(You'll find most people who are honest about whatever they believe in can certainly recognize their own fallibility.) Now one could make the "trickle down" argument of that, but that' neither here nor there. You're right, AnCap is vulnerable to corruption, very much so. But most Voluntarists-Libertarians will gladly admit to you they know it's not for everyone, myself included. To me, the agency against corruption should always be in the hands of individuals dedicated to upholding such ideals, rather than as an inherent failsafe of the system. But that's where we divide. You seem to understand the system well enough to know it's faults, but also see it's values. Can we not let bygones be bygones? :)

Erulastant wrote:

Cerebrate wrote:

For the record, I'd agree with much of the critique there for pure ancap - which is why I spend my theorizing time working on ways to come up with voluntarist ideas I can borrow from elsewhere - like, say, ancol - to better handle the asshole problem.

Well, I've got the ancaps on my side! ...Which is a bit odd, considering I came into this thread as a devil's advocate against ancap.

Hey, if you can't criticize your preferred system, you're going to be a pretty damn poor advocate for it. And even worse at improving it - you can't fix problems you can't admit to.

Quote:

Well, the problem isn't that 'evil' exists per se, it is that there will always be people who wish to exploit the system and others for their own benefit, and ancap is particularly* vulnerable to exploitation by those willing to eschew decency.

Of course, here's where we disagree on a couple of points. Noting, first, that I said pure ancap, and since to my mind you can import all manner of anti-exploitation mechanisms from, say, ancol without compromising the core of the thing, that's to that degree a fixable problem. And, second, I'll agree w.r.t. ancap's vulnerabilities, but compared to say, democracy/republic systems, which construct a giant instrumentality of coercion and proceed to sell it to the highest bidder, it's practically invulnerable. At least from where I'm sitting, the way those systems handle their asshole problem is by putting them in charge* and letting them run wild. On the "For Happiness" vs. "For Great Justice" point, I'm just going to say that I for one don't think they're necessarily opposed, but that the problem with practical ethics on this point is the same as it is in theology - if you leave people free to seek their best happiness, you also necessarily leave them free to screw up. And that's problem's pretty much insoluble however you slice it - especially since it's arguable that baseline humans can't even compute their own utils, never mind anyone else's. And, of course, it assumes that happiness is the end to be sought, which is also rather arguable. Enough so that I like to refrain from prescribing ends. -c * After a brief review in my head, I can think of exactly one democratically elected representative (and none at state or higher levels) who wasn't some kind of sumbitch or other.

I don't think they are opposed either. My stance is just that, if given the choice between the two, I'd take happiness. And leaving people free to seek their happiness only for them to ruin it is exactly how it should be. As long as they can try again. Let's say you want to compete in a major league sport, and doing so will make you happy. If you don't make the cut, you can still try again next year. Maybe happiness isn't the one all, be all, but it's the conclusion I've come to.

[\quote=Cerebrate] And, second, I'll agree w.r.t. ancap's vulnerabilities, but compared to say, democracy/republic systems, which construct a giant instrumentality of coercion and proceed to sell it to the highest bidder, it's practically invulnerable. At least from where I'm sitting, the way those systems handle their asshole problem is by putting them in charge* and letting them run wild. [/quote] I think we keep using different definitions for democracy. I'm using democracy to refer to direct democracy and republic to refer to representative democracies like we have today. I can see your objection to a republic. I don't see how that's a valid objection to a democracy. Yes, it's coercive, but the coercive power is not in the hands of individuals who can be corrupted. I don't think that anyone here feels happiness and justice are mutually exclusive. And, in my discussions of utils, assume that we actually can measure them. My point had little to do with the specific numbers, I just meant to communicate that a system is not necessarily better just because the mean happiness is higher, if that higher happiness is generated by exploiting the suffering of others.

Steel Accord wrote:

And leaving people free to seek their happiness only for them to ruin it is exactly how it should be. As long as they can try again.

Now, I'm fully in agreement with you on this point. People should be able to ruin their own happiness. What I worry about is enshrining a power structure where the actors with the most power have the means and motive to effectively take the happiness and economic power away from others to themselves. Ancap has [i]nothing[/i] in place to prevent this, while [i]every other system[/i] has something, at least. (Depending on how idealized the republic in question is at any rate. Democracies and ancol both have solid mechanisms for this.)

