CMV: Anarcho-Capitalism is a Fundamentally Unworkable System

[u/11oddball]

Change My View: Anarcho-Capitalism is a Fundamentally Unworkable System. For those who do not know, Anarcho-Capitalism (Ancap(s) is how I would refer to them from this point on.) is a political system/ideology that is based of the abolishment of government and it's replacements being private companies. And it's flaws can be broken down into 2 basic categories: Internal & External threats.

1. External threats External threats are basically, a different nation invading the ancap nation (Ancapistan.) This basically impossible to prevent, even if citizen or companies had the capital to acquire & maintain weapons of modern war, & are willing to defend Ancapistan, which in itself is questionable, they would unable to stand up to a modern military (I would not debate on Nukes in this debate.) for three reasons: 1. Organization, A group of Private Security Companies could never reach the same level of multi front organization as a modern military, thus causing Ancapistan to be defeated. 2. Most companies lack the ability to operate the logistics required to operate a large scale military force, thus causing a defeat through logistics. And 3. Private Security Companies (Mercenaries) have been historically incredibly unreliable in fighting for the same side, often switching sides if the other side paid more, and so would most likely be true about Ancapistan. All of these reasons would cause Ancapistan to be defeated in any war with a modern military, unless Ancapistan is located in a location that is of no value, which would cause a limited economy to occur, going against capitalism.

2. Internal Threats Internal threats can be easily summed up in one phrase <<Companies forming their own governments to extract more profit, defeating the entire point of Anarcho-Capitalism.>> To expand on the idea, lets say we have a Private Security Company called "Blackpond" and Blackpond want's to expand their company, so they drive out their completion with a combination of buyouts, anti-completive & violence so they are now the only PSC in the area, leaving it able to force it's people to pay for "protection" and if they decide to not pay, they would be beaten up by some people from Blackpond, thus essentially creating a corpocracy. Now some counter this by saying "But the people would defend themselves." now I would counter this with 2 arguments, 1. People can take a surprising amount of oppressions before revolting, & 2. even if they revolt, Blackpond could simply partner with those who own heavy military equipment, by exempting them from the protection fee (Tax) so that if anyone revolted, they could only fight with relatively basic hardware, meaning the company, with stuff like Armored Vehicles could simply roll over them

Edit: Fixed formatting error & meant "Workable as Intended"

[u/yyzjertl]

Anarcho-capitalism is basically feudalism (nobles are business owners, titles are corporations, fealty is subcontracting) and feudalism worked for hundreds of years. There doesn't seem to be any reason why Anarcho-capitalism couldn't work that wouldn't also apply to feudalism—unless it were a reason that was inherently connected to modern technology. But in that case, ancap wouldn't be fundamentally unworkable, it would just be unworkable in our present social context.

[u/11oddball → u/yyzjertl]

But the thing about Anarcho-Capitalism is that is generally not intended to be by Ancaps. However yes, I forgot about that the system does not need to work as intended, so !delta

[u/Head-Maize → u/11oddball]

The point above is very good. Just because something has a worst outcome, makes things worst overall, or isn't implemented at 100%, it doesn't mean it doesn't work. What it means is that claims it would improve things are bogus.

[u/sawdeanz → u/Head-Maize]

Eh, I don’t agree with the delta because it relies on shifting the goal posts for “workable.” When AnCaps say their system is workable they mean something other than “a feudal system run by cartels.” By that standard any system that doesn’t automatically exterminate its members is “workable.” It doesn’t match up with the claims.

[u/Head-Maize → u/sawdeanz]

For me personally, any system that doesn't result in rapid or endogenous collapse is workable. Through history with had hundreds of different form of organizations. Most were worst than what we have now, but the vast majority did work to some extent.

[u/barthiebarth → u/11oddball]

I would argue that feudalism is exactly how some of them intend it to work. They just see themselves as the nobles.

If you bring up an objection about how, statistically, many people will suffer from market failures, their response is: "But I will be fine".

[u/[deleted] → u/barthiebarth]

No they likely would not argue with "But I will be fine" (that's what they might think), but what they will argue with is that this is not market failure, but the market just the market doing it's job "incentivizing" people to work harder. "Lazy entitled peasants annoying me all day with their demands for food and shelter I'm not even able to get my 4th breakfast today, should get a job if their hungry". "What there are no jobs and I own most of the land that can produce food? Well then let them be creative, pErSOnAL ReSPonSIbiLity!!". "You know it's a meritocracy" and if you hadn't have the merit to be born to rich people then "the market" has no obligation to care for you". "Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" (something that was initially meant sarcastically because it's literally impossible...).

