Q: What is a “market anarchist”?

A: Market anarchists, also known as anarcho-capitalists, come from an entirely different realm of philosophical and economic thought than anarcho-socialists, communists, and anarcho-syndicalists, like Noam Chomsky and Peter Kropotkin, although we fully believe that these groups can coexist peacefully. We’re most closely mirrored ideologically by many American libertarians. Without getting into too much detail on the origins of the ethical theory, we believe society should be structured around something called the non-aggression principle, which states that no man has the moral right to initiate or threaten the use of force on another man, although self-defense is valid. This necessarily leads to the conclusion that no one group should have a coercive monopoly on any service provided in society, including the defense of property. In other words, insane as it may sound, we advocate free competition of services as the most optimal solution to problems like crime, defense, infrastructure, and education.

The most prominent economic theorists in the field are often described as Austrian economists and include Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and often David Friedman who places himself in the Chicago school of economics. The main theory is that most economic problems today arise from an incorrect allocation of resources that occurs in a coercive environment where price signals are artificially manipulated by bureaucrats who cannot possibly predict all of the complexities of the market with any accuracy and who often simply hand out subsidies and tax breaks as rewards to the interest groups that had them elected.

For instance, let’s say the government passes a law in the 1970’s to require banks to relax their lending practices and give more home loans to high-risk borrowers. Consequently, bad loans start to artificially inflate the housing market and give the wrong price signals to investors, also causing rampant speculation. We often hear this story framed as market greed, but from a market anarchist perspective, in a truly free system, banks essentially do not want to lend money to high-risk borrowers because of the possible catastrophic long-term consequences for their business. The problem is not people within the market acting too much in their own interest; rather, it is being forced to act against their interests that leads to the volatile conditions. Rothbardian theorists also decry fiat currency, central banking, deficit financing, and artificial manipulation of interest rates as major sources of economic crisis.

We’re also extreme pacifists. We believe that war is not only the health of the state, but that the state is the health of war. In other words, war today would be economically infeasible without the taxation and deficit financing that the state inflicts on the citizenry. Our views on foreign affairs are very similar to the likes of Noam Chomsky. There are of course so many more theories and predictions associated with the movement and ideas for how society could function and deal with problems in the absence of a state, but I’ll keep this a brief summary!

Q: What kind of anarchist uses the roads or attends government funded educational institutions like public schools or universities?

A: I would say that I am not morally responsible for the world I was born into. I cannot be held accountable for the fact that there are not many viable alternates to interacting with the state in this coercive system any more than an anti-communist person in Soviet Russia can be viewed upon as having less integrity for obtaining their sustenance from a bread distribution line rather than risking imprisonment and death for living off of the black market. The price of education is artificially inflated in this world, and coercive monopolies always make the “privatized” alternatives virtually inaccessible to all but the wealthy.

Checking out of society as to not have to interaction with the state would be equivalent to punishing myself for a kind of original sin, and would certainly not be the most effective way by far to spread my ideas and the cause of freedom.

Q: Why is being an anarchist always associated with blowing up buildings, hurling Molotov cocktails, starting riots, punk rock, motorbikes, looting and a general lashing out against society?

A: I guess by associating anarchists with something dangerous and scary, they can avoid their knowledge of how dangerous and scary it is to give a completely unchecked monopoly of force, nuclear weapons, and the power to educate and disseminate information to a gang of narcissists and sociopaths who notoriously blow up buildings, murder, loot, enslave, imprison, and torture millions of innocent people.

Q: What if you’re wrong?

A: I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong and to be rescued from my grievous error. A part of me very much deeply desires that someone will be able to come along, give me superior arguments, and prove that the state, theft, and violence, can actually exist as a moral good. Then I could avoid the potently uncomfortable experience of informing people that I’m an anarchist. I could widely broaden my circle of friends and social contacts, becoming a more welcome guest at dinner parties and lively political debates full of humor and light reference to current events. I could vastly increase my economic opportunity. I could start a career as a politician, pillaging the public purse and siphoning off my vast gains to Swiss back accounts. What a life that would be! Please, please talk me down from my ledge of philosophical insanity!