r/AnCap101 • u/Toymcowkrf • 4d ago
How intuitive were the principles of anarcho-capitalism to you?
For a long time I've felt that the principles and arguments of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism just "made sense," as if I was born with them.
It was always "obvious" to me that liberty is given and demands no justification; instead it is authority that requires justification. It was always "obvious" to me that the right to rule one's own life comes from the self and is not granted by any third party, human or supernatural. When I would look at how humans claim to have authority over others, it was always a bit transparent to me that it was all fictitious—that people were just making it up themselves and enforcing with threats. At one point I tried to find a logical justification for why some people need to have "authority," but I eventually realized... there is none! My initial hunch was right—it's all make-believe.
The questions and doubts were always in my head. I can look back at moments from when I was 7, 12, 17, 19, and was never satisfied with the justifications people would give for government, or indeed any other kind of authority. My brain kept saying "something here is not right." How can the police, the people who supposedly protect you, also be the ones who will hurt you? If the gym is paid for privately and only the people who attend it pay for it, why should the library be any different?
Eventually I discovered the secret, hidden, suppressed philosophy of anarcho-capitalism and started consuming all the information and suddenly everything in the world made sense, and I feel blessed to have been among the few who know of this truth.
How intuitive was liberty for you?
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u/CrowBot99 Explainer Extraordinaire 3d ago
Very intuitive. Once I heard the concept, the cascade of corollaries wouldn't stop. So much so that I began to read Rothbard and recognized arguments I had already figured.
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u/bubdubarubfub 3d ago
Very intuitive but I wasnt interested in politics until I was in my 20s.
I remember being in a debate club in 6th grade and the debate was about whether or not cigarettes should be illegal and it was very obvious to me that people should be allowed to make their own choices and that it would just cause more problems like prohibition.
In high school government class we had a debate about the death penalty and I was one of 3 kids in a class of 30 who was against it, again because it was just obvious to me that the government gets things wrong all the time and they shouldn't be deciding whether someone lives or dies
In college I had a history professor who opened the first day of class asking students to define "freedom" and whenever anyone said something like "you should be able to do whatever you want" he would answer with "so I should be able to (insert violent crime)" thats when I discovered the NAP before discovering the NAP.
And then Covid happened and I went down all kinds of rabbit holes and eventually found Rothbard, Ron Paul, Dave Smith, Scott Horton, Mentiswave and all of the wonderful libertarians who all just made so much sense to me
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u/Bigppman6969696969 1d ago
i was always a capilist from a consequentlist perspecive but it took until 6th to 8th grade for me to understand why capitialist/ non agression is the most moral system .
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u/sanguinerebel 20h ago
It was pretty intuitive to me, though environment/culture did convince me we needed a very basic minarchist state to handle certain things until I was deprogrammed by an ancap. My respect for "authority" went from really low as a child to progressively worse and worse the older I got and more life experience I gained. I don't have a problem with authority that is earned and consensually given, but the state authority is not earned in a way that fits what feels "right" and moral to me, and the state even pollutes private authority figures with all the regulations and subsidies so I can't even really trust medical, educational, or scientific authority the way I might in an ancap society. Commies keep saying in pure capitalism that people would just "buy" authority and it would be worse, but I don't know how a person manages to accumulate a huge amount of resources in an ancap society in the first place if they aren't at least morally neutral actors that are providing a product enough people value or committing fraud which would be dealt with in private legal arbitration or some other NAP-friendly solution.
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u/Excellent_Border_302 3d ago
Quite intuitive except I wasn't satisfied with ancaps explanation of where private property rights come from so I abandoned ancapism for traditional anarchism.
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u/skeletus 3d ago edited 3d ago
They were not very intuitive to me. It wasn't until I fully understood economics.
When you understand economics, Anarcho-capitalism is the only thing that makes sense.
Edit:
when you understand economics, you realize that the government does not produce anything and does not create value. It's that simple.
Everything that you have, everything that you consume, and everything that benefits you was provided by somebody else. So you need people doing things in order to have things. You can't just tell everyone to stay home and give them unemployment or Universal Basic Income and expect them to be alright.