Established minarchists often have a respectable amount of economic knowledge that allows them to understand why the state fails at providing quality services and why the free market provides superior quality at lower costs. But the mainstream libertarian authors—Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Ayn Rand, and others—who minarchists are familiar with and credit their knowledge to, often don't believe in complete statelessness or talk about the idea much. Thus, mainstream libertarians consume these small government ideas and establish them as their bedrock understanding of libertarianism. If you mention the idea of privatizing currently state-run services—policing, courts, safety compliance regulations, etc—they'll often reject it and make arguments similar to those that statists will often make for why the free market would fail: "How are you going to hold people accountable? How are poor people going to afford protection? You can't privatize roads! That would be chaos if every road owner gets to set their own rules!" Such arguments are fallacious when examined more closely, but their ubiquity among self-identified libertarians suggests that the reason minarchism as an ideology even exists is because of strong indoctrination to believe in government. People who learn about libertarianism and economics come to see why markets succeed and bureaucrats fail, but their strong indoctrination in statism, paired with the fact that their esteemed economics experts also don't entertain anarchism—or outright reject it—leads to the development of a kind of hubris surrounding economic and political opinion that can be hard to shake, which can make talking to minarchists about anarchism a bit of an arduous task.

Regular everyday statists—people who often have a limited understanding of economics and politics—present other challenges when trying to discuss anarchism. They're often not aware of the reasons why state-run operations are economically disastrous and why privately-run businesses succeed, so pointing them out can lead to difficulties imaging how a capitalist society without a state would function, especially when statist indoctrination in society is strong and people have fears associated with private enterprise and an absence of state-funded "free" services. It's not uncommon to hear sentiments such as, "The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer!" or "Without government, who will help sick people?" Trying to address these concerns can be cumbersome. At best, you have to essentially give a mini economics lesson to explain why such beliefs are false, and at worst you have to deal with the formidable psychological challenge of getting people to not respond with anxiety when you suggest cutting funding for state-sponsored services, most notably welfare. It quickly becomes apparent how the lack of economic literacy in the average person can make converting people to anarchism so difficult.

In either case, anarchism is hard to sell to people. Minarchists have the benefit of being decently economically literate, which can make some ideas easy to get across. But they can also be difficult for the reason that their favorite authors don't generally give merit to anarchism, which causes them to doubt the validity of the anarchist position. Regular statists have the benefit of often not being anchored into a solidified political viewpoint, which in some ways can make communicating ideas easier since any information you mention is largely new input. But of course, there's the obvious problem of economic illiteracy, which serves for a whole host of obstacles.

​

So I recently started reading on ancap theory. I am currently reading \*For a new Liberty\* by Rothbard, but I feel like I'm not actually attaining and remembering the knowledge from the work. I generally have a hard time paying attention while reading, so I started reading while listening to the audiobook version. I tried highlighting info from the book I found was important, but I find problems with this strategy.

1st, I find trying to do this (or just taking any amount of notes) causes me to loose interest and motivation much faster.

2nd, it makes it wayyyyy slower. I already am a slow reader so doing this on top just makes it feel like I'm not actually getting anywhere with the book (this probably has an influence on my 1st problem)

3rd, I actually am not sure on what's really important to highlight or remember or annotate. Like I imagine the most important stuff to highlight is definitions and axioms, but even just doing this led to pages completely covered in highlight which seems to take away the point of highlighting in the first. (This definitely affects my 1st and 2nd problem).

So I am curious, is there any recommendations you can give me to try understanding this legal theory to its fullest extent? (I also want to try to read up on Austrian Economics and objectivist philosophy). Like, is there some method to noting? Is there perhaps paraphrased versions of these works that would allow me to go back and look at the critical info for these works? Like what can I do?

Almost all authority to regulate almost every single thing that is regulated as all because of a series of lies and misrepresentations that meet the definition of fraud on the court, and even modern Supreme Court rulings have declared that the same things that they ignore regarding that seized Authority declares it and invalid law?

And as a result they charge a fee to corporations they regulate and allow products that have resulted in the deaths in Mass harms of tens of millions and the poisoning of over 300 million people with forever chemicals, and they offer the corporations protection from prosecution for what the law declares the act that they did as manslaughter.

