link to original reddit post by /u/cnnr_g

I just want to take a second to show some appreciation for the concept of private law in AnCap philosophy. I also want to inquire as to why I don't hear it discussed more often on this sub.

While I've been enchanted by the logic of free market principles, I do believe applying economic approaches to every little issue is either insufficient, exhausting to non-AnCaps, or both. For example, when I gave my interpretation of an AnCap society to a friend, she said basically, "Okay, but I don't want to get a bill in the mail for everything the government currently taxes me for." I explained that insurance might play a big role (but feel free to correct me if you disagree with this) and that, therefore, a lot of costs would be consolidated into fewer bills. Not surprisingly, this didn't exactly invoke notions of a brighter, beautifully efficient world. Aside from the fact that tax season is really just national bill season, the idea that much of what the government does could conceivably be traded on the market is not all that easy to swallow for most people.

My point is that not all issues can be solved economically, especially given the following:

  1. imperfect access to economic information

  2. natural barriers to trade

  3. people are - often proudly - irrational

  4. people don't like to think about money

Just because there isn't a government to inject disruptions into the economy doesn't mean that people will behave at all times as though the free market will fix their problems. It may be the case that the rich are always hated. It is certainly probable that the body of valuable social skills and the body of marketable productive skills will never fully align. But it seems like private law can fill in a lot of the gaps. Of course, we already understand that property rights at their core are not cut and dry whatsoever. They are, however, preferable to centralized redistribution schemes. Their being imperfect is not a good enough reason to throw them out the window. Still, since no one has of yet been able to establish a definitive hierarchy of property rights, some negotiation must take place between people.

There are also questions of fraud, which will inevitably arise. While the go-to response from AnCaps on this question is that fraudulent behavior by a vendor will result in the loss of public trust in their products, this doesn't quite satisfy concerns about companies whose ethical violations don't damage the reliability of their products but may actually improve it -- think sweatshop labor. There's always talk about public shaming and boycotts, but I haven't seen any good arguments as to why these strategies would necessarily be employed by the citizens of Ancapistan (but I'm open to talking about it).

Regardless, some ethical considerations will always be made at higher levels of society. The more popular an ideal is, the more likely it is gain advantages over less popular ideals. They may become economically cheaper or intellectually more accessible. Freedom to pursue an ideal doesn't imply that the ideal will be free. I think viewing the institution of private law as the sort of ethical mechanism of the economy would help others to understand why Anarchocapitalism is at all feasible. If anything, it might keep a lot of folks from checking out entirely from the conversation. It may even be best to bring up theories of private law before dropping private law enforcement into the mix.

But the magic, in my opinion, of private law schemes is that they propose to bypass a lot of the deficiencies of democracy. Allowing law a way to become customizable without limit is a very very wonderful idea, as far as I can tell. If I'm not mistaken, private law schemes have anti-consolidation and anti-fraud features built in, and they eliminate total dependence of geographical restrictions to law. Furthermore, questions of "fair or unfair" would burden far less of the unconcerned population. Private law may also be our only realistic solution to environmental questions and tragedy of the commons issues (think overfishing rather than overgrazing).

My point in elaborating all this is that economic solutions don't always speak to people, and omitting the private law aspect of a free society only encourages the notion that anarchy is chaos. If there aren't relevant stories to be found about present day private law successes, at the very least I wouldn't hate to see more theoretical discussion. After all, it'll have to happen at some point if this thing if ever going to get off the ground.