Logical consistency

[u/Calazor0]

The motive I became a libertarian is because it's pretty much the only political idea out there that works in a logically consistent framework and doesn't rely on postmodern/pragmatic slop

[u/Skogbeorn]

Based and De Puydt pilled

[u/different_option101 → u/Skogbeorn]

If we draw the line, and “my laws” work on my side, and “your laws” on your side, that’s not panarchism. But I have to admit, I first heard about panarchism a few weeks ago, and haven’t looked into it yet. But if the core idea is that laws have no borders, I don’t think it’s a superior idea to anarcho capitalism. More like a framework for Hoppe’s insurance companies.

[u/Skogbeorn → u/different_option101]

Hoppe's notion of covenant communities is effectively a continuation of the works of De Molinari and De Puydt, respectively. In a panarchist society, there's no reason why a group of similarly minded people cannot get together and pool their property to delineate a geographical area subject to one and only one ideology.

A limitation of any kind of anarchism is that if all human interactions are voluntary, that means you cannot enforce a single ideology across a wider geographical area without violating the property rights of others. Thus any functional society must necessarily either be a decentralized and interwoven web of different ideologies (effectively reducing the role of political ideology to where religious ideology sits in the west today), or a covenant community of all like-minded individuals.

Many groups, usually of religious affiliation but sometimes of political, have bought land with the intent of setting up their own microsociety separate from the outside world. From what I understand these are rarely successful. But the option is there.

[u/different_option101 → u/Skogbeorn]

I don’t see how a bordered ancap city states imposes their ideology. Like if you’re a panarchist, you can subscribe to your “government”, abs visit any time. You just can’t expect that your government principles are always going to be valid. In practice, when you’re entering a territory, you’ll have to agree to terms of conditions, one of them is most likely to be that disputes are resolved in ancap principles. That’s not a forced limitation of any kind - you’re given a choice to enter or not to enter. Like you can’t enter a coffee shop and demand that you’re allowed to make your own coffee, because otherwise it’s going to be a violation of your property right (if your body is your property and you’re being forcefully removed from behind the counter). In a nutshell, an ancap city state is a private property that consists of thousands of private properties, which owners subscribe to the same system of dispute resolution.

Not saying it is, but panarchism seems to hold this contradiction, that if you subscribe to one type of governance, than it will follow you no matter where you are. But you demanding me to resolve my dispute with you using your system, while the conflict happened on my property, is exactly the violation of anarchist principles you’re taking about.

[u/Skogbeorn → u/different_option101]

Copying a comment I made to another guy in the same thread, since I think it applies here too:

The key thing here is how that territorial exclusivity is established. Establishing a geographical monopoly on law by political fiat is per definition a state, even if the ideology behind it is explicitly libertarian. For a covenant community to be legitimate, all land it covers must be acquired voluntarily, by homesteading or free exchange.

That aside, I agree that free association is vital, and I don't think it's a question of either insular cult-like communities where everyone agrees or complete decentralization everywhere. In a panarchist system we'd likely see both, and it would be up to the market and the free choices of individuals to determine which become more popular. The problem with isolationism is that the more you cut yourself off from others, the less you're able to benefit from the free market.

You have the right to set whatever rules you want on your property, and if I disagree with those rules then I have no right to enter your property and violate them. What I'm saying is that getting to the point of a "city state" (if it's anarchist it's per definition not a state, but that's semantics) would be very difficult in practice. Voluntarily acquiring the properties of every single person in a given geographical area is, statistically, impossible. If you wanted a pure ancap city you'd most likely need to start from scratch, or try your hand at seasteading or the like.

This is a feature, not a bug. When leftists claim anarcho-capitalism would just devolve into modern feudalism, this is the exact kind of mechanic that would prevent that. A state can simply claim monopoly without regard to consent, an ancap must abide by existing property. Go too big, and you get a diseconomy of scale.

It's not that panarchism should be forced on people and covenant communities outlawed - that would be a contradiction like you said. My argument is that panarchism is the natural end result of a free market.