaks! so I think life within one space colony will be extremely mutalistic (ansyn) but relations between space colonies can be as ancap as you like.

@serapath re:ledgers that is actually a lot like what I was thinking with e-land... though, it's not so much about an ideal system, but rather about what I think might work in a given context. Though, after attending burningman I'd encourage members to form subgroups (theme camps) that did their own self governance, including coming up with their own rules if they liked. It's hard to get people to agree so if you design for needing less agreement, it'll be easier to find people who agree with you.

If it was at Bir Tawil it would be different again.

@kixunil unfortunately, that standard of "free market" doesn't actually exist. But maybe "the open market" is more what @serapath means.

@customdesigned okay, I've been reading this ancap fiction. Escape From Terra, and while I do find it quite entertaining, I'd put it more into the "cowboys in space" category rather than some kind of political hypothetical fiction. But maybe that is right, maybe cowboys are ancaps?

In reality - worldwide (=everywhere) for many centuries already - money is supplied via central banking

You'd be surprised how old central banking isn't! The idea of having a single bank that controlled the issuance of currency in a nation/empire is pretty new.

Even as recently as the 19th century, in the US there where lots of banks that all issued their own currency! Central banks are a bit older in Europe, though.

check out the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking

flip side of the coin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank (check out bit on bank of england)

Actually, a great study in how a seemly independent private institution is really or becomes a branch of the state.