Anarcho-capitalism

Here is the essential reading on anarcho-capitalism, which might also be called the natural order, private-property anarchy, ordered anarchy, radical capitalism, the private-law society, or society without a state ... At the top of any reading list on anarcho-capitalism must be the name Murray N. Rothbard ... [T]here exist also utilitarian, deontic, empiricist, historicist, positivist, and plain eclectic defenders of anarcho-capitalism ... The contemporary anarcho-capitalist intellectual movement has a few outstanding 19th and early-20th century precursors.

I had the privilege of meeting Baldy in the winter of 1946-47 ... Baldy and I came to anarcho-capitalism from laissez-faire at about the same time, driven by inexorable logic, in what for us was the memorable winter of 1949-50. I vividly remember one time I was visiting him at FEE and he quietly pulled out a copy of Tolstoy's anarchist Law of Love and the Law of Violence, which he confided that "some of us are now reading with great interest."

Politically, [David Friedman] is an advocate of the radical libertarian position known as "anarcho-capitalism," arguing that even the limited functions of the night-watchman state (police, courts, law, and punishment) can and should be privately supplied ... Friedman's academic and popular interests interact in a number of ways. Most notably, his academic research on the political economy of medieval Iceland has provided anarcho-capitalists with arguably the best historical example of their preferred social system.

Larry [Moss], and his then roommate Jerry Woloz, ganged up on me. Using on the government the same Hazlittian arguments about profit and loss, the weeding out process of inefficient entrepreneurs, that had convinced me of the merits of private vis-à-vis public provision of all other goods and services, they shook me up on this anarchism business. (I had previously thought, only, that it wouldn't work, that it couldn't work, not that it was morally wrong.) After I met [Rothbard], it took him probably all of 15 minutes to convert me to the same anarcho-capitalist position I have held ever since.

Nozick sought to defend the minimal state–that is, a state "limited to the functions of protecting all its citizens against violence, theft, and fraud, and to the enforcement of contracts" (p. 26)–not only against those who want something more, but also against those who want something less. [Anarchy, State, and Utopia] therefore includes a critique of "anarcho-capitalism," the ultra-libertarian position that the legislative, judicial, and police functions hitherto monopolized by government should be open to competition among private "protection agencies."

Organized crime is essentially anarcho-capitalist, a productive industry struggling to govern itself; apart from attempts to monopolize and injure competitors, it is productive and non-aggressive. Unorganized, or street, crime, in contrast, is random, punkish, viciously aggressive against the innocent, and has no redeeming social feature. Wouldn't you know, then, that our leftist culture hates and reviles the Mafia and organized crime, while it lovingly excuses, and apologizes for, chaotic and random street punks violence which amounts to "anarchy" in the bad, or common meaning.

Rockwell: The term anarchist is mostly used to mean someone who believes that if the state and law are gotten rid of, all property would become collectively owned. It was the great insight of Murray Rothbard that this is not the case: private ownership and the law that support it are natural ... So he was an anarchist in this sense but to avoid confusion he used the term anarcho-capitalist. This doesn't mean that he favored somehow establishing a capitalist system in place of the state. What he said is that capitalism is the de facto result in a civilized society without a state.

Block: ... Right now, we have anarchy among states ... These days, people can avail themselves of the benefits of so-called anarchy through orderly exchanges on the internet. Auction houses like eBay.com thrive, whereby people from all over the world bid and receive goods, with no enforcement mechanism other than their reputations at stake. If you fail to pay, fail to send in goods, or mislead in any way, those facts are spread out before the world ...
Anarcho-capitalism is nothing more than the conviction that market logic applies across the board.