How to Spot a Naïve Ancap

We will make a quick post to list some 10 planks to distinguish a naïve ancap from a radical ancap.

Plank one. The naïve ancap estimates that labor productivity will merely double in ancapistan. Contrastingly, the radical ancap believes that ancapistan would have at least five times greater productivity than what we have now. The naïve ancap believes that taxation and inflation more-or-less cause only a 50% productivity loss, while the radical ancap knows that the state squanders at least 80% of our labor productivity.

Plank two. The naïve ancap follows mainstream supply-side celebrities like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and/or the conspiracy nut Alex Jones. The naïve ancap almost exclusively focuses on bail-outs, while avoiding all the other draconian privileges that the plutocrats loot from us. Contrastingly, the radical ancap focuses on the entire scope of state privileges, besides taxation. The radical ancap understands that state regulations, interventions, licensing, urban planning, and prohibitions more greatly impoverishes the economy besides merely taxation and inflation.

Plank three. Because the naïve ancap have a less radical view of economics than the radical ancap, they will often resort to a fetish for the past American government, in what they call "Restore the Republic." In doing so, the naïve ancap clungs to the U.S. Constitution, an obsolete document. Likewise, the naïve ancaps more likely vote for the "fiscal conservative" candidates who promises to slash the tax brackets by an only few percentage points. They will often fall into Ron Paul's traditionalist "Campaign for Liberty," the totalitarian "Free State Project," the theocratic "John Birch Society," or "Peter Schiff for Senator."

Plank four. The naïve ancap more likely follows stock market indices than the radical ancap. The stock-market indices, such as the Dow Jones Index, most likely measures the well-being of the most privileged firms. The 30 components of the Dow Jones Index consists of mega-corporations which gets subsidies and bailouts from the government, and regulations that cartelize them.

Plank five. The naïve ancap more likely favors gradualist and reformist polices that compromises the their goal. For example, the naïve ancap more likely praises welfare reform programs, such as FairTax, school vouchers, Health Savings Accounts, and the other of the so-called "market-based" solutions. Contrastingly, the radical ancap recognizes these schemes as simply the government as expanding out to quasi-statist firms.

Plank six. Because the naïve ancap trusts the state more, they will likely hold the status quo of legitimizing some state practices, such as immigration restriction or disallowing the "illegal" immigrants to use the bureaucratic hospitals or the state schools (indoctrination prisons).

Plank seven. The naïve ancap, in general, has greater faith in the state and its bureaucracy than the radical ancaps. We do not mean that the naïve ancap supports or even tolerates statism. We mean that they only believe that bureaucracies have 50% or so inefficiency than the so-called "private" companies. For example, the naïve ancap claims that school vouchers can more efficiently indoctrinate children than state schools. However, the naïve ancap never questions the state indoctrination centers itself. Contrastingly, the radical ancap believes that truly free market schools will have 95% more efficiency, not at indoctrinating children, but at educating them.

Plank eight. The radical ancap views the state as a criminal monster that deceptively steals at least 80% of our productivity, at least not as much as the naïve ancap does. Therefore the naïve ancap will likely vote and participate in electoral campaigns rather than education. Even if the naïve ancap wants to educate others, they will tend to use arguments justifying the status quo of our income distribution as a "natural" outcome of human nature or the economic system. Most of these arguments sound indistinguishable from what Such Limbaugh or Sean Hannity makes, that "tax cuts" benefits the economy, or "welfare" creates a spiral of dependence. They never question the state impoverishes individuals by its licenses, building codes, land-use regulations, red tape, and certification requirements which impoverishes them by wasting 90% of their productivity (the state steals 80% of the productivity from the middle class, but 90% of the productivity from the lower classes).

Plank nine. The naïve ancap will more likely get fooled by the glittering generalities and the vague words spoken by conservative politicians and radio hosts.

Plank ten. The naïve ancap still trusts mainstream media.

The Social Anarchist Assault on Ancapistan

Alex, thanks again for your criticism titled Fallacious Rejection of Anarchism.

First of all, I consistently describe myself as a "poor writer," which means that my writing often misrepresents by beliefs. For instance, I mistyped yesterday's response and it contained grammatical errors, and, as you all know, some misrepresentations. In addition, I forgot to edit, revise, and clarify my work. Therefore I will clarify my claims that I pointed out yesterday.

