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May 27, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
51:12
Criticisms of Freedom - An Article Review
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All right.
So, returning to some political theory, Ludovic Jullali has a criticism of anarcho-capitalism.
And let's have a look at that.
This is from 2023.
A criticism of anarcho-capitalism.
He says, introduction.
In the present text, the author is animated by the desire to put forward a criticism of the anarcho-capitalist doctrine.
Ah, yes, doctrine.
Always the most neutral word that could possibly be used.
The author will describe anarcho-capitalism as a dangerous and contradictory doctrine which does deserve damnatio memoriari.
I assume that's damnation into the annals of memory.
The anarcho-capitalist doctrine, in spite of its interesting investigative acceptation, is unable to materialize itself in the public domain in virtue of its intellectual weakness.
All right.
Whatever.
Okay.
So, the big issue he has here, the set of natural rights, this is from Robert Nozick, the set of natural rights in particular, the rights of non-aggression and enforcement, permits individuals in the state of nature to enforce their rights, defend themselves, and punish inexact compensation from aggressors.
The right of enforcement further allows them to seek recompense for harm done to others, Nozick posits.
These rights would lead to groups of individuals to join together in the formation of mutual protection associations.
I guess what I call DROs.
These protective associations will each establish procedures for intra-association strife, as well as conflict between members and non-members.
The pressures of a totally free market, the need for division of labor, economies of scale, and so on together, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so he's basically saying that you're going to end up with some sort of police force or, you know, something like that, that is going to protect people, all right?
The weaker, less efficient associations will go out of business as people flock to the associations which guarantee the best protection for the cheapest cost.
Ultimately, a single protective association, or Federation of United Agencies, will gain dominance in a particular geographical area.
Nozick calls that association the dominant protective association.
Nozick seriously considers the possibility that the dominant protective agency constitutes a minimal political state.
Couldn't disagree with that more strongly if I tried, but we'll sort of get to that.
We are thus obligated to understand whether it is really possible to create a stateless society.
For Nozick has seen a de-Uri stateless society is condemned, sooner or later, to be characterized by the presence of a form of state, right?
And I, again, couldn't disagree more.
We'll sort of get into that, right?
Let's see.
De jure.
What is that?
I don't know.
I know de jure.
I think de jure is probably a typo for de jure.
Unless, of course, it means something else.
But de jure, it's in effect, right?
Stateless society.
The principle of the invisible hand, sponsored by Nozick, states how the citizens living in a stateless society for putting forward their affairs and preserving their individual, i.e.
personal safety, The state, the social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, does boast a pivotal role in society in virtue of a variety of reasons.
The state does exist as an apatropaic institution.
Apatropaic simply means...
So it's a way of stopping evil.
Apotropaic institution.
The apotropaic function of the state is equal to the state's capacity to avert what is perceived by common sense as evil.
The state can put forward its apotropaic function only by publicly boasting force and vindictive power.
So this idea or argument that in order to protect your property, people need a coercive institution, which they do.
Right?
And to protect persons and property.
They need a coercive institution.
Okay.
And then one of those is going to become the most popular and that is going to be kind of like a state.
It's so beyond false.
I can't even tell you.
And I'm going to be annoying here, I guess, as usual.
Yeah, so he received a PhD in philosophy in Princeton, taught at Princeton, Harvard, Rockefeller University, at Harvard for the remainder of his teaching career.
Yeah, so no business experience.
And it just bothers the living hell out of me when people start talking about, The business of, say, dispute resolution organizations or these sort of protective agencies, they talk about all the business stuff having never actually worked in business.
Now, I mean, one of my strengths as a philosopher and theoretician is I've actually done the stuff that I'm talking about.
I empirically have done the stuff that I'm talking about.
I've worked in business now as an entrepreneur for like 30 years, right?
So thinking that a very successful protection agency is going to become like a state is fundamentally misunderstanding the longevity and cycle of business, right?
So of the, you know, 100 biggest companies at the turn of the 20th century, like three are still in business.
Since I was a kid, IBM was the giant, Microsoft barely existed.
Now, Microsoft is the giant and so on, so just the idea that there's going to be this dominant protective agency and that's going to be like a state is bad.
So let's get into his argument.
Just because there's a cycle.
You have a particular genius who starts the business, and who's he going to get to replace himself?
I mean, maybe some other genius, but they're pretty rare.
They're pretty rare.