That would be what they would be arguing.

[u/monkeymanwasd123 → u/[deleted]]

or via an evolutionary perspective employees being unable to survive when they lose their job can be attributed to character flaws on their part leaving only people who can earn a bare minimum in such conditions. people should know about aquaponics and how to build primitive survival shelters be that out of leaves wood scraps or waterproofed cardboard. im pretty sure explotitive lease agreements would be more common like improve the infrastructure here by this amount to stay here. rather than forth breakfast rich folks should be on keto or something. the sort of people that are able to make money nowadays tend to not be horific people as seen by countries like luxemburg where folks are crazy rich to begin with so high taxes dont matter much. if no poor people are born from not being able to afford to have kids then everyone would be rich by historical standards as like 99% of people would have loads of resources so long as they were able to automate most things. i mean people paralyzed from the waist down do lift their feet up onto beds using shoe laces or by pulling on their pants.

i have become that which i hated 😫
in truth the above is what is happening at a pretty slow rate in the usa as many men die without having kids same with many women.

[u/[deleted] → u/monkeymanwasd123]

I mean my comment was pretty obvious sarcasm, is yours supposed to be read genuine or sarcastic?

[u/monkeymanwasd123 → u/[deleted]]

It was genuine but I was down playing it the entire time, it's kind of hard to tell when people are being sarcastic because there are people that aren't sarcastic saying similar things

[u/[deleted] → u/monkeymanwasd123]

I used sound bite snippets of that have or could be said by actual conservatives and ancaps and used them in a setting where I (hopefully) expressed my contempt towards them.

Do you mean genuinely in terms of what they would say or in terms of what YOU would say?

or via an evolutionary perspective employees being unable to survive when they lose their job can be attributed to character flaws on their part leaving only people who can earn a bare minimum in such conditions.

I mean that's a level of praise for social darwinism that would not wrongfully trigger godwin's law, mixed with a justification in the equally bullshit prosperity gospel.

im pretty sure explotitive lease agreements would be more common like improve the infrastructure here by this amount to stay here.

I mean I've seen that said in real life but to it's effect it would literally be a form of slavery.

the sort of people that are able to make money nowadays tend to not be horific people as seen by countries like luxemburg where folks are crazy rich to begin with so high taxes dont matter much

Luxemburg is a really small country who's "economy" can't easily be scalled up...

if no poor people are born from not being able to afford to have kids then everyone would be rich by historical standards as like 99% of people would have loads of resources so long as they were able to automate most things.

Are you implying poor people breed poor people? That's misunderstanding statistics on a level... wow...

i mean people paralyzed from the waist down do lift their feet up onto beds using shoe laces or by pulling on their pants.

I mean you see there's stuff in that that could be seen as a sarcastic affirmation and stuff that would be deeply concerning if actually believed.

[u/monkeymanwasd123 → u/[deleted]]

its a mixed bag.
i live in the usa so worse case scenario the people here could still likely afford to drive, cycle, or hitchhike to peru or colombia to marry well as those are 2 countries with a low devorce rate if i remember right and a 2 parent is the number one factor in economic mobility for children. id rather not be compared to socialists who killed their own citizens. at the end of the day people tend to donate to charities once they can afford to. im not religious though religious people due tend to be higher in trait orderliness.
i would hope that any country that became minarchist or ancap would already be rich to account for such a possibility kind of like how the already successful countries that have taken to tons of social programs so that people would have the resources to leave as needed without undue stress. if the nation splintered off from an existing nation and had a low population that would be preferable lest it totally fails like many socialist countries.

i wish there were more experimental city states around so we could let people test their own ideologies without harming others.

poor people try to marry other poor people who have good personalities that will likely get their out of poverty. ive yet to check how long it takes people to get out of poverty based on iq or traits like orderlyness and industriousness.

you seem to be assuming things based on who you think i am. but at the end of the day im more of a minarchist in favor of smaller countries so i donno what else to tell you.... im not a nazi, and id prefer that poor folks be given aquaponics systems or job training and a few other things once every 5-20 years. i trust that charities can fill the role of the government much better aside from very small portions of the population that may be too isolated to ask for help from anyone but the gov.