Interesting discussion, but it's left me with a bit of an odd line of questioning. 1) Who owns the habitat exactly? If it's private property then it's obviously not owned by everyone, so who exactly owns it, whether it's a group or individual. 2) Same question with life support, who owns the system? Is it the same individual/group that owns the habitat? 3) If those are owned, what stops the owners from cutting someone off from access to either? (I.E. Person A doesn't have the resources to pay for one or the other or even leave, we'll go with habitat as it's easier to envision in this case, so Habitat Owner(s) tells them to pay up or get out.) According to what I've read the owner is completely able to do so as Person A is effectively now stealing. Here on Earth getting kicked out of your home sucks horribly, but getting kicked out and having nowhere to go doesn't mean potential instant death while in this case it very much could (assuming Person A is an unprotected biomorph). So which is deemed worse, Person A being the aggressor by simply existing within the Habitat Owners' property, or the Habitat Owners' aggression resulting in the possible death and destruction of morph of Person A by kicking them out? Or, the 3rd option that seems like it's antithetical to the entire ancap philosophy, Person A effectively becomes a slave to the Habitat Owners in order to pay for his continuing existence within the habitat. Even if they are referred to as an indentured servant, they still have accruing costs for continuing to exist within the habitat, which effectively makes them a slave instead.

Steel Accord wrote:

Except one shouldn't "introduce the existence of" vigilantes. That undermines the whole point of their existence in that they are not artificially enacted to address an imbalance. The private, individual initiative can be a great tool for brining to light corruption and infractions. Sure there is an issue with accountability, but living in a world with unchecked vigilantes is a better one than of unchecked tyrants. In my opinion at least.

Well, we are theorizing hypothetical society designs. Hence i meant 'introducing' that element into our hypothesis and seeing if the change was positive or negative.

Cerebrate wrote:

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:

Would the asshole problem be solved by introducing the existence of vigilantes? A few people who keep an eye on the various wealthy people. When one starts abusing a monopoly to the point that nobody else can enter into that market, these people treat it as aggression against the entire hab and permagank the culprits in question. Given that to get into such a monopoly position would necessitate being publicly seen as the monopoly in the field, it would be hard to deny when someone is abusing such power.

I'm not a huge fan of vigilantes who don't have to answer to anyone/everyone (a place where, say, rep networks come in handy); and as I mentioned upstream somewhere in this thread, I only have a problem with unchallengeable ("cheating") monopolies. (The other kind, it occurs to me, can occur under ancol systems, too. If your particular hab happens to have a half-dozen genius fabber engineers practicing as the Flying Tractor Factory Collective, seems to me like any other fabber engineers wishing to practice their profession thereabouts are going to have a hard row to hoe going uphill against the existing self-reinforcing rep advantage.) But all that said, I would have no problem at all with the notion of "vigilante" groups whose specific purpose is to monitor wealth concentrations, large corporations and other groups, etc., especially those behaving in non-transparent or less-transparent fashions, and drag 'em in front of the nearest convenient judge. Seems like a good addition to me. -c

So the Rep system would need to be a load bearing feature of a vigil?

Cerebrate wrote:

Against the latter, ancap has security providers. Against the former... it has an absence of coercive power. You can't coopt what doesn't exist. Which is also one of the chief ancap arguments against the other systems. They all involve what we see as to varying extents, loci of coercive power, and as long as you have loci of coercive power, be it by bribery or corruption or demagoguery, we think they're going to end up in the hands of... well, the assholes. -c

Thing is, wealth itself has all the properties of a coercive locus. When you can use that wealth to ensure the survival of others who have no wealth, you can own those people by threatening to cut off the life supply. AnCap still has all the issues with bribery, except it is no longer called bribery, and is no longer illegal.

Erulastant wrote:

Cerebrate wrote:

Which is not to mention the asshole majority problem. You can have a 60%-40% biomorph-synthmorph population, institute direct democracy, and if the clanking masses memes are going around, well, then, the synthmorphs are still fucked.

And how is this less of a problem in ancap?