Entrepreneurial geniuses don't tend to want to take over big existing companies, and there's always going to be something that disrupts the business, right?
So you've got a giant media empire, a newspaper empire, television empire, then the internet comes along, and you've got vloggers and podcasters who eat your lunch, like the Substack people and all of that.
They just eat your lunch completely.
There's just constant this churn and change, right?
You've got this big giant software company and then AI comes along and can enable people to write code very quickly, right?
So you have all of this, the business stuff constantly is getting disrupted, right?
You have some big, giant companies.
So, maintaining the quality of an organization, particularly in a truly free market, right?
So, in the existing system, what happens is there are fewer disruptors because most people's brains are crippled by absolutely crappy and mind-destroying government schools, right?
So, government schools are there to make sure that you don't compete with the powers that be by being smart and entrepreneurial, creative, and curious.
So, people just get their brains absolutely shredded and destroyed by government schools, so there's less competition.
Property rights, in terms of intellectual property, create a big, giant legal fence.
There's lots of patent trolls and so on rolling around, so it's really tough to...
There's, of course, endless amounts of licensing and requirements to go through multi-year and sometimes half a decade to a decade plus hoops in order to be able to perform various functions within society.
So, then of course you have unions, government-sponsored unions that make it very hard to compete.
You have tariffs and excise duties and other forms of taxes.
You have regulations and OSHA and, you know, disparate impact legalities, like all kinds of crazy stuff.
That means it's virtually impossible or very hard to compete with large established companies because they're constantly buying up politicians and preventing others from coming into the field.
And of course, in the protection of property, what we want for the most part is prevention, not cure.
You would rather, if somebody steals your TV but it can't be started without your thumbprint, that's going to be very, very helpful.
You can reduce the amount of criminality and violence within society, then people won't need these protection agencies nearly as much, which is the peaceful parenting argument.
You raise children peacefully, and they are going to not be violent and not be criminals, and therefore you're just not going to need these companies very much.
So there's constantly people who are going to find ways, because the protection agencies for persons and property are going to charge a lot, and there's going to be constantly coming along Other companies that want to undercut them, that want to prevent these kinds of things.
And even if you have some absolute brilliant genius dispute resolution organization, well, it won't be able to copyright its entire business model.
And all big companies get sclerotic.
They harden their arteries.
They get layers and bureaucracy and all kinds of HR nonsense.
And then smaller, leaner companies come along that can undercut them and provide better services because they can start from scratch.
all this kind of stuff.
So this idea that you're going to get some big DRO, some big And I remember this, of course, when I was in the business world.
As a software entrepreneur, man alive, I had to constantly innovate like crazy.
Absolutely innovate like crazy.
I had to come up with wild new ideas.
I had to experiment with things.
I had to automate things, I had to find ways to produce the customized software faster and more accurately.
That's just a massive amount of innovation that was required.
When people say, well, you're going to get one big DRO and it's going to harden and just become like a state, these are just people who've never operated in business.
In business, you're constantly, again, without the protection of the state, without the reinforcement of the state and all of that, you're just constantly surfing against You know, absolute creative geniuses who are going to eat your lunch unless you eat theirs first.
And it's really hard to maintain the growth.
So think of it.
Think of it.
You want to think of big corporations in a free society like bands, like a music band, right?
So if you look at John Lennon, right?
He had Sean Lennon as kids and Julian Lennon.
They're both great musicians.
Julian Lennon had Much Too Late for Goodbye.
It's a pretty good song.
Sounded a lot like his dad.
So, you know, they're stronger than average musicians, but they're not as good as their dad.
And, you know, their kids won't be as good as them, who is not as good as their dad.
So the people who were in the Beatles, they didn't just sell their life.
Like, they didn't just sell their brand and say, well, you know, four other guys can now be the Beatles.
That's just not how it works.
So a group of musicians, a band, they just won't last.
I mean, the Eagles have been broken up for years now and so on, right?
Pink Floyd, broken up for years.
And, you know, people go on to do solo stuff and all of that.
But it's just not the same.
You can't maintain a band.
It's like saying, well, some band's going to come along that's going to be the most popular band in history, like the Beatles or Queen or Rolling Stone.
Some band's going to come along that's going to be the most popular band in history, and they're just going to last forever.
It's like, well, no, they're not.
Because they're going to die off and there's going to be other bands that come along and compete with them and so on, right?