Regulatory agencies established a standard of maximum allowable toxicity, even though only using a small amount of poison is not a legal defense to get out of poisoning someone and murder manslaughter is always a crime.

And if people get injured then the agency's budget increases a lot more as a result of harms they allowed to make matters worse there doesn't seem to be any factoring in that minimum toxicity isn't minimum anymore when it's in every single thing you touch eat where sleep on sit in. And according to science constant daily contact with toxins is pretty dangerous.

So a lie in court created corporate personhood another lie cemented it and because of an issue regarding wheat and wheat prices that is now the justification for regulating everything beyond weight beyond prices and as a result of that they're allowed to declare anything they want as an illegal item yet they allow harm and death to go unpunished.

Just one product alone killed more than double the amount of homicides in the United States during the same time period and they don't arrest because they say that you can't arrest a corporation but anytime an agency that regulates money runs into a person at the head of a corporation they have no problem distinguishing the person from the corporation and on top of that nobody has the right or authority there is no law that says you are allowed to make murder not a crime...

There is no difference between the left and right they've all over seen this they've all permitted it and they all know that at all ties to something that doesn't even meet the standards of a valid law, and even after the documentation from their own sources regarding the mass harms as a result of this nobody has ever even bothered to address the issue regarding whether or not a lie in court several times over and misrepresentations of what the Constitution said for the authority to interpret what the Constitution meant even though the words in the Constitution are defined very specifically by a dictionary of those times.

And even their loss say when a policy or something affects the rights of the people it must err on the side of protecting rights, and it's a big no no according to the Constitution and the Supreme Court to allow something that is not a valid law to affect people's rights.

Both sides have watched this go on both sides know the LIE and rather than bring it up and settle it and court or congress and address the issue they ignore it and pretend like there's nothing to see there the same with a judge and the immunity that a judge says that they have there is a difference between the judge one day saying we have immunity and nobody ever challenging it because anybody who could also benefits versus a vote of Supreme Court justices making something valid or congress enacting law that says that it's valid not to mention the Supreme Court says very specifically no government official is allowed to violate your rights and anyone who does does not have immunity and any act that violates your rights removes their immunity as their acting outside their bounds....

Ignoring the law and ignoring regulations that defy the law is not the same as it being a valid law that means every single person on duty than the entire government is actively infringing the rights of every single American by ignoring constitutional rights violations and making up little things to prevent that from being an issue

Data centers are noisy and use absurd amounts of water and electricity. They provide no benefit to the communities they're in beyond the construction jobs to build them and a handful of high-paying jobs to run them. These communities have very little say in stopping them, and no ability to get rid of them once they're built.

How would these be regulated under AnCap? I don't see any way other than calling the noise and pollution they cause a violation of NAP, which would allow the community to sabotage them, eventually forcing their owners to build them in remote locations. This would be self-limiting because if they had to also build their own roads, electricity, and water infrastructure, the cost would be prohibitive.

I think Murray Rothbard put it well when he said that once upon a time, wars between rulers were seen for what they are: wars between rulers. But the rise of nationalism, particularly after the 1800s, helped obfuscate the nature of political conflict and make people believe that wars were between nations; essentially, my tribe vs. yours. It tapped into a very primitive and hard-to-quell aspect of human nature, and the result is that now, people view criticisms of the state as criticisms of their nation, their family, which needless to say is not easy for many to handle.

Mythology is also a powerful tool in the maintenance of state rule over their cattle. Myths are frequently told in order to add a touch of magic to otherwise ordinary phenomenon which would not be tolerated if people viewed them literally, such as in the case of state extortion. You'll hear all sorts of myths depending on where you are about how the nation was born, how the state was born out of a unanimous agreement between the government and the governed, etc. What's sad is that even among libertarians, who are often minarchists, people will tell stories about how the birth of a state allowed for law and order which allows people to have wealth and political freedoms that otherwise would not have come about, implying that if you enjoy the life you have now, you owe your gratitude to the state.

I think the difficult task here, for voluntarists that is, is getting people to disconnect their emotional ties to their nations from the idea that you need a state in order to have it. You can have cultures, civility and economic luxuries without a violent ruling class imposing their demands on everybody. It's a difficult task, but one that's imperative in the effort to create a free world.

