Objectivist Criticisms of Anarcho-Capitalism
Top objectivist criticisms of anarcho-capitalism and counter-criticisms.
The objectivist stance is that people need one shared government to write laws and resolve disputes. The anarcho-capitalist stance is that private arbitration services and judges could not only do that, too, so that no government is necessary, but could actually do it better.
This discussion is for objectivist criticisms of anarcho-capitalism in particular. Other common criticisms have been addressed here.
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The anarcho-capitalist stance: competing governments in a single territory would not only work but be superior to having a single government, a monopoly on violence.
[I]t is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government.
In other words, having multiple governments in a single territory would not result in having objective laws.
Reddit user KodoKB explains why:
[T]here could be thousands of slight (or not so slight) variations between the different agencies. Because there are so many different definitions of what’s allowed, the law then would not be objective in the sense that it’s not practically possible for an individual to know what actions are permissible and which aren’t.
Common standards often emerge voluntarily because people prefer objectivity and wish to avoid arbitrariness.
Consider communications technology and the web. Competing phone companies agree on standards for underlying technology so their customers can call each other. Developers of web browsers adopt common standards for the web. Developers of operating systems follow shared, cross-OS standards (called POSIX).
These standards result in objectivity, and they emerged without government involvement. People develop and agree upon such standards voluntarily because of the benefits they offer: without them, there’d be chaos. People generally don’t like chaos.
If someone decides to make a website that only supports a certain browser, or to only allow certain encoding methods in their phonelines, while that may exclude me from their services it does not violate my rights. If someone decides that they can steal my IP [intellectual property] and they have an agency that supports this view, they are violating my rights and are being protected in doing so.
That sounds no worse than the current situation between the US and China, say. China protects Chinese companies violating US trademarks.
(There’s a common libertarian saying about how criticisms of libertarianism are usually just criticisms of the status quo.)
Private protection/arbitration agencies would actually be better than the governments described in #5 (the US and Chinese government, respectively). Consider how things would be different if these governments were not extorting their citizens for money, but instead had to rely on a value proposition to earn their money – that is, if they both operated like private arbitration agencies. Then both would prefer to have shared rules around intellectual property so their customers continue to give them money.
Even if it’s true that people need shared, objective legal standards for a society to function, that doesn’t mean government is the only way to supply such standards. (Logan Chipkin)
Since an objectivist government, by definition, cannot aggress upon its citizens, it cannot stop them from forming private arbitration services anyway. It has no way to enforce its monopoly. So an objectivist society would sooner or later turn into an ancap one anyway.
There exist many legal variations between states of the US, eg with regard to wiretapping laws (single-party vs two-party-consent states), yet presumably that wouldn’t lead KodoKB to conclude that federalism is bad.
[There is a] difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production.
Rand says ancaps make the same mistake as “modern statists” – they don’t see this difference.
Defensive force and security services are productive endeavors.
Retaliatory force is only part thereof, and defense involves the employment of scarce resources, thus economic principles apply. (Logan Chipkin)
If the government tries to step outside the free market, that’s tantamount to pretending there’s magically no scarcity for the government. But in reality, the government still has to attract talent to fill government jobs, pay that talent, and use scarce resources. If it tries this without the error-correction mechanisms the free market provides, it will do anything poorly.
KodoKB points out a risk of abuse:
The use of retaliatory force has an objective risk of being misapplied and therefore of violating the rights of others.
Related: #4
One illustration will be sufficient [to show that a society made of competing governments cannot work]: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of [arbitration service] A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of [arbitration service] B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of [arbitration service] A. What happens then? You take it from there.
As I have written before, Rand “implies that they could never resolve their conflict – or worse, that they would be in a perpetual state of war – because they don’t have a shared jurisdiction, an underlying legal framework.”
Libertarians such as David Friedman have explained how that situation could be resolved peaceably:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yo7vnXmVlw
Rand’s illustration is an instance of a mistake Karl Popper calls the myth of the framework: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/objectivism-vs-the-myth-of-the-framework
A common libertarian argument is that governments already compete. They are already in a state of anarchy with each other, yet the world still works somehow, and states can and do have agreements and common standards (eg extradition rules).
Governments often wage war against each other.
Governments do wage wars against each other, but private arbitration services would be less inclined to do so because, unlike governments, they do not have an effectively infinite amount of extorted money (taxes), fiat money, and human lives to draw from.