So remember, in a free society, the barrier to entry is almost infinitely lower than it is now and you don't get access to government power, regulations, and...
So people are going to figure out what's the cheapest and best way to protect people's persons and property.
And they're going to say, well, the best way to do that is peaceful parenting.
And so there's going to be DROs that give massive discounts to children who've been raised peacefully.
And they'll check that, sort of brain scans and so on.
I write about all of this in my novel, The Future, which you should definitely check out.
Yeah.
It's not going to last.
Stuff in business doesn't last.
It's constantly churning.
It's constantly changing.
There's constant innovation.
And what was the biggest company 30 years ago is not going to be a big company now.
And it's going to be like 5, 10 years in a free market.
Anyway, so let's go on with this guy.
anarcho-capitalism as a performative contradiction.
Nozick's invisible hand argument is in a position to show how A performative contradiction arises when the propositional content of a statement contradicts the presuppositions of asserting it.
As I call it, self-detonating arguments and so on.
Like if I write you a letter containing the argument that letters never get delivered to the right person, that would be a performative contradiction.
Anarcho-capitalism promises a state of society.
However, in virtue of the capitalistic acceptations which characterize capitalism itself, an anarcho-capitalist society would give birth to a crypto-status society, namely a society governed by a dominant protective agency.
Protective agencies are very expensive, so society will look at the best ways to reduce criminality, to reduce the need for protection, which is peaceful parenting.
And that's not a theory, right?
I've got the whole bomb in the brain series that's proven all of that.
Okay, anarcho-capitalism promises a stateless society.
No.
Anarcho-capitalism does not promise a stateless society.
Anarcho-capitalism is the definition of a stateless society.
So, promises is what the goal is.
Like, if I define a mammal as, you know, give birth to a live young, who's got hair, warm-blooded, whatever, I don't say that the definition of mammal promises these things, the definition of mammal is these things.
Anarcho-capitalism is a stateless society.
And he says, however, in virtue of the capitalistic acceptations which characterize capitalism itself, an anarcho-capitalist society would give birth to a crypto-status society, namely a society governed by a dominant protective agency.
Well, let's say, I mean, let's, of course it wouldn't because there's constant churn and prevention of problems rather than solving problems would do all of this.
I mean, There was a company that was very big at making rotary telephones, rotary dial telephones.
Where are they now, right?
So governed by a dominant protective agency.
But that dominant protective agency cannot initiate the use of force against you.
It cannot initiate the use of force against you.
So it is a voluntary.
You can do without.
It's protection if you want.
You can provide your own protection.
You can band together with your neighbors too.
Have protection of some kind.
You can do a wide variety of things rather than take this.
You can't do that with the state.
This dominant protective agency isn't going to be able to go into multi-tens of trillions of dollars of debt on you and your children's behalf.
It's not going to be able to suck up against your will and against your approval money from your bank account.
It's not going to deduct its source money.
It's a voluntary thing.
I'm sorry, this is just a dumb argument.
It's not even an argument, and maybe he'll make this.
It's not even an argument.
It's basically saying, well, okay, so there's slavery.
And in the future, all you're doing is replacing slavery with wage slavery.
I mean, people are still going to have to get up.
They're still going to have to go and work for a living, so it's exactly the same as slavery.
No, it's goddamn well not.
One is voluntary, one is not.
You know, penis and vagina, it's the same with voluntary, passionate lovemaking as it is with coercive, knife-to-the-throat rape.
Both involve penis and vagina.
It's like, no, it doesn't.
One is voluntary, freely chosen, and two, the choice could be undone at any time.
The other is coercive and captured.
Oh, my God.
Putting the word crypto, you know, it's like, rape is crypto lovemaking is not a valid statement.
or lovemaking is crypto rape.
It's like putting the word crypto in front of it doesn't...
One's moral and one's not.
One conforms with the non-aggression principle and universal moral absolutes and one does not.
So anyway, let's see here.
The author, by putting the focus on the psychological aspects of the investigation, does state how, in virtue of an icon effect, the citizens are prone to adhere to institutions which are already famous and experienced within the country.
Crowdial philosophy, psychology.
I don't really understand that sentence.
I apologize.
Icon effect.
He's given footnotes before.
Crowdial philosophy, psychology.
I don't know.
With the passage of time, the protective agency that is in a position to become the largest and most famous within the country can enjoy the icon effect, the goodwill of the people.
