Anarcho-capitalism is a philosophy whose proponents favor a neo-classical conception of the free market and oppose the initiation of physical force against person and property, the threat of such, and fraud ("initiation" meaning a first use). Anarcho-capitalists favor the establishment of private property and believe in the freedom of individual self-determination, either to become wealthy, stay poor or found a cooperative. This freedom extends to economic practices that some consider exploitative, and requires that those who wish to attain their chosen lifestyle be able to compete in a capitalist market. Anarcho-capitalists favor voluntary relations between individuals rather than involuntary submission, and as a result, they oppose the territorial monopoly of states. Anarcho-capitalists believe that an unregulated free market, sometimes called "pure capitalism" by proponents (see footnote¹), is the only economic system that is compatible with this view. Anarcho-capitalism is sometimes referred to as anti-state capitalism by anarchists, who believe anarchism and capitalism are incompatible.

Basics

Philosophy

Anarcho-capitalists tend to identify themselves as libertarians, favoring a free market (in the strict economic sense) and believing that all individuals should be allowed to do as they wish with themselves and their property as long they grant this same respect to others, including recognizing the same model of property. More specifically, they oppose all initiation of physical force, the threat of such, and fraud to acquire, use, manipulate, damage, or otherwise modify the property, bodily or external, of any person or to prevent one's preferred use of the same. Anarcho-capitalists make little or no fundamental distinction between objects that are physically unconnected to the human body and the body itself in regard to determining them to be the property of a person (For example, cutting a persons hair without his consent and cutting down a tree on his land are both considered an initiation of force against his property). However, objects are not recognized as being legitimately-obtained property unless they have been acquired without initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud (see footnote²). Any action or inaction that is not influenced by any of these three mechanisms is considered by anarcho-capitalists to be "voluntary." Anarcho-capitalists believe that capitalism is the only system that embraces this philosophy.

Anarcho-capitalism opposes "traditional anarchism" on some foundational issues, one of which is the issue of private property. While anarchists traditionally reject all property beyond personal possession as a form of authority, anarcho-capitalists embrace the establishment of private property as an essential element of individual liberty.

Anarcho-capitalists believe that real property, i.e. land, can be privately owned, traded, bought, sold and given. Unowned or abandoned land and objects can legitimately become property by initiating physical control, use, or claim over it (finders keepers). An example of claiming land in this way is homesteading. This conforms to the anarcho-capitalist opposition to the initiation of physical force against the property of another since they would consider it to be previously unowned. It is generally the premise of anarcho-capitalists that at the "dawn of man" all land and objects on the Earth were initially unowned, and that ownership comes about through physical use or control rather than some a priori metaphysical connection.

Anarcho-capitalists, like other capitalists, support the freedom of each individual to acquire or produce more property, of any kind (including land), than what is necessary for one's mere survival or modest comfort and to do so without imposed limit on the quantity or value she holds for herself regardless of whether others live in poverty. In other words, they believe in the freedom to "get rich." "Greed" is not a bad thing to anarcho-capitalists; rather, as Adam Smith wrote about the Invisible Hand, it is the engine that drives all economic action. What concerns them, however, is how this greed is satisified --whether through production and trade or by theft. There is no taboo at all against economic institutions such as inheritance or bilaterally-contracted indentured servitude.

Anarcho-capitalists hold that a modern territorial state by its nature is an entity that initiates coercion (for example, by implementing taxation), and therefore oppose the existence of such a state as a monopoly so that markets can operate free from this type of interference. If individual liberty is to be defended by an organization, they insist that it be in the form of a private business who sells its services to private individuals rather than a public institution who relies on taxation to fund its operations. Anarcho-capitalists, like traditional anarchists, reject all coercive aggressions of the state, from initiatory war to government monopolies.

Contracts are seen by many anarcho-capitalists to be the form of private law that would run such a society, sometimes along with a form of common law. Many people can make guesses as to what form law and order would take in an anarcho-capitalist society, but like many things that involve the market forces, it is difficult to predict before it actually happens.

Anarcho-capitalists are not an entirely monolithic movement; there are some internal disagreements. Almost all support the freedom to use force to repel others who have initiated force against their person (self-defense) or external property. Most support the use of force to eject those who have trespassed on their land and have refused to exit, or are otherwise deemed threatening. Many oppose the use of retaliatory or punitive force, asserting that any use of force beyond defense, even in response to an initiation of force, is tantamount to initiation of force. Regardless, all would allow reliatory or punitive force if the offender had previously agreed through voluntary contract to be subject to it in the case that he had violated the liberty of another. Some believe prisons or indentured servitude would be justifiable institutions to deal with those who violate anarcho-capitalist property relations, while others believe excommunication or restitution are sufficient.