60% of people in a market can reduce your business opportunities by 60%, at the cost of damaging their own competitiveness. 60% of people in a democracy can reduce your business opportunities by 100%, then legalize shooting you in the face, and appoint an official body to do it. -c

I believe that wing is in building B. Just ask to fill out from 23-T and bring your community petition to the overseer with it. Thank you and have a nice day, Comrade. *Rim shot*

I have an inverse question: If the three guys on a small ancol habitat who, collectively, do all the life-support maintenance decide one day that - since they do that, and they are the only people who know how to do that, and they can push this button here and change the command codes to ones only they know - they'd rather promote themselves to kings, how - with details, please, four part harmony and feeling :) - are you any less screwed than if the three guys on a small ancap habitat who make up the local HabCorp AirCo, Inc. decide to do so? -c

bibliophile20 wrote:

(To make literary comparisons, the failure state for an AnCol society is illustrated by LeGuin's The Dispossessed. The failure state for an AnCap society is illustrated by Jennifer Government)

I would suggest the failure state for AnCol is the first half of every 80s high school movie ever. Popularity is everything, the popular ones get to shit (sometimes literally) on the 'nerds.' To add in another though, the failure state for Republics is the Cyberpunk genre.

If 60% of an ancap society would, in a democracy, vote to legalize shooting me in the face, then there will exist at least one who despises me enough to shoot me in the face and take their chances with the 'courts' heavily stacked in their favor. And there's at least a 60% chance that the judge they get for the trial happens to similarly believe that I should have been shot in the face. He might not get away with it. I'm just as dead either way. If 60% of the populace wants to oppress me, I will be oppressed in a democracy and I will be oppressed in an ancapia. If 60% wants me dead, I'm dead either way. 'Mob Rule' will *always* be a problem regardless of your economic or governmental system. But in ancap one must worry both about both mob rule and the tyranny of the wealthy. I fail to see how this is an improvement. In a democracy, for the constitution to be ignored and unconstitutional laws to be passed, a majority has to care enough about the issue to ignore the constitution for it. In an ancapia, for the NAP to be ignored to disastrous effect (For example, as Bibliophile outlined), ONE person has to be willing to ignore it for their own benefit. It is far more likely that one person is willing to bring suffering down on others to benefit themselves than that millions are willing to bring suffering to others for its own sake*. And, of course, people can be exploited and coerced without violating the NAP or contract law. Everyone else basically beat me to it in pointing it out: What happens when I, as Big Money Person, decide to buy up the food supply? (Or air I guess if we're talking strictly EP terms. I think that it is worth including a discussion of how ancap would work in a scarcity society, since that's what we'll probably get for any near-future implementation.) Or use any number of other exploitative methods to restrict people's access, all within the 'legalities' of ancap society. (That Thread Which Violently Exploded brought up some of them before violently exploding... Building a road around a town, for instance, and defending your property rights over that road with violent force. Since trespassing on private property, especially if it includes Warning: No Trespassing signs is most definitely justification for my well-paid mercenaries, er, Security Contractor to remove you from the premises, with nonlethal or even lethal force if necessary. Better stay inside the town. Oh, what's that? You need to eat? Well, good thing I have this road here, I can use it to import food. You'll have to compensate me for my costs of course, I don't run a charity here. The difference between ancap and ancol or democracy in these situations is that in ancap, the system enshrines people's right to do this. In ancol, if you try to hijack the air filters and extort concessions, well, you don't own the air filters. They are communal. So we agree to kick you out, kick you out, put out a call, and some other engineers egocast in because of the rep boost they get for helping out a hab in need. In democracy, the people can empower an anti-trust committee to seize your assets and arrest you, and oh look, what do you know, problem solved. In ancap, we could fire a lawsuit, but you could just hire some good lawyers and a favorable judge and either get it ruled in your favor or just get the proceedings tied up for long enough that your victims are willing to drop the case in addition to whatever other concessions you decide to include in the contract you make with them to supply them with oxygen. The ancol or democratic attempts may fail, but they can be made, and the people hijacking the air are working outside of the system. In ancap, your right to deny me air if you own all the processors is legal within the system. For democracy or ancol, this is someone hacking in. For ancap, this is just a bug in the code. Or, worse yet, working as intended. In short, Ancap gives Mr Big Cheese Moneypants the right to power over other people if he can take it, wheras democracy and ancol both hold that that no such right exists**. *Yes, I know that the latter has happened. So has the former, far more. **for individuals. Democracies may hold that The People have the right to power over The People in certain circumstances.

Well the obvious answer is no. More to the point, no one on this thread is saying AnCol is perfect either. (At least I think they know it isn't.)

But what about the children? No, really, what about the children? Presumably ancaps breed. Since there are no laws about majority age, what happens when a child signs a contract? What about the now explicit social contract? When are they required to sign that or leave? (Isn't that sort of coercive? Sign this or leave your family?) Importantly, without a mandate for education and education being provided at market price, what is to guarantee that children get the education they need to be fully realized actors and have equal opportunity?

