Could a space government run on anarcho-capitalism?

Literally "Bakunin" from Infinity.
In short: you pay for a place onboard the spaceship and allowed to do whatever you want unless you harm the ship and/or it's inhabitants.

Otherwise, some sort of libertarianism would be nice for a space "government". You pick any planet out of the hundreds or thousands possibilities, and if you think it will suit you -- you move there. Would solve a shitton of problems, actually.

I mean. The concept of 'border' is a bit iffy in space. You can lay claim to, let's say, a few star systems, but there's not much in the way of natural borders like say rivers or mountains. Of course, there is precedent for "un"natural borders like the canadian-american border, but I think in the development of a spacefaring civilization, upstarts could make vague claims to asteroids or planets based purely on monetary incentives (essentially hire a private military to enforce the border), at least where official states haven't made claims yet. I think in the developmental phase of the spacefaring paradigm it would be common for asteroids, planets, or even entire star systems to be seized by private entities hunting for profit, incetivizing a migratory population to serve as it's productive base. I foresee three outcomes:
>The private entity places internal restrictions, enforces tariffs, and mans the border and becomes a state unto itself, eventually recognized by other powers. The birth of a nation.
>The private entity intended to take advantage of a loophole or avoid legal repercussions for specific activities, and acts as an outside manager for criminal activities in the old nations. A space mafia, essentially.
>The private entity intends to exploit the natural resources of it's new possessions to engage in commercial activities with the old nations, outside of whatever regulations would impede them in their home planet. Pretty much the ancap paradise.

This is all assuming the enterprise is successful, and the old nations don't take (effective) punitive measures against the private entity. In general, I think if the insane ancap utopia is ever put to practice, I think it would be in the birth of spacefaring as a public enterprise.

Yes.

>anarcho-capitalism
This meme is worse than the Big Bad Evil Guy grunt

You know what's worst about it? The fact that nearly everyone who talks about it simply doesn't understand it in the slightest, and just spouts off what they've read in dumb memes.
Ancap is the true way, which you'd all know if you knew anything about it.

I mean, it could if you actually convinced the people in the society that memes were a viable currency/commodity.

>"Bakunin"
Mikhail Bakunin was an anarchist - the leftist/socialist version of libertarianism (it made sense in the context of 19th century Europe). Anti-hierarchy, including hierarchy due to money equaling power. Quite different from anarcho-capitalism.

A fairly good interpretation of anarcho-capitalist space colonies would be "Luna: New Moon" by Ian McDonald.

A more sympathetic view would be the webcomic "Escape from Terra" by "Big Head Press." Which has all the rational objectivity of a Jack Chick pamphlet.

Suppose all of your neighbors revoke your easement that allows you to traverse their land in order to get to the market to buy food. You cannot leave your property without trespassing (NAP violation) and unless you can get to the marketplace, you will starve to death.

What do?

>anarcho
>capitalism

Please stop and talk about traditional games.

Call amazon to send me a drone.

We are talking about the future.

The free market necessaties the internet in some fashion.

Anarcho-capitalism has the same main problem that other flavours of anarchy have. Eventually the society will reach a critical mass of people, traditionally Dunbar's Number (the average number of people a single person can interact and recognize) as in the case of the Icelandic Pirate community. It's widely considered a historical example of a anarchist community and yet it never grew beyond ~200 people- which is the within the range of the Dunbar number.

I'd wager that an Anarcho=Capitalist society is most likely to naturally evolve into a feudal society. In an absolutely free market, it's inevitable that the most successful businesses and business people to consolidate their respective markets around themselves. This consolidation would also extend to the workforce. I have no doubt the successful enough companies would offer subsidized or free housing as a means of attracting new workers. Not only does such a tactic work as an incentive for potential employees, but it gives said companies a way to control, defend, and better manage their workforce.

This is probably how society developed during the formations of cities, with successful farmers attracting labour then consolidating their power through various means to eventually become the first kings of the first City-States.

This isn't meant to be an attack on Anarcho-Capitalism, as it's the least fantastical of the Anarchist flavours. That being said, it's important to note that it too is cannot survive in the long run.

You starve. Or violate the NAP and deal with the consiquences. But fuck your stupid hypothetical because you're attempting to critique a moral slash ethical system by invoking a constructed and largely absurd sceario that would, at best, establish that there is a case in which you feel it is not practical.

