Comments by "Regis" (@Timbo5000) on "Turns out, Anarcho-Capitalism ISN'T "Anarchy" (RE: LiquidZulu)" video.

@dankmemes7423 If we live in an economy in which you must work or else you starve, that is coercion. We are all born into that coercion. You only get to choose which business you forcibly work in. Even in ancapistan, coercion cannot be escaped. In a socialist state, the coercion of working or dying is replaced with the coercion of those that work forcibly having the fruits of their labour distributed to all in need of these resources. Coercion is a fact of nature. Trying to create a society free of coercion is attempting to erase consequences of our (in)actions. It's pointless. All we get to do is shift the consequences around, not eradicate them.
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@mniskin You speak of an idyllic situation in which the owners of land are also the ones working the land. In that hypothetical situation I would agree with you. However, I am speaking of a situation in which there are landowners who themselves do nothing, but use their ownership rights over the land to employ others to actually work it for them. In theory they could even purchase land, leave it completely unused and forcibly remove anyone that wishes to use the land from it due to their ownership rights. I don't care how these owners became the owner. Whether a feudal king bought all the land he rules over or took it by force, feudalism inherently is a system of coercion. Therefore what matters is how owners can and will employ their ownership rights to dictate to others how they can acquire their needs. In ancapistan it is theoretically possible and permitted to buy up vast swathes of land and to literally implement feudalism there. And if theoretically almost all land is owned in this manner, and you only get to choose who your feudal lord is, you can impossibly escape this coercion. Any system which allows this cannot claim to not be coercive. Ancap allows coercion by private actors and even backs this up by force (enforcement of ownership rights). That is why I say that only a system in which ownership rights do not exist can be non-coercive. If it is legal for anyone to start using unused land, and illegal for anyone to forcibly take over land that is currently being used by another, only then is there no coercion. Only then is every land "owner" also the producer of food. Only then can you claim that in all cases, you either produce food yourself or you must exchange something to an individual who themselves laboured to produce the food. Only that is voluntary. Capitalism cannot exist without coercion because ownership rights inherently require coercion to enforce them. If I own a house but leave it empty and live elsewhere, squatters have to be forcibly removed and denied access to that home in order to protect my ownership rights. It does not matter whether the state or a private actor enacts this violence towards the squatter. The point is it requires (a threat of) violence, always. So ancap cannot claim to be non coercive. Any system with ownership rights cannot claim such. Or perhaps a system in which ownership rights only exist as long as you actually use the good you own, and expire after a set period of not using it. F.e. I can leave a house empty for a year before my ownership rights expire and the house becomes res nullius. By the way: I want to clarify that a mistake many make is thinking that capitalism = free market. No. Capitalism is only one specific TYPE of free market, which places emphasis on ownership rights and thereby enables use of capital to acquire ownership over anything and passively generate income. There are many ways to organise a free market because yes, even free market functions based on rules. And choices can be made in regards to those rules.
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@floydlooney6837 I.e. feudalism is a form of ancapistan according to you as long as the royals legally own the land their serfs work on based on a voluntary contract to provide the fruits of their labour in exchange for a right to live/work on the land. At this point are you not making a mockery of the "anarchist" principles of ancapitalism? And what once this relationship has become the norm and serfs only get to choose which landowner they get to serve? No coercion because you get to choose your lord by moving? That is not anarchism but quite literally feudalism.
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@mniskin In an economic system in which we deliberately deny people basic necessities, we weaponise the threat of starvation to force them into working under the conditions of our system. The choice to not participate does not exist. If all land already is owned, you are denied access to the means of freely cultivating food for yourself. You are forced to acquire food by exchanging something for it to someone who owns the land and sets the conditions under which you can acquire your basic needs. It always is coercive. The only non-coercive system might be one in which ownership rights do not exist. Ownership rights inherently require coercion to protect (i.e. removing someone from an empty house that is owned by you but not actually used by you). Ownership rights can also be abused by owning many things you do not actively use and dictating conditions under which others may acquire/use your unused goods/amenities. If these are basic needs of others, they can even be used to exert serious power over have-nots that need something you have ownership over. That inherently also is coercion.
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@fazole You can't in a system in which it is possible for random people with capital to buy land they will never use themselves, only as a means to dictate to those that will work the land under which conditions they are allowed access to that land. As long as ownership rights are protected (which inherently requires coercion anyway), you cannot assume that there will be no coercion in the economy
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@snex000 If I weaponise them to force you to do something, yes they are. I.e. needing food is not coercion, but someone buying up all land so that you cannot produce your own food and forcing you to perform certain tasks in order to gain access to food can be coercion by the monopolist. It depends how much control one or a few owners have over resources. Control over resources places individuals in positions of power over others. Especially when their control is only based on the ownership they have on paper, which is very different from an individual who farms land asking you compensation for the fruits of their labour.
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Anarchists would generally describe their ideology as wishing to abolish all unjust (incl. unnecessary) hierarchies. This is why I feel like "when there is no state" is a poor definition of anarchism. That definition to me seems like one that the "anarchy is when chaos/no rules" type crowd has formed. If you look at actual anarchist theory it's more about abolishing hierarchies. Anarchism never aspired to not be a state, as per your definition of state. I think the "anarchism is when no state" definition refers to states as simply the centralised governments we know today (and empires/governments we have known when anarchist theory formed), not the more elaborate definition that you use.
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Under your definition of state, every single political ideology inherently describes a type of state, including anarchist ideologies. And arguably NOT having a state is impossible under this definition, because not having any type of social organisation whatsoever goes against basic humanity as it requires almost all social ties between humans to be severed and us to live radically as individuals to the point where it goes against our very nature. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your here though. Anyway, it's fine to use this historical definition of state, but you must also recognise that the political ideology behind anarchism mostly refers to the term "state" in a different context. Mostly in the context of states as they existed when the ideology of anarchism formed. Most ppl today when saying "state" will also only refer to government forms as they exist today. Perhaps you are using a correct, but outdated definition?
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