Many refutations of Anarchocapitalism have been written but few are as self contradictory and worthless as this.
Seeminly reasonsble conflations made to be culturally relevant, rarely sound illogical, but the fact remains the statist consistently overlooks the factors that make statism inherently self destructive.
(1.) Politics has never, and will never be the study of what is proper. The Political Means has always been the study of what CAN be stolen from the non political class without overwhelming resistance. If proper means: “what you can get away with, without being justifiably lynched,” then change the name of proper, to tolerable.
(2.) NO SUCH DEFINITION OF LAW EXISTS, EVEN WITHIN THE STATIST PARADIGM. I know, shocking considering the lengths the author went to to make it seem rational. Though he is correct that the definition of law is connected to the state, it is only perceived as such through the lense of tyrannical enculturation. There are two forms of law; Malum Prohibitum vs. Malum in se.
It’s entirely too fucking easy to lump these two, entirely different, forms of law together and call them the same(3), but it is totally different to unpack the concept of law into the constituent parts. Malum Prohibitum means wrong because “I say so”, Malum in se means there must be a person who feels like there is something wrong about the way they have been treated by another individual, or group of individuals. One requires no victim, other than the one targeted by the state, the other requires a victim. By lumping the two together, the author legitimizes every law deemed “necessary” by the state. He’s just granted amnesty to the Nazis and the slave traders.
By making this insane oversight, he’s now entered intro the realm of absurdity. If Anarchism does not recognize individual preferences, it must necessarily only recognize the values of the ruler of the collective, not Anarchism. No longer does there need to be recognition of the individual(5), only the collective(made up exclusively of individuals) matters. If one group outnumbers the other group, any political aggression is justified(5).
(6)”Without the state, who will build the roads?!” Its the pressing questions all statists lacking self awareness are dying to know, literally. Apart from the individual first line of defense against aggression, there are lots of other ways that one can protect oneself against aggression (to include agents of the state seeking to steal property to “protect” you from people stealing your property). The state most often employs the tactics of disassociation, because it’s less expensive to enforce Malum Prohibitum with associative measures than forceful ones, but somehow the market that pioneered these techniques for disassociating with bad actors and incentivizing restitution are impossible for the people already doing them and finding new ways of peacefully settling debts. Meanwhile, states are legalizing the murder of people targeted by SWATING pranks and trying to prosecute soldiers, hired to kill, for killing innocent people under orders. The state cannot figure out what role to play or how to play it. Public service is beyond the reach of public servants because statism and service are mutually exclusive concepts that cannot be papered over with platitudes.
The drastic difference, that statists will never be able to comprehend, is that the private property necessarily preexists the state. Thusly, evidence of ownership also preexists the state. If the state does not accept evidence as an argument for ownership, then having a state is useless to ensure personal protection.
It is, in fact, counterproductive to enforcing laws, that the state, itself, will never respect. If both the property and the individual are subject to the whims of the state, what use is the state for protecting the individual or his rights? Tribal warfare seems to be the least of the problems of the purist statist, If the state authority is committed to stealing all the wealth of the subjects as a necessary part in the existence of the wealth of the state, why would a statist resist if all other imaginary requirements of government are rhetorically promised?
Now comes the really absurd, circular nature of statism. If a proper government cannot justly identify original claims of ownership how could it possibly identify itself as proper? All claims would only to be based on force for them to be legitimized. A robber claiming to be legitimate government, with equally low claims of consent, would need only to extort people to reinforce his claims.
In this authors view. A global government would only need to be the best thief to be the most legitimate in his claims. When evidence means nothing, legitimacy of rights will also mean nothing.
The uncertainty of ignorance is exactly the problem Austrian economics serves to address. We know how statism deals with scarcity, and it’s pure shit. Intervention into markets has had over 2 thousand years of utter failure, but somehow we’re all supposed to believe bigger government with bigger monopolies and bigger violence will fix the calculation problem. Just think, more ignorance to fix a problem caused by ignorance. It’s simply the institutionalization of economic illiteracy.
(9)(10) Pure and simple, the author doesn’t know why the economy exists or why people use it. If the state made T-shirts, the author would be questioning who would create T-shirts without a monopoly on T-shirts. Pathetic failure of Econ 101.
The proposed solution to the statist ignorance problem is to reduce the options that could better, more efficiently be managed by the free price system.
The author finally makes the leap to assume that everyone who competes with the state for customers is automatically a criminal. In his world, serving people more efficiently is an inexcusable crime against nature itself. This line of thinking is historically the most dangerous and irrational line of thinking the world has ever known. His views are based on emotional reactions alone. Logic is not his strong suit. Only pure stupidity and speculation can satisfy his huger for an authoritarian regime, it’s best to fill his belly with bullshit than engage him with facts. For every fear based reaction he proposes, give him an even more scary scenario. There’s no point in engaging with facts if fear can suit him more substantially.