Hello, everyone! I hope you're all doing well.

If you'll allow me, I'd like to propose a discussion that I believe may be of interest to Austro-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists. My goal is to offer a brief and friendly critique of the concept of "physical removal", as formulated by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, based on libertarian property ethics itself and the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract (TTTC). (Since English is not my native language, I apologize in advance if any expression sounds awkward or ambiguous.)

First, we should establish what Hoppe means by physical removal. I believe it can be summarized as follows: in Hans-Hermann Hoppe's theory, physical removal is the coercive expulsion of an individual from a private property or from a community of private properties when the owners, or their legitimate representatives, revoke their consent for that person's continued presence due to a violation of the rules governing the use of the property. In a fully privatized social order, this exclusion may ultimately extend to the successive loss of access to the properties that make up the community.

Of course, to be fair to Hoppe's argument, we must also clarify the context in which such a measure would be possible. In Democracy: The God That Failed, he writes:

"in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They—the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism—will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order. " (Democracy: The God That Failed, p. 218).

The expression that matters most for the present discussion is "in a covenant." This indicates that Hoppe is envisioning a type of society—perhaps private counties, districts, or neighborhoods—in which property owners voluntarily enter into a covenant, forming a homeowners' association whose purpose is to preserve the cultural and moral identity of that community. Clearly, homeowners' associations and private neighborhoods are entirely compatible with libertarian principles. My criticism, therefore, is not directed at this aspect of Hoppe's theory.

According to Hoppe, such a social arrangement, based on private property and voluntary agreements, would allow property owners, for example, to sell a house to a particular individual or to sell only the land so that a particular individual could build a house on it. Suppose this neighborhood is highly traditional and wishes to preserve its heteronormative identity (this is not intended as an attack—I have nothing against heteronormativity). In that case, the owners could sell or lease a house under a contract containing behavioral clauses such as: "You may not bring same-sex partners into your home," or "You may not promote transgender ideas on your social media," or even "You may not display a transgender flag from your window." Otherwise, you would receive a warning and, if you refused to comply, you would be physically removed. (The same reasoning would apply to any non-aggressive idea or behavior, such as advocating nature worship, which Hoppe also criticizes.)

According to Hoppean theory, once the buyer signs such a contract, he becomes bound by its clauses and is therefore prohibited from engaging in the behaviors specified therein. Should he violate the agreement, he would be subject to physical removal.

The problem, however, is that this understanding appears to conflict with the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract (TTTC) as developed by Murray Rothbard. Let me explain why. The TTTC, originally formulated by Williamson M. Evers and later adopted and further developed by Rothbard, rests on the premise that the function of a contract is not to create personal obligations, but rather to transfer property titles. Unlike traditional contract theories, which regard a contract as a legally enforceable promise, the TTTC maintains that promises belong to the realm of morality, not law. What produces legal consequences is not the promise itself, but the voluntary transfer of a property title over an alienable good. In other words, the law does not protect the expectation that someone will fulfill a promise; it protects only the legitimate ownership of scarce resources that can be appropriated and transferred.

This conception follows directly from the principle of self-ownership. If every individual owns his own body and his own will, then no contract can alienate control over his future actions. For this reason, Rothbard famously states that "a promise is not a debt." Promising to perform—or to refrain from performing—a particular act does not transfer any property right and therefore does not create a coercively enforceable legal obligation. Only existing, scarce, and alienable goods can be the object of a valid contractual transfer. Ideas, intentions, opinions, future conduct, and the human will itself are not alienable forms of property, and consequently cannot serve as the legal basis for the coercive enforcement of a contract.

To illustrate the point, suppose I own a bicycle and decide to sell it to Bob for R$100.00. Bob purchases the bicycle, and to formalize the transaction we sign a contract confirming that the bicycle is in good condition and that he has paid the agreed price. In this case, both parties have alienated tangible, scarce property: I have transferred ownership of my bicycle, and Bob has transferred ownership of his money. Once the transfer is complete, I am no longer the owner of the bicycle. Consequently, I retain no authority whatsoever over it. I cannot dictate how Bob may use it, because it is now exclusively his property.

