Well I was going to say that the idea of "big government" versus "good government" isn't really the issue, because "good government" doesn't exist, but that seemed to be outside the scope of your thread. Everything the government does is based on violence and coercion to begin with so it's never good, but the bigger it is the more it does so the more it engages in violence and coercion.
From the get-go I want to state I respect you and hope we can engage in clean debate. This is a fundamental question about government that deserves serious consideration. Ultimately, I think you are right about there is no good government. Most people attracted to power are mediocre and our institutions have been slanted towards personal gain over the good of all.
But the fact is we have government, so we need to consider what's good and what's not. You assert all government activity is violent. I sharply disagree but I suspect it's because your definition of government is coercion. So that' won't do for our purposes of discussion since by definition I have no chance of asserting otherwise. I'm sure you are attached to that term and tautology so I will use a modified term: really existing government.
So given really existing government (REG) we can take a look and see if there is anything REG does that is not violent. Take any number of welfare programs. I have received benefits on occasion and I can assure you there was no violence, there was no coercion in the process. I was simply without adequate food and after much bickering decided to see how good government can be if at all. It turns out I was able to get the nutritious food my body needed and this quickly became a celebratory day when my card would be loaded. It meant I had access to sustenance that was denied to me through prices and the market.
To argue this is coercive is to simply speak in an esoteric language that does not vibe with reality in this case. I can offer more specific examples but suffice to say, REG does good as well as bad.
but I most curious by your anarcho-capitalist stance. I find this an oxy-moron at best and an outright contradiction at worst. I want to reiterate I respect you and you are clearly intelligent so I have chosen to engage your views on a critical level as I hope you enjoy. I mean no harm and it's sad that most participants I've engaged on USMB feel deeply threatened and hurl insults at me for merely challenging their assertions.
Anyway, allow me to explain. You probably imagine free enterprise is the fuel for freedom. But free enterprise cannot exist without private property, right? Right. So how do we come to hold private property? Through drawing up a document that claims you own such and such. This document is then embedded in a set of legal statutes governing "property rights." But in order to defend property rights once you own something there must be those who defend that property from altercations and invasions.
Well, property then is by no means self-evident and is entirely arbitrary from its deed to its legalisms. For without property, there is no need for property rights and no need for laws that arbitrarily support property. Nor is there a need for an army of defense to serve those with property while limiting those who do not have property from accessing life sustaining land or water. Thus, some form of government must exist in order to protect property rights. Inherent, according to John Locke, Hobbes and others whom I've read say that the state of nature does not work for property. That governments must be instituted and have been to protect property (but the only way property had nascence was through state protection from outsiders by arbitrary legal documents.
Therefore capitalism is state dependent and if we take a look at subsidies of corporations and tax incentives, we can see that fact is really beneficial. State re-distribution of taxes is alive and well and much of it is re-distributed upwards to private hand though various means. We can discuss this more if you like but suffice to say it doesn't take much thinking to realize anarcho-capitalism is blatantly unaligned with anarchism. Anarchism is absence of state and capitalism is dependent upon the state for private property to be protected.
If you want to get hypothetical and say capitalism can exist without government then who protects the property? The private enterprise-ers. But how would they protect property? The only way possible: the same way the government does: through intimidation, coercion and violence. Thus, authority is sneaked through the back door while still calling it private. Well, technically all authority is is private people cooperating and there would be cooperation among the few corporations that own a majority of the earth's supposed "private property." So it seems anarcho-capitalism is a contradiction in terms.
If you'd like further discussion listen to this podcast at around 30 minutes in: CrimethInc. Ex-Workers? Collective : Podcast Episode #18
The bold portion is the relevant portion to this thread, while the earlier portion was more in line with another thread.
Many of the collectivist variety of anarchists, anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, etc..., would agree with your assertion that anarchism and capitalism are contradictions. Even Murray Rothbard, the "founder" of anarcho-capitalism, at one point believed that the terms were contradictions.
We must conclude that the question “are libertarians anarchists?” simply cannot be answered on etymological grounds. The vagueness of the term itself is such that the libertarian system would be considered anarchist by some people and archist by others. We must therefore turn to history for enlightenment; here we find that none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position, that even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines. Furthermore, we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists, and therefore at opposite poles from our position. We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical. On the other hand, it is clear that we are not archists either: we do not believe in establishing a tyrannical central authority that will coerce the noninvasive as well as the invasive. Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist. Then, when, in the jousting of debate, the inevitable challenge “are you an anarchist?” is heard, we can, for perhaps the first and last time, find ourselves in the luxury of the “middle of the road” and say, “Sir, I am neither an anarchist nor an archist, but am squarely down the nonarchic middle of the road.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/are-libertarians-anarchists/
Of course Rothbard never again, as far as I'm aware, uttered any objection to the idea of calling ourselves anarchists, and certainly his term "nonarchist" never stuck. I myself favor the term "voluntaryist," or "voluntarist," meaning a person in favor of a fully voluntary society. Hans-Hermann Hoppe favors the term "Private Law Society," which is instructive towards how I'm going to answer your post more specifically, but I really don't get too bothered about what we call it as long as we know what we're talking about. So anarcho-capitalist, nonarchist, voluntaryist, or private law society are all fine.
Let's turn to your more specific concerns. You're correct that private property is the basis for free markets and capitalism, so you say that without government private property is essentially arbitrary. Frédéric Bastiat, not an anarchist himself, stated:
Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
How do we know that private property preceded the State? Because human beings in and of themselves must have preceded the State, and since every human being has an innate property right in and of themselves (This must be axiomatically true, because to deny such a claim proves the claim) then it must logically follow that they have a property right in that which they transform with their labor. So private property is not arbitrary, but rather clearly defined. It is only when the State gets involved that the definition becomes muddled.
So your question, then, is who protects the private property in the absence of the State? Well every person has an incentive to protect their property, so they would either protect it themselves, or they would turn to those who have a comparative advantage in providing defense to do so. Now it would seem that you're operating under the assumption that anarcho-capitalists are opposed to all aggression, but this is a common misconception. We are opposed to violent, or offensive, aggression. Defensive aggression, or violence, is perfectly compatible within the anarcho-capitalist framework which is based simply on the non-aggression principle. You may not aggress against anybody, unless they first aggress against you or your property. So you may defend yourself and your property against aggression.
Now we come back to Hoppe's idea of a "Private Law Society," where the market would not only provide defense of property, but would also provide arbitration in disputes that inevitably arise. Judges or arbiters would be brought in by the different parties to mediate the dispute, and the market would obviously weed out biased or corrupt arbiters the way it does now in cases of arbitration. The parties would then be bound by the decision of these arbiters as laid out in a contract.
For more on private defense and private arbitration in the anarcho-capitalist society I would suggest reading "Chaos Theory" by Robert P. Murphy, which, despite the title, has nothing to do with actual chaos theory, and is actually two essays on this very subject.
Robert P. Murphy :: Chaos Theory
