All political philosophy, whether in disagreement or not, is concerning the issue of property. Some may espouse private-ownership (capitalism) or collective-ownership (communism), or some mix of the two (democratic socialism), but the issue at hand still remains: ideas in politics are regarding the use of property. As nearly nothing is presented to us in a ready-to-consume way, it is the reality we're faced with in this life that we must grapple with earth's resources to survive.
Capitalism is defined by the recognition and respect of private property rights. "Private" denotes that the owner(s) have exclusive rights to decide its use: to sell it, to keep it, to invest it, transform it, etc. Rights in property are acquired by original appropriation or first-use (homesteading), or by voluntarily contracting it through exchange (trade, gift, or inheritance). All scarce resources are subject to private ownership.
Things that are non-scarce (ideas, words, reputation, sunlight, etc.), that everyone may have at one time without depriving the other of having it, may not be privately owned. This mistake in "rights" can be found in the concept of "intellectual property", where actual invasions of private property are justified under the made-up idea of a right to prevent others from doing with their property as they please, i.e., of shaping their own resources in a way or design that is claimed to be "owned" by someone else. As a matter of fact, our simple libertarian pitch, cliche as it may be, is precisely the opposite: one may do whatever they want with their freedom so long as they don't prevent another from doing the same.
Property norms are used to solve possible conflicts arising over mutually-exclusive uses over the same resource, needed necessarily only for that the undeniable fact of scarcity exists. Since a body cannot be unappropriated, man is a natural owner of his own body; the objective, indisputable owner and operator of his physical being. Since resources, however, can be un-owned, they're open to being appropriated by someone applying their labor to said resource; whether planting seeds and taking care of the crop, building a shelter, etc. As this original appropriation causes no conflict with another person's property rights, since no one previously owned it, this process of coming to own resources is moral; it cannot be considered involuntary against anyone. Since theft of property must precede the existence of the State, it may not own anything legitimately; therefore, too, property owned by people who received it not by voluntary contract (subsidies, transfer payments, etc.), but by forceful redistribution, cannot be said to be the legitimate owner.
Besides the right to own one's body and the physical space that they stand in, without scarcity there would be no conflict over resources; man would be provided with all his needs in great abundance. My desire to eat a banana could never possibly conflict with your desire to eat one. We would both have one. There would be no need to say clearly who owns the banana as bananas would be infinitely plentiful. It is also for scarcity that there is a science of economics. Without it, there would be no economics. Again, besides the fact that some opportunity costs will still occur because of time and the inability to simultaneously receive all pleasures, being that we can't do everything we may wish to at once even in a dreamed-up world of non-scarcity, there would necessarily be no need for the science since we virtually wouldn't be man acting in the world anymore, using scarce means to satisfy subjectively-valued ends of unlimited desire, facing a diminishing marginal utility, downward-sloping demand curves, and other such implications from the premise that we are conscious creatures engaging in purposeful action. Similarly, if there was only one man on earth, there would be no need for property rights either: man could never possibly come into conflict with another's property rights since there would be no one else around. That man, if he was so capable, and sure of his lone existence on earth, could build nuclear bombs and fire them off at once, destroying absolutely everything in his path, including himself.
Socialism is characterized by the use of aggression against private property, however politicized and legitimatized, and the substitution of "public property" for private property. Since the ideas of socialism have turned from total state-ownership of "the means of production" seeing the failures of outright communism (nationalization) to allowing for a largely "private" economy, instead preferring to tax the proceeds of production, I believe it to be still fair to refer to property redistribution, or taxation in general, as socialism. Various styles of socialism employ various means, but to achieve the same end: prevent, limit, hamper, or totally abolish private ownership of property.
As stated above, capitalism's property is private and socialism's property is public. And while socialism must be measured by different degrees of socialism, directly proportionate to the size of government and therefore the theft of private property, every move away from capitalism is a move toward socialism. This is often a criticism against anarcho-libertarians, that "everything but anarchism to you is socialism", but this is necessarily true. Again, all government is socialism in effect. The State is always socialism, and never capitalism. Any move away from anarchism is an introduction of some level of statism, i.e., socialism.
Were the only thing left standing of the minarchist-state a defense monopoly, reaching a truly "limited-government", then I believe it would be accurate to still say that this is socialist defense, albeit "socialism" to a very small degree; socialism only for the provision of security. Most socialists wouldn't disagree, in fact, citing the military as "a successful example of socialism that we all benefit from" and seeing it as a necessary "public good." It is more so the "conservatives" who may wish to think the defense monopoly (the military) is to protect them from socialism. Obviously, the military has no real principles, and stands to defend democracy, i.e., whatever form of government is voted in, entirely socialist or not. The State, at any size, is a criminal organization that prohibits voluntary interaction between humans.
