So, on a forum I'm on, some ancap decided to make a post asking us to explain why some of us think that they tend to develop authoritarian tendencies. Now, I don't debate ancaps. I don't have the patience for it any more as arguing with anyone who is just so dogmatic and thinks that they're right is a waste of time, but I did decide to make a blog post about it.
For reference, the person who originally issued the challenge was a so called "anarcho monarchist" so we're already off to a swimming start, so....
Anyway, they decided to ask us to prove it using posts on the mises website, which is an anarcho capitalist blog, and while no post is a smoking gun, many of them are red flags.
Anyway, I'll post three articles from there, all about democracy.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/democracy-not-same-thing-freedom
https://mises.org/mises-daily/democracy-and-liberty
https://mises.org/mises-wire/democracys-road-tyranny
After all, the reason why ancaps often go down that road are because they despise democracy. You see, ancaps take locke's idea of natural rights, life, liberty, and property, and take them to extremes. They believe that those three principles are a form of objective morality that cannot and should not ever be violated, lest they go against the natural order of things. And this is why i dont debate them. Because they'll just start from this position that their rights are morally objective and anyone violating them is bad. I mean, in trying to expand my own moral framework, I've come around to life and liberty a bit, but property? No, I strongly maintain that property is merely a social convention and not on par with the other aims of morality.
And let's face it, democracies often inevitably go in the direction of wanting to take a rich person's property and redistribute it. Even I'm strongly in this camp, with my pro UBI mindset. Of course, this presents a problem for ancaps, as their moral system relies these natural rights being respected and enforced. And ultimately, when people start finally coming around to the injustices of their economic system, they basically become authoritarian in nature. They would rather have a strong dictatorship like a monarchy, or an oligarchy, rule over people while forcing their views on people, while keeping the masses, which they actually hate and have disdain for as they see themselves as part of the chosen upper class, away from their precious property rights.
And that's how they often end up going authoritarian. In reality, anarchy has always been a bit of a pipe dream for these guys, and their ideas are basically like the right wing equivalent of communism. Ya know, sound good on paper but don't work in reality? Because their ideas are nonsensical. Natural rights don't exist in reality, they're all social constructs, and while I would argue that morality should ultimately serve life and liberty in their own way, property is, once again, lower on the totem pole for me. Property is just how we distribute things, and there is no singular moral answer to this question. Obviously some inequality is a good thing because we need to tie property to work somewhat in order to motivate people to work, but how much? And how comfortable should the lowest rungs of society be? That's debatable. And I tend to argue on utilitarian grounds here, with the greatest good for the greatest number, with some level of rawl's veil of ignorance here (as applied by people like van parijs) implying that everyone should be guaranteed to a reasonable minimum standard of living.
After all, if we just let capitalism act according to its natural impulses, most property will be siphoned to the top, income inequality will be massive, the masses will be poor, and often enslaved to serve the wealthy. And that's where most people end up embracing more left wing forms of thinking. We understand that their system just leads to these massive inequalities in the first place, and that it requires significant state action to actually begin to make capitalism livable for the majority of the population.
Even more so, anarcho capitalism is philosophically incoherent, because you kind of need a strong state or authoritarian (a "leviathan" if you will) to actually enforce property rights to begin with. That stuff doesnt just happen naturally. Capitalism grew out of statism. And states have historically enforced private property through violence. Just ask 19th century strikers about that. Or really, the entirety of the world colonized by western powers. Btw, you know ayn rand seemed okay with just genociding the native americans? I'm not kidding. So you're saying that private property has always been a settler colonial initiative intended to justify only white europeans' claims of property? Always has been. We have this system set up to serve rich people, with the rest of the world just being oppressed and turned into slaves. That's literally what capitalism is. And this is why leftists become so revoluntary against capitalism.
Now, I don't support revolution. I think that the positive results of capitalism and statism speak for themselves and I don't support anarchy. But I do support moved toward greater levels of justice for the underprivileged. And yes, I realize now I'm starting to sound woke, but keep in mind, in my mind, I don't support action on the basis of mere identity politics. I support action that helps everyone. UBI, medicare for all, free education, affordable and accessible housing, a gradual reduction of the work week, etc. I believe in progressively making life better for people, keeping the aspects of current social structures that work while also reforming that which can be changed to make life better.
And ultimately, I think the results of my system would speak for themselves. you have your cake and eat it too. You have some form of capitalism, along side social justice for all. You have the poor taking care of, the working class not basically being slaves, and you have a more equitable system of property than exists now, one that keeps the functionalist aspects of the current system that make it work, while also ending poverty and overt economic coercion.
But ultimately? Ancaps are a fundamental opponent or enemy of my system. Because at the end of the day, they see my redistributionary measures as a violation of their "inalienable rights" and the second the people move in such a direction, many ancaps will just become full on fascists or monarchists, arguing for a system in which their property rights regime is forced on the populace. Because anarchy was never gonna work and this weird idea they have of having "rights enforcement organizations" (ie, private police or pinkertons as they've been tried in the real world) was never gonna actually work.
One article talks about plato's republic. Well, plato had three main forms of government, rule by one, rule by the few, and the rule by the many. Rule by none just aint happening, so you're getting one of those three. I beleive democracy is the least bad of all systems, and yes, i still believe that even after 2024 and realizing that most people are fricking stupid. The answer there is education, not oligarchy or dictatorship. But most ancaps? Push comes to shove, they'll welcome a dictator in order to preserve their preferred economic system. And they WILL push for a monarch or fascist strongman if they fear that democracy will modify the existing property rights system to be more equitable and fair to others.
And that's what it comes down to. And that's why I fully argue that, yes, there is an ancap to fascist pipeline that has become pretty apparent since 2016. Ancaps have always been a bit of a joke to me, even as a former right libertarian, I just can't justify anarchism, you at least need a state with a strong army and police to maintain law and order. But now they're becoming scary, because in this age of trump, many of them are descending into the intellectual dark web and their hatred of the masses and their opinions cause them to become more authoritarian to win their ideological battle, with many just dropping anarcho capitalism altogether and becoming some form of "alt right", whether fascist or monarchist.
And even the OP who issued this challenge seems to be a bit of a walking contradiction, asking us to prove this while his own posting history shows us that he's a monarchist who wants "neofeudalism." You can't make this crap up.
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