"Capitalism" is typically regarded as a system of trade in a relatively free market whose operation is protected by the oversight of a state with a modicum of interventionary influence in those markets. Anarcho-capitalists claim a "pure" version of capitalism can exist, one which consists of what they regard to be an absolutely free market.

Anarcho-capitalism has also been called anti-state capitalism, market anarchism, free-market anarchism, private-property anarchism, neo-classical liberalism, anarcho-liberalism, voluntaryism, and, critically, free-market fundamentalism. Some consider it to be identical to panarchy. Critics often accuse it of reducing to plutocracy or feudalism in practice.

Economics

Anarcho-capitalist economic thought often draws heavily from the Austrian School of economics, as developed by Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, F.A. von Hayek, and especially Ludwig von Mises. (Some prominent anarcho-capitalists--such as Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe--have made substantial contributions to Austrian economics in their own right.) Other anarcho-capitalists, such as David Friedman and Bryan Caplan, do not identify with the Austrian School and have criticized important aspects of the Austrian program, but they agree with the Austrians on many substantial economic issues. Like most mainstream economists, anarcho-capitalists accept the subjective theory of value, which says that all value is purely subjective. Only the buyer and the seller, while using information shared and available in the marketplace, can determine how valuable a good or services is and thereby set the price in accordance with that value judgement. Any government intervention such as regulation, tariff or tax, is said to interfere with this judgement being reflected accurately in the price.

In basic terms, an anarcho-capitalist believes that the state is unnecessary, and all desired goods and services - even those long held to be only the realm of governments - can be created by the free market.

Anarcho-capitalists believe that any goods or services worth having, and which people want, can be supplied entirely by the private sector. Thus, government services such as fire protection, police, unemployment protection, schools, welfare, drug testing, road construction, and sometimes such things as courts and copyrights, can be provided by the free market, if they can be done so sustainably. If the output is less than the input - that is, if there is no profit, or if no one is willing to donate - the market has determined the service or good is not beneficial enough to be produced at that time. Anarcho-capitalists don't agree with the concept of a market failure, and never support using government or coercive intervention to help any individual, business or charity.

Philosophical roots

Anarcho-capitalism synthesizes certain ideas from the tradition of classical liberalism (see libertarianism) and arguably from individualist anarchism as well.

Classical liberal tradition

Classical liberals have long distrusted states and called to limit government power to a minimum. See Liberalism for the history of liberal thought. In the 18th century, liberal revolutionaries in Britain and America had endorsed anarchy without grounding it in theory, while some French economists had theorized it without endorsing it. In the 19th century, a group of classical liberals first explicitly argued to abolish monopoly government, the first being Gustave de Molinari in 1849. He and this new type of anti-state liberal grounded their reasoning on liberal ideals: individual liberty, private property, and natural law.

The anti-state liberal tradition in Europe and the United States continued after Molinari in the early writings of Herbert Spencer, as well as in thinkers such as Paul Émile de Puydt, Auberon Herbert, and Albert Jay Nock.

In the 1950s, Austrian School economists such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek heavily influenced a new generation of anti-state liberals. Mises's student Murray Rothbard worked to fuse the insights of the Austrian School with classical natural law theory, bringing together European and American traditions and coining the term anarcho-capitalism. Since the 1950s, anarcho-capitalists have been an important if minority part of the libertarian movement in the US and have been consistent defenders of the liberal tradition.

Individualist anarchist tradition

Many anarcho-capitalists also locate themselves within the tradition of individualist anarchism--as exemplified by 19th century individualists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner. This claim to individualist tradition is controversial however, as Tucker explicitly denounced capitalism and Spooner rejected several of the most fundamental institutions of capitalism. Early anarcho-capitalists were influenced by individualist critiques of the State and their arguments for the right to ignore or withdraw from it (as, for example, in Lysander Spooner's "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, (http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm)" which was widely reprinted in early anarcho-capitalist journals), and they adopted individualist ethical arguments against the use of collectivist reasoning to defend State power or any other use of coercion to subordinate the individual to some authority claiming to act on behalf of collective interests. Like modern anarcho-capitalists, 19th century individualist anarchists described their economic and political positions as a radicalization of the classical liberal defense of free markets and civil society--Tucker, for example, described anarchism (on his individualist conception) as "consistent Manchesterism" [1] (http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker37.html) and anarchists as "unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats" [2] (http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm#SSA.27).