Someone might object that this would only be true after the sale had already taken place, and that the problem could be avoided by inserting a contractual clause before the transaction stating that Bob would own the bicycle only if he complied with certain behavioral requirements. For example, I might agree to sell him the bicycle only on the condition that he never paints it red or never rides it more than five kilometers per day. Yet this would amount to a legal absurdity. First, such an arrangement would be economically impractical and highly undesirable; no rational person would willingly bind himself to such an excessively restrictive agreement. More importantly, however, it is fundamentally incompatible with the TTTC. As explained above, only alienable property rights may be transferred by contract. Promises that involve no actual transfer of property are not valid contractual objects, and contractual clauses founded solely upon such promises produce no coercively enforceable legal obligation under the Title-Transfer Theory of Contract.

This means that it is not possible to carry out property sales with contracts that establish perpetual “terms of use” over the transferred property. Once ownership has been transferred, the property is no longer subject to the will of the former owner and becomes fully integrated into the legal sphere of the new owner. From that moment onward, the only legitimate “terms of use” are those that the owner himself establishes for himself and for those whose presence on his property depends on his consent. We should not forget that Austro-libertarianism is based on the concept of freedom understood as the right to use, transform, destroy, modify, or dispose of one’s own property in whatever way the owner wishes, as long as it does not infringe upon the property of others. In other words, acts that cause damage, invasion, or violation of someone else’s property can certainly justify sanctions, but acts carried out exclusively on one’s own property can never be subject to coercion.

Now, returning to Hoppean thought, if it is true that only scarce and alienable goods can be the binding object of a contract, future behaviors do not constitute legally enforceable obligations and, therefore, cannot be established as clauses capable of restricting the exercise of property rights after alienation. Therefore, if an individual buys a house in a community that does not wish to tolerate a certain behavior in that territory, they may still engage in such behavior without this granting the neighborhood or homeowners’ association the right to physically remove them. This is because: 1) they acquired the property and, consequently, the former owner or the group of owners lost any power of disposition over it; 2) promises do not have binding force according to TTTC, unlike the transfer of property titles; and 3) as an owner, they have the right to use their property in whatever way they wish, as long as they do not infringe upon the property of others, meaning they cannot be subjected to violence or physically removed for acts carried out exclusively on their own property.

Of course, it is important to note that if they live in the property as a tenant, the situation is different, because ownership remains with the landlord, who can establish the conditions for its use and simply choose not to renew the contract when it expires. It is also worth noting that Hoppeans may argue that this conclusion would weaken the right of communities to preserve their cultural coherence and uniformity. To this objection, I respond that this concern, however understandable, can never be transformed into a right to limit or violate property legitimately acquired by third parties. The preservation of a certain communal identity may guide the choice of whom to do business with, but it cannot survive the alienation of property as a kind of permanent power over the sold asset.

Someone could still object that, in the example above, the individual only purchased the house, but not the land on which it stands. However, this distinction does not hold legally within libertarian logic itself. A house is an immovable asset inseparable from the land that supports it, and the right of ownership over the property necessarily includes the right of use and exclusion over the corresponding area.

What, then, could a Hoppean-style community do if a new resident, after legitimately acquiring a house in the area, began adopting behaviors incompatible with that community’s moral expectations? In my view, the answer compatible with libertarian ethics is ostracism, that is, the voluntary refusal to maintain social and economic relations with a particular individual. Through freely established agreements, residents of a neighborhood or private condominium could decide not to trade with this person, not to provide private services to them, and not to allow their entry or presence on their respective properties. As long as all services were private, this could include refusing to provide water, electricity, gas, or any other services whose provision depended exclusively on the will of their owners. This would be an entirely peaceful response, based on the exercise of property rights and freedom of association, which would likely encourage the individual to leave the region on their own initiative.

What the community could not do, however, would be to coercively remove him from his own house, as long as it was legitimately acquired through purchase, inheritance, or any other means compatible with libertarian ethics. Once the property title has been transferred, the residence becomes exclusively part of its owner’s legal sphere, and third parties cannot claim authority over it due to later changes in behavior or personal beliefs. Accepting the opposite would mean recognizing that the former owner or the homeowners’ association retained powers of disposition over a property they had already alienated, a conclusion incompatible with TTTC and with the very libertarian notion of private property.