[…] I disagree that international law and agreements are such a shining example for having anarchy on a local scale. The defense of my rights from someone who lives in my neighborhood shouldn’t rely on the extradition agreements between our two protection agencies, there should be clearly established rules about how what rights of action we have and don’t have, and it should be clearly established how we can resolve disputes about those issues. And if my neighbors all have different agencies, then it cannot be practically clear to me what all of those actions and resolutions are.
In anticipation of this problem, different protection agencies would develop such rules and procedures, which could be publicly accessible for their customers to peruse.
Solving this problem is one of the main value propositions these agencies have to offer. Without a solution, people won’t give them money. So these agencies have an incentive to put their heads together and come up with common standards.
For novel situations where they don’t have an applicable standard yet, see the myth of the framework (#16).
Taken to its logical conclusion, Rand’s argument necessitates a single world government, which doesn’t fit with the objectivist notion that government should be limited.
Building on #17 and #22, imagine a world with multiple objectivist countries. Say the US is purely objectivist, and so is England.
Presumably, Rand would see no problem with multiple objectivist countries coexisting. She would consider this state of affairs not only possible but desirable.
Yet how is that state different from the problem she describes in #14? Objectivist countries would be voluntarily financed by voluntary taxation; private arbitration services would be voluntarily financed through voluntary payments as well.
Isn’t this an instance of a stolen concept?
The “stolen concept” fallacy, first identified by Ayn Rand, is the fallacy of using a concept while denying the validity of its genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) on which it logically depends.
Rand is using a concept – objectivism, which logically depends on peaceful coexistence of voluntarily financed groups of people – to argue against the possibility of the peaceful coexistence of voluntarily financed groups of people!
One difference between having multiple objectivist countries and having private arbitration services is that the latter can operate in the same territory whereas the former have distinct territories. So this may not be a stolen concept after all.
Requiring one government per physical territory is an anachronism that Rand retains. Seems unnecessary – see criticisms to #2.
Government creates consent. Without government, there is no consent.
It doesn’t. Not any more than it creates man’s rights. Whether an interaction is consensual is derived from the nature of the interaction itself.
There are already consensual interactions between people that are nonetheless unregulated. Sex, for instance.
Two people out in international waters, or in space, or anywhere else with no government, can still have consensual interactions. For example, they can decide to share a sandwich. That’s still consensual if neither party has a preference that arbitrarily steamrolls over the other.
Dispute resolution, lawmaking, and personal defense are only proper in the hands of government.
In order for a military and police to be valid, it would need the consent of the governed […], but a hidden qualification is MOST of the governed, which is an exception to individual right of association.
And:
[Rand’s] conclusion, in essence, is that an individuals [sic] right to choose who defends them should be ignored for the sake of a collective good, which seems to me an exception to one of our shared principles.
Harry Binswanger wrote a piece titled ‘Sorry Libertarian Anarchists, Capitalism Requires Government’ for Forbes, criticizing the libertarian position.
Ask yourself what it means to have a "competition" in governmental services. It's a "competition" in wielding force, a "competition" in subjugating others, a "competition" in making people obey commands. That's not "competition," it's violent conflict. On a large scale, it's war.
Governments already compete on a global scale. So why isn’t the world in a perpetual state of war?
See #17.
Could conflict among "competing governments" be taken care of by treaties? Treaties?--enforced by whom? I once asked Ayn Rand about the feasibility of such treaties between sovereign "competing governments." She looked at me grimly and said, "You mean like at the U.N.?"
The part “enforced by whom?” is telling. There isn’t just ‘who’ but also ‘what’. For example, David Friedman refers to the discipline of constant dealings as an enforcement mechanism.
She looked at me grimly and said, "You mean like at the U.N.?"
Consider, instead, NATO – the ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organization’ – another supranational collaboration. It has been stable for decades and war amongst its members would be unthinkable.
Why does Rand choose a bad example that conveniently supports her case while ignoring a good one that doesn’t?
Ask yourself what it means to have a "competition" in governmental services. It's a "competition" in wielding force, a "competition" in subjugating others, a "competition" in making people obey commands. That's not "competition," it's violent conflict. On a large scale, it's war.
In reality, enforcement of laws would only be a small part of what competing arbitration services would have offer. They would come up with laws, revise, simplify, and otherwise improve laws, protect their customers, coordinate with each other, and more. Lots of value creation.
