Thorium.

I’m happy you are doing the same, and discussing civilly. It’s the only way we can understand each other. Hopefully the quality of discussion will be better on this platform - I think I had a grand total of three or four legitimate conversations on Reddit over the course of several years, so at least we’re off to a decent start.

And yes, you’re right about the definition of capitalism. The terms capital, ownership, private, and means of production are unfortunately not that clear when people coming from different perspectives have different definitions of all those component parts, so I was trying to phrase a bit of my perspective of it in less ideologically-loaded terms.

It’s not surprising you’d feel that way about anarcho-capitalism if you believe money is evil. I think money is man’s greatest invention, the foundation of peaceful cooperation, and primarily good.

I know you already touched on it, but could you explain in more detail why you think money is inherently evil? My view is - there are a very limited number of ways people can interact with each other to obtain things they need or don’t have. If you wish to obtain something from someone else, the fundamental options are trade, beg, steal, or enslave. Outside of reshaping the nature of man into one of complete selflessness, I think the only consistently good option there is trade - which money enables us to do very efficiently. That’s probably already a lot to unpack, but I’d like to hear your thoughts.

It seems to me we have fundamentally different ideas of what capitalism is. To me, capital is savings - immediate consumption forgone to create something which provides more in the future. I haven’t yet encountered an argument that isn’t reducible to a complaint against the way market mechanisms interact when the government is involved.

I agree about reducing the maximum wieldable power to the greatest extent possible. I think we just disagree about what this actually looks like. The problem is that any institution which would deign to be the authority on this matter is the very one where power coalesces. A system wherein no one single entity has the ultimate authority is the only one that won’t get worse on this over time. The participants should be governed by the incentives inherent in the system, not the dictates of one of the participants.

Anarcho-pacifism is a very respectable political position, btw. I think studying economics from the Austrian school would at least give you a better idea of where ancaps are actually coming from.

It happens with corporations every day, every time you make a purchase. With the government you receive two bad options once every four years.

I agree the more decentralized the better. And the government is just a business with the worst incentives - evidenced by other, more efficient businesses following their own incentives to protect their interests by lobbying the government to use the impetus of legal violence. The existence of the government provides the avenue for corruption. There isn’t a great workaround, the Constitution was the best attempt and a single clause enabled the federal government to argue for basically everything it does.

Best just to nix the idea of an institution that can legally demand resources regardless of how well they perform their job.

And yeah, sorry about the seriousness- I’m no fan of billionaires but they can theoretically exist just by providing things people want. The government, with taxes and wars, figuratively and literally suck the blood out of people.

There’s no such thing as a non-corrupt government. Taxation perverts the incentives because the source of their revenue is decoupled from the voluntary contributions of people who want the service they provide. That extra money will not be going to you. These people are not your friend. Efficiency isn’t even possible - half of the information in the economic calculation is not present because they don’t obtain revenue voluntarily.

Agreed about stopping that spending. You like the hospitals? And the roads? One of them is full of potholes and patrolled by the State constantly for their ticketing revenue generation scheme and the other will bankrupt you for existing. Doesn’t much matter if it’s America or elsewhere, the only difference is whether they took your money already or not.

Replace “billionaires” with “the government” and you got yourself something truer