Some thoughts on market Anarchism

Market anarchism is definitely the most plausible and least utopian of all anarchist theories. Market anarchism, sometimes known as anarcho-capitalism, is the theory that if the government were removed, its functions could be completed to a passable degree by private institutions. So security firms would replace the police, private courts would replace the judiciary, and so forth. The market anarchist might claim that the market would provide these things better than government, or somewhat worse than government - the important thing is that they wouldn't provide them to a terrible degree, with people having their rights routinely infringed. Here are some general thoughts

Market anarchism has been tried before. Well, sort of. Often people say that if a state of market anarchy was achieved, one of the security firms that would emerge would eventually turn into a government and we'd be back to square 1. Anarchists dispute this for whatever reason, but actually I think we have a historical example - in fact, many historical examples - of this being true. States haven't existed forever. I'm not sure when the first state was (it would of course depend on how you define a state), but there must have been a time when we lived under anarchy. Animals live under anarchy, and given that we evolved from lesser animals, we presumably did too. But, communities emerged and eventually states emerged (or perhaps states emerged at exactly the same time as communities emerged, since those communities probably routinely used coercion to stop certain behaviours). If that has happened under anarchy before, why shouldn't it happen if we tried it now? The anarchist might respond by saying that if that did happen if we achieved market anarchy now, we haven't really lost anything since we're back to where we are. But that of course isn't true - infantile states are often brutal, corrupt, undemocratic and have little respect for rights. States had existed a very long time before universal suffrage existed (I don't take ancient Athens as a counter example to this, as only about 18% of the population had the vote). Thus, by attempting market anarchism, we risk returning to terrible statism.

The effect on the poor. A libertarian talking about the effect on the poor! What is this! What I mean here is that if security firms were to emerge, they would of course have to charge a price. They might be able to offer different schemes, where you get more protection for more money. But even the cheapest scheme, which would protect you from being murdered, enslaved, or having your property taken off you, would be pretty expensive, given the amount of administration, detectives and equivalent of beat cops that would be required. The poorest in society who struggle to pay for food would not be able to afford any sort of insurance in the market anarchist world. Thus, they would be open to their rights being infringed with no recourse to the perpetrator at all. I think there is a good case for some degree of egalitarianism with respect to rights - so this result would be unacceptable.

Security company war. Security companies would have to make a profit; to do that, they would need to attract customers. One particularly effective way of attracting customers in any market is to get the competition out of the market. This might be done by predatory pricing, or improving one's product using technology which other firms don't have. But I fear that under a system of market anarchy, there would be a temptation to use another way of getting rid of the competition - to actually kill them. Security companies would have high start up costs and probably large economies of scale, so there wouldn't be that many of them. If there were, say, only 4 security companies in the market (not an implausible number by any means), one company (or perhaps three of them together) could take out the offices and personnel of another company, and (if all companies had an equal number of customers), would increase their customers by an average of a third each. War is expensive, but that would mean a big increase in profits. Now, the market anarchist might say that individuals would desert a company which waged war on another. But I am pretty sceptical of this. Individuals are largely self interested (the market anarchist agrees with me here), and a security firm which has already proven itself in battle is a good one to go with - going with another could be risky as they could be the next target. Furthermore, it seems that the actions consumers take against firms which do immoral things is pretty weak. It is well known that some clothes companies use slave labour - but they don't see much of a reduction in their sales. I suppose some consumers buy Fairtrade products rather than 'unfairly' traded products, but I think this is a pretty niche case, since Fairtrade's success happens only with cheap products, such as coffee, and to be honest some of Fairtrade's goods genuinely are better - whereas a 'fair' security company's goods - providing security - would actually be worse.

That'll do for now.

EDIT: Just noticed that my three emboldened points all rhyme. I should turn this blog into a rap.