I agree with Zoe as I believe the AC system would be essentially 'Mad Max' in nature. By removing the state and it's monopoly on the legal use of force you open a pandoras box. There are some great things in there (freedom and such) but down the bottom, inescapably, you find the principle that 'might is right'.
The world is "Mad Max" right now! Might is right. There is no world government regulating actions between nation states. These nuclear armed behemoths just make up the rules as they go along.
Right now a coalition of democratic nations is in the middle east for no good reason occupying two countries based on false pretenses, and has killed over a million people since the war started, not to mention the millions of orphaned children and people starving right now! Hundreds of millions have been slaughtered by governments in the last century.
They are not accountable to anyone. The US government does whatever it wants. Other countries do whatever they want as long as its not the US government's interests to intervene. There is no order regulating this. We have anarchy right now on an enormous and terrifying scale.
In society there are always the strong and the weak, one of the functions that the state can (and should) perform is protecting the weak from the strong. Preventing the strong from coercing the weak. Remove the state and you remove this protection. The strong will use violence or the threat of violence to enforce their will on others.
What protection? The state institutionalizes the exploitation and coercion of the weak. The average worker pays 30-40% of their income in tax. The extremely wealthy pay far less because they have the resources to evade taxes and they receive massive government subsidies and recently direct bailouts.
The AC argument seems to run that this will not happen because the weak will hire some strong to fight off other strong. This ignores the fact that the weak will not always be able to afford this protection. It is not financially possible for them to hire protection, not financially viable for someone to offer it - but it is financially viable for the strong to kill them and take their possessions (the benefit is low but the cost is very low) or perhaps to enslave them (again the benefit can be low because the cost is low).
This makes no sense. Hiring people to kill poor people for their meager possessions is expensive. Hiring people to enslave others and supervise them so they don't escape is even more expensive.
The only way to do any of this is to pay armed soldier to round them up. So to defend themselves, all the poor really need is access to guns, which can be purchased for as little as $100.
So even if the evil army of the rich has better guns and better trained soldiers, its still going to need a lot of soldiers, perhaps a ratio of 1 soldier for every 2 poor people being enslaved. That's hugely expensive. Slavery almost only works when the slaves are disarmed and/or convinced that it is their duty to be slaved.
But of course the AC argument also ignores the fact that where the weak can afford the protection that at a minimum the hired strong will be essentially engaging in a protection racket. More likely is that the hired strong will become the oppressors.
How is this a fact? Especially if instead of being forced to use the services of one protection firm (the government), people actually have a choice and security firms have to compete for business.
But surely in an AC society the weak would still be armed and could resist the strong themselves? Economics 101: specialisation. The strong are specialised in oppressing the weak. They have the better equipment, better organisation and more practice. The weak are specialised in other kinds of work. They will likely possess poorer equipment, they will certainly be less organised and they will be definitionally less practised.
Economics 101: Specialization and training is expensive. You seem to imagine these rich oppressors as people with bottomless pockets, creating private armies for the sake of being evil. It is almost certainly cheaper to just pay workers and treat them reasonably, rather than paying armies to round them up as slaves.
The AC will say that an armed populace who knows the local conditions can wage an insurgency war. It is true. They can. There is no reason to think that they will be successful though. Insurgencies are only relevant against an occupation and the strong may have no need to do that. The strong can extract rents through threats and can back these threats with punitive strikes (raze a village to intimidate another village). They can also raid for resources or slaves.
Sure. Their are no guarantees. I'm sure some terrible things would happen at some point in an AC world. No one is saying it will be utopian. Only that it would be better than the current situation where the poor are systematically exploited and abused by governments, and millions are routinely killed in wars between nation states.
In an AC society the strong have a favourable cost-benefit in oppressing the weak. Historically the strong have always oppressed the weak. Taking things by force is part of human nature. Why would this be any different in an AC society? The lesson of communism is that a system which requires a new or different human will fail.
Note: above arguments also apply to the majority v the minority
Because historically the "weak" are always disarmed. Even in Vietnam, the majority of Vietnamese people did not have guns.
Look at Switzerland, with its tiny but armed population it was able to deter much more powerful forces from occupying her in two world wars.
Also if we look at history, the "strong" are almost always governments, not private armies. The strong get strong by forcing others to pay for their wars. The oil companies and defense contractors in the US might have deep pockets, but could they really afford to fund the wars they are waging themselves without robbing the taxpayers. The strong don't just use force to maintain their strength, they are heavily reliant on brainwashing the subjugated people to do what they want. In the developed world, their method is lauding the greatness of democracy and creating fear of terrorism. The strong also use religion, fear and personality cults to get people to co-operate without having to use the expense of force.
In an ACist society where most people don't accept anyone trying to rule them as "legitimate," its going to make it much HARDER for any would be rulers. As I said though, I'm the first to admit there are no guarantees, just like there are no guarantees now. AC does not make violence and coersion impossible, it just makes it more expensive to use.