But there is no way to swing your scenario that would make the NAP unethical. Merely subjectively impractical, but ethics and morality don't give a fuck about practicality, particularly not subjective practicality.

Read Rothbard. Read Hoppe.

Given how vast space is, anarcho capitalists might be able to scrounge some sort of living. However, such a society (or lack thereof) would be extremely vulnerable to outside attacks, since all they would have for defence are a bunch of uncentralised mercs taking orders from different people. All it would take for it to collapse is one despot overlord to fuck them up and absorb them into his rule. This also applies to regular anarchy.

>Call amazon to send me a drone
Your neighbors claim to own the atmosphere surrounding your property and have installed buffers to prevent cell signals from escaping your yard.

Except no, because one can account for Dunbar's number already through networked communities and you're ignoring the transience of wealth that was less present in the past vs a developed civilization. Without govermmen support, maintaining large fortunes is nearly impossible over periods.

Then I teleport if we're constructing absurdist fantasies.

Unless of course the free market is something all peoples can participate in.

In which case removing the anarcho capitalists would be a bad idea.

We ancaps believe in our McSpace Program

Soon we will conquer the galaxy in the Great Icrusade

Since the vastness of space and latency of information fucks with the idea of centralized governments pretty hard, maybe, but it's more likely that individual solar systems or planets would form their own sub-governments and you'd get a "loose confederation of planet-states" type deal.

Can’t own the air up to the atmosphere unless you have worked all the air.

It’s not the same as land.

Anyways the best answer if the market can’t come to you would be to work out a deal with the landowners blocking the way.

Alternatively start hunting/farming on the land you or your company owns.

Not really. To say nothing that doing so would create an ulsor that would bleed said despot dry.

Putting aside the >ancap >government point, I think that once you start getting into space things pretty much would end up as effectively extreme libertarian or anarchist simply by default. Space is big and it's mostly empty. Finding people to even try to enforce laws on them out in the vastness of space, let alone even getting to them in time to do anything about what they're doing that you disapprove of, would be a monumental task. You could enforce things locally on planets and space stations, but assuming there's available travel, even then people can just simply leave if they decide you're being too much of a cunt.

>But there is no way to swing your scenario that would make the NAP unethical.

Okay, how about this:

Ten-year-old Billy the orphan just inherited 1 million dollars from his dearly-departed parents. Billy elects to buy and then consume $1 million worth of black tar heroin from Harry the drug dealer, who is more than happy to sell it to Billy.

Wat do?

I don't see why they would. Nations on planets still makes sense. Large governments like that don't really work and never have. The idea of planetary governments or star system feferations just is the shortcut for sci fi authors but it doesn't add up.

Well, if said anarcho capitalists exerted enough influence for them to cause this kind of trouble for the despot warlord, isn't this a centralisation of power and a move away from anarchy? Wouldn't it be more like a corporation in a Cyberpunk future?

Nothing?

Again, what is your point. You need to stake an ethical position, establish why it is valid, and apply it universally. If you can do that, I'd love to see it but I'm 100% certain you can't.

He does it and dies.

If he survives I hire him as a worker in my company.

Only an idiot would trust their money in the hands of a child without multiple failsafes including a panel of trusted servants/slaves/bodyguards.

Billy had liberty to do what he wanted to do with his money

Now Harry the drug dealer is very happy I guess

Now, from a Veeky Forums stand point, I do think that one can drop an Anarcho-Capitalist society into a sci-fi setting.

I think it would best work in a setting similar to Eclipse phase, is terms of humanity just colonizing the Solar System. Take out post-scarcity parts and the crazier aspects of post-humanism and you have the perfect setting for anarcho-capitalist societies to form. Space is a big place and their are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs to start up tiny company-communities in the emptiness of space.

This would also protect them from the other main weakness of anarchism: bigger organized states.

>To say nothing that doing so would create an ulsor that would bleed said despot dry.
Say what now?

Yeah, probably--come to think of it, there's no way to really enforce any agreement between separate solar systems. So instead of a loose confederation, you just have a bunch of planets or nations-upon-planets fucking off and running their own joint.

Yes, but in a lack of government, forming one of your own becomes a business innovation. Again, this is how societies likely formed after the advent of agriculture.

