Another common criticism of anarcho-capitalism that I've seen is that people think that if people have freedom to have the ability to defend themselves, for there to be private armies, than then this will lead to warlords taking over and ancapistan would be warlords constantly at war with each other.
I think ancaps in response have argued that states are kind of like "warlords" and they sometimes go to war with each other, and often are at peace because peace can be mutually beneficial. I guess there's no real guarantee of how much war ancapistan would or wouldn't have, any more than there's that guarantee with states.
What do you think of the "warlord" objection and how do you respond to it?
I think you hit the nail on the head. 90% of criticisms of ancapism are of things they people have no problem accepting in the current system.
We will not have private armies necessarily (not saying they can't form) as a form of defense in Ancapistan, but rather private militias. Militias are MUCH cheaper to operate, can operate in a guerilla warfare scenario relatively easily, and have a greater motivation than just material resources. That being said, the population will be armed and freedom oriented, ready to neutralize any form of warlord or statist taking over the ancap society. And companies will not form private armies on their own due to the sheer cost of maintaining an army, there is a reason that high taxes are necessary to run a public military or police force. The only way a warlord could take over an AnCap society is if the people let them. And before you bring up Somalia as an example, Somalia actually was improving in every quantifiable metric except for literacy (they were in fact improving faster than their neighbors) until the UN took over and established de facto statist control, and that lead to the rise of warlords in rural areas. So we can empirically see anarcho-capitalism, polycentric law, and spontaneous order in action and being more effective than top-down statist organization, yet people will say that "warlordz vil tak ovarrrr!!!"
The stupid masses ruining things would be my biggest worry about ancap society, more than all these other theoretical problems people come up with. You'll need something to appease "disenfranchised" people if you don't want continuous revolution. The militia will try to keep them down, but like you see with rich leftists today, there would be many elites trying to virtue signal to the people that they're on their side rather than actually helping them become self-sufficient individualists. Is it a violation of the NAP to shoot some aggrandizing tech CEO because he's funding anti-ancap activist groups that want to seize my property?
There would be private armies and there would be warlords taking over and it would look awefully close to the same thing as States.
This is actually essentially how things worked in ancient times more or less and arguably that was better.
If the end result of empowering people by giving them more liberty is an outcome that looks awefully a lot like what we have now, I fail to see the criticism.
Isn't same outcome with more freedom better than same outcome with less freedom?
It's hilarious that their worst-case scenario for anarcho-capitalism is basically what we have now.
People tell on themselves in such interesting ways.
"trade or war" applies to all economic, political, and religious systems throughout human history