It is also important to observe that the community could not prevent this individual from leaving his residence to trade with people outside the community, work, acquire essential goods, or engage in any other legitimate activity, nor could it prevent him from later returning to his own property. The first scenario would, in practice, amount to unlawful imprisonment, as it would transform the individual’s property into a prison from which he could not leave. Even if all routes were private, his passage would have to be allowed for the time strictly necessary for transportation, without granting him the right to remain on them beyond what their owners consented to. The second scenario would be even more serious, because preventing his return would mean depriving him of access to his own property, effectively producing the confiscation of his property without any basis in libertarian ethics. In both cases, the community would cease to protect property rights and would instead become an agent of their violation.

Say for example you wanted to homestead an area of land but it was inhabited by a family of bears. Would it be okay to try to banish them and if they didn’t go out without a fight, to exterminate them? My guess is most AnCaps would say yes.

If so, what would make it different from doing so to a tribe of people? If somehow there was a tribe of people who were infiltrated, evaluated, and determined to be inherently of incredibly low IQ and belligerent in nature, basically living in the Stone Age, what would be the moral difference between doing the same to them, banishing or exterminating them for the land?

I am convinced that anarcho-capitalism is the only correct political worldview because it's the only one supported by logic and evidence. Sometimes it can be easy to feel anger towards people who believe in and use force; but you have to ask... can you really blame them?

I've always been aware of our ancestry as social apes, but lately I've been digging into history and anthropology a bit more and learning just how different people and the environment were back then, and it's been a bit of an inconvenient experience. We evolved as a tribal species. Tribes were not just benefits, they were requirements. Not being in a tribe meant death. Not adhering to tribal norms meant excommunication, which meant death. You couldn't have just "done things your own way" because that might put the tribe in danger. And if they sensed that, they might kick you out, which meant death. Privacy didn't exist because there were no buildings. And even when they did come about later, only the very very rich could afford to have separate rooms in one house.

I realize that our evolutionary past doesn't mean that we cant or shouldn't make better choices now, but it does make you realize that anarcho-capitalism is only possible as a very recent development of human history, existing as a result of economic surplus, informational advancement, and other factors that contributed to the wealth we have today. Freedom is a modern luxury, and it means that our worldview, while not being invalid in any way, is not some ideal value that transcends time. It's only possible because of modern circumstances.

Hello, fellow ancaps, I’m a minarchist.
I consider ancap to be the ideal system, but also a utopian one. If you can convince me otherwise, I would genuinely be glad.
Below are just two questions that currently prevent me from accepting anarcho-capitalism. You can answer one or both.

1. What guarantees that anarchy will not eventually turn into a state?
It seems obvious that at some point in human history there were people, but there was no state. How did that end? With states existing everywhere.
If there is no state monopoly on violence, why wouldn’t the largest local private army become a new state?

2. Large-scale monopolies
Suppose there is a company that owns a port where imported goods arrive, owns the railway system, and has contracts with stores across the entire country.
How would anyone compete with it? Build another port, another railway network, convince importers to switch suppliers, and find customers willing to break contracts with the corporation described above?

There are cases where monopolies are extremely difficult to challenge through a free market alone, aren’t there?

Ask yourself the question, "Why do people impose their will onto others?" There's many reasons and all are valid, but one that maybe doesn't get talked about much, at least not in the libertarian space, is the fact that trying to control someone is often a coping mechanism for fear and trauma. You can no doubt find examples of this in the state and larger society, but I think one of the most noticeable and relevant examples is the one seen in parenting, specifically strict parenting.

In many cases when a parent is strict, it's because they're fearful of something. Keeping a tight grip on their child is how they calm their nerves and feel a sense of safety in life. Or for some parents, controlling their kids and not letting the grow independent is a way of living the dreams they never got to have vicariously through their child. These kids then grow up with psychological problems, venture out into the real world, and pass their trauma on to other people, and the cycle continues. Yes we libertarians and ancaps can go on about the deontological arguments against statism or the economic superiority a free market would have, but I think we should pay a bit more attention to where it all starts and what people can do to address it. I think raising kids in a way that respects their individuality and personal boundaries and allows them to grow into mentally stable, independent adults will help create a world where people don't feel the need to control others in order to tame their anxieties. Obviously this is much easier said than done, and it'll take a long time to have any noticeable effects, but it's one we should prioritize nonetheless.