Yes, but why let them grow up before trying to dupe them? It's just bad business sense. I have a particular business model. This involves going around and finding children, especially those who are orphaned or have poor families, and offering to pay for their education, food, housing, etc. Out of the goodness of my heart! Of course, they will have to do some labor for me after I've done all this so that I have the money to keep giving away a high-quality education and food and shelter to suffering children. Do I really need to explain the rest? There's no child labor involved, but I've just gone and exploited the gullibility of children to guarantee myself a ton of slave labor in the future. (Because I'm counting on these kids not to read the fine print.) And I've got a solid morality stick--I'm paying for their education and food!--which should be more than enough to keep my rep and the rep of my reliable judge from tanking. Speaking of which, you didn't answer most of my questions: When is the child forced into the social contract? What about education?

So is "Oh, I didn't read the whole contract" a valid legal defense to get out of any contract? Because that's all it is. How can I be blamed if the children who I am trying to help don't read the contract I give them? So... A person is an adult when they feel ready? They only have to sign the hab contract when they're ready? So, then... why would they ever sign the hab contract? If they can just refuse to sign the contract, and thus not be held accountable to the NAP or other hab rules, why would they ever voluntarily sign it? Even if they aren't planning on committing aggression, isn't it still better to not sign in order to avoid the risk of being falsely convicted of breaking it? (Even if that risk is tiny, you would be voluntarily assuming that risk for no benefit.)

Steel Accord wrote:

Children would, presumably, be raised by their parents or an equivalent. Educated by whatever service the parents feel is appropriate [b]and can afford[/b].

Fixed that for you. So you're denying that equality of opportunity exists in ancapia?

Steel Accord wrote:

I actually think that would just solve itself. Can you really expect a child that signs a contract to uphold his or her end of the bargain? And if you expect to hold that child to that agreement, good luck getting an arbiter to rule the enforcement of it, unless he has a desperate craving to have his business tank due to all his customers abandoning him for enforcing child labor. Which goes double for the guy who wrote the contract for the child in the first place.

My understanding of the system is that the only restrictions are contracts are everything and the non-aggression principal, so if they signed if of their own volition the contract and subsequently broke it, why should they be held any less accountable than anyone else? It's not like there are any laws saying that you can't use underhanded means to get someone to sign a contract, the only two aspects that matter is that they sign it of their own free will and what the contract actually says, so you're free to say whatever you want just as they are free to read the contract. If you say something and it's not in the contract, well then they should have actually read the contract. If it's written down, then it means nothing.

Steel Accord wrote:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I would appreciate it, if you not put words in my mouth. "Whatever education they feel is appropriate." I say what I mean. There would be public education or services payed by rep or favors. Again, that's just not what everyone wants to use. A couple of parents that prefer a high rep tutor might be willing to use the money they've earned to pay for his services. Or they may agree to owe him a favor. Another pair of parents may not have as much money, or be of such high rep. But that same tutor might be willing to spend his time teaching their child, if he so chooses. If he doesn't there's always many, many, many other educational services that can be used.

Who exactly is paying for this public education? It seems to me that individuals would be better off offering up a contract to the child/children that can't afford it proposing to pay for their education in exchange for repaying the debt with some form of labor/service, whether now or in the future. Or, even offering the contract to their parents if you prefer. Either one of those gets you a guaranteed payback in the form of labor or service rendered as well as potentially a skilled and educated individual that you can utilize in the future. Whereas paying into a pool for public education possibly gets you nothing, so why would anyone do so?

Once again, portmanteau reply of ridiculous size...

Erulastant wrote:

If 60% of an ancap society would, in a democracy, vote to legalize shooting me in the face, then there will exist at least one who despises me enough to shoot me in the face and take their chances with the 'courts' heavily stacked in their favor. And there's at least a 60% chance that the judge they get for the trial happens to similarly believe that I should have been shot in the face. He might not get away with it. I'm just as dead either way.

In the conventional ancap model, bear in mind that judges are usually selected by mutual agreement of their cutomers...

Erulastant wrote:

If 60% of the populace wants to oppress me, I will be oppressed in a democracy and I will be oppressed in an ancapia. If 60% wants me dead, I'm dead either way. 'Mob Rule' will *always* be a problem regardless of your economic or governmental system.

