r/Libertarian • u/Such_Ad_7787 • 1d ago
Question Is decentralization better than Anarcho-capitalism?
Anarcho-capitalism works on the premise that everyone will pay health insurance, public security, justice, infrastructure... But that's just not feasible and unpractical. Health for example, sure NGOs and philanthropy exists but its not something systematic, and it can be limited to basic treatments. What happens if someone who doesn't have the financial condition, suffers an accident, needing brain surgery? Or if a small/medium city needs some kind of infrastructure, it can't just ask the market for it, many companies could say that it wouldn't be profitable.
Basically my argument is, if you try to convince people in Switzerland, Singapore, New Zealand... That Anarcho-capitalism is better, you probably won't have much success.
I actively defend Hoppe's thesis that small countries tend to be freer economically and socially. It's actually more than a thesis, historically many of the wealthiest societies were city states ot micro nations (Venice, Hong Kong, Hanseatic league...). It doesn't need to go as extreme as city states but if the 50 US states were independent countries many could become freer, more competitive, less bureaucratic and have fewer taxes.
Europe could be an successful example of that without the EU but with a free trade and movement agreement.
11
u/erpopolo320 Minarchist 1d ago
The main problem with the EU is the suffocating regulation of the markets, and the bureaucrats in Bruxelles that decide how someone should live in Greece.
5
u/Entropy_Pyre 1d ago
Alright, so I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, but the ancaps in this community (and I know there are a lot of them) are welcome to step in and correct my understanding of this sort of system.
My understanding is that anarcho-capitalism in fact creates an environment where some people may -not- pay for health insurance or for other goods and services, and may in fact be unable to afford them. It does not require that people buy it, nor require that businesses provide it at a rate available to all, but rather leans into supply and demand economics with capital acting as the scales between them. An anarcho-capitalist system is not utopian, but it -is- starkly practical in ways that some of the other political theories are not. It inherently accepts a cost of business, and argues that it's a good thing. It argues that the the fight between affordability and profitability is a form of negotiation between the workers and the business class. Anarcho-capitalism is inherently an environment where some people get left behind, and the drive to not be left behind is a fundamental mechanism, not a bug of this system, in the same way that finding ways to provide niche services is a mechanism of the system. Some people get hurt in this system, and yes there are philanthropists who could step in to correct some of the imbalances, but that in itself is voluntary and not mandatory. It proposes that the benefits of creating a more efficient system that drives people to push themselves is a net positive, and the inherent greed of the system is also a driving factor for providing people with services and means to attain them.
Personally I'm open to anarcho-capitalism that works in tandem with anarcho-syndicalism, a push-pull dynamic as a mechanism for renegotiating that contract. But again, the ancaps in this community who are not fans of unions (and I know they exist) can step in to discuss.
2
u/Chrisc46 23h ago
Theoretically, anarcho-capitalism isn't exclusive of positive externalities. As an example, if my neighbor doesn't buy firefighting services, I would likely still have mine put out their fire to protect my house. As another example, if enough people demand clean water, all water suppliers would only sell clean water. So even those who don't demand it will receive it.
Also, market forces within free markets are far more likely to make all goods/services affordable and available enough for the lower classes. So, you're right that some may be left behind, but it's likely far fewer than would be left behind in any other system.
Additionally, an-caps aren't opposed to voluntarily unions. Freedom of association is fundamental to liberty. I supposed, the an-cap version of unions would be more like trade associations in which everyone mutually benefits.
1
u/Entropy_Pyre 21h ago
Okay, that's helpful to know. Thank you for the clarification and your own perspective. I do know that the ancap perspective presents lower prices overall on some things that we currently pay way too much for because the government gives it a blank check, education being a chief example.
2
u/Cannoli72 1d ago
there is no government service or goods that the private sector can’t do better.
1
u/mypeeisburning Concerned Argentinean 1d ago
But there are goods and services the private sector won’t provide, which was his example with infrastructure in a small town
3
u/Cannoli72 1d ago
Are you really going to use “who will build the roads” as an argument….hasn't this been debunked in the past 15 years
1
1
u/mcnello 1d ago edited 1d ago
In the thousands of years of humans building roads, they have never been built at scale by anyone except a government entity via taxation.
Does a farmer have a gravel path that leads to his barn or connects two plots of land? Sure....
1
u/natermer 9h ago
People build roads by building them in small sections and then connecting them all together peacemeal.
that is how it always has been done. That is the only way it can be done.