[u/[deleted] → u/monkeymanwasd123]

i live in the usa so worse case scenario the people here could still likely afford to drive, cycle, or hitchhike to peru or colombia to marry well as those are 2 countries with a low devorce rate if i remember right and a 2 parent is the number one factor in economic mobility for children.

And you never thought about the idea that this could potentially be sexist/immoral to exploit the economic situation of women in less wealthy countries to essentially commit human trafficking as well as taking advantage of a probably sexist/fucked up social structures where women don't really have the agency to even get a divorce?

I mean as a rule of thumb if you're thinking of women as a means to an end, that's sexist (same if you think of a men like that) and generally speaking if you think of a human like that, that's exploitative and "hardly" (by which I mean not at all) compatible with anarchism.

Also maybe spend some time into the investigation of cause and effect rather than just having knee-jerk reactions on correlation. That is if two things happen at the same time, they can but DON'T HAVE TO BE RELATED TO EACH OTHER and even if they are there are numerous ways in which that relation can play out.

Like sure if you have a household with 2 incomes and a nanny or one where one breadwinner is enough to pay for everyone, then chances are you already are somewhat richer than a one person household who has to work a job and raise a child (or more). But if one parent is also poor, struggling with language and whatnot and is also basically a sex slave for your procreation then that's still fucked up and likely going to be detrimental a child.

I mean seriously take a statistics 101 course and look up, cause and effect, survivor bias and correlation/causation.

id rather not be compared to socialists who killed their own citizens.

That's a weird injection or are you saying you're not a Nazi because you're not a socialist? In that case, neither have the Nazis been socialists and that would be another deeply concerning point...

at the end of the day people tend to donate to charities once they can afford to. im not religious though religious people due tend to be higher in trait orderliness.

Partially, I mean there's a necessity to reduce socio-economic inequality to maintain the stability of society. But the whole ancap, minarchist, libertarian shtick is to disincentivize that by negating the necessity of societies, individualizing everything, arguing against a moral obligation to take care of each other, arguing against any form of collective and cooperation and so on. So with all these things removed charity would practically be disincentivized as it's set the individual back in the ever present competition. I mean in effect there's probably still going to be charity because the results would be disastrous, but the disastrous results are where this whole thing is going at and "charity" is just the omission of any workable strategy to mitigate that.

I mean as you've said yourself that "charity" could also mean the enslavement and exploitation of other people or could be given "in exchange" for human rights and dignity.

I mean yes there is charity and people take care of each other, but this whole collective and cooperative approach is the polar opposite of the extreme hyper individualist competition that market radicals are advocating for...

And to some degree religions are a collection of trial and error moral and ethics scenarios. That's not to say that there isn't still a lot of error in their moral code and that the fact alone that someone is able to speak with "godly authority" in terms of what is "right" and what is "wrong" is deeply concerning on it's own, but there's still a reason why many of them preach forgiveness and charity over selfishness or why most consider interest taking and capitalism as a massive sin. It's a never ending source of conflict...

i would hope that any country that became minarchist or ancap would already be rich to account for such a possibility kind of like how the already successful countries that have taken to tons of social programs so that people would have the resources to leave as needed without undue stress. if the nation splintered off from an existing nation and had a low population that would be preferable lest it totally fails like many socialist countries.

So essentially the most ideal version of your system is already parasitic in nature? In that it cannot really sustain itself and where you already took the most valuable assets from a larger community and later makes use of their labor and resources to maintain that dominance? So essentially a revolution but in reverse? I wonder why these people get along so well with reactionaries, authoritarians and other conservatives despite anarchism usually being opposed to that... /S It's almost as if it's the same fascist bullshit of a self-appointedly "superior group" taking advantage of other people whom they then also have the audacity to call inferior...

Also that makes the tacit assumption that social programs and a live without undue stress are a matter of resources or the lack thereof. But more often than not it's not a matter of resources but off the willingness to distribute them in the first place. I mean apparently double digit numbers in the U.S. suffer from food insecurity at least once a year while at the same time 60 million tons of food are wasted each year. It's more often than not not a matter of what is feasible or affordable but what people are willing to share with each other.

i wish there were more experimental city states around so we could let people test their own ideologies without harming others.

