For those who don’t know, there’s a group of people who call themselves “ancaps” or “anti-capitalists”, and another group called “anarcho-capitalists” who typically invade ancap discussions, trying to take the title ancap away from the anti-capitalists.
Now, the problem here is that an anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron, because anarchy is that which has no rulers, but capitalism is ruled by the banks and the other ultra-wealth … so there’s nothing remotely anarchic about capitalism.
These people make the claim that “free-market” capitalism (an oxymoron in itself) is anarchic because there’s no government tax … so I just wanted to take some time to debunk this entire insane perspective.
The Free-Market Oxymoron:
Nothing is free:
Firstly, there’s nothing free about ANY form of capitalism, with the exception of:
- breathing (they haven’t figured out how to charge you for it yet);
- charity;
- what we pay to slaves (zero), and;
- what we pay to nature (zero).
Now sure, modern day slavery is illegal, but that doesn’t stop it happening, and there’s nothing that’s truly free in the scope of Free-Market Capitalism (FMC). FMC it is merely a euphemism for “not being taxed”, and “not being regulated”, thus “getting away with taking no responsibility whatsoever” for the deleterious ecological & social consequences of their reckless, stupid & insane actions.
The Voice of Money:
Just voicing your opinion or in any other way being significantly heard, costs money:
- If you’re wealthy you get a louder voice;
- If you’re wealthy you can suppress the voice of others, and;
- If you’re poor you have a lesser voice (or none at all).
So again, neither free-market capitalism nor any other form of capitalism, is about freedom of voice.
Bias of Market Forces:
Continuing from the previous point, market forces are utterly biased – so no matter how vital the idea or project, it has to buy influence, and buying that influence has no guarantee of success, plus it can completely kill a project.
Markets are also biased in favour of the established & entrenched status quo, disruption does occur, but the status quo can often buy out the disrupters, or out compete them EVEN IF the disruptive technology was a vast improvement. It does occasionally win through, but the point here being that the market is biased against such thing.
Government Interference:
This is actually not as much of an issue as markets make out, the problem is government corruption NOT government interference. I am an anarchist so I am NOT in favour of governments … BUT … within the context of any form of capitalism, governments are needed to regulate industry & provide balance to this wholly flawed system.
Without central regulation of industries under the status quo capitalist economic paradigm (any variation), you’re left with industries regulating themselves … and for any self regulation they agree to, their number one priorities are:
- Minimise the cost of such compliance;
- Minimise the scope of regulation, and;
- Cheat like all fuck.
Taking responsibility for the deleterious ecological & social consequences of business is a cost they’d rather avoid, and prior to government regulations that’s precisely what they did; even after government regulation they lobbied against it, dismantled it, cheated, lied etc. to avoid such costs … so believing they can self-regulate under the status quo paradigm is delusional at best.
Summary:
So for these & many other reasons, there’s nothing free about capitalism at all, and free-market capitalism (if anything) makes that worse not better.
The Capitalist Resource Control Obstacle:
I experience a certain sense of despair for the fate of humanity when groups with (obviously) way more resources than myself, staffed by multiple people instead of working alone and unfunded, and whom obviously – despite all their resources and apparently genuine intention – have clearly done no research of any kind in which they ever questioned their foundational assumptions … will pit their assumptions and faith in capitalism against my 30 years of obsession, saying:
” … clearly you’ve done no research – I have memes that can destroy your arguments … “;
because aside from the obvious stupidity of claiming that a meme is a valid and superior rebuttal to a detailed argument … aside from the fact they made such a claim, but never actually even attempted to fulfil the claim … THE SAD PART … is that society supports these and other such numbskulls and feeds them resources; meanwhile – someone who actually has a clue, whose conclusions are based on decades of research, and adheres to strict principles of argument, reason, logic maths, modelling, science & other evidence – gets sweet fuck all … and all the while, civilisation keeps racing to the precipice of ecological & social calamity (and which calamity is already occurring and already out of control).
A system like what I propose is effectively blocked by resource starvation, which is the resultant consequence of the very principles the anarcho-capitalists defend, thus they’re defending hierarchy, authority & control, on order to block freedom from that control. As such, there’s not one single thing anarchic about their perspective.
Decentralised Currency Oxymoron:
Other groups exist like The P2P Foundation who do good work, but in many such groups – when you speak to their social media admins or other staff – you get the clear message their philosophy is that of the anarcho-capitalist, and thus for any good work they do, they simultaneously sabotage that potential by inserting the flaw right back into their solution.
A decentralised currency – for all its benefits – is still a currency, so it is still ultimately based on the fundamentally flawed property/trade/currency-based (capitalist) economic paradigm. Which means it can still be controlled, it can still be corrupted, it still motivates people to maximally exploit resources (including sentient humans & other species), and it still motivates people to avoid all possible responsibility for the costs of any deleterious ecological & social consequences of their actions … BECAUSE IT IS STILL A CURRENCY.
Semi-Anarchist Projects:
Though I have made countless criticisms of such groups, I am in fact very much a fan of The Venus Project (TVP), The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM), and others like them.
The Venus Project (TVP) I love … and I love the heart of the beautiful man that founded it (Jacque Fresco) … BUT … it cannot succeed in its present form without gigantic financial backing and almost universal human consensus, because it won’t get the backing without the consensus, and it is an attempt to leap forward in giant steps without dealing with many of the underlying issues – based on the assumption those issues will disappear … so as much as I admire the objective, it is blocked by massive and powerful socioeconomic opposition.
Similarly The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) I love … and I love the wit & intention of the man that founded it (Peter Joseph), as he has an amazing comprehension of the corruption and flaws of the socioeconomic status quo (more specialised in some areas than my own, but less broad in other areas of such specialised knowledge) … BUT … the problem is that TZM suffers the same flaw as TVP, because it needs gigantic backing & consensus to achieve its goals, and it is based on the same assumptions about the automation of labour & production.
Similarly again I love the heart & intention of all those who follow and support these projects … BUT … those people are typically blinded by their faith, they want something so bad, they fail to look at or acknowledge the flaws in the strategy.
Such groups are only semi-anarchic, because they still have a form of centralised decision making that requires authority.
The Open Empire Difference:
Open Empire is fully anarchic, meaning that it has internal rules that apply to itself and it’s systems … BUT … it claims no authority over anyone, instead it recognises the self-sovereignty of every object (sentient or non-sentient, living or otherwise).
- Open Empire uses decentralised systems like the Blockchain (see cryptocurrency distributed ledger), but modified to handle non-property/trade/currency-based economics, and buffers itself from all forms of the capitalist paradigm, while still interfacing and translating between itself and those paradigms where necessary.
- Open Empire declares its own claim to sovereignty by irrefutable arguments of reason, logic, maths & science.
- Open Empire provides a framework to assist and guide human productive activity without authority, such as to motivate them to regulate their own behaviour, while remaining free to ignore such motivations.
- Open Empire further motivates people to regulate each other … BUT ONLY via impartial & scientifically verifiable principles, WITHOUT the need for authority (a redundant requirement), AND ONLY where circumstances involve such extreme consequences as to justify such actions by principles which could not in any regard be deemed hypocritical.
This is a truly anarchic framework, capable of working with and alongside other anarchic, semi-anarchic, and non-anarchic systems, and doing so without those systems being able to corrupt its principles & systems.