>Lots of settings have interstellar societies based off of the feudal system, OP.
... which doesn't really make much sense in most cases. Large communication and travel times necessitate some kind of distributed and easily scalable authority, as well as each entity usually having to generate enough resources locally for its own needs.

Just run one of those generic dystopic cyberpunk games where megacorps rule but on space, user

No?

Listen, the despot has to get something out of the conquest. Like, conquering shit is about resources. This is actually important for good setting design in RPGs too. Like, if you're not dealing with legit cosmic good or evil, its about resources at the core. Conquests has to lead to some sort if benefit, but ancapistan has no structure to take over for taxation or tarrifs, and a heavily armed population is hell for occupation forces. You'd have a hell of a time trying to extract resources from it, and the amount of troops needed would quickly outcost the benefits.

Further, this assumes the despot does no trade with ancapistan, as trade historically tends to defuse war. With no trade barriers, even more so.

Technically the free-business owners have the authority to use their money to anything, up too and including flexing their muscles against larger powers.

Considering the fact that businesses could be the size of nations, yes they would be like cyberpunk corps. However cyberpunk where anyone can get anything, from child slaves to robot guards

Honestly I think sci-fi is one of the few situations where ancap could work albeit be a darwinistic hellscape.

Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Also, you couldn't form a pure anarcho-capitalist society in existing networked communities, as existing networked communities are the one's with governments. Your best best is, as traditionally true throughout history, large amounts of autonomy for the merchant-class.

Hyper insurgency with extreme difficulty in extracting any value from occupation.

Ancapistan would have massive attrition values and your troop upkeep would spike massively with little to no income boost in game terms.

>and a heavily armed population is hell for occupation forces.

Though it also has no coordinated military for the initial resistance in comparison to something more centralised.

>tfw when this man is not your dad,and your real one is a socialist worm

Thats your assumption. Can't make declarative statements that way. Plus, that predates currency, as well as things like complex math and languages that allow for higher methods of tracking property.

It doesn't need it. The deterent is in it being not even worth it to invade.

Yes and?

When a company can just causally buy a bunch of cutting edge ships it would still be hard to take a person like that.

Assuming the despot doesn’t want access to the free market. Even a despot would want the ability to buy cutting edge weapons and child-slaves.

Far from being anarchy. People form corporations and enforce their own rules all the time. The only way you can have "anarchy" is when no one follows any rules. It crumbles almost instantly into people just killing, eating, and fucking because that's all people usually feel like doing. As soon as you have someone say, "Hey, do this" and someone obeys, you've moved into government. You can have simple tribes with a dictator, parties that vote on disagreements as a democracy, or groups that choose leaders democratically via contest in a meritocracy, but any form of leadership or rules means "anarchy" doesn't actually exist for those people.

I mean, maybe? Like, no one expects sudden ancapistan. Its a goal to work towards, not a magic pill.

You have no idea what anarchy or governments mean.

Exept companies that big are as unfeasible as planetary states.

The name of the ship has nothing to do with it's philosophy, though. "Bakunin" is pure ancap.

So the deterrent is being such a shit-hole no one would want to live there?

No you fucking idiot, the deterant is it costing too much to occupy.

Not entirely.

Feudal systems have run countries before and that’s as close to ancap as we are going to get anytime soon.

Shut up, retard-o.

And what makes ancap more good at resistance than any other method of government (Or lack thereof)? As this seems to somehow assume that ancap land has infinite morale and the coordination for organised resistance despite the anarchy.

No the deterrent is that the ancaps form a free market which boosts all countries enconomies and can be used to obtain anything.

If I was a supreme leader of a country I would keep those guys around. they would have the best prices as they don’t deal with taxes, and would have everything up for sale.

That’s a great asset.

Sure, just like anything else, for like a day until it collapses into unaccountable tyranny of the wealthy elite.

You see, this is what it comes down to. For a anarcho capitalist to be able to fend off an outside aggressor, they will need to be highly organised and have resources, which inevitably forms a community around it. A bunch of disorganised moots taking orders from different people, even if they all share a common goal, isn't going to be a match for a warlord who has been pillaging his way through space and has a capable military fleet to boot. The more resources they have to seize, the more attractive it's going to look to said warlord and the more he might be willing to spend on it. You can't have military capabilities strong enough to fend off something like that without some sort of infrastructure or centralised organisation, especially not under the command of a bunch of people who are a law onto themselves.