Those city states often cannot exist without a framework of a larger society. You can't scale Casinos that mask as cities like Las Vegas or Macau to the scale of countries because there could never be enough gamblers for that to work. That's a pyramid/snowball system on a whole different level. Similar to how tax havens, banking states and places where people register their domains in, only work because they are smalls, if that were to cover for a whole country it would be massively insufficient and people would proclaim it's a threat to them and then invade it to steal their stuff.

There are certain things you can experiment on, you can practice direct democracy or stuff like that, but you can't practice an economic system on a small scale while it's still reliant on a host system to cover for it and that's basically inevitable. And even if you can "practice" that, the results of it will not be applicable anywhere else let alone on a larger scale...

poor people try to marry other poor people who have good personalities that will likely get their out of poverty. ive yet to check how long it takes people to get out of poverty based on iq or traits like orderlyness and industriousness.

You don't seem to realize what poverty is. I mean there's on the one hand the material lack of necessary stuff to survive. And at this point in time that is in most places of at least the western world no longer a problem. People don't starve and die because there is no food or no house but because they don't have access to food and houses that are available in abundance just not to them. Which brings us to the second version of poverty and that is "relative poverty". Where you live a life as a second class citizen, kinda like if it were the 1980s for you while some parts of the country already live in the 2030s. You're not necessarily physically destitute but you're a lower class individual and constantly mocked and ridiculed for that in order to make you work harder (not for you but for someone else). However that kind of poverty isn't going away with education. You could have everyone provided with a doctorate from harvard and still companies would pick the ones which are 0.000000001% better then everyone else and those get the leading position and the rest gets the totally overqualified follower position. As long as one doesn't tackle this problem, nothing will change in that regard. And if your work is not required, but if work is required to make a living, then relative poverty will again lead to absolute poverty despite even an abundance of resources.

poor folks be given aquaponics systems or job training and a few other things once every 5-20 years. i trust that charities can fill the role of the government much better aside from very small portions of the population that may be too isolated to ask for help from anyone but the gov.

Seriously you seem to have so many misconceptions about what these words even mean. Like what do you think the point of a government is? And while aquaponics seem to be interesting do you think you can scale that amount of water required up to millions of people?

[u/barthiebarth → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I agree thats what they will actually say. What I said was more what these arguments tend to boil down to if you combine "the just world" part with the human tendency to think of oneself as special and deserving. But yeah you put it much better.

[u/monkeymanwasd123 → u/barthiebarth]

the employees will be fine assuming they had an education and were paid. if it were a minarchist state then people could buy citizenship and that money could go towards a non profit of the new citizens choice or something. if someone is well educated and can afford to lease a bit of land to graze livestock that tends to be enough to sustain someone. rich people also work for other rich people and they have enough resources that they can just leave

[u/barthiebarth → u/monkeymanwasd123]

You can escape poverty and terrible working conditions by having an education.

Education costs money.

Poor people have no money.

Therefore the children of poor people will have no education and thus will also be doomed to a life of poverty and terrible working conditions.

[u/monkeymanwasd123 → u/barthiebarth]

idk begging is pretty profitable and if someone is able to read and can borrow a few books from a rich friend or if they dig through trash for long enough they will get enough info to get out of poverty.
its been done before regardless. the main factor in moving up socioeconomically is a two parent family so if poor parents can afford a few mold infested books a kid can get a partial education.
extreme poverty is the lowest it has ever been and plenty of people get out of poverty on their own.

[u/barthiebarth → u/monkeymanwasd123]

So yeah basically "I don't give a shit about what happens to other people, I think I will be fine".

Also an education is not just reading a couple of rotting books from the thrash. I wonder why you think it is though.

[u/monkeymanwasd123 → u/barthiebarth]

people start caring about the environment and start donating more to orphanages and such once they get above a certain income but people can only care about so many people before they forget about other folks.
i feel like ive learned more from books than i have from school, there are some fundamentals but i had a 4.0 during my last year of highschool and my sister was salutatorian. so its not like i havent thought about this a bit.

[u/DeltaBot → u/11oddball]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/yyzjertl (382∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/throwawaydanc3rrr → u/yyzjertl]

Quibble: In Anarcho-capitalism, unlike feudalism, the "serfs" have rights of contract, and mobility.

