You committed a coup!

[Kooky]

Aren’t you the go-getter? Now you are free to establish any form of government you want. What do you do?
I would immediately dismantle the state and replace it with nothing else! Let society spontaneously ebb and flow with the free market. I’d give Ancapistan a trial run.
I’m still getting familiar with the theories on how everything would work without a state (law, defense, money, etc.) I’m reading a book on it and will make a detailed post sometime this year.
I’m curious what you would do if you could establish any form of government you would like.

If the people didn't participate in your coup, then you imposed your own power on them without their express consent, didn't you? Thus we arrive at the first paradox of Anarchism.

 

[Estro Felino]

Obviously, I would have to rule as an enlightened despot to steer my people towards the correct path, then do the same with the rest of the world. After all, we all know that we, personally, could do it better than those darn politicians.

The correct path...
Which is...?

 

[Father Heathen]

I would install myself as the autocratic leader and my title would be "Glorious Father". I'm would reintroduce democracy eventually, but I could fix and get everything on the right track much quicker via this route.

 

[Nakosis]

The law exists to protect the rich from the poor. - Reality

The law ought to exist to limit one person's ability to encroach on another person's freedom.

 

[Nakosis]

Aren’t you the go-getter? Now you are free to establish any form of government you want. What do you do?
I would immediately dismantle the state and replace it with nothing else! Let society spontaneously ebb and flow with the free market. I’d give Ancapistan a trial run.
I’m still getting familiar with the theories on how everything would work without a state (law, defense, money, etc.) I’m reading a book on it and will make a detailed post sometime this year.
I’m curious what you would do if you could establish any form of government you would like.

Outlaw coups I suppose.
Otherwise someone else is going to come along and destroy anything you build up.

 

[Secret Chief]

the free market

Are you sure you've got this anarchy thing nailed down?

 

[Augustus]

. Free market defense agencies, who’s existence would be dependent on Ancapistan, would have a market motive to prevent any state from arising.

Some successful free market defence agencies would have a motive to conquer the rest and give themselves a life of luxury as you slave away for them in their mines.

 

[an anarchist]

Are you sure you've got this anarchy thing nailed down?

I’m one of them capitalists anarchist. Other anarchists say I’m not an anarchist because of it, loooots of disagreement amongst self proclaimed anarchists about what anarchy really is. Most tend to be socialists, which I find to be oxymoronic.

 

[Mock Turtle]

If a dictator is wicked to the banking and financial elites, he is a wicked merciless dictator in the eyes of this tiny minority.
If this dictator is very generous to the people, the majority, he will be called savior.

Same as for Robin Hood.
Hated by the elites, loved by the populace.

What is the point of elections when they aren't fair, the opposition is hobbled, and all the other various means of making sure one party - and usually the one in power - just stays in power? This is what we have in Russia now, and have had for some time, and which no doubt occurs in many other dictatorships.

 

[Secret Chief]

I’m one of them capitalists anarchist. Other anarchists say I’m not an anarchist because of it, loooots of disagreement amongst self proclaimed anarchists about what anarchy really is. Most tend to be socialists, which I find to be oxymoronic.

Bit like "capitalist anarchism" is to me then.

 

[joe1776]

The first thing I would do is make sure I did not dismantle the rule of law..

I have to disagree. Laws are useful tools for obstructionists. The routine is simple, if you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. For example, in the USA, the gun lobby successfully blocks meaningful legislation they don't like using the Second Amendment to our 1789-vintage Constitution. All it takes is money.

The idea that laws are essential to keep order in a society is a popular myth. The authority to punish wrongdoing can be transferred to a decision-making panel making judgments based on current evidence. For example a current panel on civil rights could decide and enforce gun control policy.

 

[Estro Felino]

What is the point of elections when they aren't fair, the opposition is hobbled, and all the other various means of making sure one party - and usually the one in power - just stays in power? This is what we have in Russia now, and have had for some time, and which no doubt occurs in many other dictatorships.

But this thread is about a hypothethical situation

 

[Revoltingest]

There'd be a coup by the smartest most powerful
people in the country. They'd draft me, against my
will, to become Grand Poobah of Ameristan.
As for my plans, everyone who is anyone already
knows what they are.

 

[Kooky]

If a dictator is wicked to the banking and financial elites, he is a wicked merciless dictator in the eyes of this tiny minority.

Yes, the singular reason why people condemn Hitler and Stalin is because they were mean to bankers, and for no other reason whatsoever.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I’m one of them capitalists anarchist. Other anarchists say I’m not an anarchist because of it, loooots of disagreement amongst self proclaimed anarchists about what anarchy really is. Most tend to be socialists, which I find to be oxymoronic.