Whatever the parallels, however, the ultimate relationship between anarcho-capitalism and the individualist anarchist tradition is made much more complicated, and controversial, by the fact that 19th century individualist anarchists usually identified themselves as socialists, and condemned the common practices of bosses, landlords, and bankers as exploitative. Some contemporary individualist anarchists hold that, whatever anarcho-capitalists may have appropriated from the individualist anarchist tradition, their explicit support for capitalism places them outside of the individualist anarchist tradition, and excludes anarcho-capitalism from being a genuine form of anarchism at all. There are still substantive differences between many modern anarcho-capitalists and the positions of 19th century individualists such as Spooner and Tucker over issues such as interest, the legitimacy of land titles (and thus demands for rent), and the corporate organization of commerce. Anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard have been willing to accept substantially more of the "capitalistic" practices that characterize today's market as acceptable or even desirable features of a stateless free market than the 19th century individualists were--who rejected them, either because they were inefficient and exploitative arrangements that would cease to exist without government protection (as with interest and corporate commerce) or because they were themselves directly coercive (as with the enforcement of absentee landlords' claims to ownership).

In light of these differences, many anarchists hold that whatever anarcho-capitalists have gained from their reading of the individualists, they have repudiated essential components of both anarchism in general and individualist anarchism in particular (including not only specific conclusions about practices such as interest, but also underlying premises such as the labor theory of value). Not everyone who would today be described as an "anarcho-capitalist" would disagree--Robert LeFevre, for example, described his position as "autarchy," rejected the identification with anarchism, and criticized Tucker's individualism in particular. On the other hand, some who self-identify as individualist anarchists, such as Wendy McElroy, argue that anarcho-capitalism is a species of individualist anarchism (although not the only one on offer). It is important to note, however, that McElroy has also argued that the individualists of the past would be anarcho-capitalists if they were alive today, raising some doubts concerning the appropriateness of her own choice of the label individualist-anarchist over anarcho-capitalist. Most anarcho-capitalists, on the other hand, emphasize the underlying premises they draw from the 19th century individualists—such as the critique of collectivist justifications for force, the identification of organized coercion as a primary cause of social ills, and the rejection of violence for any purpose other than defense against invasion—and argue that their differences with the 19th century individualists are corrections within a tradition rather than a break from the individualist tradition.

It would be an understatement to claim that anarcho-capitalism's place within the anarchist tradition is hotly contested (see Anarchism); in fact, it is disowned by the tradition, which believes that capitalist economic relations constitute a form of social domination, and thus contradict the fundamental anarchist belief in freedom.

Utilitarian vs. natural law approaches

Libertarians in general, and anarcho-capitalists in particular, have developed two different approaches to their theories, from a utilitarian point of view, or from a point of view of natural law. Some of them defend one approach and dismiss the other, whereas some of them, like Bastiat, claim an inherent harmony or correspondence between the two complementary approaches.

The Natural Law approach (see for instance Murray Rothbard and his book Power and Market, or Chapter 10 of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's book The Economics and Ethics of Private Property [3] (http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/econ-ethics-10.pdf)) argues that the existence of the state is immoral, and that unlimited capitalism is the only ethical political system, or rather anti-political system. The Utilitarian approach (see for instance David Friedman) argues that abolition of the state in favour of private businesses is economically more efficient. The Harmonic approach argues both as equivalent statements.

The notion of property rights is a fundamental element of anarcho-capitalism. The Natural Law approach argues for the natural right of humans to own their body and what is considered the result of their work, that they can use or refuse to use as they like, as long as they do not attempt to use or forcibly transfer the property of someone else. The Utilitarian approach argues that defining property rights in this manner is the most efficient way to prevent destructive conflicts between individuals and to foster productive efforts. Also, under this approach, there isn't any real need to talk about "ownership" of one's body -- one's relationship with one's self isn't ownership, but identity.

Anarcho-capitalism rejects every and all kinds of "positive rights", while defending "negative rights". It differs from minarchist libertarianism only in that it considers that "being protected by others" is also a positive service that must be rejected as a right, and that one can't claim protection by government, but must take personal steps or organize with others, so as to enforce the respect of one's property.

Anarcho-capitalism and the environment

Anarcho-capitalists argue that private property allows people who care for nature to protect whatever is valuable about it. Indeed, they point out, when individuals own a certain portion of a natural ecosystem, that means there is someone who is interested in the preservation of its capital, and someone who can hold people who damage it responsible for torts. Anarcho-capitalists frequently argue that most of the worst-polluted land and water on the planet is government-owned, and claim that this is due to the lack of incentives for good stewardship of government-owned land (putting control of natural resources in the hands of government agents, they argue, effectively creates an externality problem and results in decision-makers far more likely to cut political deals with well-connected corporations than a private owner would). The nationalization of nature by governments, and their delegitimation of homesteading, is thus argued to be one of the primary causes of pollution. One example often cited is the number of wild-life species that were endangered in South Africa while they were administered by the government, some of which now prosper after privatization because farmers and villagers now own them and have interest in their continued existence (as game, tourist attractions, biological capital, etc.). More generally, anarcho-capitalists argue that if any resource is in the hands of people who have disrespect for it, and undervalue it, then a completely free market (including freedom from government monopolization of unclaimed resources) allows people who do respect and value this resource the opportunity to make an exchange for what they value and acquire it for protection or responsible use.