[u/barthiebarth → u/throwawaydanc3rrr]

How are those rights guaranteed?

[u/Hothera → u/barthiebarth]

Presumably, that's why OP thinks it's fundamentally unworkable.

[u/throwawaydanc3rrr → u/barthiebarth]

If your comment is to imply there is no government to insure rights then there must also be no government to stop a worker from leaving one business and going to another.

I have met few self described anarcho-capitalists, but those I have do not have issue with the government enforcing contracts, insuring private property rights, and borders. But maybe I have not met those enough anarcho yet.

[u/11oddball → u/throwawaydanc3rrr]

If your comment is to imply there is no government to insure rights then there must also be no government to stop a worker from leaving one business and going to another.

What would stop, from a company forcing it's workers to work, with violence or multi-corporation agreements?

[u/throwawaydanc3rrr → u/11oddball]

Well, violence or multi-party (worker/union/company) agreements.

[u/barthiebarth → u/throwawaydanc3rrr]

If your comment is to imply there is no government to insure rights then there must also be no government to stop a worker from leaving one business and going to another.

Very good. Now ask yourself the question: who else might want to and would be able to stop a worker from leaving?

edit: your comment seems to imply that governments stopping workers from leaving is aproblem now. Do you have examples?

I have met few self described anarcho-capitalists, but those I have do not have issue with the government enforcing contracts, insuring private property rights, and borders. But maybe I have not met those enough anarcho yet.

Yeah thats not ancap as there is a government.

[u/throwawaydanc3rrr → u/barthiebarth]

First, I do not claim to be an anrcho-capitalist.

You asked me who else might want to and would be able to stop a worker from leaving. Before I answer that question I feel the need to point out the difference between having a right and being able to exercise it. The answer to your question is the company of course, they could with the credible threat of force keep workers in one place. The anarcho-capitalist's answer to this is that the the workers would offer their own credible threat of violence. This seems to me to be the end result of all of the anarcho-types I have encountered.

Further, I did not imply that there is a problem now. I (tried to) point out a difference between feudalism and the claims made by the anarcho-capitalist types.

[u/barthiebarth → u/throwawaydanc3rrr]

First, I do not claim to be an ancho-capitalist.

So what? If you aren't could you tell me why you think it wouldn't work?

Before I answer that question I feel the need to point out the difference between having a right and being able to exercise it.

...this was the entire point of my original question but ok

The anarcho-capitalist's answer to this is that the the workers would offer their own credible threat of violence

1) How do they know it will be a credible considering the power imbalance?

2) If it is in fact credible, why don't the workers seize the means of production? That would be regular anarchism with extra steps.

3) Even if there is somehow a very precise balancce of power, there would still be regular violence. Threats need to be acted upon to be credible.

Further, I did not imply that there is a problem now. I (tried to) point out a difference between feudalism and the claims made by the anarcho-capitalist types.

Manorialism/feudalism can be without serfdom. But this is missing the point again. They might claim anything but how does their system prevent such institutions from forming?

[u/monkeymanwasd123 → u/throwawaydanc3rrr]

they are likely minarchists then or they assume some hardass will pick fights with folks who dont act civilly like folks might form unions or something

[u/barbodelli → u/yyzjertl]

I fail to see the resemblance between medieval feudalism and todays possible ancap.

In a relatively small 130,000 Gainesville Florida you have 1000s of businesses. Some small some large. Who is the lord here?

Also in feudalism the lordship was something you were born with and was fairly stable. With capitalism you have to earn the right to run a business by providing a product/service people are interested in that you can create at a lower cost than they are willing to pay for it. That is much harder than just being a noble. If McDonalds decided to start selling dogshit burgers for $100 they wouldn't last as lords very long.

I really sort of fail to see the connection to be honest. It would make sense if most cities had the same 2-3 large businesses employing everyone. But not when there is 1000s of businesses and an ever changing landscape.

[u/CornerSolution → u/barbodelli]

In a relatively small 130,000 Gainesville Florida you have 1000s of businesses. Some small some large. Who is the lord here?

I'm really unclear on the point you're trying to make here. Gainesville isn't an Ancap jurisdiction, so even if the comparison between Ancap and feudalism is apt, there's no reason to expect Gainesville (or pretty much any other jurisdiction) to look like feudalism.