Alex said: This is a misrepresentation of me. What affiliation with minarchism? I had come to negatively define anarcho-capitalism after having been one myself! ... The claim that I was a minarchist while making such claims about anarcho-capitalism is false - I held the exact same position I do now upon making those claims and considered myself a market anarchist. The allusion to me as a minarchist has nothing to do with this.

Looking at Alex's old blog and his past influence from Ron Paul, I presumed that he had defined "anarcho-capitalism" that way. On his old blog, Alex had defined "anarcho-capitalism" as a system of competing private defense agencies operated by large bureaucratic firms. However, most self-described "anarcho-capitalists" disagree with Alex's narrow definition. These "anarcho-capitalists" define "anarcho-capitalism" more broadly, as a system in which its constituent individuals abide by the non-aggression principle. I hope this clarifies it up.

Alex said: My problem with anarcho-capitalism is in the assumption of a certain absolutist norm of property rights and by making a reductio ad absurdum out of what *some* anarcho-capitalists advocate. ... Anarcho-mercantalist would like to fool people into thinking that all of this is purely a semantic issue when it isn't. ... This is not merel about labels.

I agree with Alex here. I try to minimize my use of "anarcho-capitalism" because of its connotations, especially when I communicate with strangers. In general, as I mentioned before, I dislike to describe myself with one-word, two-word, or three-word labels. I also disagree with with the beliefs that some (or most) of the "anarcho-capitalists" hold. In your quote of me, I meant that some "non-vulgar" market anarchists continue to use "anarcho-capitalism" to label themselves, even if they know that some (or most) of the "anarcho-capitalists" conflate the current system with a free market.

Alex said: it is generally revolved around the concern that "sticky ownership of land" as a normative absolute can justify authoritarianism, have bad socio-economic consequences and ultimately devolve into states. The concerns about anarcho-capitalism are not merely over the term itself.

I know the consequences if we take "sticky" land ownership to the absolute. It might result in some cartelization of land, thus might devolve into a state. Nevertheless, the current system already cartelizes land.

Many "anarcho-capitalists" even favor land redistribution of past stolen land. See Rothbard's article on the Confiscation and the Homestead Principle.

Many mutualists therefore do not see much difference between mutualism and "left-Rothbardianism." However, as I described earlier in an unexpectedly famous post titled The Left-Libertarian Strategy, the "left-Rothbardians" and the mutualists differ by a lot.

Alex said: Some "anarcho-capitalists" likely dislike the term "market anarchism" precisely because it implies that they do not have a monopoly on free market ideas in anarchism. The resistance to "market anarchism" as an umbrella is a reinforcement of my own claim that "anarcho-capitalists" tend to be monocentric.

I only partially agree with you here. Let us clarify this below.

Alex said: I have never taken an absolutist anti-private-property position.

I apologize for misrepresenting you of opposing "private property" in all contexts. Anyway, I identify myself as a "poor and sloppy writer." Also, as you mentioned, I support "voluntary cooperatives" and oppose "corporations" if I follow your definitions.

I consider this sentence that I have written as unclear:

Anarcho-mercantilist said: I think Cork use 'private property' to mean the 'non-aggression principle'

So we will rephrase and clarify the above statement: Cork used "private property" to mean that "no social anarchist has the right to harm the legitimate private property of third parties." I used "legitimate private property" here to refer to the private property legitimately owned by individuals, not stolen property held by a monarch or by the state (which includes taxpayer-funded contractors).

Let us explain what Cork means below.

We find it unquestionable that all social anarchists—regardless of the anarcho-communist, anarcho-syndicalist, or anarcho-collectivist stripe—hate "capitalism" and "wage labor."

Thus, the social anarchists will invade ancapistan and attack their factory bosses, managers, landowners, and financiers—all the occupations that they consider as parasitic. Cork fears about this!

Alex might object to this claim because many social anarchists (such as Bakunin) speak of "voluntary associations." However, the social anarchists have a different conception of what "voluntary" means. As I mentioned before in another comment, the social anarchists define the expropriation of capital and land by the workers as a non-aggressive act. Therefore, because the social anarchists argue the expropriation of capital and land as "voluntary," they will invade ancapistan and attack their factory bosses, managers, landowners, and financiers.