The function of the apotropaic Function boasted by the dominant agency of protection is equal to the function which is commonsensically associated with the traditional state.
Yes.
One offers you the services voluntarily of protecting life and property.
The other one violates life and property and then fails to protect you, right?
So the state, at least in America, I'm sure this is true in many places, the state has no duty to protect.
This has been repeatedly affirmed by courts all the way to the top.
It is fundamental in a state of society that the state has no duty to protect you.
You can call the cops, the cops can show up, do nothing, and you have no recourse whatsoever.
So there's no duty to protect you.
So I don't know really what to say about that.
A DRO, if it fails to protect you, will suffer sanctions, right?
It would have to include that, right?
It would have to include that in the contract, right?
Because nobody would sign on to a DRO that did not have any particular duty to protect you, right?
So this apotropaic function, this fighting evil function, is not the state.
The state initiates the use of force against you, takes your resources, Against your will, by definition, because otherwise, right?
You wouldn't have to.
And it has no duty to protect, and you have no recourse if it fails to protect you.
So he says, the dominant agency of protection is a de facto state that is distinguished by the same coercive powers and same coercive attitude of the state.
Totally false.
That's totally false.
We're not the same, right?
Because there's the initiation of the use of force and then there's legal and moral self-defense.
Some guy pulls a gun on you and you outdraw him and shoot him.
It's like saying, well, you're both the same because you're both shooting.
You're both drawing guns and pointing them at people.
It's like, well, one is the initiation of the use of force and one is not.
Maybe he'll break it down.
Let's see here.
The dominant agency protection, in spite of its Apotropaic function and coercive abilities is not a public institution.
The agency of protection is equal to a private business which uses private means of production for materializing its business.
The dominant agency of protection, in spite of its endemic action, is equal to a private business that cannot be questioned by the citizens on the basis of an official and objective code.
What?
The dominant agency of protection, in spite of its endemic action, okay, what does that mean?
and Prevalent or limited to a particular locality, region, or people, okay, its local action, is equal to a private business that cannot be questioned by the citizen on the basis of an official and objective code.
What is that?
It cannot be questioned by the citizen on the basis of an official and objective code.
Well, of course it can.
Of course it can.
When you sign with a cell phone company, there's pages and pages of EULIS and dispute resolution and so on.
So I don't really get that.
If you sign with a protection agency, there's going to be a whole bunch of things that they agree to and a whole bunch of things that you agree to.
And they're going to train you on, for instance, What you're allowed to do in terms of self-defense, there'll be training videos and questionnaires and so on, right?
So I don't know what this means.
The modus operandi of the agency of protection is self-made.
The modus operandi of the agency of protection is self-made.
No, it's not self-made.
It's made based upon what is considered most efficient and valuable to the customer.
So he goes on to say, while the state is officially recognized as an objective model of justice, What does that mean?
The dominant agency of protection is equal to a private actor who profits through its activity.
While state action is accountable to the people and questionable by the people.
What?
State action is accountable to the people and questionable by the people?
Absolute bullshit.
That's embarrassing.
There have been countless studies done.
You can look at the myth of the rational voter, right?
Countless studies done that the preference of the people has virtually no effect on the actions of the state.
The preference, even in a democracy, it doesn't matter.
I mean, in Europe, they've been crying out for lower immigration for decades, so it doesn't matter, right?
No, it doesn't.
The dominant agency pretends State action.
How many people believe something shady happened with the end of Epstein?
How many people want the list released?
How many people...
How many people want those, as it seems to be the case, if Jeffrey Epstein filmed a bunch of people having sex with an underage girl for purposes of blackmail and so on, and how many people want those accountable, those people arrested held accountable?
How many people want some sort of justice for some of the really bad stuff that happened under the COVID nightmare?
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't happen.
Right?
So, while state action is accountable to the people and questionable by the people, the dominant agency of protection is private matter that operates according to private economic calculation.
What does that mean?
What does that mean, private economic calculation?
Yes.
In order to provide services to people, you have to do that, which pleases them.
So, I don't know what private economic calculation means.
The enormous ethical gulf, says the writer, which separates the dominant agency of protection from the state, exists as such in virtue of the tragic unaccountability of the agency of protection.
What the fuck is that talking about?
So, okay, so a voluntary private company that can't initiate the use of force against you is tragically unaccountable, but the state, which can borrow, print, and, you know, kind of attack you kind of at will, Well, that's accountable.