Critics of these views argue that when individuals own a certain portion of a natural ecosystem, they may have a variety of interests that conflict with the preservation of that ecosystem. For example, they may wish to destroy it and build something else on that land, or they may wish to exploit its resources rather than preserve the ecosystem in its natural state. Indeed, critics point out that the main driving force in a capitalist system is profit, and that there is usually very little profit to be made in preserving a forest, for example. Opening it up for logging would most likely result in a higher revenue, and thus individuals have an incentive to destroy the natural ecosystem for personal gain. In general, critics argue that the people who value a resource (and who have an interest in purchasing it) tend to value it for the profit it can generate, rather than for any natural beauty. Thus, they claim that the free market approach advocated by anarcho-capitalists would result in all (or most) as-yet unspoiled ecosystems being owned by large businesses with an interest in exploiting them for profit.

Anarcho-capitalism, corporations, and contracts

While anarcho-capitalists believe that private businesses born out of voluntary contracts are the best (most moral and most efficient) way to conduct human affairs, they do not support corporations as they are currently supported by governments. Many anarcho-capitalists argue that the traditional government protection of limited liability for corporations is an illegitimate form of protectionism that insulates corporate owners from full responsibility for their actions, and harms those who are denied the right to sue them for damage or debt.

All anarcho-capitalists criticize government-enforced privileges for corporations in the form of limitations on liability, other subsidies and protectionist barriers to the free movement of people and trade, subsidies and regulations regarding workers and employers, disproportionate protection for official work contracts as opposed to other private contracts, and so on.

To anarcho-capitalists, contracts in general, and employment contracts in particular, are but a particular case of voluntary exchange of property (one's time and work, one's goods and capitals, etc.), that individuals may perform. Individuals may take any legitimate steps within their property, including the self-defensive use of force, to protect whatever they have gained from such contracts. On the other hand, they do not deserve any special protection beyond the protection of the peaceful exchange: just because two (or more) individuals agreed something together at some time does not mean they are entitled to any protection from each other, from third parties, or from the accidents of life.

More generally, anarcho-capitalists do not recognize any monopoly authority for declaring any arrangement "official" as opposed to other "unofficial" things. Thus, for anarcho-capitalists, no-one has the rightful authority to enforce special benefits or penalties for "official" arrangements above beyond the legal status already given any other private contractual arrangement.

One illustration might be the present debate over same-sex marriage. For anarcho-capitalists, both sides of the debate operate on fundamentally flawed premises. Opponents of same-sex marriage on the Right argue that the State should give special status to the family arrangements of heterosexual couples who enter into an "official" marriage, and inflict special penalties on same-sex couples by refusing to give legal status to their private family arrangements. Liberal advocates of same-sex marriage, on the other hand, argue that both heterosexual and same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into an "official" marriage and gain special benefits from the State. Anarcho-capitalists differ from both positions: they deny the legitimacy of distinguishing between "official" and "unofficial" family arrangements, and argue that no-one should receive special legal benefits. Thus, they argue that in a free society any group of two (or more, for that matter) consenting adults have the right to set down a private agreement about family arrangements, and that that private agreement is as good in legal terms as any other.

As with corporations, anarcho-capitalists assert that a private agreement between two or more parties does not place a duty on anyone else and that, rather, private individuals have every right to choose for themselves whether or not to smile upon the family arrangements that particular consenting adults make. Thus, the owner of an insurance company that disagrees with same-sex marriages should not be forced to extend benefits to same-sex partners; on the other hand, the owner of an insurance company who endorses same-sex marriages has every right to extend benefits to same-sex partners that he wishes. Gay liberation activists are free to boycott the first provider and support the second provider; Christian conservatives are free to boycott the second and support the first. The same principle applies to all other providers of goods and services, as well as employers and employees. Anarcho-capitalists argue that no restrictions should be imposed on their choice of customers, business partners, employees, etc. For example, an employer with racist views should be allowed to hire people based on racial standards, and a shopkeeper with very strong views for (or against) a certain religion should be allowed to refuse the entry of people with other religious views into his shop.

Anarcho-capitalists have very widely differing social views, ranging from the conservative and sometimes religious paleolibertarians to moderate and extreme social libertarians. As such, they tend to disagree about which of these arrangements are best. What they don't disagree about is which of these communities ought to be legal--assuming that they do not interfere with the property claims of other communities, they should all be allowed in a free society. Most anarcho-capitalists expect that different communities will tend to coalesce around different social norms and attitudes; within these communities, more common forms of private arrangements will have more extensive jurisprudence than less common forms, and thus lower enforcement costs, which might make some arrangements more common than others. The only important political issue, however, is that people are free from the threat of "illegitimate" violence no matter which community they live in, and that they can freely move from one community to another (if they have the resources to do so, that is). As long as that is the case, there may be many arguments about fairness or virtue, but there are no arguments of legality.