Pretty sure you haven't thought this through in very much depth at all. I can see you being surprised before you get 20 minutes into your anarchy.

 

[an anarchist]

Pretty sure you haven't thought this through in very much depth at all.

You’re wrong there! I’ve been obsessed with anarchism for a few years, often times I think about it way too much.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Aren’t you the go-getter? Now you are free to establish any form of government you want. What do you do?
I would immediately dismantle the state and replace it with nothing else! Let society spontaneously ebb and flow with the free market. I’d give Ancapistan a trial run.
I’m still getting familiar with the theories on how everything would work without a state (law, defense, money, etc.) I’m reading a book on it and will make a detailed post sometime this year.
I’m curious what you would do if you could establish any form of government you would like.

I would have everyone call me El' Presidente, and open my very own Swiss Bank account!

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

You’re wrong there! I’ve been obsessed with anarchism for a few years, often times I think about it way too much.

Then something you might think about is Chaos Theory -- how very miniscule causes can result in totally unpredictable effects. People who are constrained by law, by convention, by necessity (or whatever other constraint you can imagine) will behave less unpredictably than those less constrained. You can't predict how those with no constraints at all will behave.

And you have ignored your own nature (or if not yours, or at least the nature of the species that you belong to) which is a social animal, dependent on others of your kind for your own well-being.

Before you decide that a totally anarchic world is the one you want to live in, I suggest you do some reading on a subject that you've probably given very little thought to -- Human Nature. You might try David Hume (difficult to read because the language is old), or E.O. Wilson, or Steven Pinker, or my (current) favourite, Yuval Noah Harari.

 

[an anarchist]

Sure but those free markets would then eventually start amassing wealth and power, and without something to keep them in check (to prevent them from buying out competitors, cutting safety at the expense of workers, etc) would become the defacto govt themselves.

sorry if TL;DR
My response is a paraphrase/quotes from a chapter I'm reading on monopolies in the book A Spontaneous Order: A Capitalist Case for a Stateless Society
again, this is all in the realm of theory. With ancap theory, empirical examples may be used to illustrate a certain part of the theory, but at its core, anarcho-capitalism is theoretical.
Let's talk about monopolies to illustrate the theory of anarcho-capitalism. I think this topic helps show how businesses could be kept in check in a free market.
So, in Ancapistan, the free market and consumers are the regulating force keeping businesses in check.
Monopolies, would they be able to form in a truly free market? Ancap theory says that monopolies would not. What is a monopoly? A basic definition is a firm that is the single provider of a particular good or service. This definition is not that economically useful, as it can render everyone a monopolist.
Let's say we both sold wheat. You would have a monopoly on The Hammer Wheat and I would hold a monopoly on Xavier Graham Wheat. Our wheat would be differentiated by the process we used to grow it. No one else can offer the unique labor contributions of other people. We are all monopolizing our skill sets.
So where did monopolies originally come from? It initially meant an exclusive privilege to produce or sell a product or service, granted by the King himself.
Murray Rothbard, an anarcho-capitalist, said this
Monopoly is a grant of special privilege by the State, reserving a certain area of production to one particular individual or group. Entry into the field is prohibited to others and this prohibition is enforced by the gendarmes of the State.
Without the Statist apparatus of compulsion, there could be no special grants given to certain businesses. Free entry is the default condition for all industries. Monopolies created by the power of the State could not exist in a truly free market.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that a single provider of a given good or service does arise. As the absence of aggressive barriers to entry into any industry is inherent in free markets, the threat of a potential competitor will be much stronger relative to the case in which the State imposes artificial barriers, and sometimes even prohibitions, on competition in various industries.
scenario - a water company triples its prices without a corresponding increase in the cost of production. How do market participants respond? Firstly, potential future consumers would be deterred from moving to the town, and current residents would be incentivized to move. Consumers would act more conservatively with their water. Less water will be used, and a decrease translates into a decrease in revenue for the water company. Even if the company lowers its prices again, consumers may have grown fond of their conservation methods, thereby permanently lowering the income of this water company. However, if they keep the high prices, then a competing water company from the next town may decide to move in as an alternate provider. If after this, the original water company decided to lower their prices again, they still will have lost the trust of consumers.
Finally, for a company to achieve a "monopoly" status in the first place, it would have had to gain the trust of its customers and provided a more satisfactory service than any actual or potential competitors. The likelihood of this business fundamentally changing its practices which made it successful in the first place is relatively low. . This is of course speculative to some degree. Hopefully the hypothetical may demonstrate the means in which people in the market may effectively deter, prevent, and mitigate all activity that is harmful to the consumer.
Only through the application of State-mandated price ceilings, price floors, regulations, occupational licensure, minimum wages, taxes, and even explicit grants of monopoly over certain industries, can a given firm exploit the consumer. The exploitation of the consumer only exists in this arrangement because the State is able to insulate a given business from market forces via legislation.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS you say? Unrestricted competition in society would not allow for a single entity to amass enough power in order to become a defacto government. There would always be options for people to choose from. So if a certain company were to try to exploit their position, they would simply be replaced by a more consumer friendly competitor. If a company cuts safety precautions for it's workers, workers would be incentivized to go elsewhere to work, as that company would not be the only option.

