r/AnCap101

Saw a post 5 years ago asking this question, but the answer felt weak.

It argued that since the unborn aren't yet subjects, creating them can't violate the NAP. The obvious follow up: would it be immoral to deliberately choose the worst possible genes for the worst possible existence? There's still no subject at the time of the act, and you're not "making them worse off" in any comparative sense that exact person could only ever have existed with those genes. There is no "them" with the better genes.

There seems to be something more than just no subject that needs to be addressed.

To be clear, I'm not an antinatalist or an AnCap, just generally interested in philosophy.

Edit: I place this edit at the top so it's seen first. First of all I will concede that I am wrong, the companies are not necessarily Monopolies in a way that would be concerning in Ancapistan. I also understand that a monopoly is bad when it makes competition impossible (which ideally shouldn't happen in Ancap), or is built around necessities like housing, water, healthcare etc. All this to say that no matter the medium/market/physicality as long as it's free without restriction then monopolies will always be challenged and if you don't keep informed then it's on you.

I'm looking at companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and even Steam/Valve (although I'd doubt Steam would survive Anarchy because no one would make games if they can't make money from them). These companies all hold monopolies despite there being reasonable competition, nothing stops me from making my own operating system or office suite software, we have Linux based OSs and Mac OS, as well as FOSS office Suites. Online store fronts aren't impossible, we have eBay, Alibaba, Etsy, etc. I could make my own Web engine, Geko (Firefox) exists. There are plenty of different digital game storefronts and Launchers.

However these companies haven't necessarily grown to be monopolies solely because of regulation, rather they have provided services that people want and thus captured markets completely despite competition both prior to and post their creation. You might argue that lucrative government contracts facilitate their rise but is that necessarily exclusive to the state model, couldn't a rich person in Ancap invest wild sums to do the same thing. If anything Linux and FOSS would slow down massively because people won't be able to afford to donate their time to voluntary development.

Then there's the bad practices, what's their incentive to be honest and open about their tracking, who's gonna tell Adobe that their subscription model is predatory because it makes it very difficult to back out and they should change. How can a free market stop these companies swallowing up their competition when they have no reason to be honest about anything they do?

Almonds use far more water, “they’re training on other artists’ art styles” is BS because other artists do it and IP is illegitimate, but I know the issue with AI being used by the state to spy on citizens is no good and I honestly don’t know if the concerns over polluting neighbors water and using crazy amount of energy are good reasons to be against it.

I'm under the impression that most ancaps are American. This philosophy was largely developed and popularized in the U.S., and all the ancap literature is in English, though a decent number of works have been translated into major languages like Spanish, German, and Russian.

I heard once that Brazil has a decent number of ancap, but I can't confirm this. I imagine the U.K. And Canada must also have a decent number. But I guess what I'm curious about is how many ancaps there in places like Bulgaria, Thailand, Algeria, and other places not under the influence of the anglosphere.

It's hard enough to convince anybody of giving up statism, but are devoutly religious people even more difficult?

Many religions, especially western religions, are rooted in the belief of authority, the divine right of the supreme deity to punish people, a moral obligation to obey your parents and elders, etc. Leaving statism requires a person to completely give up their belief in authority and social hierarchy, so if you try to talk about that to some devoutly religious people, you're indirectly going to be poking at their religious beliefs that give them comfort in a materialist world full of uncertainty and discomfort, and the chances you'll get through to them are likely slim. Obviously I realize that there are many Christian ancaps, for example, but I think those people just cherry-pick their religious views. Jesus might tell you to love your neighbor, but the same book will also justify parents hitting their children, so make of that what you will.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

I’ve seen people say that the right to exclude defines ownership, but that would mean tenants own their homes because they have the right to exclude.

This seems like a bad definition of ownership. Surely the profit from a property matters in determining ownership.

In 1776 a bunch of people got together and decided to create a defense agency responsible for protecting the rights of people and ensuring contracts. They immediately had a monopoly.

In 1861 this monopoly was challenged, the opposing defense contractor lost in this altercation.

Now in the present this monopoly has transitioned completely into the tumorous cartel that is everything that makes your libertarian heart blood boil and also what people keep saying would happen in an ancap society where a monopoly forms.

I posed a question about land the other day in this sub and found a surprising number of people asserting that property cannot be collectively owned, that even corporations or joint stock companies are impossible in ancapistan.