Anarcho-capitalism and inheritance

Anarcho capitalists believe individuals should have complete freedom of determination of their property's fate after death (once all open contracts have been settled). Therefore any degree of inheritance, disinheritance and bestowal to individuals or organisations of choice is permitted. They are against inheritance tax or compulsory inheritance. In their view, an individual also has the right to retain ownership posthumously for as long as he wishes. For example, a musician has the right to prohibit the public performance of his work after his death. In theory, land owners also have the right to declare their land off-bounds to anyone for eternity.

There is some debate among anarcho-capitalists as to what should happen to property in absence of a will or a contract such as marriage. Some argue that "natural" heirs like family members, related by blood or otherwise, do not have an automatic right to inherit property of the deceased as they are as much subject to the principle of voluntary contracts as the rest of society. Instead, a deceased person's property would simply be declared as unclaimed property. The first individual to claim the property would then be its legitimate owner.

Anarcho-capitalism and violence

Anarcho-capitalists, like classical liberals in general, argue that the use of violence should be restricted to self-defense of person and property. A few anarcho-capitalists are outright pacifists, but most defend the right to use force in defense of person or property against criminal acts, and many argue that the defensive use of force may include revolutionary violence against tyrannical regimes or even war against dangerous imperialist or terrorist foreign states. However, even though they might approve of violence as legitimate in certain cases; even though they may concede that governments, having monopolized the means of violence, are the ones who currently are to enact this violence; they believe that governments should yield this monopoly of violence, and let individuals organize freely to better handle such situations. (One prominent example of such mixed feelings is the admiration that many anarcho-capitalists express for the American Revolution. Many anarcho-capitalists see the American Revolution as the legitimate act of individuals working together to fight against tyrannical restrictions of their liberties, but also sharply criticize the Revolutionaries for the some of the means used — taxes, conscription, inflationary money — and the limitations of the result achieved — a system involving a government.)

However, whether or not a given group of anarcho-capitalists thinks that forceful resistance and revolutionary violence are legitimate, the vast majority of anarcho-capitalists think that gradual change through education and modification of public opinion are more reasonable as a strategy. The use of force is seen as a dangerous tool at best, and violent insurrection is usually seen as a last resort. (Some anarcho-capitalists argue for a third option: simply circumventing the State by working to found a libertarian society in some territory uncontrolled by statists.)

Criticisms of anarcho-capitalism

Anarcho-capitalism being a radical development of liberalism, the same general arguments for and against liberalism, laissez-faire capitalism and capitalism usually apply, except as regards the justice system, in which anarcho-capitalism is more specific and differs from the classical liberal tradition.

A common misunderstanding about liberalism in general, and anarcho-capitalism in particular, is to consider them as economic or political theories. They are not. They are theories of Law — of what is or isn't legitimate to do. This in particular is used to refute the affirmations according to which today's society or any society is already libertarian, since everyone is ultimately free to obey or disobey and chooses to abide by the rules of the system: indeed, libertarians have a theory of "natural law", i.e. law as it should be; and as long as positive law (law as it is acknowledged) doesn't match natural law, the society is not libertarian. In particular, the right of anyone to secede from a government he considers unfit should be respected (see secession and urban secession). If not, then non-cooperation is morally justified (see civil disobedience).

Parallel arguments are made by other movements with a similar belief in the existence of natural law, but a different conception of what that law implies for human behavior. For instance, the green movement contains a strong strain of green anarchism with a concept of natural law based on the science of ecology, and more minimalist advocates of eco-anarchism. The convergence between these movements and tenets of syndicalism and anarcho-capitalism leads some to observe that green politics can sometimes be libertarian, and some political positions, e.g. the green tax shift, resemble measures advised by libertarians and anarcho-capitalists. Such measures, very broadly stated, tend to degrade special status of debt (which takes a strong state to guarantee and collect) but sees profit as the basis of prosperity.

This common strength of movements with different concepts of natural law is one of the main arguments for anarcho-capitalism: it accommodates much diversity.

However they see diversity or biodiversity as a value, there is some role accepted by most anarcho-capitalists for strong centralization of some powers, particularly if those are achieved by persuasion and good service, and restricting centralized power would put restrictions on property rights.

Neither natural law nor utility

Criticism of anarcho-capitalism can focus on either of its two variants, or on the elements they share. The Natural Law approach encounters criticism from those who maintain that human beings cannot be considered property, even their own, and/or that private property in general is illegitimate (or immoral), or that private ownership of natural resources is so in particular. Natural Law anarcho-capitalism is also criticized by those who have a different view on what exactly is "natural law", and by those who believe that natural laws or rights do not exist (i.e. that laws and rights are a human invention, a product of human society).

