a new anarcho-capitalist paradigm

this is something i posted in the anarcho-capitalist forum. check out the wikipedia page if you need a primer.

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i was thinking hard about intellectual property a few days ago and as my mind wandered onto grander things, i had a small ephiphany and saw a new agenda for anarcho-capitalists. i'll try to convey my thought process as best i can.

i began by trying to answer this question: what is the value of i.p. law? i know we usually talk about incentives, etc., but i was trying to look at it another way: from a perfect contracting perspective (since laws can properly be considered pre-fab contracts).

putting aside higher-order issues such as simultaneous invention and authorship, i focused on copyright and piracy. the question i had was, when and why would one consent to laws such as the d.m.c.a.?

the answer i struck upon was this: given our potential for opportunistic behavior, it could very well be pareto-optimal to consent to some sort of punishment regime and thereby lend credibility to your side of the bargain. that way, rather than force the musician to hire an encryption expert, you can just say: "look, if i'm caught by this auditing agency [the government, in this case], i'll get punished and you know i don't want that."

in an anarcho-capitalist society, i believe things would work out roughly the same, but as a more efficient manifestation. for example, i could choose the auditing agency i want, and musicians could choose their consumers, rather than have them allocated by geography and inheritance. also, chances are that my auditing agency would do some due diligence and adjust my punishment according to the tenets of marginalism.

if the potential for opportunistic behavior can pave the way for pareto-optimal consent to punishment (now known as law), this has some surprisingly broad implications. first, in an anarcho-capitalist society, people would voluntarily choose to join groups that invade their privacy in the name of full disclosure. what's more, people would even volunteer to be part of a punishment regime.

importantly, i believe that this latter point supports the anarcho-capitalist critique of classic anarchism. classic anarchists are likely to say that withdrawing consent at any time violates our "free will" or "natural rights," or somesuch nonsense. thus, one could change one's mind at any time, paving the way for opportunistic behavior. crucially, i believe that this forms the basis of their mistaken belief that capitalism requires the state. the more accurate thesis is that it is not "the state" which is necessary for capitalism to benefit a society, it is merely enforcement, which can be provided in the absence of the usual statist voting regimes, geographical fixation, and nationalism.

i also believe that fully incorporating the utility of credibility can help make ours a positivist philosophy, rather than have us come off as simply nihilistic anarchists. to me, the most important question is always, "well, then what?" so we get rid of government, how do we build a better society? i submit that the study of how people would choose credibility-providers in the absence of the state helps fill this theoretical void, while remaining within the bounds of economic theory.

additionally, i think it may help to counter statist critiques of anarcho-capitalism. namely, if efficiency and its analogues are based on choice, and (assuming) people chose governments, how can they be inefficient? furthermore, how do you explain the indisputable success of capitalist nations?

with all this in mind, i think we might help refine anarcho-capitalism and put some distance between it and classic anarchism (and its failings) by focusing our critique on populism, geography, and the nationalist mythology.