I think what you're not taking into account here is the collective-irresponsibility effect that democracy has. By and large, things are easier to do the further you're separated from the sharp end of having to do them. It is, I think both history and science demonstrate, hilariously easier to get 60% of people to vote for some grotesquely oppressive policy than it is to get 60% of the people willing to go out and oppress people themselves. (And even easier to find 60% of people willing to say that those damn ethnics damn well ought to be oppressed than either of those.) The virtue of ancap isn't that it's impossible, it's that there's not a massive mechanism of oppression people can cycle into action with the pull of a lever, never having to actually look anyone in the eye and say, "Actually, yes, fuck you."

Quote:

In a democracy, for the constitution to be ignored and unconstitutional laws to be passed, a majority has to care enough about the issue to ignore the constitution for it. In an ancapia, for the NAP to be ignored to disastrous effect (For example, as Bibliophile outlined), ONE person has to be willing to ignore it for their own benefit. It is far more likely that one person is willing to bring suffering down on others to benefit themselves than that millions are willing to bring suffering to others for its own sake*.

I don't think that's a valid parallel. One person violating the NAP is equivalent to one person breaking the law.

Erulastant wrote:

Or use any number of other exploitative methods to restrict people's access, all within the 'legalities' of ancap society. (That Thread Which Violently Exploded brought up some of them before violently exploding... Building a road around a town, for instance, and defending your property rights over that road with violent force. Since trespassing on private property, especially if it includes Warning: No Trespassing signs is most definitely justification for my well-paid mercenaries, er, Security Contractor to remove you from the premises, with nonlethal or even lethal force if necessary. Better stay inside the town. Oh, what's that? You need to eat? Well, good thing I have this road here, I can use it to import food. You'll have to compensate me for my costs of course, I don't run a charity here.

Yeah, I'm not going to touch that one with a barge pole. ...I'm not really meaning this personally, Erulastant, just letting people know my general policy on this, but y'know that thing I said over in the ancol big thread regarding how easy for us it is to sit around thinking up bizarre-ass edge cases to break societies? That. Yes, it is theoretically possible that - despite the apparent need for us to invent eminent domain to get even ordinary roads built these days - someone might buy up the circle surrounding a town without anyone refusing to sell, or in the future I suppose the sphere entirely surrounding the town, find a bunch of minions who will play ball with him even in the face of this obvious violation of the spirit of, well, everything, and try to pull off this extortion trick. But at this point we've leapt straight over into the territory of four-color comic book villainy, moustache-twirling included, and I'm pretty much happy to confine myself to saying that, well, people will improvise appropriate solutions to that at the time the way they usually do and that it's not terribly useful for me to spend time coming up with plans for every hypothesizable weird-ass edge case in advance. Or, indeed, to give much the same answer as I imagine the White House would give if someone asked them for their plan to deal with the Democratic and Republican parties having both been infiltrated by a secret ex-Nazi conspiracy and our children having to Hail Hydra six times before school from 2016 on. To wit, "wut?".

Erulastant wrote:

The difference between ancap and ancol or democracy in these situations is that in ancap, the system enshrines people's right to do this. In ancol, if you try to hijack the air filters and extort concessions, well, you don't own the air filters. They are communal. So we agree to kick you out, kick you out, put out a call, and some other engineers egocast in because of the rep boost they get for helping out a hab in need. In democracy, the people can empower an anti-trust committee to seize your assets and arrest you, and oh look, what do you know, problem solved. In ancap, we could fire a lawsuit, but you could just hire some good lawyers and a favorable judge and either get it ruled in your favor or just get the proceedings tied up for long enough that your victims are willing to drop the case in addition to whatever other concessions you decide to include in the contract you make with them to supply them with oxygen. The ancol or democratic attempts may fail, but they can be made, and the people hijacking the air are working outside of the system. In ancap, your right to deny me air if you own all the processors is legal within the system. For democracy or ancol, this is someone hacking in. For ancap, this is just a bug in the code. Or, worse yet, working as intended.

Ah, more likely, if you try to force concessions from people using your air, they sue you for breach of contract (because only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots signs a contract saying "and you may turn my air off whenever you like", or buys oxygen day-to-day), and some unsympathetic security guys make them turn the air back on. Contract law already has provisions for this sort of thing - say, rent, in which the terms of your lease are very unlikely to let your landlord evict you immediately 'cause he feels like it one day, because no-one in their right mind would sign such a contract. Likewise, you're probably buying your air a good couple of months in advance and so have plenty of time to arrange an alternate supply, one way or another, or leave. Which, yes, is unfortunate, but it's not like the locals under any other system can't vote you off the hab either. You can't live off other people indefinitely, no - which we would call a feature - but it's in everyone's enlightened self-interest (yours, to avoid being screwed; theirs, to appear reliable and honest and attract custom) to do business in a manner that doesn't have nasty pointy edges. Or you lose out in a competitive market to someone who will.