Anarcho-capitalism, a term that sounds like the worst of two worlds to anyone indoctrinated in the government-schools, holds that if one has a right to self-ownership (an anarchist principle), having property rights in their very person, that they must have property rights in physical resources (capitalism) if to have self-ownership at all. Self-ownership and private property, i.e., anarchism and capitalism, are inextricable. You can't have one without the other.
By our definition of capitalism as private property and the State as the thief of private property, the only genuine capitalism is anarchism and the only genuine anarchism is capitalism. Capitalism and statism cannot coexist. They're incompatible ideas: private property (where the owner is decisive) vs. "public property" (where the owner, while known to not be government, isn't known or clearly decided). Just as the State is the antithesis of anarchism, then, to use it synonymously, so too is it of capitalism. The State, formed in repeated expropriation of private property and subsisting upon further depredations, necessarily negates capitalism. It is introducing aggression against the idea (private property) of capitalism. To anti-statists of this libertarian variety, the phrase "but without government" means with capitalism. There's no such thing as "crony capitalism" without statism. It's not capitalism at all; it's statism. Socialists are misidentifying the culprit in today's issues: their socialism!
The State is not the institution that upholds property rights, but it is the great violator of property rights. To varying degrees, the abolishment of private property accompanies the rise of the State. The State is inherently socialist. The State is the institutionalization of theft, among other fears. In our view, the only anti-socialists are anarchists. The State is nothing but a monopoly, being the sole provider – coercively, at gun-point – of all the things it takes unto itself, at minimal consisting of a monopoly on: defense and protection, law and justice, and not limited to schooling, transportation, health care, etc. Arguing to rid "monopolies" then with a monopoly is a contradiction. The monopolization or the nationalization of a given good or service is the socialization of it. We have, for example: a law monopoly, and security monopoly, a school monopoly, a road monopoly, an so forth; or socialist defense, socialist schooling, socialist roads, etc. No socialist really would disagree with this.
Libertarianism is quite simply the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), which holds that aggressive invasions of one's rights are immoral. This can only be conceptualized with a theory of property. That is, of aggression against property. While property rights violations are not always so clear as they are in the case of Person A punching Person B, since B is unmistakably the self-owner of his body, this principle applies too to physical property which is also private.
Now, if one ingests marijuana or lives a polyamorous lifestyle has nothing to do with one's libertarianism, but their own personal choices in life. This is outside of the NAP, and so not related to political philosophy anymore. As is often used against us, ironically, by the aggressionists themselves, who absolutely do not oppose aggression, libertarianism is not to be confused as a pacifist ideology, which would oppose all violence, justified or not by libertarian criteria, but it is one which rejects the initiation of violence, termed "aggression." Aggression is initiatory, uninvited, non-consensual violence against persons or property. Therefore, violence in defense of aggression is not immoral, but needed and justified. We are not wholly committed to the idea of non-violence then, and even see a need for it. We are not against violence per se; force is very much needed to stop an attacker (rapist, thief, thug, etc.). In this sense, "good ideas" (like stopping aggression) do require force.
Moreover then, the only things that should be criminal and illegal are violations of property rights. Drug-use, prostitution, adultery, homosexuality, or any other things we find unpleasant but harm no one else, are thus not "crimes" as they are victim-less, i.e., no one's property rights were violated. A libertarian legal system is one that would only consider violations of property rights to be aggression; to fit the bill of a crime. As opposed to this, the State's idea of justice, ignoring that it believes its own theft and such is just while yours is criminal, it considers to be things which harm no one but this mythical abstraction of "society" to be crimes, and so tragically imprisons millions for never hurting another man.
Harking back to the original point, it is by property that we can decide what is aggression; and by this that we see that statism is aggressionism. The philosophy of libertarianism is thereby limited in this scope: of determining when the use of violence is aggressive, and therefore must be deemed criminal; or when it may be deemed non-aggressive and therefore just and moral. Anything else, like my preference for punk rock, or maybe someone else's perhaps bigoted preference to not associate with black people, cannot be judged as, or considered part of, the range of what libertarianism seeks to answer.