The state is accountable, but a private business that has to please its customers is tragically unaccountable.
Oh my God, this is wild.
A private business exists, disur, and for itself.
Right?
Because Lord knows, people in the government are just absolute selfish angels who...
They're just absolutely cuntian, idealistic altruists that never, ever aim.
This is why politicians never get wealthier and all of that, because they're just there for the benefit of others.
While the function of the state is objective and no profiteering, the dominant agency of protection exists as a profiteering agent.
That in addition does not have the ontological duty to serve the community in its entirety.
The agency protection serves its clients who are, in whatever case, non-equal to the entirety of the population.
The function of the state is objective and no profiteering.
So apparently people in the government are not interested in profiting.
Again, politicians make absolute fortunes and depending on how you measure and calculate it.
Government employees make between a third and a half more than private sector employees and have job security that, you know, can't be dreamed of, right?
People who vote for the welfare state, a profit to the tune of, you know, $80,000 a year plus in benefits.
So they vote for that kind of profiteering.
We've seen, of course, recently under Doge, all of these nonprofits which get massive amounts of government money, Hundreds of billions of dollars and just pay themselves massive salaries and don't really get anything done.
So this person, this writer, actually seems to exist.
The function of the state is objective, whatever that means, and it's not for profiteering.
So somehow people in the government, which is a third of people in some countries or more, the people who work from the government are a completely separate species from the people who work In private industry, because people in private industry are interested in profit, but people in governments are not at all in any way interested in profit.
So we've got two classes of people.
Pure profit-driven people and pure altruists who are completely indifferent to profit.
And this is the same as the Marxist thing, we just create two classes of human beings, which makes no sense.
Okay.
Wild, man.
Straight face and everything.
Oh, that's it?
This is his argument?
Okay.
All right.
Let's do one or two more.
This is painful.
On private production of defense.
On the dangers of ensuring pluralism.
According to Hoppe, this is Hans-Germann Hoppe, I assume, insurers could and would differ and distinguish themselves with respect to the behavioral code imposed on and expected of their clients with respect to rules of evidence and procedure.
and or, with respect to the sword, and assignments of awards and punishments.
They could and would exist side by side.
For instance, Catholic insurers applying canon law, Jewish insurers applying Mosaic law, Muslims applying Islamic law, and non-believers applying secular law of one variant or another, all of them sustained by and vying for a voluntarily paying clientele.
Consumers could and would choose and sometimes change the law applied to them and their property.
That is, no one would be forced to live under a foreign law, and hence a prominent source of conflict would be eliminated.
Okay.
to several thinkers, the absence of the state would give birth to sectarianism in various fields.
Hoppe's prediction is the overture to tribalism and mutual incomprehension.
The variety of successes marking the democratic age would be severely harmed by the passing away of the state and its subjective nature, endemic and malleating powers.
Oh, to malleate, to beat with a hammer, pound, to beat or mark a dent.
Okay.
The process of unification of customs and objectivization of human logic and behavior sponsored by worldwide governments, worldwide pedagogical institutions, and the internet would certainly be endangered by the passing away of the state and the appearance of economic and behavioral tribalism.
So it's the argument that people are not tribal under the state.
That's just not true at all.
Races tend to be tribal.
Religions tend to be tribal.
Tribalism under the state absolutely exists.
And I suppose as states have become more powerful, multiculturalism is funded through debt, right?
And so the fact that as the state becomes more powerful, you end up with more of these sort of multicultural values, differences, is not...
When the government was relatively poor, say, in the, I don't know, 13th, 14th, 15th centuries, how much of all of this multiculturalism was going on, say, in the West?
Well, not that much, right?
So when the government gets more money, then it can buy votes, it can expand the welfare state, and so on, which is going to attract some people who are there for free stuff, not for freedom, as I sort of talked about before.
So the idea that somehow a free society with no enforced welfare state would create all of these multicultural conflicts doesn't sort of fit at all.
An anarcho-capitalism and warfare, according to Hoppe, in addition to the opposition of an armed private citizenry.
Oh, you know what?
I'm going back here for a sec.
I'm going back here, right?
So he says here, Catholic insurers apply canon law, Jewish insurers apply mosaic law.
Well, so, of course, we're talking sort of multi-generational issues here, which are very interesting.
Multi-generational issues would go something like this.
Let's just say person A and person B. Person A has just the non-aggression principle and protection of property rights.