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:

One fun thing to do in an AnCap society is to buy up all (or as close as you can) of the advertising and media space. Once you buy up the vast majority of transmission bandwidths, and billboard space. You can make sure your side of the story is the one the vast majority believe.

You say that like it never happens in other kinds of society. Which I think we have kind of a live-action demonstration that it is not the case going on right now, heh. Which is not to say that it can't hapopen in an ancap society, but I will go so far as to point out that it's a lot harder to secure an unchallengable media monopoly when you can't buy the assistance of the National Press Council or the Communications Decency Act or the Fairness Doctrine or the Federal Communications Commission, say, because no such bodies exist. You can't stop the signal, but it sure helps when no-one's in charge of the signal in the first place.

bibliophile20 wrote:

While, as Cerebrate has pointed out, there is a deliberate attempt at decentralization of capital, on the scale of individuals there will still be a tremendous difference in capital available on a per person basis. This inequality gives more powre to the corrupt business owner than it does to the idealist business owner, because, all other factors being equal, the corrupt one has resources available to him that the idealist does not.

That depends on where he's getting it from. Sure, he can hire legbreakers, just as he can here-and-now, but most of the conventional options for leveraging wealth into coercive power, as I've pointed out, don't exist - because you can't buy the services of coercive organs that also don't exist. (Also, comparatively speaking, I'm willing to bet that high rep can also get you a lot of legbreakers.)

Erulastant wrote:

But what about the children? No, really, what about the children? Presumably ancaps breed. Since there are no laws about majority age, what happens when a child signs a contract? What about the now explicit social contract? When are they required to sign that or leave? (Isn't that sort of coercive? Sign this or leave your family?)

Like I think I said elsewhere, it's not so much an explicit social contract as a universal ethic/natural right thingy. The primary way in which this applies to children, I imagine, is that the school bully gets a swift trip through the Extropian legal systems, has to hand over his allowance to his victims, and gets to spend more of his off-hours than he might like scraping slime off the hull or whatever other task is considered too menial and degrading for the maintenance robots this week. As for children and contracts, we may not have majority, but we do have competence. Whether you phrase it as "no force and fraud" or as "informed voluntary consent", and which of the million or so ways we have to define and establish it you subscribe to, we do have the notion that you can't sign a contract unless you have the capacity to understand what you're signing. This principle is what would generally be invoked when this sort of contract ends up in court.

Erulastant wrote:

Importantly, without a mandate for education and education being provided at market price, what is to guarantee that children get the education they need to be fully realized actors and have equal opportunity?

Erulastant wrote:

Fixed that for you. So you're denying that equality of opportunity exists in ancapia?

Does it exist anywhere else? No, seriously. I mean, apart from the obvious differences in individual capacity, has it ever existed? (And, for anyone who feels like taking this up in the ancol thread, I for one would be interested in learning how, if it does, it deals with ensuring that the child of the habitat shut-in with the weird-ass hair gets the same quality of education as the child of the local celebrity orgiast - in a rep economy.) But, yeah, we recognize the problem. The thing is, however, if education (or anything else) isn't allocated by market means -- (And let me remind everyone here that in ancap jargon market means includes "giving it away", since a transaction with a price of zero is still a transaction, m'kay?) -- the alternatives tend to be unpleasant things along the lines of "take it", "deny it", or "force everyone into our compulsory system and do both", all of which are pretty much anathema to those of us who place our supremely high value on consent, and all that. (Especially since it's kind of hard to invite a bunch of coercion into one place without getting it all over everywhere else, too.) So, yeah, there's no guarantee of positive equality of opportunity in ancapia - it only guarantees that people get out of your way, not that they'll do anything for you. We rely on the desires of the parents and, if need be, Philanthropic Phil's Eleemosynary Homeschooling & Tutorial Collective to fill the gaps. (But, we also say, considering the notorious shittiness of public education "mandates" in general and for those at the short end of the here-and-now economic stick in general, could it really do worse?) -c

bibliophile20 wrote:

(To make literary comparisons, the failure state for an AnCol society is illustrated by LeGuin's The Dispossessed. The failure state for an AnCap society is illustrated by Jennifer Government)

Good examples.