Mike Gogulski (who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist) has commented his thoughts on the social anarchists in his post titled Agorism and Ancap Panarchy. Mike, in one of his comments, has expressed the same fear that the social anarchists will attack ancapistan.

We hope that this clarifies Cork's thoughts on the social "anarchists."

Anarchist Controversies

I disagree with some aspects of libertarianism promoted by virtually all libertarian bloggers. Thus I unsubscribed to almost all libertarian blogs. I began to criticise libertarianism since then. I took useless notes in hundreds of text files since I felt like it. I felt obsessed with the fallacies. I plan to integrate these notes in some writings. Below, I posted a possible outline of the free online book on libertarian fallacies. Almost all of the materials below did not show on my blog or any other author. So this outline does not repeat any of the fallacious ramblings on this blog.

I integrated 22 separate articles to this book as "chapters." I sorted these chapters so they would build up in order. I might also add 15 additional chapters in the Fallacies within Libertarianism section.

1. The Abuse of Libertarian Theory

   1. The Fallacies of the Rule of Law

      Why do authority figures abuse the rule of law? What incentives does the system lack? Can we even interpret the law clear enough? Indeed, libertarians often refer to the U.S. Constitution and the non-aggression principle as the "rule of law." Politicians use the "rule of law" to legitimize their beliefs. Wikipedia editors, likewise, abuse the "rule of law" for their own interests.

   2. The Abuse of Libertarian Ethics

      Hans-Hermann Hoppe cites the "non-aggression principle" to justify closed borders. Likewise, some misapply the non-aggression principle for their own ends. Indeed, libertarian theorists cram their preferences with the non-aggression principle to promote their own interests.

2. Libertarian Semantics

   3. The Confusing Labels of Libertarian Schools

      We often cannot attach any specific or concrete meaning to the words "liberal," "conservative," "capitalist," and "socialist." Despite such usual words, we also confuse terms such as "anarcho-capitalist." We found a surprising number of definitions of "anarcho-capitalism," from the broad meaning of the non-aggression principle, to the narrow, "hard propertarian" meaning resembling fascism.

   4. Ontological Nonsense

      In ontology, the "study of being," we take different positions on "rationalism," "empiricism," "physicalism," and "idealism." We will show the meaningless of these terms.

   5. The Semantic Abuse of Meta-ethics

      What does "objectivism," "subjectivism," "realism," and "nominalism" mean? Can we agree on a specific meaning of these terms? Can we "pick" a semantic interpretation of ethics such as "cognitivism" and "non-cognitivism"? No, we do not. Some will ignore this chapter as advocating "subjectivism" or "idealism," but we claim to not hold any position in meta-ethics.

   6. The False Dichotomy of Consequentialism and Deontology

      Many libertarians divide between consequentialist and deontological ethics. We will deny this false dichotomy.

   7. E-Prime and Libertarian Semantics

      Libertarians will often misrepresent others. How do we resolve it? Some will resort to redefining terms, while others avoid only those "controversial" terms altogether. We found a new method to do this. We resolve this by practicing a variety of English called E-Prime, which reduces labeling and ontological fallacies.

3. Fallacies within Libertarianism

   8. The Slippery Slope of Lifeboat Scenarios

      Libertarians will often extort aggression in "extreme" cases of ethics as "lifeboat scenarios." However, they will often abuse it and unconciously label "lifeboat situation" to every subject that they repel. Indeed, many controversies orginate from lifeboat scenarios. Thus we will refine "lifeboat situations" to minimize ambiguity.

   9. The Fallacy of Subjective Indeterminacy

      When debating with some statists, we often go into debates on whether we should support the state to fund some "public goods" such as health care and housing. Many libertarians, however, will go into the slippery slope fallacy of "subjective indeterminacy" when debating about "public goods." Even with noting the multiple meanings of this term, we still take the risk of going into a version of the Sorites paradox.

   10. Market Forces and Cultural Preferences do not Mix

       Some will say market competition will increase "popularity." Some others claim that a product can "outcompete" others. However, we should never use the metaphor "competition" to describe social evolution. We often abuse free-market theory with social movements.

   11. The Theory of Popularity and Fringeness

       Why many so many people adore a belief or ideology and ignore others? Why does not the majority of economists practice Austrian Economics? Why typists avoid the Dvorak keyboard layout? We will claim the underlying factors of popularity, and the unpopularity of non-mainstream viewpoints.