They might get ignored if the operation wouldn't be cost efficient, but since this is presuming space age technology, the sheer amount of different ways the warlord could siege them without risking manpower would be near infinite.

The big deterrence is that ancaps can potentially own anything.

One dude could have a group of loli cyborgs as his military.

Another could have bought 30 nuclear bombs on a bet.

You don’t know.

Not a previous poster, I just want to puzzle this out.

Usually in Ancapistan discussions, people talk about how ancaps are some kind of strategic caltrop fucking nightmare land if you want to conquer them as a despotic warlord.

But how do you account for the self interest of people in this scenario? Ancaps aren't super-rational creatures. None of them will want to be the one to cast the first stone against an aggressor vastly superior to their own holdings, even if the combined might of Ancapistan could rip them apart, even if it WILL rip them apart once the first snake has bitten, this doesn't change that the first person to resist conquest will likely be the one to face the brunt of the retaliation, a retaliation which will likely obliterate them utterly given the difference in operational scale between our hypothetical invading despot and an individual unit of ancap society. They need to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause, which I feel is exactly the sort of attitude living in ancapistan would RAPIDLY beat out of people.

You could read the other posts where I talk about the combination of a heavily armed population, a lack of existing tax infrastructure (ie: there is no state taxing things to take over,) lack of compliant population to extracting resources. Troop presence would need to be massive and would take constant losses. Morale would be a shitshow.

Insurgencies are decentralized for a reason. Plus, the plethora of private security companies wouldn't exactly hurt things either.

Regardless, anarchy doesn't mean unorganized. It means No Rulers. IE: no government. Voluntary organization would exist.

You realize that ancaps are businesses right?

They would have motive to defend themselves and the free market.

Why? You're ignoring years of evidence about insurgencies.

Plus you're ignorant of what anarchy actully means. Please stop, you're making a fool of yourself.

>But fuck your stupid hypothetical because you're attempting to critique a moral slash ethical system by invoking a constructed and largely absurd sceario that would, at best, establish that there is a case in which you feel it is not practical.
Why is it so absurd?
We established laws about access easement and shit, precisely because you have situations where some guy is unable to enter or leave his property because his neighbour(s), either out of conjecture or spite, landlocked him out of his land.

They also tend to overlook the tendency of people to collaborate with invaders to their own advantage; this happened several times throughout history.

By this logic how do insurhencues ever form? Nothing is special about ancaps there, its just they'd be ridiculously well equipped.

remnants of the government could exist as some private enterprise, for example providing administrative services. but you're right since there would be no central governing body

>implying in ancap any sane person would buy property without a private road leading to it, with a contract clause ensuring you have access to it
>implying that in such scenario revoking your acces wouldn't break NAP and you couldn't kill your neighbours with a rented orbital laser

ancap allows for hierarchies (even pseudo-governments) to arise, the difference is their voluntarism. forcing you to join or preventing you from leaving breaks the NAP

You know nuclear weapons don't magically come into existence.
Why would the people with the expertise and resources to build them be selling them to anyone who wants one?
Where are these people getting the resources and expertise to arm and use these weapons once they own them?

Historically none of those factors have been anything but a temporary delay to states seeking to expand into previously ungoverned territory.

This
>low prices because competitive market+ no taxes
>nearly everything is in stock

If a dude started attacking business owners, he would likely get crapped on by other countries who enjoy the free market.

No, a real form of government would assert itself.

I do think it would work in a sci-setting though. Space is a big place that will likely be filled with tiny communities (i.e. mining stations). It's hard to maintain a unifying government in a situation like that, and the small community sizes will lead to a situation where anarchist societies could form. Entire stations too would be "ruled" by no other authority than the funding company.

Of course, if space warfare were to become a thing, likely so would space piracy. It just takes one captain to go rogue with his warship. Then you start to see the signs of feudalism, where station workers have to be loyal to their companies, who in turn provide protection to the workers by hiring security ships, who themselves will have to be lavished with benefits to prevent them and their warships from going rogue.