Tragically, the original American theory of [limited] government was breached, shelved, trashed long ago. But that's another story.
Convenient. Maybe if he investigated that story a bit more he’d realize that the government qua institution isn’t all that? The rampant failures of the American government to remain limited are something objectivists need to explain, not just gloss over!
[T]here is no conflict between individual rights and outlawing private force: there is no right to the arbitrary use of force. No political or moral principle could require the police to stand by helplessly while others use force arbitrarily--i.e., according to whatever private notions of justice they happen to hold.
What a horrible straw man. No libertarian advocates this view.
Libertarians agree that laws should be objective, ie non-arbitrary. They have that in common with objectivists. Libertarians disagree that a monopoly is required to make laws objective. They think that a monopoly makes laws less objective.
The wielding of force is not a business function. In fact, force is outside the realm of economics. Economics concerns production and trade, not destruction and seizure.
It cannot be. This is an attempt to step outside of nature rather than obey it, even though objectivists normally advocate obeying it.
The police force, prosecutors, judges, etc need resources and payment. Those resources don’t grow in nature. Scarcity and the economic-calculation problem apply.
Any attempt to ignore or evade this reality leads to police forces and justice systems that are, all else being equal, worse than they would be in a free market because they don’t correct errors as well as they otherwise would.
See #267.
Economic competition presupposes a free market. A free market cannot exist until after force has been barred. That means objective law, backed up by a government. To say it can be backed up by "competing" force-wielders is circular. There is no competition until there is a free market, and some agency has to protect its condition as a free market by the use of retaliatory force.
The anarchist idea of putting law on "the market" cannot be applied even to a baseball game. It would mean that the rules of the game will be defined by whoever wins it.
Once again, supranational treaties refute this point. Germany and the US have no shared government or jurisdiction. (They each have separate governments, but together they have no common government above them.) Yet they have come up with rules of trade and justice and extradition and so on. Those are objective and evidently work really well since war between these two nations is unthinkable.
I think Binswanger is invoking the fallacy of the stolen concept here: he claims libertarians logically rely on a concept they reject. Clearly, as international relations have shown time and again, that is not the case. There are certain mechanisms such as, again, the discipline of constant dealings, which exist independently of any particular association between people. When someone reneges on his word, he diminishes his ability to do business in the future. That’s inherent in the logic of the situation, without any definition or creation by people. It is not necessary for people to create rules of engagement before engaging. It’s helpful, sure, but certain rules of engagement exist a priori.
See also #16 and my application of Karl Popper’s myth of the framework to this issue: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/objectivism-vs-the-myth-of-the-framework
Force properly employed is used only in retaliation, but even when retaliatory, force merely eliminates a negative, it cannot create value.
That isn’t true.
People want protection and justice. Retaliatory force does not merely eliminate a negative. Restoring and producing justice is a value, as is the peace of mind from knowing you have working defenses and someone who will seek justice on your behalf.
Retaliating against one burglar can scare off ten others. The value that’s created here far exceeds the negative which the burglar (might have) created.
The anarchists do not object to retaliatory force, only to it being wielded by a government. Why? Because, they say, it excludes "competitors." It sure does: it excludes vigilantes, lynch mobs, terrorists, and anyone else wanting to use force subjectively.
Competing arbitration agencies would develop objective (ie, non-arbitrary) laws and rules for coordination. And, just like governments (should), they would defend their customers against anyone who wants to use force subjectively. That’s their value proposition; their income relies on it.
See #3.
Rand herself proposes a yardstick by which to determine whether one country has a right to invade another:
Since there is no fully free country today, since the so-called “Free World” consists of various “mixed economies,” it might be asked whether every country on earth is morally open to invasion by every other. The answer is: No. There is a difference between a country that recognizes the principle of individual rights, but does not implement it fully in practice, and a country that denies and flouts it explicitly. All “mixed economies” are in a precarious state of transition which, ultimately, has to turn to freedom or collapse into dictatorship. There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: one-party rule—executions without trial or with a mock trial, for political offenses—the nationalization or expropriation of private property—and censorship. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw.
In other words, Rand recognizes that across nations – ie having no shared jurisdiction or government – there are still objective standards to determine who is in the right and who is in the wrong. If Rand can identify such standards without sharing a government with those countries, why could not others do this, too?
The working principle here is supremacy of reason, not the supremacy of government. See also #920, where I explain that certain rules of engagement exist a priori and need not be devised by humans before engaging.