For an example of this "moral violence", we'll call it, we wouldn't describe self-defense as being criminal. Most anyone would cheer upon seeing, say, an elderly woman unloading her revolver on a home invader. And in doing so, and recognizing who the victim is (the intruded) and who the aggressor is (the intruder), as pertaining to who's property rights are being violated, they are realizing that the natural theory of rights is one of private property; the only moral theory that can withstand the test of universalizability, i.e, that everyone can have the right at once without it conflicting with another's freedom. Whereas not every man can own another man, since someone must be owned by another, everyone can own themselves. Socialism instantly fails the test, and so isn't egalitarian as it pretends to be, but one where some have rights to other people's property and where some are in fact the tax-payers, obligated to give up their property. While many might all appear to "pay" taxes, like the military for instance, there are in the end net tax-recipients (consumers) and net tax-payers.
It is statism that is not only monopolistic itself, but comes to create other monopolies, cartelizing the market. The "free market monopoly" is a myth. Also, the business cycle, what has come to be known as the "recession", is not endemic of the market, but caused by artificial manipulation of the interest rates by central bank inflation and the proceeding misallocation of resources. The resulting recession ensues once these bad investments must be liquidated in the economy, fully curing itself only if the central bank doesn't pursue the same policies they did before, e.g., inflate the supply of money, which now they almost always do.
It is not logically consistent to argue for the socialization of one or more things but the privatization of others. Those wishing for a free-market should privatize everything; and those who now consider themselves "democratic socialists", wishing for a "mix" of socialism, since "capitalism can't be unchecked", should go full-communist and socialize everything. However, seeing the failures of communism, they concede that some privatization will be needed, although, inconsistently, do not apply this principle to its logical conclusion that everything would be allocated most efficiently if privatized. But economic law does not apply differently per industry to where shoes and food and other things equally considered essential to survival can be private but security and schooling and such must be socialist. Government's monopolization of anything will have the same effect: to limit competition and supply and decrease the quality upon removing a market price for said good or service. It no longer has proper judgement of how much of anything to provide. Everything the State does is arbitrary; its best guess.
To summarize further in regard to the morality of the State, we hold that there is never a time when the initiation of aggression is just and moral. Never; not for defense, law, food, clothing, schooling — anything. All logically consistent libertarians should therefore be anarchists.
Anyone who opposes non-aggression (a principle taken from the property right in our person and in physical resources) or the voluntary society based on private ownership of property as a human right, besides being in contradiction by arguing against property rights while being in recognition of one's self-ownership in said argumentation, is indeed an aggressionist. There is no in-between. There is no such thing as "kind of voluntary." It either is or it isn't; and if it isn't it's immoral. You're either a voluntaryist, or you're an involuntarist. That is, you're a libertarian holding the non-aggression principle, and understand rights as a negative concept, i.e., that no one has a right to initiate aggression against another person; or you're an authoritarian who thinks people calling themselves a "government" have a special right to do things to people that no one else has, and that they get these "rights" simply through voting and ganging up against others. Everyone but anarchists are pro-aggression.
If private property is our foundation, there's no such thing as "gay rights", or "women's rights", or the right to not be discriminated against, etc. There are only the rights of the individual — to non-aggression. "Positive rights", requiring others to do things for you do not exist, philosophically. However harsh it may sound, not being one scared to pitch a libertarianism that isn't watered down, no one has a "right to be loved." While it's true I wouldn't wish for this, nor do I think it would be popular in a market driven by competition, no black man has a right to employment from a businesses should the owner wish to deny him. Mentioned above, the only rights are the negative rights of property owners, in their bodies or their physical properties, to not have people do things to them; not to have people do things for them, the enslaving idea of socialism where man lives and labors for another man.
For another misconception of capitalism, the State sub-contracting out its "services" or giving legal monopoly to another institution is not genuine privatization in our use of the term, but rather still qualifying as socialism. The "privately-owned central bank" (the Fed), or "private prisons" are not private in the true sense of the word at all. They're ultimately socialist, and quasi-private at best. If government decides it should hire a company to provide security to replace the city police then this isn't privatized, competitive, market-produced security as we call for, but still socialist. These would not be market institutions subject to profit and loss, operating and earning revenues by making voluntary offers to wiling consumers. They are, all in all, state-supported institutions. Privatize security is when we're free to choose who provides our security, not when an allegedly "private" company remains our compulsory security provider via the State. Socialists here greatly struggle in attacking anarcho-capitalists since they don't understand what private means.
