An ideal Objectivist government which did not initiate force even to collect taxes would be, in practice, no different from an ideal AnCap defense agency. And both ideals are abstractions which will never exist in practice.

The AnCaps are trying to short cut philosophy. The NAP makes no sense without property rights. Freedom cannot be protected in a world that accepts the irrational.

Locke's starting point "that you own yourself" is much more profound and useful than NAP. The AnCaps want us to forget Calculus and return to geometry.

AnCaps are intellectually lazy and dangerous

I agree with most of your statement.
it is impossible to build "monopoly" without government grant, which is a violation of natural rights and gives a competitor exclusive access to a market. Socialists have attempted to redefine what a monopoly is, based on the flawed concept of perfect competition, which has never existed, is completely incompatible with property rights and incompatible with economic growth. In fact, the original concept was created by a religious professor at the University of Chicago to describe a perfect "altruistic" market.

ok, a buch of discrediting there doctor, let's stay on the arguments. In an anarcho system, the strong private defense arbiter can easily swallow the weaker one, leading individuals to purchase fractions of rights' protection. Some rights may be protected as you may afford them. That is not consistent with NAP thinkers who assume some basis in agreement. Wealthy criminals can afford better protection than poor individuals. How do you address that problem?

ultimately, all of these systems existed under the umbrella of the rule of law-common law in Britain. IT was not perfect by any means but still, it was better than most systems.Implementation vs exact laws. I challenge those who think the individual private defense agencies would work without this umbrella. I guess the closest I can come to the lack of umbrella and people for the most part sharing common goals for producing would be the settling of the western territories. (there are other examples) here, the umbrella of the federal govt was distant. Sheriffs were privately hired. Depending on your location to a fort, private systems were in charge and everyone did not have the luxury of the federal enforcement mechanism.

As usual, I learned something here. Thanks, khalling.

Contrary to what the author asserts, we are not in a state of Anarcho-Capitalism. We are in a state of crony capitalism, a predecessor to a Fascist state, wherein the powerful corporations are able to buy government support. Real Anarcho-Capitalism implies an "every company for itself", with any state element avoiding interference with the market. In such an environment, entrepreneurs with superior skills would have a more level playing field to challenge the established firms that have become complacent.

Any license I was willing to give the author went out the window when he ranted about allowing a government that permitted "infant genital mutilation", obviously referring to male circumcision. The link between uncircumcised males and female cervical cancer has been reliably established, and I'm astounded that women's rights groups haven't demanded mandatory circumcision.

The very arrogance of the web site name tells it all, implying the owner has a superior intellect that can judge the views of his inferiors. I don't like the precept of MENSA, as I found most in that group to be what I call "educated idiots", lacking common sense and possessing unduly inflated egos.

the Bow Street Runners, East India Company, privateers,to the earliest of times, private contracts for protection and negotiation existed. Force or the threat of it was always the final arbiter

The citizens of a Muslim state are willing to cede any number of human rights, yet they are recognized as sovereign by the United Nations. China blatantly ignores world patent laws, so definitely buyer beware because there is little recourse. "whatever the market will bear" is meaningless without rule of law and a philosophical foundation of what constitutes natural rights.

I am even talking about business arbitration. As MM points out, there are many private operations worldwide which provide these services and those contracting agree to terms. However, the elephant in the room are the national governments which must be adhered to first. So actually having the ability to criminally adjudicate does not fall on those organizations.

The system of governance is somewhat random given time, place, and scale.

"They ... they.... they...." with no citation of source. "Would... should... could..." a plethora of modal auxiliaries without empirical evidence.

If the free market allows "anything" then anyone could make billions of dollars with huge rip-off schemes for perpetual motion energy. And the world has no shortage of such swindles, from the South Sea Bubble to Florida Real Estate to Bernie Madoff. Let people do whatever they want and the parasites will enrich themselves by grinding everyone else into poverty. Just look at the world today.

But we know that is not true because reality requires reason which mitigates such silliness. While foolery exists, genius succeeds. The marketplace impels toward excellence.

In point of fact, if you look at the world today, you will find free market defense agencies, Securitas, G4S, AlliedBarton, Guardsmark,... And you will find arbitration written into your contracts for your mortgage, your credit cards, your car loan, your employment (especially if you are a contractor)... And those contracts specify _which laws_ are to govern the interpretation of the terms. Multinational corporations shop for laws. It is the only way that a manufacturer in Germany can buy parts from China for a product sold in the United States. Read your contracts. You live in one state. Your bank is located in another. The credit card company is in a third. They all specify the laws they want.

A hundred years ago, a self-appointed committee of jurists created the Uniform Commercial Code to reconcile the conflicts in contract law. Read any purchase order: it says one thing. Read any sales invoice: it says something else. How do you bring them together when something goes wrong? Today, the UCC has been included in part or in whole by various US state laws. It still exists on its own.

The essay is correct: this is the way the world works today. Some governments are better than others. Some businesses are better than others. Some people are better than others. Everyone is better on some days than on others. You cannot legislate it, mandate it, predict it, demand it, or avoid it.

These theories are all just explanatory filters. They say less about the way the world is (or should be) and much more about the persons who invent them.

In a truly free market (no government cronyism), it is hard to build monopolies since competition on price and quality and pay would make that hard. All theory though. America's founding was unique and now it is an old country susceptible to the same decaying forces.

The best example I can think of that would be comparable to a private competing defense agency would have been the Pinkertons, infamous for bringing down the strikers at Carnegie's steel plant.
That didn't work out so well.

One thing that anarchos need to acknowledge is that they are not for whatever the market will bear in terms of defense agencies. They do not allow for a monopoly on force (defense) nor do they allow for whatever the market will bear. In conclusion, like an Objectivist, they must convince large numbers of people moral bounds, which they have refused to define or root in a logical structure save no initiation of force.

As well, they do not address the problem of competing defence agencies, with regards to strength or representation. The example given in the article of how a defense agency grown monopolistic through wealth compared to smaller defence agencies representing those with less means has no solution. The larger defense agencies will prevail simply by their participants ignoring the rights of the less strong agencies. This can of course become a problem in even our current justice and law enforcement systems. The wealthiest neighborhoods influence local authorities for more protection than less wealthy neighborhoods and large companies often take risks that individuals or smaller companies will not sue because they will be outspent in taking the case to trial.

There is no contradiction between the non-intervention principle and monopoly government IF the scope of said government is kept limited as it was in the US prior to 1900. Anarcho Capitalism is like the Articles of Confederation - good on paper but difficult to implement. The Constitution, as written and followed until 1900 for the most part, is the way things ought to be.

A very good essay, it needs more than the 10 mins I have given it so far.

They may be a few others on this site who like me do not like the existence, let alone the paying, of taxes. Yet a government that relies only on voluntary payments would have several difficulties such as resisting significant aggression from outside.
There is a concept in economics that relates- the free rider principle.

Alright! I'm excited lol.