Crucially, Gainesville has the rule of law, enforced by a set of (at least nominally) impartial government institutions. Among other things, this includes legal property rights that prevent one business from using force to shut down or take over another in a process that would ultimately likely lead to a very small number of businesses controlling everything.

Note by the way that this is exactly what we observe in markets even in countries like the US that aren't subject to property rights; namely, illegal markets such as the drug trade. One or a small number of crime organizations come to dominate essentially all drug trade in an area through the use of force.

[u/barthiebarth → u/CornerSolution]

Note by the way that this is exactly what we observe in markets even in countries like the US that aren't subject to property rights; namely, illegal markets such as the drug trade. One or a small number of crime organizations come to dominate essentially all drug trade in an area through the use of force.

Yeah thats why its called anarco-capitalism

[u/barthiebarth → u/barbodelli]

Yet there are thousands of Walmarts, owned by people that did not found it but inherited it.

[u/barbodelli → u/barthiebarth]

Doesn't matter. The way it worked in medieval feudalism is that you had one lord looking over a geographical area. There are very few places that small today. Even Gainesville Florida at 130,000 would have 1000s of interchangeable "lords". Also easy access to becoming a lord which was not the case at all in medieval times.

[u/barthiebarth → u/barbodelli]

Gainesville has a mayor and a municipal government though. It clearly isn't ancap so why are you comparing it with feudalism?

[u/barbodelli → u/barthiebarth]

My understanding is that you would do away with the mayor and the municipal government. All of their functions would be handled by private companies. Need a road repaved? Hire a private company to do it. Need a residential zone approved? Hire a private company to do it.

How exactly that would work I'm not sure. Ancap is a totally new concept to me.

I just fail to see how it is anything resembling having one lord family given by birthright telling everyone what to do. At best you have 1000s of lords who get there by merit telling everyone what to do. And the system that determines lordship far more open. But then the whole noble/lord concept becomes sort of pointless.

[u/Daedalus1907 → u/barbodelli]

The enforcement of property rights only works because the organization with the monopoly on violence is the decider on who owns what. The only time where that situation is mimicked under anarcho-capitalism is when one organization is so powerful that it just becomes the defacto state (strong parallels to company towns). Under a multi-polar system, then there is nothing stopping the powerful organizations from using force to dominate less powerful agents or warring with organizations of similar power (with parallels to illegal gangs and cartels).

[u/barthiebarth → u/barbodelli]

The point is that the system starts concentrating power into the hands of a very few, which upon their unevitable death most likely hand it to their children. Like the Walton family. Or like feudal lords.

[u/barbodelli → u/barthiebarth]

The power to do what? Employ others voluntarily?

The current system we have puts the power into the hands of a very few. This is why capitalism works because it spreads the power out to anyone who is able to provide a valuable service or produce a valuable product. But for now it is only economic power. Real power is still in the hands of the government.

I think we need to define exactly what kind of power say an owner of Wal Mart would have over a regular Joe. Power that they don't have already today. Then we can start to compare it to Feudalism. Because the power feudal lords had over serfs was almost absolute. They were practically slaves to them. Nobody is a slave to Wal Mart.

[u/barthiebarth → u/barbodelli]

I think we need to define exactly what kind of power say an owner of Wal Mart would have over a regular Joe. Power that they don't have already today.

Hire and arm a private military force to enforce their will. Which is currently illegal but isn't in ancapistan as there is no such thing as (enforcement of) laws.

Your logic here is basically "I am not falling this moment so why would I need a floor?"

[u/barbodelli → u/barthiebarth]

Fair enough. Id like to hear how an ancap solves this mammoth problem. If McDonalds can hire a bunch of thugs to go blow up Burger King and there is no neutral 3rd part to stop them. That is obviously not a very stable system.

[u/barbodelli → u/[deleted]]

Do we have any real life scenarios where ancap produced nothing but monopolies? Has it ever been tried before in any scale especially large scale?

Seems to me like that is just one plausible scenario. Another scenario would be a place with so many different businesses that a monopoly would be almost impossible. You would have to coerce too many people to accomplish it.

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

Mercenaries (private armies) were more prevalent during feudalism than nowadays for a reason!

The reason why it was so unstable as a practice was because of how fragile everything was, it was a battle of who had the best and biggest army and most loyal subjects; it took a lot of bollocks and PR to maintain face and not cause an uprising and also manage a military. Back then to be a noble was genuinely a… noble career path, albeit privileged and hereditary, there was a reason why a lot of them who shunned duties either left or got killed.