   12. Why Do We Grow?

       What does it mean for the economy to grow? Does it mean increased labor productivity or increased use-value satisfaction of its individuals? Should we even consider individual productivity as a virtue? We will conclude "economic growth" as a nonsensical concept.

   13. Free-Market Manorialism: Why We All Rent and Invest Capital

       Some will argue "rent" will decrease, due to increased land availble and lower time-preferenecs. Some will predict land prices to increase, thus labeling the free-market as "manorialistic." However, we will all ubitiquously rent in a free market, whether we like it or not.

   14. The Myth of Regulatory Expansion

       Some net neutrality detractors, such as libertarians, oppose increased interventions on Internet service providers. However, they often oppose it for flawed reasons. Can citizens even restrain the state? Some will say no, and some will argue yes. The Public Choice Fallacy comes.

   15. The Economic-Demographic Myth and Sociobiological Evolution

       Ronald Reagan once claimed the free-market as "the best contraceptive." Ludwig von Mises and Mary Ruwart said the same thing. Should we accept that free markets reduce birth rates? Despite this fad, the opposite actually happens. Free markets increase birth rates, and economic planning reduces it. Also, due to sociobiological evolution, even a socialist society will increase birth rates in the long-run.

   16. The Dow Jones Fallacy

       Libertarian enthusiasts and economists capture stock market indices as a hobby. However, they fail to take account of the accuracy of the reporting. Can the Dow Jones measure the entire economy accurately? The Dow consists of the 30 privileged firms and biases itself on cartelized sectors of the economy. Simply no.

4. Libertarian Traps

   17. The Ubitiquity of Policy Libertarianism

       Even many those libertarians who oppose electoral politics support some form of policy libertarianism, whether criticizing Obama as a person or promoting "welfare reform" as conservatives do.

   18. Obama Will Not Instigate Revival

       Many conservatives and libertarians alike, applaud Obama. They want Obama to mess the economy up so the general population will see socialism, in general, as a failure. However, Obama supporters will not blame socialism in itself, but will blame Obama for "mismanaging" and "bad policies." Just like how the Democrats do not blame Bush for the war, but blame the "mismanagement" or "bad intelligence." They do not criticize the war in itself.

   19. Against Anti-Federalism

       Almost all proponents of libertarianism, including many mutualists, support "states' rights" or defederalization of the federal republic. They will even support "local control of schools and health care" and every other thing.

   20. Radicalism and the Politicial Process

       Politicans fool more libertarians than we know. They will often fool even those who do not practice electoral politics. In the early stages of the campaign, politicians will often lie to attract the radical grassroots first, and then speak in a less and less rhetoric towards the end stages of the campaign.

   21. How Conservatives Deceive Libertarians

       Conservatives often speak of "deregulation," "less spending," and oppose "socialized medicine" that appeals to some libertarians. However, almost all of such terms have multiple meanings.

   22. The Libertarian Case Against Wikipedia

       Often, libertarians will get stuck in a bureaucratic institution called Wikipedia. Not suprisingly, they often get wound up on wasteful debates about changing the article titles, prescribing their own definitions of some libertarian terms, and putting non-mainstream knowledge and links which invites editors to revert. Besides those numerous false sockpuppet convictions, the editors lack many incentives to improve articles and accept contributions from dissidents other than to revert their edits.

Against Information Privacy

I dislike to describe my beliefs with one-word, two-word, or three-word labels. Such labels, which include "libertarian," "anarcho-capitalist," and "agorist," describe belief systems inaccurately and imprecisely. Also, I dislike to describe myself with words that I consider as glittering generalities, such as "individualist." I will therefore describe myself below in a precise and concrete dialect.

To label my belief system more precisely, I believe in total informational freedom and oppose all forms of censorship, informational privacy "rights," and publicity "rights." Such informational privacy "rights" only protect criminals (which includes the state), enhance groupthink, discourage group cohesiveness, encourages dishonesty and free riders, violates the freedom of thought, and contradicts with ethical individualism. And most arguments for informational privacy "rights" rest on the flawed argument that employers would "discriminate" employees. To achieve total informational freedom, I support the re-legalization of defamation, slander, libel, hate speech, blackmail, voyeurism, audio and video recording, eavesdropping, and the banned privacy-destroying technologies.

I posted this because many market anarchists, and self-described "individualists," support some types of censorship.