 

[Heyo]

sorry if TL;DR
My response is a paraphrase/quotes from a chapter I'm reading on monopolies in the book A Spontaneous Order: A Capitalist Case for a Stateless Society
again, this is all in the realm of theory. With ancap theory, empirical examples may be used to illustrate a certain part of the theory, but at its core, anarcho-capitalism is theoretical.
Let's talk about monopolies to illustrate the theory of anarcho-capitalism. I think this topic helps show how businesses could be kept in check in a free market.
So, in Ancapistan, the free market and consumers are the regulating force keeping businesses in check.
Monopolies, would they be able to form in a truly free market? Ancap theory says that monopolies would not. What is a monopoly? A basic definition is a firm that is the single provider of a particular good or service. This definition is not that economically useful, as it can render everyone a monopolist.
Let's say we both sold wheat. You would have a monopoly on The Hammer Wheat and I would hold a monopoly on Xavier Graham Wheat. Our wheat would be differentiated by the process we used to grow it. No one else can offer the unique labor contributions of other people. We are all monopolizing our skill sets.
So where did monopolies originally come from? It initially meant an exclusive privilege to produce or sell a product or service, granted by the King himself.
Murray Rothbard, an anarcho-capitalist, said this
Monopoly is a grant of special privilege by the State, reserving a certain area of production to one particular individual or group. Entry into the field is prohibited to others and this prohibition is enforced by the gendarmes of the State.
Without the Statist apparatus of compulsion, there could be no special grants given to certain businesses. Free entry is the default condition for all industries. Monopolies created by the power of the State could not exist in a truly free market.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that a single provider of a given good or service does arise. As the absence of aggressive barriers to entry into any industry is inherent in free markets, the threat of a potential competitor will be much stronger relative to the case in which the State imposes artificial barriers, and sometimes even prohibitions, on competition in various industries.
scenario - a water company triples its prices without a corresponding increase in the cost of production. How do market participants respond? Firstly, potential future consumers would be deterred from moving to the town, and current residents would be incentivized to move. Consumers would act more conservatively with their water. Less water will be used, and a decrease translates into a decrease in revenue for the water company. Even if the company lowers its prices again, consumers may have grown fond of their conservation methods, thereby permanently lowering the income of this water company. However, if they keep the high prices, then a competing water company from the next town may decide to move in as an alternate provider. If after this, the original water company decided to lower their prices again, they still will have lost the trust of consumers.
Finally, for a company to achieve a "monopoly" status in the first place, it would have had to gain the trust of its customers and provided a more satisfactory service than any actual or potential competitors. The likelihood of this business fundamentally changing its practices which made it successful in the first place is relatively low. . This is of course speculative to some degree. Hopefully the hypothetical may demonstrate the means in which people in the market may effectively deter, prevent, and mitigate all activity that is harmful to the consumer.
Only through the application of State-mandated price ceilings, price floors, regulations, occupational licensure, minimum wages, taxes, and even explicit grants of monopoly over certain industries, can a given firm exploit the consumer. The exploitation of the consumer only exists in this arrangement because the State is able to insulate a given business from market forces via legislation.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS you say? Unrestricted competition in society would not allow for a single entity to amass enough power in order to become a defacto government. There would always be options for people to choose from. So if a certain company were to try to exploit their position, they would simply be replaced by a more consumer friendly competitor. If a company cuts safety precautions for it's workers, workers would be incentivized to go elsewhere to work, as that company would not be the only option.

That is the very naïve argument of free market advocates. In reality, it doesn't work.

1. In many industries there is a high level of entry cost. Most wannabe competitors will shy away just from that.
2. Competing is not rational. The monopoly equilibrium is much higher than the Nash equilibrium. Even if there are multiple suppliers, it is economically favourable to co-operate (price-rigging) and form an oligopoly.
3. Every innovation destabilizes an existing competition model. Let's say one corporation found a method to cut production costs. It can now (and will) drive the competition into bankruptcy by lowering prices below the production cost for their competitors, becoming a monopolist.

The "invisible hand" is a fairy tale capitalists tell the uneducated, it is as real as the invisible dragon in my garage.