Those are libertarians, all that kind of stuff.
So they're just basically interested in that, right?
All I want is the non-aggression principle.
All I want is protection of property.
It's very minimal.
And let's say there's some other people who have Well, what is the price difference going to be in these situations, right?
Well, what is the price situation?
What is the price difference for the non-aggression principle and protection of property versus I want you to enforce these 10,000 laws?
Well, it's going to be a couple of bucks a month for simple laws, right?
Protection of property and non-aggression principle.
And to enforce 10,000 laws, On people who are part of that DRO, well, that's going to be $3,000 a month, because it's just way more expensive to enforce 3,000 laws than a couple of simple principles, especially proactive laws, right?
So over time, money in society is going to concentrate in the wallets of those who are libertarians, who are non-aggression principle protection of property, because it's going to be way too expensive in the long run to enforce these Other rules and other laws.
So that is going to long curve towards minimal laws.
So I just want to mention that.
All right, let's get on.
Oh, gosh.
So this guy quotes Harpy.
In addition to the opposition of armed private citizenry, the aggressive state would run into the resistance of not only one, but in all likelihood, several insurance and reinsurance agencies.
In the case of a successful attack and invasion, these insurers would be faced with massive indemnification payments.
Unlike the aggressing state, however, these insurers would be efficient in competitive firms.
Other things being equal, the risk of an attack, and hence the price of defense insurance, would be higher in locations in close proximity to state territories than in places far away from any state.
To justify this higher price, insurers would have to demonstrate defensive readiness Vis-a-vis any possible state aggression to their clients in the form of intelligent services, the ownership of suitable weapons and materials, training, blah, blah, blah.
So what's he talking about here?
In other words, the insurers would be effectively equipped and trained for the contingency of a state attack and ready to respond with a two-fold defense strategy.
On the one hand, insofar as their operations in free territories are concerned, insurers would be ready to expel, capture, or kill every invader while trying to avoid and minimize all collateral damage.
On the other hand, insofar as their operations on state territory are concerned, insurers would be prepared to target the aggressor of the state for retaliation.
That is, insurers would be ready to counteract and kill, whether with long-range precision weapons or assassination commandos, state agents from the top of the government hierarchy of king, president, or prime minister on downward, while seeking to avoid or minimize all collateral damage to the property of innocent civilians.
Non-state agents.
They would thereby encourage internal resistance against the aggressive government, promote its delegitimization, and possibly incite the liberation and transformation of the state territory into a free country.
One of the greatest failures of anarcho-capitalism is represented by its approach to warfare.
An anarcho-capitalist society would be simply unable to defend itself from the attack of a traditional army.
Nations boasting traditional armies I.e., armies equipped by the state would not take into consideration insurance agencies as military actors.
How?
How do you know?
A nation slash community protected by insurance agencies is, in military terms, equal to an undefended territory, easily invadable.
I mean, these are just statements.
I don't quite understand.
These are just statements.
It is ridiculous to underestimate the risks.
which do reflect objective acceptations of human psychology.
Uh, what?
Okay, he says here, Okay, how has that worked in America?
How has that worked?
The American government is the largest and most powerful government in the history of the world with the strongest military presence.
By the millions.
So how's that working out?
How's that working out?
Just as a whole.
Anarcho-capitalism glorifies the industrial spirit of mankind and the rights of the individual over his or her private property.
However, just anarcho-capitalism is unable to defend the private property of the individual from foreign attack.
But Hoppe made a whole argument about this.
About how you would target the leaders of the military.
You would target state leaders and generals and so on, right?
So, do you just quote someone and then completely ignore it?
Just saying, well, you wouldn't be able to, private companies would not be able to defend against the government.
I don't...
You know, the resistance against, say, the Nazi occupation of France, the French resistance fighters, they were not state actors.
I had a conversation many years ago with a guy who was talking about how, you know, when it came to Iraq, it was a bunch of guys on the back of a pickup truck in flip-flops who were taking on the U.S. military, and they were not state actors in that way.
So there's tons of examples of guerrilla fighters pushing back state actors, non-state resistance to state military actors.
So you can't just say it doesn't happen, it won't happen, it's impossible when there's tons of examples.
I don't know.
Those citizens living within an anarcho-capitalist society would find themselves without defense and terrified by the risk of encountering an age of war.
So, there's just saying stuff, though.
I know.