The idea that people have the right to own the result of their work, which anarcho-capitalists champion after their own fashion, is differently-championed by a number of different political movements. For example, many branches of socialism hold that capitalism is unjust precisely because the workers have a right to own the results of their labor and because capitalism denies them this right (since the result of a worker's labor becomes the property of the businessman who hired him). Some critics of capitalism also argue that, while one has the right to own one's own labor, no such right exists in the case of natural resources; and since natural resources are ultimately required in the construction of any object, it can be concluded that all property is illegitimate.

Criticism of the utilitarian anarcho-capitalist approach argues that anarcho-capitalism does not maximize utility; indeed, most critics contend that it would fall far short of that goal. This kind of criticism comes from a variety of different political views and ideologies, and different critics have different views on which other system does or would do a better job of bringing the greatest benefits to the greatest number of people.

Defense agencies and monopoly

One of the most common criticisms of anarcho-capitalist prescriptions is that, in practice, the free market "defensive agencies" that they envision providing defense services will collapse into monopoly governments, creating (at best) local governments controlled by market wealth in the place of larger constitutional governments. This amounts to arguing either (a) that governments represent natural monopolies rather than coercive monopolies on the defensive use of force, (b) that anarcho-capitalism will make it more likely for coercive monopolies (in the form of local plutocracies) to form, or (c) that the distinction between natural and coercive monopolies is either specious or insufficient in determining whether or not an institution is legitimate. Considering the merits or demerits of this charge requires a consideration of the anarcho-capitalist understanding of monopoly.

Austrian School economists are not opposed to natural monopolies (or de facto monopolies, in which a company happens to currently be the only provider of some service due); rather, they are opposed only to coercive monopolies (or de jure monopolies, in which a company or a cartel of companies is guaranteed a monopoly through the use of political force).

Or rather, to be more precise, anarcho-capitalists are not politically opposed to natural monopolies--that is, they do not advocate the use of political force to prevent them or break them up. Many anarcho-capitalists are economically opposed to natural monopolies or quasi-monopolies as inefficient methods of production, and may support economic actions against natural monopolies that abuse their market position, such as boycotts and worker strikes.

But precisely because they see natural monopolies as inefficient, they also endorse economic arguments that natural monopolies can exist only transiently, usually due to some recent technical or organizational innovation that hasn't been copied by competitors yet. ; In Austrain School view the market is an open process and in real markets will be no end which could called "natural monopoly" or "market failure". These theories are only possible by theorists of neoclassical economy. This doesn't mean, that these theories should be wrong; just the conclusion is wrong that intervention by government is announced with it as proper procedure. Every authority can only evalutate a monopoly-situation on political needs. But government sets ends in an open process. This is a reason that coercive monopoly regulation consists although the assumptions of monopoly had gone long time ago.

Thus, all evaluations of free markets are the motto of anarcho-capitalists. Maybe force is an tool of free markets, too - with all responsibility to the offenders. But why shouldn't be this and moral purchasing a better method than regulation with techniques from socialism?

Applying this reasoning to the protection of individual property rights, most anarcho-capitalists do not fear the emergence of local monopolies or oligopolies in the justice market or everywhere — as long as the individual right to secede and choose a new defense agency, or start a new one yourself, is respected.

Is state the same kind of coercion as defense agenture?

Another related argument, characteristic of opposing anarchist views, is to deny the claim that natural monopolies cannot be coercive. This view holds that capitalist defense agencies and the owners who employ them would constitute de facto monopoly governments in themselves due both to the economic powers they hold and their exclusive right to legitimate defense of those properties they claim. Proponents of this view say that a cooperative group which sets to enforce its claims in such a manner, without accounting for the active involvement of dissenting parties, would amount to the very same monopoly on violence that anarcho-capitalists claim to reject. As such, some hold anarcho-capitalist businesses to be identical to a state in all but name - thus incompatible with anarchism.

Anarchism vs. private property

Private property and freedom

Anarcho-capitalists are the only group to claim the title anarchist while expressly embracing private property and capital. Given this, many anarchists have questioned the legitimacy of the title "anarcho-capitalist," claiming that anarchism is essentially antithetical to capital relations due to their perception that capitalism inhibits individual freedom. Because these forms of anarchism originally arose, in part, to decry capital relations, anarchists of many different factions have a diverse set of arguments against property (which some distinguish from possession). All of these arguments, some of which occupy the space of several books, would thus apply as arguments against anarcho-capitalism. One brief example of such an argument is to consider private property an institution enforced privilege, and so regard individual or collective defense of it to be a form of coercive violence used to oppress non-owners. Anarcho-capitalists, on the other hand, typically argue that a broad classical liberal conception of private property is justified independently of the State, either by utilitarian considerations or by natural law. Thus, they argue that individuals can use force to defend a wide range of private property, and they can cooperate with others or hire a defense agency to defend whatever they can rightfully defend on their own. There are several critical responses and counter-responses to these arguments and others.