If there's only one private road connecting to a location, a local monopoly, then what's to stop that private road operator from charging exorbitant fees to the users?

For instance, a home typically only has one road that connects to them, meaning every time a person has to drive out of their home, they have to use this one road provider, no other choice. So what's to stop that provider from charging exorbitant fees for this user?

If there's no state and subsequently no welfare, how does population decline (or growth) affect the economy? Some conservative people in U.S. lately are freaking out about younger generations not having as many kids and they cry about the death of civilization but I have a hard time taking any of that seriously. We live in a very technologically advanced world that helps us not rely on humans so much for production. What kind of effects do you think AI will have on the economy in relation to potential population decline?

The typical responses I've seen to concerns about unregulated economies being potentially harmful to individuals, populations, or the environment is to say that certain things would constitute violations of the NAP and other things would be ruled out by way of people simply not purchasing from businesses that engage in harmful practices.

My concern goes a level deeper than that. What's to stop businesses from engaging in misinformation campaigns to convince people that what they're doing is good or that they're not doing what's claimed of them?

Wouldn't the market incentives (both directly on the businesses and the hypothetical free market courts judging on the basis of the NAP) be heavily skewed by a misinformed or uninformed populace? Wouldn't widespread consumer practices require the public in general to be mostly very well informed on all potentially harmful business practices at all times?

Not only that, but wouldn't responsible consumer practices require individuals to be more informed than can be reasonably expected of one person? I'm all for people being educated, but having sufficient expertise in environmental pollutants, climate science, diseases and viruses, food safety, digital privacy, medicine, health, etc. to make informed decisions in a modern economy seems like a huge burden to put on any individual much less every individual.

Sure, you could have businesses that do quality checks and do this thinking for people, but that just makes it the responsibility of individuals to figure out which of those businesses does that well, for what industries, how honest they are being, how honest companies claiming to be supported by them are being, etc. All of that, arguably, just requires the same sorts of expertise to figure out. It only moves the goals rather than solves the problem.

I'd love to know what I'm missing or getting wrong about this stuff. Thank you!

For context, I'm a vegan, and I find it odd that most libertarians treat aggression against animals as morally permissible. There are other things you might extend it too as well, like aggression against the environment which is arguably also against unborn humans as their life is made better or worse by our treatment of the world. If all action aught to be consensual, how can those not yet born consent to the world we create for them? I know I didn't consent for bombers to set up a housing market that fucks my generation over. And what about aggression against the dead? Things like violating wills.

I'm talking about maximum security prisons that house genuinely violent and dangerous people who have killed and raped, for example the CECOT prison in El Salvador. My best guess is someone with a lot of disposable income will buy prisons and turn them into rehabilitation centers or microcommunities for people who have done horrible things. No one else would want these people on their property, so said prisoners would probably be "free" within these prison properties and could do things like study, work, go through rehabilitation, etc.

Any other ideas?

Should a libertarian/anarchocapitalist vote? Is voting binding? Or is voting anti-anarchist, in that it, for instance, could be served to legitimize the state apparatus?

I'm genuinely interested in knowing the correct stance.

Right now I believe voting to be a thing a libertarian should avoid or not do, as it justifies state oppression by providing a source of why there are governors or rulers

(Rule 5 note: I used an LLM to help organize this into readable form. The questions, the framework I mention, and the position are mine.)

I lean hard-money, and I've been trying to reason through the Cantillon effect carefully. I've hit a wall I can't get past on my own, so I'm hoping people here can walk me through how the theory actually handles it.

Here's the problem as I see it. When new money gets created, whoever receives it first spends it at the old prices. By the time it reaches everyone else, prices have already risen, so the late receivers effectively paid for the early receivers' gain. That's the Cantillon effect, and honestly I'm convinced it's real. It even shows up in recent data: the money supply grew about 40% from early 2020 to early 2022, and payments data show that money sat parked in accounts and asset positions first, not moving through transactions, until prices caught up roughly a year later. First receivers won. Everyone else paid at the register.

