Anarcho-capitalism as a response to failed capitalism

[memenode]

I've been reading Capitalism.org and there are two particularly interesting pages which I find relevant to anarcho-capitalists.

One is their page on anarchism, which I think is a bit too extreme and colorful in the way they characterize anarchism. They make some interesting points which I'll look into, but overall I think they're just contributing to the common misunderstandings of anarchism as equivalent to chaos. As I understand it, anarchism merely denotes absence of governing authority, not the absence of order.

Another page is one on democracy where it, in my opinion rightfully, argues that pure democracy leads to mob rule whereas limited democracy is used merely to establish the small government with the sole purpose of protecting individual rights - which according to the capitalism.org tour pretty much stem from the principle of non-initiation of force.

What I find interesting is how close certain western republics get to the ideal capitalist society that capitalism.org seems to describe, yet always end up having governments which "protect" from more than just these basic individual rights and always tend towards pure democracies, rule of majority.

This may mean one of these two things, as I see it.

1. The capitalist society was just never yet executed properly, but this could still be possible.

2. Or capitalism, by relying on limited government and limited democracy is relying on a flawed and inevitably corruptible system, proven as such by all these republics that failed to contain their governments and democracies to this limited function.

Interestingly, if the latter is the case, it means that not having government at all is the solution, despite what capitalism.org says about anarcho-capitalists. So I'm basically trying to determine which of the above two are true. I'm posting here in case anyone has some interesting thoughts to share about this.

Thank you.

[PattyLee loves dogs]

I recommend reading David Friedman (the son of Milton). Here's his web site:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Libertarian.html

You might want to start with his article on "Private Creation and Enforcement of Law -- A Historical Case.", but most of his writing is useful. He points out that medieval Iceland had an ancap system for 150 years before Norway took it over, so ancap is stable... at least as stable as government.

[memenode]

Great, thank you. Existence of stable and true ancap societies in past would be a true gold mine of arguments against sceptics. (And I am involved in a rather big debate about that elsewhere ).

Gonna check that out.

Thanks

[Caleb]

were they truly capitalist, though? I don't know, because frankly I haven't read enough about Iceland to know, but a hunch tells me they weren't 'capitalist' in any modern sense. I think the modern version of capitalism pretty much needs a stable oligarchy or dictatorship to enable it.

[memenode]

By "modern capitalism" do you mean the one currently applied and called as "capitalism" while actually not being true to what is described on capitalism.org (assuming we can take it as an authoritative resource on what capitalism is) due to bigger government, pure democracy and over-regulation that ensued?

In any case I'll keep that in mind when I read about the Iceland case.

Thanks