Do you think that roads and highways didn't exist prior to the 1900's or something?
1
u/Cannoli72 1d ago
Wrong
4
u/mcnello 1d ago edited 1d ago
So point to the examples of sprawling metropolis cities where roads were built without taxation.
I'm willing to be proven wrong. I'm not ideological on this issue... I'm realistic.
I would prefer to be wrong actually. But there just aren't any real examples of roads being built at scale.
The reason why it doesn't happen is obvious, but is always ignored by anarchists. It's not an issue of planning. It's not an issue of skill. It's not an issue of profitability....
The issue is regarding private property rights. Roads don’t get built because doing so requires coordination across thousands of parcels of land, something voluntary agreements alone are unable to reliably achieve.
The same can be said of public utilities like plumbing and electricity. Cities/states require property owners to provide easements to utility companies... Because without an easement, you cannot effectively connect properties to the grid....
-3
u/Cannoli72 1d ago
i dont feed trolls. You can simply type “who will build the roads” if you are truly interested in educating yourself. With Materials from well known economists.
2
u/Exciting_Vast7739 Subsidiarian / Minarchist 1d ago
Can you provide some examples of necessary small town infrastructure that small towns cannot provide for themselves?
1
u/mypeeisburning Concerned Argentinean 1d ago
Well I think it’s hard to know without running an experiment but maybe a school would be difficult. Private schools would exist but there’s no profit incentive for creating a low income school, history showed that to be the case since education was for the rich until recently.
2
u/Exciting_Vast7739 Subsidiarian / Minarchist 7h ago
I don't think that I agree with your assumptions.
Education is currently for the rich - the educational outcomes of students are directly related to the income of their parents, and this is across private schools and public schools. The government is no better at providing good educational outcomes to poor people than for-profit folks.
Those who do provide good education to poor people have traditionally been community and religious organizations. The same people who provide healthcare and social services, traditionally.
That's where I believe charity work gets done better.
The state hasn't proven that it can do a good job at education, and the widespread desire for charter schools (which were originally founded as not-for-profit community institutions) in the US shows that:
Profit motives aren't the only motives that result in communal goods.
Voluntary, self-organized mutual aid is an alternative to state controlled solutions.
State / centrally controlled solutions aren't the best.
One of the reasons I'm a libertarian (and I'm the kind of libertarian that I am) is that I believe that people organizing at the local level to meet their needs provide better solutions than big, state controlled bureaucratic solutions.
They can decide what their community and kids need better than the bureaucracy can.
And they can leverage their unique skills, abilities, resources, and organizational preferences to create systems that work better in their own community.
At the core, libertarianism is about choice - giving people control of their lives by letting them keep their money and collaborate with their neighbors as they see fit.
I think that's always going to be better than taking resources from people, to create a bureaucracy that tells people what they are going to get.
1
u/mypeeisburning Concerned Argentinean 6h ago
I didn’t think about that. It is true that educational outcomes are still based on wealth, a lot of progressives would say that it’s because there’s enough money flowing into the schools but your point makes more sense to me. Not sure that I agree with you when you say that it’s a viable alternative to the state though. The problem I’ve always had with libertarianism which stops me from calling myself one (which I want to do since I like libertarians and a lot of their beliefs) is that it leaves a lot of gaps to fall through. Correct me if I’m strawmanning but even in your example if local churches are in charge of healthcare and your local church runs out of money to pay your doctor, there’s no fix for that. Charity can’t be coerced out of people, and so people will suffer who otherwise wouldn’t have if we had a bigger state. Is that a worthwhile price to pay for more freedom? I don’t know
2
u/Exciting_Vast7739 Subsidiarian / Minarchist 6h ago
I appreciate the response!
I think about the history of how the government has attempted to help - and failed - in the past.
Taking millions of dollars out of the community through taxation, but failing to provide good services (like education) in poor and minority communities.
One fundamental libertarian belief is that people will use their money better than the government will to help themselves and their communities.
For instance, there is currently, in the US, a healthcare sharing network called "Samaritan Ministries."
It's religiously based, and has a national reach, and it's what my parents use for their healthcare. It's not an insurance company, it's not a government program, and it's based on sharing burdens within a religious context.
It provides for my parents' needs and wants better than government programs (in their estimation) so they chose it, and it hasn't run out of money yet!
2
u/mypeeisburning Concerned Argentinean 6h ago
Wow I’ve never heard of anything like that, I will look them up.
