Objectivist Criticisms of Anarcho-Capitalism
Showing only ideas leading to #14 and its comments.
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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.
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 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.