Is this true? It seems obviously bad to disallow the main engine that allows capitalism to work.

The specific context is that I asserted the ownership claims on land in England are all descended from the Norman conquest, and thus illegitimate. (I don’t know if this is literally true, it’s a thought exercise).

Because the original specific people who each specific piece of land was stolen from cannot be known, I asserted the land belongs to the people of England collectively, but I got pushback on the idea land could ever been owned collectively. I’ve also read that villages have worked land collectively in history.

I don’t really see any reason why a village couldn’t own its land collectively, or why a joint stock company couldn’t work in ancapistan.

To really explain,
Fossil fuels created devastating storms like during the great depression due to arguably, chemicals gathering in the atmosphere.

SPF rising scares.

There is times when profit has to be stopped or is it?

P.S. Made to orientate discussion, won’t reply until the morning. I lied because I’m major depressive and trying to work on shit.

If a society whose land was extremely concentrated in the offspring of violent conquerors (England after 1066 for instance), wouldn’t abolishing the state cement those people in their improperly obtained land? Wouldn’t a form of redistribution be necessary to prevent a landed aristocracy from capturing most of the value of society without contributing to it?

Because a state could always theoretically redistribute land, people without land may resist abolishing the state.

The standard ancap position rejects IP — ideas can't be homesteaded, only kept secret. Fine. But this raises a real structural question for *fundamental* science.

I'm not asking whether private firms will fund applied R&D. Obviously they will. I'm asking about science as a *non-instrumental* endeavor — particle physics, gravitational wave astronomy, cosmology. Low immediate reward, diffuse long-term spillovers (CERN didn't set out to invent the internet). The value is real but it's not capturable by any single actor on any reasonable time horizon.

In the current world this gets solved by states and treaty organizations (CERN runs on a 23-nation convention). That's not available to us. So what replaces it?

A few framings I've been turning over:

- **Reputation markets** — scientists are rewarded by priority credit, which translates to salary and grants. But in a stateless world, who funds the grants?

- **Private consortium models** — voluntary cooperative funding between firms who expect *indirect* spillovers. The CERN model, minus the state coercion. Does this scale to pure theory?

- **Philanthropic/ideological patrons** — wealthy individuals funding knowledge as a terminal value. Historically this worked (Bell Labs, pre-war European physics). Is it robust?

None of these feel complete to me. Curious whether anyone has a principled framework here, or whether fundamental science is just a genuine hard case for decentralized organization.

So naturally, anyone would be able to buy any substance in ancapistan without restriction, which means all of the really strong drugs as well as antibiotics would be purchasable without someone else's permission or oversight. Being an ancap, I'm in favor of this, but I really must ask... what's going to happen?

If everyone starts buying antibiotics like candy, that could weaken their effects against potentially life-threatening infections, and consequences of that are not limited to just those who abuse the medication. If very strong substances like morphine and medical grade fentanyl can be bought over the counter, a bunch of foolish people are going to ruin their lives abusing those substances. I wonder if pharmacies would make customers sign a waiver acknowledging that whatever drug they're purchasing is strong and the customer promises not to hold the pharmacy accountable if something happens.

What do you think the prescription drug situation will be in ancapistan?

Getting 50% of people to agree to dissolve the government would be challenging. Even if you do theres going to a sizable minority that would want to bring it back. In history it's shown that people can build the government back up through grassroots movements most notably the ICU in Somalia and the Korean Peoples Republic. How do you prevent the minority from rebuilding the government?

Hello everyone, as you know, a right-wing president recently won the elections, where the results were very close. And let's not forget that the country is very polarized, with everyone attacking each other without thinking about why they're doing it.

Okay, let's start with the basics: the left has a strong foundation in values ​​like, you know, equality, respect, and so on. But now that this president has won, they're destroying public property—property that people pay for through their taxes. I'm not being prejudiced; I saw it with my own eyes. And after seeing that, I now think they're going to destroy other public things, like transportation, traffic signs, and much more. All because they lost. And this raises the question: Is this consistent with the values ​​they defend, like solidarity, the common good, and non-violence? Because they are blatantly violating the principles of non-aggression, and even more absurdly, they're destroying public property that people pay for with their taxes.

It's literally inconsistent for me that they're committing so many violations of public property, so I ask you: How do you explain this contradiction? Is this consistent with an ethic that claims to defend the poorest?