Some of these conflicts are the result of debates over fundamental perspectives on issues of social organization, justice systems, property, self-defense, and so on. Many anarchists approach these from a socialist standpoint, whereas anarcho-capitalists consider any kind of collectivist politic as oppression of the political minority by the political majority. In response, collectivist anarchists tend to argue that anarcho-capitalism would involve the oppression of the political majority by the economic minority, and that collectives based on consensus would by definition not be able to oppress a political minority.

Other anarchists, like the individualists, are also wary of collective arguments, but critique anarcho-capitalism on other grounds. For example, some individualists argue from the labor theory of value to conclude that capital enforcement, and thus the institutions of rent and interest, are destructive of free market relations and thus involuntary. Others argue that wage labor is exploitative and thus incompatible with individual freedom. Still others, like the egoists, deny the validity of property claims altogether, arguing that they are mere "spooks," nothing more than figments of the mind that serve no essential purpose.

These debates, in turn, are often seen as fruitless by anarchists who view the "left-right spectrum" as an irreconcilable and artificial abstraction that simply institutionalizes debate about an existing property rights system, as opposed to examining the life-purposes fulfilled by such entities. One such example is "Greens and Libertarians: the Yin and Yang of our political future", in which Dan Sullivan, a Libertarian from the United States, explores common attitudes about monopoly and draws a new bottom-to-top spectrum, claiming that the Green and Libertarian political movements disagreed on the appropriate scale of solutions, but that they generally saw many of the same problems and disdained left-right arguments. The common belief in natural law made it at least possible to debate differences amiably, in a way that the traditional worker-manager divide did not permit.

The incompatibility of differing private property ideals

Anarcho-capitalism assumes property is a well defined and unambiguous concept. In the real world however, the interpretation of property differs from society to society depending on the cultural, historical and technological circumstances. For example, before invention of the printing press the concept of copyright did not exist. Ownership of children (child labour) on the other hand was considered legitimate in Victorian times. Many modern anarcho-capitalists would disagree with both ideas, saying that children cannot be rightly owned and that copyright can, according to what they view as natural law or utilitarianism common to all human beings. That stance is to some extent arbitrary however because it simply reflects the modern day legal consensus in the West, a consensus enforced by a state monopoly.

In an anarcho-capitalists society individuals would, in the absence of an absolute authority on law, be tempted to mould the definition of property to suit their own needs. For instance nothing would stop someone from declaring that they own all the oxygen in the atmosphere in an attempt to charge people for breathing. Nothing would stop someone from patenting the number 0 in an attempt to charge people for using maths. Critics say that legal chaos would ensue as people constantly redefine their terms and different cultural groups accuse each other of theft.

Technological limitations of private property

Certain critics like the Free Culture and Open society movements argue that any form of pure capitalism (including anarcho-capitalism) is a dated ideology designed for a 19th century world (where property was tangible), and as such incompatible with more advanced societies of the future.

In a knowledge society information is likely to be the most economically relevant type of capital. Tangible goods (land,labour,energy) will still play a role, however a minor one. In a knowledge society communication technology is also likely to be highly advanced. In practise, excluding individuals from access to information will prove difficult, unless technological restrictions are imposed by some form of authoritarian government. An example are ad hoc wireless peer to peer networks. Unless an authority imposes a ban on transmitting in a certain frequency, people are free to use those networks to acquire information (such as software, music, movies, and books) anonymously, with little chance of being caught.

In the hypothetical anarcho-capitalist knowledge society individuals would be free to develop communication technologies without technological constraints (such as DRM), as constraints require a legal monopoly. Certain groups within this society would probably try to introduce constraints, but technology would still be developed outside those groups and competitive pressures would mean unconstrained technology would eventually leak back in. Enforcement of property rights would become impractical, and the very idea property itself would become meaningless to a certain extent. The anarcho-capitalist society would therefore mutate into de facto technological anarchism, or otherwise it would be forced to set up an authoritarian regime to uphold the concept of property artificially.

Free rider

Minarchist and statist critics often argue that the free rider problem makes anarcho-capitalism (and, by extension, any anti-statist political system) fundamentally unworkable in modern societies. They typically argue that there are some vital goods or services—such as civil or military defense, management of common environmental resources, or the provision of public goods such as roads or lighthouses—that cannot be effectively delivered without the backing of a government exercising effective territorial control, and so that abolishing the State as anarcho-capitalists demand will either lead to catastrophe or to the eventual re-establishment of monopoly governments as a necessary means to solving the coordination problems that the abolition of the State created.