In hypothetical terms, the anarcho-capitalist doctrine can be successful only within a fictitious scenario, namely a world in which all the countries are anarcho-capitalist.
Anarcho-capitalism thus reaches its maximum level of non-utility once the latter is contextualized within warfare logic.
Yeah.
So it's just a bunch of nonsense.
It's like when all armies used to be slave armies and you said, well, I don't want a slave army, saying, well, then you're not going to have any defense.
It's just completely limited thinking.
Or non-thinking.
So I don't know.
quote stuff.
I'll just do one more chapter because this is not as good as I Chapter 5 on anarcho-capitalism and the law.
For Hoppe, quote, on the other hand, a system of insurers offering competing law codes would promote a tendency towards the unification A-slash-law.
The domestic, Catholic, Jewish, Roman, Germanic, etc.
law would apply and be binding only on the persons and properties of the insured.
The insurer and all others insured by the same insurer under the same law.
Canon law would apply to profess Catholics, blah, blah, blah.
So you'd be able to interact with Muslims from Catholics.
Okay.
Competing law codes write distinctly different conclusions.
A problem would arise.
The insured would want to be protected against the contingency of intergroup conflict too.
So you'd have particular groups with their own laws for that group, but then you would have common law, which would be property rights non-aggression principle between groups, right?
So, a Muslim group and a Mormon group would have their own particular rules internal to themselves, which are now enforced a lot through ostracism if they don't have access to the power of the state.
But between, say, the Muslim group and the Mormon group, they would not be allowed to initiate the use of force and steal from each other, right?
All right.
But if competing law codes arrive at distinctly different conclusions, as they would, In at least some cases, by virtue of the fact that they represent different law codes, a problem would arise.
The insured would want to be protected against the contingency of intergroup conflict too, but domestic intergroup law would be of no avail in this regard.
In fact, at a minimum, two distinct domestic law codes would be involved, and they would come to different conclusions.
In such a situation, it could not be expected that one insurer and the subscribers of his law code say the Catholics would simply subordinate their judgment to that of another insurer, and his laws say that of the Muslims, or vice versa.
Rather, each insurer, Catholic and Muslim alike, would have to contribute to the development of inter-group law, i.e.
law applicable in cases of disagreement among competing insurers and law companies.
Yeah, so, I mean, every cell phone provider offers different plans, but they all carry each other's signals if necessary, right?
I mean, Rogers is a company that operates in Canada, and Rogers has a plan by which you can use your phone in the States.
They have as a minimum, and of course it's the same thing with email, right?
Email bounces around a bunch of different servers, and they all agree to process the email in a way that makes sense.
And where there wasn't, so let's take, for example, I'm obviously no expert on this kind of stuff, but let's take some rule like in some Muslim communities, the standard for proving rape is a lot higher than, say, In a Christian community, right?
You need more witnesses and more verification and so on, right?
And I'm sorry if I've got all this wrong.
I'm just taking this example out of my armpit.
So, if there is a different definition of, or if there is a different legal standard for establishing that a rape occurred between, say, Muslims and Catholics, then those two groups would not interact.
On a sexual level, right?
They would probably try and stay away from each other on a sexual level because of the difference in proof.
So then there would be, you know, one group would stay with their own group, the other group would stay with their own group, and those kinds of things would cause a fragmentation.
The fragmentation is largely already occurring, but yeah, there would be a certain amount of fragmentation, right?
There was a group that said, oh yeah, I'm not saying this is any particular group, I just make up a group, the Elbonians, right?
So the Elbonians are like, oh yeah, we can rape at will.
Okay, well, I don't think there would be many DROs that would want to deal with that kind of stuff, but let's say that one was made up within the Elbonian community.
Yeah, we can rape at will, we can steal at will, whatever, right?
Well, everybody would stay away from that.
And nobody would do business with them and nobody would want to socialize with them and they would be kind of ostracized within the society because it would be pretty risky and difficult and dangerous.
So that group would suffer economic ostracism because they had these sort of bad rules and laws like rape at will, steal the will or whatever.
And so there would be a very strong pressure to have more rational rules.
That were cheap and effective for the society as a whole.
So you've got to look at these things like not in static.
Oh, there's going to be groups that disagree.
Yeah, of course there's going to be groups that disagree, for sure.
And right now, the groups that disagree get to hijack the state and impose their will of right and wrong on populations of tens or hundreds of millions of people.