Actually, I think that's a cool idea. Stellar robber barons who take contracts from space corporations to protect segments of space from the odd space pirate. In the meantime they get to 'demand tribute' from the various stations who really have no recourse to go to complain to the company directly. As far as the companies are concerned, unless there is proof that the security captain is taking more profits than it is to send an internal investigator, there's no reason to try and remove them.

What happens next? Do the miner start plotting against their security? What happens in the case of a corporate rebellion? The workers might be able to quit if they really want to, but how can they when their place of residence and only transportation is property of the company they're trying to leave? Would the company send security ships to take back their station, should one rebel?

Funny you should bring that up.

Which is irrelevent to the ethics of it.

Except nothing like a developed ancapistan has existed. Its not 'ungoverned' its SELF GOVERNED.

>and a heavily armed population is hell for occupation forces. You'd have a hell of a time trying to extract resources from it, and the amount of troops needed would quickly outcost the benefits.
I too want my life to become Space Vietnam.

If their motive is to defend themselves, compliance and cooperation with the invaders is simply a more efficient option for them, unless they know that the terms are total surrender of all their resources and death to the women and children or whatever, on the assumption that someone else might expend their resources to deal with the problem instead. Or even not on that assumption, since their personal choice is to comply and suffer a fate less than total destruction, or to not comply and suffer total destruction.

It's the behaviour we see in ACTUAL markets at the very least, and I feel it is overoptimistic to expect that the lack of governments as people to pick up after the mess left by business would influence behaviour *enough* to change that.

Like I said, it only works if they have some kind religious zealotry and matyrdom for the sake of the free market itself, and I can't imagine ancapistan being the sort of place that fosters faith and irrational attachment to causes amongst its citizens as personality traits.

If there is a market an ancap would likely have it, considering the way the philosophy works.

Why not sell nuclear weapons, the NAP will protect you and other business owners would buy your weapons.

>Morale would be a shitshow.

So would the Ancap situation. Generally Insurgencies work a lot better when they've got an overarching cultural framework to keep morale up (Patriotism and Religon are both good ones there).

You are also making interesting assumptions about just how armed the populace is. Violence in an ancap society is a hotly debated topic.

Extortion is a violation of the NAP. Blow them away.

Large communication and travel times exclude the possibility of an overarching authority.

>The big deterrence is that ancaps can potentially own anything.

So could a government.

Self-government is ancap.

But thats it. Its Space Vietnam times 1000. Its Vietnam if Vietnam had modern weapon and a booming private economy and massive trade relations.

You know that the free market and being able to do whatever you want is rather attractive.

I’d fight for that.

Even if I was a ancap wageslave, the fact that I could just go out and buy an ak-47 and no one would care is nice.

No restrictiond on arms at the least implies easy access.

>Which is irrelevent to the ethics of it.
Yeah.
But i think we need to take a step back if said system allows for this shit.

Right and the great thing about free markets is that nobody ever cheats and nothing ever goes wrong. It's a perfect system. Everyone is free to market, and protected by the free market, and everybody knows everything equally and never makes mistakes and monopolies don't actually exist, but if they did the metaphorical hand of the market would correct it so there's no danger of market failure, and even if there was it wouldn't be used as an excuse to seize power because who would do that?

Besides the hand would protect us so you have to die to appease the Hand. Your blood will wash the Great Hand clean to trade. It's just simple economics. The market will correct your flesh and buy our shares in the Great Hand.

>Even if I was a ancap wageslave, the fact that I could just go out and buy an ak-47 and no one would care is nice.

And the invading guy might be offering you rights beyond 'Wageslave'. That's a negative term for a good reason.

>Checked
Not the same user, but I don't believe insurgencies are possible in space. Sure, planetary colonies could potential put up an insurgency, but space colonists and stellar captains would have a MUCH harder time putting up an effective resistance.
Space colonists have no mountains, rainforests or similar remote locations to hide in. All they have is their station. All a determined aggressor needs to do is blockade the station and starve them of the supplies they need to break their will. Insurgents on star ships or who get access to a star ship might have a better time since they actually have mobility, but even then one must ask where they will get their supplies: their fuel, spare parts, raw materials and so on. Insurgencies on Earth are able to forage for their supplies then take refuge in the wilderness. Insurgent ships would need to target stations for their supplies, which is no easy feat if the aggressor starts to properly defend their installments.