What would an anarcho-capitalist America run on lines imagined by Rothbard or Hoppe look like?
We have their vision described here, here, and here.
On the one hand, it would be an economic catastrophe, as the mixed capitalist economy that has been the foundation of US prosperity since the 1940s would be destroyed, and a depression would ensure. As all barriers to trade and capital movement would be removed, the collapse of manufacturing and industry would be accelerated as free trade under absolute advantage would implode the US.
Even worse, as any effective national borders were dismantled, there would be a tidal wave of mass immigration from the Third World, which would destroy the demographic and cultural cohesion of America.
Those owners of any big business and industry left would also happily bring in millions of cheap, foreign and easily exploitable labour from the Third World to smash wages and labour rights and make themselves internationally competitive.
Given the fact that there would be no US national government concerned with national security, hostile foreign governments like China or the Arab Gulf States would be able to buy up vast real estate, property and national assets, and then import millions of their own people, which would reduce vast areas of America to colonies of China or Saudi Arabia. As in Europe, whole areas would be gradually lost to segregated and fundamentalist Islamic communities, deeply hostile to the culture around them.
The result would be increasingly isolated, militarised gated communities of wealthy Americans, surrounded by a sea of Third World poverty, economic collapse, crime, drug cartels, violence, social collapse, intercommunal violence, and then civil war.
Despite Hoppe’s pathetic attempts to deny that this would be the outcome as described here, that is clearly what we can expect to see.
In short: anarcho-capitalism would mean economic and national suicide for America, or indeed for any other First World country where it was implemented.
I imagine this is why many American libertarians are abandoning libertarianism, as the evidence in my post here seems to suggest, and converting to the Alt Right.
The reason? I think it is fairly obvious: many of them realise that the anarcho-capitalist vision for America would result in exactly what I have described above, and they have no alternative political movement to fall back on.
I’m on Twitter:
Lord Keynes @Lord_Keynes2
https://twitter.com/Lord_Keynes2
i think that an ideology which can win over conservatives and moderate conservatives while being more or less mainstream will have the next policies.
ReplyDelete1.it will centre around familiy (not to confuse with "familiy values")
and not around rugged individualism.
for example policies which will help a familiy (no matter if its homosexual or hetrosexual familiy) to have a decent wage so it will be easier to sustain a familiy only with one earner in the familiy (no matter if man or woman).
and it will give benefits which will help to raise children and etc
2."cutting taxes" (but the right way) lets say to slash taxes harshly on low and middle income earners and small buisnesses while massively increasing income taxes on the rich (trickle up policies instead of trickle down policies).
3.highly protectionist industrial policies (helping the poor the middle class and also its boost the national pride).
4.a return to melting pot assimilation speeches like saying unity is our biggest strength instead diversity is our biggest strength or we are all americans not afro americans not latin americans but we are simply americans.
basically this policies and speeches should be uniting speeches not divisive speeches and the policies should be uniting as well.
5.to win the support of conservatives and moderate conservatives for fiscal stimulus its have 3 paths to implement fiscal stimulus.
a.on military (conservatives love huge military even if they dont want to use it as much as neocons)
b.infrastructure is plausable as well but its still harder to implement politically.
c.subsidizing the "worthy" poor by giving subsidies to small buisnesses small farmers or to subsidize wages for workers progressievely (helping the workers and big biz will not be against it as well) and all the conservatives which is less likely to support government intervention can at least excuse it by saying that at least you giving people money and they decide what they are doing with that and not the evil government.
Honestly, most A caps are probably not actual A caps, at least the "leaders" of the movement like Block, Hoppe, Rothbard, Rockwell and Woods seem that way. I think most are basically net-confederates who would like anarcho-capitlaism to work but realize that the breaking point for it would be borders and the rule of law.
ReplyDeleteImagine radical Muslims and Christian recinstructionists(Gary North) arguing over which courts are the right ones, both think God is on their side. Should we let Jihadists create courts centered around Sharia law? According to Hoppe they could just buy some nice land anywhere in the world and be allowed to. The fact that he believes everyone is as bigoted as him and will shut out gays, beggars, bums, drug users, blacks, muslims, or communists shows how ignorant he is about capitalism. The wealthy have their private islands and gated communities. In an A-cap society they will buy armies to protect their fortresses and let the workers of the world figure out who runs the slums as they import all kinds of people from around the world to work their factories, warehouses, mines and ports.
You can privatize a lot of things, healthcare, education, utilities and land, but some things don't seem to be "marketable" like borders, law, or children(LK has noted Rothbard's weird child market which is basically reintroduction of slavery).
I think the A caps have shot for the moon with all their goals so that when they miss they can still privatize and deregulate as much as possible knowing that the utopia won't ever happen, but they can get close.
http://nakedkeynesianism.blogspot.com/2016/08/crowdfunding-campaign-to-publish-keynes.html
ReplyDelete