Statism is statism is statism, no matter what it's called: "democratic socialism", "national socialism", a "republic", "communism", etc. They're all statist, and they're all therefore socialist. Their differences are aesthetic and not fundamental. Statists do not oppose aggression, but do have different ideas for what they think should be done with your stolen property, and so squabble among this irrelevancy, ignoring the theft itself. National Socialists are as much collectivists as Communists are, but differ on things such as egalitarianism or autarky, etc.
Coercion is not consent. Threatening someone's life and watching them submit by "relinquishing" their property is not voluntary. The idea of voluntary is that you explicitly agreed to something; or that if you didn't, and don't go along with something, that there are no consequences; that it is an offer and not a demand. As such, the only contracts that are valid are one's where private property owners voluntary enter into agreements concerning their respective properties. Thus there's no legitimacy in the idea of a "social contract" binding everyone to be part of this organization called "government", founded in aggressive action against private property owners. It does not become moral or legitimate for people to do things to one another in a groups that they as individuals cannot do to each other.
I can't accept that there's such a thing as "anarcho-socialism" either. Indeed, the political spectrum spans from anarchism at one end to socialism/statism at the other. If the ideas of "anarcho"-socialists of collectively owning resources in a sort of "worker co-op" will be implemented voluntary, then this is just voluntarism; and if people in a group are privately deciding the use of their property among themselves, leaving everyone else out of it who wants no part, this is in my mind just capitalism. If all the property should be owned in common, especially "the means of production", and private property in capital goods is not allowed, by whatever arbitrary measure, then this cannot be anarchism and freedom. It is the way of the State to steal private property, and so therefore any anarchist philosophy calling for the end of private property is necessarily statist and not anarchist. Were a central-planning committee formed to allocate and oversee the use of resources, this would necessarily be an erection of the State under a new identity. And if calling for a "direct democracy", as they do, democracy is as incompatible with anarchism as freedom and capitalism are to statism. If it is simply a preference to have communal-living in an anarchist society, then I see no reason to denote this in one's anarchist prefix. It is an overarching legal system of anarcho-capitalism (of private property ownership) that would allow for various norms and methods of arranging resources to develop voluntarily, but an anarcho-socialist one by contrast would not allow for anarcho-capitalism were this reversed.
The world is governed by economic law, with or without the State. It may attempt to repeal it by writing legislation, and it may disrupt it, distort it, and even appear to overcome it for some time but it can never overthrow the economic law that naturally exists. Scribbling words on a piece of paper does not make laws as simple as supply and demand go away. Printing money does not create new wealth in the economy as measured by new goods and services. Artificially driving down the interest rate is not representative of a change in people's time-preference or the amount of savings in the economy. Pricing fixing laws like minimum wage and rent controls do not make anyone better off. The function of the price system to convey information about scarcity and preferences in a decentralized manner is necessary for the efficient allocation of resources.
This should help to clear the many oxymorons in politics, such as: "state-capitalism", "capitalist government", "anarcho-communism", "essential government employees", "socialist economics", "free trade bill", "private central-bank", "limited-government", "voluntary taxation", "mixed economy", "federal marketplace", or any of the other absurd usage and mixing of words that are incompatible with each other.
If government must exist at all, then it's only role should be the protection of property rights and the enforcement of contracts. "Regulations" for banking, the environment, etc., aren't needed, but simply a protection of property rights. In fact, those who are supposed to be reigned in by regulation are the ones who run the agencies that use the political means to dominate the economy in previously unimaginable ways with the voluntary, economic means. As history has show, we see, empirically, that it has failed to stay limited to this role. As expected, it grew into the monstrously dangerous bureaucratic behemoth it is today, with its hegemony spread far and wide. If the protection of property rights is one's goal, then I believe they would be be best protected with no government at all.
However, being the original armed robber of the property, it cannot fulfill this role without being in contradiction. To protect anyone from theft, it must first steal from them. It's incapable of meeting this need for protection then without it all becoming a racket. Taxation always requires aggression, or what we know as robbery. Taxes are without doubt coercive, paid by way of punishment for not not doing so. It fits no conception of "voluntary", which must be defined with a theory of property rights, i.e. the private property ethic.
Freedom is the freedom of association. It is when one is not forced to give up their property for something that is or isn't of any benefit to them when they never agreed to such an arrangement, i.e., when it was involuntarily imposed upon them. Freedom is when there is no aggression against one's person or property; that is, when there is no State whatever.