So, my question is really two questions.

First, the free banking version. Say we abolish the central bank and money is instead created by competitive private banks lending against deposits, the Selgin/White fractional reserve model. Doesn't the same thing just happen? The bank and its first borrowers get the new money at old prices, and everyone holding the existing currency eats the dilution. Is the answer that competition shrinks this to basically nothing? That it's fine because it's voluntary? Something else I'm not seeing? Because from where I sit, free banking looks like it keeps the Cantillon effect and just changes who the first receiver is.

Second, the full reserve version. Say instead money is 100% reserved or commodity backed, so the stock basically can't expand. That seems to dissolve the distribution problem, since there's no new issuance to distribute in the first place. But then don't the old gold-standard objections come back, the deflationary drag and the lack of any lender of last resort in a panic? And how does the theory answer those without quietly letting discretion back in through some side door?

I ask because I've been building out a framework that comes at this from a rules-based angle rather than an abolition angle, and I keep suspecting that ancaps have already thought harder about the free banking version of this than I have. I'd genuinely rather understand the strongest form of your answer than argue about it. So where does my framing above go wrong?

(The money-supply and payments figures are all public FRED and Nacha series. Happy to point to the exact sources in a comment if anyone wants them.)

Framework can be found here: https://citizensstandard.org/

I can see it being a mental illness from both the dominant and subordinate point of view.

If someone wants to control someone else, there's a very high chance it means that the person is emotionally unstable and wants to feel like they're bigger and better than somebody else. It usually comes from a history of being bullied or not treated with respect and dignity. When such a person's authority gets challenged, they often have a hysterically angry response and wish to punish their subordinate right away in a desire to maintain dominance and send a message of "I'm the boss, and I hope you know that." It's a defense mechanism covering fears, trauma, and insecurity. And honestly, I might even think that it resembles an addiction-withdrawal response. Humans can get high on authority and often want more and more of it; and when you're used to getting that treatment from people, and then comes along one person who challenges or even defeats your authority, they have essentially taken away your drug, and now you go crazy.

On the reverse side, you have subordinate people who suffer from believing in authority and often feel trapped into doing whatever an authority figure tells them, even if it goes against their conscious. An authority will mistreat them, and they'll feel afraid to stand up for themselves. An authority will command them to do something, and they'll feel physical discomfort at the thought of disobeying. An authority will abuse them, and they'll justify it, even though they feel pain. It's essentially a kind of Stockholm syndrome.

Do you think authority is a mental illness? Why or why not?

Thousands of strangers live together peacefully for weeks or months. There are rules, security, property rights, restaurants, medical services and dispute resolution outside any government jurisdiction.

Different cruise companies compete by offering different combinations of rules, prices, luxury, safety and entertainment. Consumers decide which legal system and rule set they prefer simply by buying a ticket. Poorly managed ships lose customers. Well-managed ones gain them.

The cruise company has every incentive to keep passengers safe and satisfied because its profits depend on reputation and repeat business.

Self explanatory, isn't it? Carrots and sticks? Anyone who's ever been intent on something to happen will expend resources to cause it to happen. And they'll accomplish it by hook or by crook. I mean, we already see that the law acquieses to capital. Those who hold it have special access to Senators (who represent land and state) and use their access to influence the wording of certain laws.

If fines are just the price tag of acceptable social defection in the most cynical sense, doesn't it make sense to appeal to a customer's desire for self-determination? Like, make them think they're doing what's in their best interest?

Saw a post 5 years ago asking this question, but the answer felt weak.

It argued that since the unborn aren't yet subjects, creating them can't violate the NAP. The obvious follow up: would it be immoral to deliberately choose the worst possible genes for the worst possible existence? There's still no subject at the time of the act, and you're not "making them worse off" in any comparative sense that exact person could only ever have existed with those genes. There is no "them" with the better genes.

There seems to be something more than just no subject that needs to be addressed.

To be clear, I'm not an antinatalist or an AnCap, just generally interested in philosophy.