Critics such as Robert Nozick, for example, have pointed out that it seems difficult for a stateless society to avoid free rider problems in defense; it is impossible for a defense agency to stop a missile from blowing up its customers without also preventing the same missile from blowing up the non-customers who live nearby; thus people could rationally choose not to pay the defense agency, on the assumption that enough other people will pay for it. But (these critics argue), that quickly creates a situation in which it is economically rational for each individual person to make a decision to benefit from the defense agency while withdrawing from paying for its services, leaving anyone who tries to provide effective defense without the funds to do so--unless it can somehow convince everyone in a territorial region to pay (in which case it succeeds by effectively re-creating a minarchist state).

Anarcho-capitalists frequently respond to the criticism by pointing out that the arguments directed by minarchists against non-governmental provision of defense are similar if not identical in form to the arguments directed against minarchists by those who favor government funding of roads, lighthouses, education, and other public goods. Similarly, they point out that free rider problems for defense already exist today, as states provide defense not only for their tax-paying citizens but also for children, visitors, and others who either don't pay taxes at all or receive more tax funds from the government than they pay in. Of course, these replies do not refute the free rider argument against anarcho-capitalism; but they do show that if there is a problem here, it's not a problem peculiar to anarcho-capitalism itself, and whatever arguments are given to show (for example) that lighthouses can be effectively provided without government intervention are likely to also show that defense can be as well.

Many anarcho-capitalists also endorse alternative means of defense (such as volunteer citizen militias in place of a large standing army) and suggest that without a government to engage in international power politics or modern large-scale overseas wars, there will be much less need to provide for military defense in the first place.

Similarly, some people believe that anarcho-capitalism is ill-equipped to manage commons. For example, owners or managers of factories may choose to pollute the air, rather than voluntarily joining pollution-management agreements.

Many anarcho-capitalists argue that it is government that creates most of the opportunities for companies to pollute common resources in the first place, by claiming to have sole control over common resources such as national forests, waterways and air quality, and by using ex ante regulation to shield companies from liability for pollution as long as they follow the letter of the rules. Tragedies of the commons would be minimized as people were able to sue environmental offenders in a private arbitration forum for damage to the enjoyment of their own property. (Of course, this raises a second-order free rider problem: how will people harmed by pollution be able to get environmental offenders to agree to a common private arbitrator with them? Whether or not an anarcho-capitalist society would have mechanisms that could effectively bring about arbitration of disputes over damages is a matter of further controversy.)

Another common proposal is to treat the right to emit substances into the air as private property owned by someone, but only owned in measurable quantities. Those who may be harmed by emissions would have actions against those who emitted more than their (tradeable) rights allowed, and the parties to such a dispute would then use the usual arbitration system. Such a system, already in existence in some respects, would internalize the costs of pollution. Nonetheless, some regard more thorough reliance upon such schemes as an untested thought experiment that would introduce problems of its own.

Crypto-anarchism

The development of the internet and cryptographic methods raises a new possibility for achieving some aspects of anarcho-capitalism on the internet (or 'in cyberspace') called crypto-anarchism. Pseudonymous communication allows services, especially information services (e.g. consulting, translation, programming, etc.), to be provided without revealing the physical identity of the person providing a service in exchange for anonymous electronic money. As laws can not be enforced without knowing the identity of people, the relevant laws become irrelevant. (As even the location (country) of the individuals are unknown, it is not even clear which country's laws will be ignored. In a sense, 'cyberspace' can be regarded as an independent territory.)

Anarcho-capitalism in fiction

Anarcho-capitalism has been examined in certain works of literature, particularly science fiction. Vernor Vinge's short story The Ungoverned depicts anarcho-capitalists defending against an invading government. Example contract corporations in this story include Big Al's Protection Racket (a police service) and Justice, Inc. Anarcho-capitalism is also discussed in Vinge's novels The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime, which both occur in the same literary milieu as "The Ungoverned". The short story "Conquest by Default" depicts an anarcho-capitalist alien race which prevents monopolistic groups via antitrust religious customs.

Anarcho-capitalism also plays a major role in Neal Stephenson's novels Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. In Snow Crash, territory is primarily controlled by corporate franchises, termed "Franchise Operated Quasi-National Entities" such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" and "Nova Sicilia," with privately-operated police forces and justice systems, where the landscape has been turned into a patchwork quilt of franchise enclave communities, the roads are private entities one subscribes to, and the Federal Government is just one more competitor (albeit an inefficient one losing market share by the day) in a free market for sovereignty services. Its sequel, The Diamond Age, depicts a more mature anarc