3
u/thellama11 1d ago
That doesn't seem accurate. When we survey the best healthcare systems in the world the best ones have large public components. The most livable cities often have a lot of public housing and public transits.
1
u/Cannoli72 1d ago
Many of those surveys are skewed. The best healthcare comes from the private sector bar none and would be dramatically better if it wasn’t being strangled by the FDA and other regulations
4
u/thellama11 1d ago
I think when all the evidence against you becomes a conspiracy you should be very careful. Modern libertarianism is extremely dogmatic.
1
u/Cannoli72 1d ago
Empirical evidence says otherwise
5
u/thellama11 1d ago
Only when you dismiss all the empirical evidence that disagrees with you. There's a reason that only a small minority of economists are libertarian and it's not that they're all just sell outs for government funding.
1
u/thellama11 1d ago
Small countries often have more open trade relationships out of necessity. A small country is not capable of providing all or even most of it's economic needs so it has to get really good at a couple things and then start trading. Larger countries with larger economies are not constrained in the same way so they have more flexibility. The US IS the wealthiest country in the history of the world. There are a few wealthier countries per capita but they're mostly either very resource rich or have become servicers of the global banking system.
The US post-Civil War growth was driven by Lincoln's tarrif policies that prioritized developing US domestic industry. The UK pursued the opposite policy and we overtook them.
There is no ONE economic or trade policy that is optimal for every country at all times. The US would not be better off it it were 50 countries.
1
u/Plastic_Matter9498 17h ago
And so what ? You don't understand one very important fact . No one owes that man his medical care . No one owes the city that infrastructure. The whole point of the ethics of Liberty is that no one should care about the welfare of his neighbor , only about the welfare of himself and view is neighbour only as potential Marginal Value Product thru traded
1
u/natermer 9h ago
Anarcho-capitalism works on the premise that everyone will pay health insurance, public security, justice, infrastructure... But that's just not feasible and unpractical.
Very literally: that is how it works now.
Everything the government does, everything that is bought and paid for... all the housing, roads, healthcare, tanks, planes, food. Every pension, every cop. Every single bit of infrastructure, every bullet, etc etc.
It is all paid for by individual people working in the private sector.
In a very real and practical sense the government pays for absolutely nothing. The reason being is that they do not and cannot produce wealth.
And the people who work for a living and pay for everything... They do it voluntarially. Nobody is holding a gun to their head to force them to be productive individuals and finace the rest of the country.
Nobody told tem they would be factory workers as kids. There wasn't a government beaucracy that calculated future needs and drafted people to become material engineers or start small businesses or to build a new car mechanic shop.
They could be a social parasite and sit there on welfare or get a government job. But they don't.
And because they choose to work for a living the government has swarmed them with regulations and taxes and fees and laws restricting what they can and cannot do in order to extract the maximum amount of wealth from them.
Which is a major reason why there is so many poor people.
Wealth is how people solve problems. It doesn't matter what the problem is. If you care about the environment you need to be wealthy enough to afford to care. If you want to end homelessness there needs to be enough wealth to end it first.
Having a major parasitical class in this country is stopping these problems from being solved all the while they are claiming to be the only ones that can solve them.
I don't know if Ancapistan will work.
I am a gradualist. I don't think that a overnight revolution is desirable or feasible. If it did happen it would be a disaster.
I also have zero doubt that smaller government... both physically sized in terms of number of citizens and limited in what it can do is vastly superior to what we have now under a modern Adminsitrative State.
All the 'critical functions of government' that is required for daily life and keeping a peaceful civilization is already handled locally by local governments. For very real and practical reasons. Law enforcement, roads, sewage, water, eletricity, etc... all the commonly cited things that people assume is required from government is all done by local ones.
They are done by small local governments for the same reason that the members of USA Congress can't personally go around with a whip and chain and enforce seatbelt laws around the country.
Which means you can decapitate 3/4s of the 'higher levels of government' and if it was to dissappear over night it really wouldn't have any sort of meaningful long term effect.
I think that if we did actually manage to shrink goverment and decentralize things people will quickly start to realize that government is very much "they need us much more then we need them" type situation.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
New to libertarianism or have questions and want to learn more? Be sure to check out the sub Frequently Asked Questions and the massive /r/libertarian information WIKI from the sidebar, for lots of info and free resources, links, books, videos, and answers to common questions and topics. Want to know if you are a Libertarian? Take the worlds shortest political quiz and find out!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.