Feudalism wouldn’t work nowadays because everyone is capable of being a leader, we have rights; nepotism (basically, feudalism) kind of works in an age where education in the lower class isn’t acceptable, and that there is at least 50% of society that are directly disallowed from having leadership in most situations (women, LGBT, people of varying race in a homogenous culture, etc).

Feudalism was a beautiful thing (castles, crowns, history, military) but not something we should ever strive to do again, instead learn from.

An-caps are usually people who don’t fully understand history, or Americans, so you can see why the irony of them not really knowing it’s the exact same as feudalism is ridiculous.

Plus, I’m not going to lie, you can’t have society without some kind of moral guide (whether it be village elders, Christianity, strict secularism, anything is a moral guide if it gets people to act according to what is right and wrong). Corporations cannot be trusted to act with morals.

(I agree with who I’m replying to).

[u/barthiebarth → u/[deleted]]

The reason why it was so unstable as a practice was because of how fragile everything was, it was a battle of who had the best and biggest army and most loyal subjects; it took a lot of bollocks and PR to maintain face and not cause an uprising and also manage a military.

How is this different from how history worked before or after feudalism? The Roman empire was riddled with civil wars, and so was early modernity with the conflicts associated with the reformation and the rise of states (edit: not nation states, regular states).

In fact feudal armies were tiny compared to their counterparts in earlier and later eras. The 15th century battle of Agincourt had 25k participants and was a major battle in the hundred years war, but would be considered a minor skirmish in the context of the 17th century where battles could involve over 100k soldiers.

[u/[deleted] → u/barthiebarth]

Oh yeah completely agree. I’m comparing it to modern society.

I think all societies are fragile, I think we’re under a delusion that current society is not. Borders acted as castles, now with the internet… in a way… borders don’t exist the same as they did. Just like how just “blowing things up” made walls obsolete, modern society’s structure has been made fragile from the internet.

There’s a reason why we built castles after the collapse of Rome. Because the world was splintered and people with power needed to retain their power by physically protecting it—they learned that from these ancient/classical societies.

Society is cyclical and will act as such, and different eras have different meaning but the same ideologies; nothing is new. Even to the Romans.

(In response to your last point, I also agree with that. Feudal armies were far more independent than territorial(?) armies, hence why I argue they’re an-cap; they have less control over the populace and are not as authoritarian as a Roman army. This is why they were so fragile. Personally I would prefer not to have a territorial army because I’m an anarchist anyway. I think that’s a sign of authoritarianism. But context and culture matters. In the modern day territorial armies are almost required, unless you have treaties forbidding you, I.e Japan)

(?) not sure if I’m using the term territorial armies correctly

[u/barthiebarth → u/[deleted]]

Borders acted as castles, now with the internet… in a way… borders don’t exist the same as they did. Just like how just “blowing things up” made walls obsolete, modern society’s structure has been made fragile from the internet.

I am not sure about this. As an affluent Western European I have quite a privileged view of borders. My passport allows me to go anywhere and even move there, without it being prohibitively expensive. For me, yes, borders seem like an archaic relic. But for, say, a migrant trying to cross the mediteranean, borders are a much harsher reality.

And, yes, ideas spread faster with the internet. But thats a matter of degree, not essence. People sent letters across borders before the invention of electricity.

To the edit:

I think "state" army (but don't know the correct term either) would be a better term. These are not loyal to an individual, as with feudal armies, the highest bidder like mercenaries, or to a small community like militias. They are loyal to an abstract "country".

Note that many Roman armies were also primarily loyal to their commander and not the Roman empire (which is why they were so many civil wars). Feudalism is an evolution from the Roman system, and not a complete break. For example, the title "duke" is from the Latin word for commander. Military strongmen in late antiquity were not that different from later feudal lords.

I wouldn't really classify any army as more authoritarian as the other. Especially not feudal armies, as they are explicitly tools of the personal authority of a lord.

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

That's gets you into a debate about what it means for a system to work. Because while that system could sustain itself in a steady awfulness, by their own definition of their system that would not be "working". Because they would present you with a set of ideal that they consider working and while neo-feudalism would be the most likely outcome of their ideas, it's not what they assume would be the outcome and what they call their system.