Intro To Anarcho Capitalism

We start with land. Land is the basis for everything that occurs on earth. Every function that humans partake in is reliant on the land. Land ownership is a way to incentivize efficient use of land to allow people to prosper. To what extent people may own land will tell us to what extent people can flourish. Living in the United State, we are instilled from day one that we are the greatest country to prosper in. We are told the US has such qualities of property rights and capitalist freedoms that we are lucky to live in such a great place. 

The people that shed a tear on the Fourth of July to salute the founding fathers for kicking Britain's ass for a 3% tax on tea are the same people that pay 30% of their income to the government. And somehow they still don't see a problem. Institutions have indoctrinated kids, leading to teens, leading to adults, to have a patriotic mindset. People support the founding fathers ideals but are completely fine living under the same government the fathers fought against. Here are some quick facts to see if you live in freedom or a dystopian novel:

#1: You don’t pay taxes, they take taxes. The government allows you to keep a certain portion of your income, as they can take more any time they like.

#2: You don’t own any property, the government is renting it to you. See what happens if you don’t “pay” your property taxes. The government will come and take it. You will own nothing and be happy, they said.

#3: Do something such as drink raw milk, well that's illegal.

Now people can set rules and regulations, but who gets to decide that. We probably all heard the phrase from our parents or used it ourselves: “My house, My rules”. This common anthem echoed by parents alike establishes that they, the land owners, get to set the rules on how people, particularly family members, should contribute to the household. Homeowners give conditions for being within their property and if participants choose to accept then the homeowner is inclined to allow them to stay on the property. If the participants choose to not accept the condition, then the homeowner has the right to remove them from the property, as he does not want to associate with them. We see this with current Governments. Governments set imaginary borders that say anything within is under its jurisdiction. Now we can say that is just as they are the owner of the property. But are they really?

Let's say that you are the first person to land on the planet Mars. You land near the base of a mountain range. You set up a base that is approximately 1 acre of land on Mars. Do you own it? Yes. You are currently occupying that land that was previously unused. You have exerted your labor and resources to transform a barren plot into a habitable zone, a tangible extension of your efforts and vision. Clear boundaries have been drawn as your house can be differentiated from the barren landscape. Now lets say a second person lands miraculously on top of those mountain ranges you neighbor. You have never set foot on those mountain ranges. Now can you say that those are your mountain ranges. No. Say the second person builds his base upon those mountain ranges. Do you have the right to receive rent from that second person? No, because they are not on your land. Land ownership can only occur in two ways, setting claim to land by utilizing as much of the un-claimed land as possible before another person's property line prevents you from doing so. Or to voluntarily trade the rights to that parcel of land with the previous land owner, and that land would have traced itself back to the first principal of land ownership. 

Some might say that conquest can be used to establish new property rights. America and many other countries have been established this way.  But this argument falls flat on its face. If I take your TV away from you at gunpoint, and now it is in my possession, do I now own the TV. In today's age, that would be considered theft. Killing others or threatening to use force against others to give up land is theft. Those people are not the rightful owners.

To further explain this we can talk about some ethics used to solve conflicts. Say these two people have arrived on an island and have a dispute over a rock. Alice originally discovered this rock and took it out of its natural state by sharpening the end to be used for drawing in the sand. Bob on the other hand wants to use that same rock, that Alice fashioned, to hunt rabbits. We have a conflict. One action excludes the other. Who gets to use the rock? 

Might Makes Right: An ethic stating that whomever wins, should win. It is the principle that those who are powerful can impose their will or rules on those who are not. Morality can be dictated by people as they can defend their position with power, thus solving our conflict. The people with the power will decide who is right or if Bob is stronger and more powerful than Alice, then the conflict is settled. But this ethic has a large contradiction. If a minority of people believe in the “Might Makes Right” ethic and the majority (the power) believes it to be false, then by the ethics standard, the ethic is false. But something can't be false and true at the same time. This ethic is a contradiction and inconsistent. 

Democracy Ethic: This is an ethic used today by many governments to give power to citizens to decide what is good and what is bad. By majority vote, people decide if citizens should possess guns, marijuana, raw milk, etc. But this ethic also allows for something else to occur. Say 10 people arrive upon an island and 9/10 want to rape one person. There is a conflict of the use of the one person's body, and according to the democracy ethic, the majority can rape the minority. Now we have legalized gang rape.

Today these are the most, if only, ways to “solve” a conflict. But they are flawed systems.

The only true ethic is something called The Consent Ethic. “Say Eve is standing under a tree and Adam wants to stand there instead. So he pushes her out of the way. It is clear here that Adam violated Eve’s consent, not the other way around. In other words, Adam has initiated a conflict over the use of that standing room.” As previously mentioned, the only way to objectively obtain ownership of something is to homestead it. She got there first and started making use of the land before anyone else. Adam pushing her causes aggression upon her body, which she owns (as she is making use of it and is the only person that can make use of it) and the space she was occupying. 

This ethic can now be called the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). A clear definition of the NAP is as follows: Aggression is inherently illegitimate, no matter if the result of those actions is damaging, beneficial, or neutral to the owner, when they are against the owner’s free will and interfere with his right to self-determination or the principle of self-ownership.

To prove this ethic is true: 

The act of argumentation requires that both parties are capable of exchanging propositions, which implies recognition of their control over their bodies. This makes it impossible to argue against self-ownership without contradicting the fundamental premise of being able to propose anything in the first place. Just like arguing the premise "no one should ever argue" would be a contradiction, saying "you can't own yourself" would also be a contradiction. At best, someone making that claim would be making a joke, therefore it has no validity as a proposition. No one could possible argue against self-ownership, the right to exclude others from using your body, thus the Non Aggression Principle (NAP) is correct. The law of non-contradiction can also be found to be true, as both contradictory propositions cannot be true and false at the same time.

Now to use the NAP to decide if Alice or Bob can use the rock: Alice found the stone in the state of nature, previously unowned by anyone. She takes the stone and uses it to draw in the sand. At the same time, Bob wants to take the stone, sharpen it, and use it for rabbit hunting. This lead to a conflict, as both cannot use the rock simultaneously for their own purposes. It’s clear that the conflict is initiated by Bob, who tries to claim what Alice has already taken possession of. It's important to recognize that there is a fundamental distinction between owning and merely using something, a distinction understood by both Alice and Bob as they each assert their own claims to DIRECT the rocks use (drawing in the sand or rabbit hunting), essentially claiming ownership. If ownership were simply about current control, then anyone could override previous claims by taking control, which would collapse the distinction between direction and possession. This contradicts the shared understanding that ownership means rightful direction. Thus, we are left with the conclusion that the initial director has the only defensible claim to ownership—initial direction is the only just direction, and thus it is the homesteader who uniquely attains ownership status.

This is the introduction to Anarcho-Capitalism. A way in which people voluntarily live. No coercive powers interfere with voluntary decisions made by individuals. We already live in anarcho-capitalism, but we do have some coercive powers. In other articles I will discuss why anarcho-capitalism is a success and the ways we see it today.