So that's no good.
Right?
That's no good.
It's like saying, well, you know, if people date, some people will ask.
Others today, they won't get a yes, they'll be unhappy, and then some people will end up going through life single, and so on.
It's like, yeah, that's a risk, for sure.
And that risk will work itself out over time.
It will diminish over time.
And the solution to that is not to have the government force everyone to get married.
So if the government forces everyone to get married and chooses their marriage partners to say, well, we don't have problems with singletons, we don't have problems with romantic disappointment, we don't, like, yeah, but...
That's like institutionalized rape houses.
Like, that's terrible, right?
So the fragmentation and some of the balkanization that would occur in a free society, a stateless society, that's a real issue, and it would work itself out over time.
Because those who had the least intrusive, the least initiation rules, right?
Response rules, somebody has to violate persons or property in order for the state.
In order for the DRO, the quasi-state actor in this guy's nomenclature, the DRO would be cheapest, most effective, most efficient with regards to protecting property and persons, and that's about it.
So over time, it would flow that way.
And of course, anarcho-capitalism will only arise when a significant portion of society raises their children peacefully, which means not imposing anti-rational doctrines on the children.
So, all right.
And again, there's no snap your fingers and have a change all by tomorrow.
Anarcho-capitalism would lead to the dramatic process of schism of the law.
Again, just saying stuff, all right?
From a historical perspective, the process of unification of the law is one of the greatest achievements of human history, an achievement which brought mankind closer to the objectivization of human logic.
Really?
Unification of the law.
So, is he saying that the Constitution that was adopted by the USSR and imposed, of course, eventually on the Eastern European countries Is he saying that the unification of the law is one of the greatest achievements in human history?
Yeah, but what goddamn law are you talking about?
I mean, if you look at North Korea, it used to be a bunch of different fiefdoms and princedoms way back in history, and now it's unified, but it's the largest open-air prison in the world.
People are treated like absolute slave cattle.
It's horrendous.
So, unification of the law?
So putting everyone under a centrally coercive dictatorial system of rules run for the profit of corrupt people, that's one of the greatest...
Wild.
The process of schism of the law is in logical opposition to the economic reasoning at the economic profit.
Is this translated?
It's not good English, right?
The schism of law is equal to ghettoization and mutual incomprehension.
Once different communities are accustomed to different logics of law, intergroup-line comprehension of clashes are ordinary events.
In the presence of intergroup clash, Hoppe, see above citation, advocates the development of intergroup law.
Once Hoppe advocates the development of intergroup law, he advocates nothing but the objective code which is traditionally associated with the state character.
Narco-capitalism despises state, however it, especially in moments of emergency and easiness, regrets its customs.
I'm sorry, this just, I don't...
Because he's not talking about the rationality and the logic and the universality of the non-aggression principle.
The non-aggression principle leads to a stateless society because the non-aggression principle is universal, which means you can't have people who have the right to initiate the use of force, which is the nature of the state.
That's just a fact, right?
So he's not dealing with any of the arguments.
He's just creating ooga-boogas of bad outcomes.
Just ooga-booga, bad outcomes.
Well, you won't be able to protect yourself against state armies, and there's going to be a fragmentation, and all these bad things are going to happen.
You're going to end up with the state anyway.
None of this deals with the logic.
This is the equivalent of saying, well, if we end slavery, nobody's going to pick their food and you won't have any cotton and everybody's going to starve to death and freeze to death.
I mean, this is...
Ooga-booga, bad outcomes.
Well, if we don't do the rain dance, there won't be any rain.
We're going to starve to death because the crumps will all die.
So give me, you know, 500 bucks and I'll do the rain dance.
This is not an argument at all.
This is just, you know, bad things will happen.
Bad things will happen without a government.
Okay, well, that's not an argument.
it's shaking the voodoo stick of consequences to hope to get you away from some sort of rational analysis of an idea or argument.
Anyway, I don't particularly feel like going on This is impossible.
He's wrong about this and there's no actual arguments or evidence.
So unfortunately, look, if there's better stuff, If there's better stuff out there, that's a good criticism of NCAP.
I would like to see it.
But this ain't it.
So, freedomain.com slash donate.
If you'd like to help out the show, I'll put a link to the document below if you want to review it at your own leisure.
But I'm curious what you think about this analysis, and I look forward to your feedback and your support.
Again, freedomain.com slash donate.
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