/liberty/ - Liberty

>>73698

A sensible answer is a combination of militias and privateers. If you think about it, privateers have a strong incentive to team up with militias, because those militia forces effectively reduce their costs by picking up the slack. The privateers might even find it cost-effective in some situations to sponsor local militias.

As for the historical performance of privateers, as well as a look into what this surprisingly sophisticated and effective industry looked like, I recommend Privateering and National Defense, a collection of essays on the topic:

https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Myth%20of%20National%20Defense,%20The%20Essays%20on%20the%20Theory%20and%20History%20of%20Security%20Production_3.pdf

As for governments delaying the negative effects of the invasion; that depends on actually capturing economic control of the target region, which involves capturing existing tax structures. It's much more difficult to invade an area, create a tax system, and get everyone to start complying, than it is to simply capture an existing tax structure. This is due in large part to the difficulty of trying to convince a local populace to comply with new restrictions, which has proven to be the downfall of many invaders throughout history. For an examination of this principle at work, I recommend Civilian-Based Defense. It's perhaps a shade on the pacifist side, but it does shed some light on the surprising efficacy of mere non-compliance:

http://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Civilian-Based-Defense-English.pdf

Now of course, you can presume that if the invading country has enough resources, military power, and so forth, it will conquer. However, the question we have to ask ourselves is whether the defense of a similarly-sized state in the same scenario would fare any better, and it seems fairly clear that it would not. We can only point to inherent advantages of an Anarcho-Capitalist social order; we cannot establish that it is absolutely unconquerable. Nothing is. A private national defense is better ceteris paribus, but we cannot say for certain that all private defense will outperform all state invaders.

>>73698

I'll try and dissect your criticisms one point at a time and try to poke holes in your arguments.

>Historically, mercenaries are massive cowards. Once the tide starts turning against them, they'll desert and flee, assuming they don't get hired by the invading force.

Well, sure. But everyone is a massive coward at heart. Just because someone is enslaved into military service at the point of a bayonet doesn't change this fact. It doesn't take a deep understanding of military history to realize that routing or desertion is a universal aspect of warfare. As soon as one side believes they will lose they will flee from the battle to preserve their own lives, this has not changed throughout all of human warfare. The few times that a company of soldiers endured losses and defeat instead of fleeing are unique occurrences. I think it is worth considering that many times these extreme acts of selfless defiance against impossible odds were usually people defending against an invading force, consider the Alamo, the Gaulic Wars, the Winter War, etc.

>Militia

The modern world has numerous examples of smaller, weaker countries defending against aggressors who have greater resources to spend on aggression. Combined arms, air force, and navy are almost always needed for states that plan on engaging in state-to-state warfare, as they are tools that are needed to defeat modern armies in the field. The tanks and mobile infantry are needed to breakthrough enemy defenses and encircle an army, air force is needed to destroy organization and communication, and a navy is needed to facilitate invasion, supply, and to continue the requisition of the armaments of war that a massive army requires to function, but it is not the tools that a defensive force needs. Defense requires a far lesser degree of investment than attack, surface to air missile launchers are far cheaper to produce than modern jets, the only reason jets are produced is that they are armaments of aggression. Battleships and nuclear submarines are not defensive but offensive. These tools of offense don't mean victory, either, you only need to look at Vietnam and Afghanistan to see that a much poorer and less numerous force can exhaust an attacker until they need to retreat. However, in a stateles society, the people would be far richer and would be more thrifty in defense, people would only want to pay for what is absolutely necessary for defense. A billion dollars would go a lot farther in a stateless society than one beleaguered by a bloated state.

>Governments, with their fiat currency and monopoly on force, are quite good at delaying the negative incentives of their retarded actions until the next head of state comes into office, which decreases the incentive to act rationally. Also take into account that most democratic leaders are sociopaths and pathological liars (traits best suited to winning elections), meaning they're even less likely to make the rational choice.

You still haven't provided an incentive, only made the claim that they aren't rational, which is a whole other topic that is a lot more complicated but I will instead just contradict you by saying that they are rational. They make decisions that will increase their political capital. What use would there in attacking a society without a state? Modern history shows us that almost every war is preceded by some conflict between states: a border dispute, excluding each other from resources inside their country, ideological difference of state rulers, or what have you. If a state can exploit the resources in a stateless society as easily as they can within their own state, what motive could there be to attack? If there is no state apparatus in which to declare war and make peace with, how would you even go to war? If the people will never submit to the foreign authority then it would be only to the foreign state's detriment to be an aggressor.

Of course these scenarios are all predicated on the notion that statism continues in all parts of the world as normal and some geographic area all-of-a-sudden just dissolves the state, which I think would be difficult to imagine. If an anarchist world would to occur I would imagine it would not be isolated to one area of the world but be a global trend, a gradual transition as people are convinced that the state is not a necessary function of harmonious society. But even if it was only to happen in an isolated geographic area and even if it was eventually subdued, against all odds, by some foreign state then we would just return to how things are now but at least in the mean time there would of been a nice vacation from statism.

>>73703

>I think it is worth considering that many times these extreme acts of selfless defiance against impossible odds were usually people defending against an invading force, consider the Alamo, the Gaulic Wars, the Winter War, etc.

That was the point I was trying to make, actually. A soldier defending his home is a stronger force than a hired gun. Guess I didn't really make it explicit, so my bad on that. Anyway, the point I was trying to raise is that, if we assume that mercenaries will rout and native defenders are less likely to, how do you know enough will volunteer? Thinking about it, though, that seems like a non-issue. It's unlikely that people will simply refuse to resist invasion. Even if they did, it's like you said: no one said this region (I agree with you that ancapistan is much more likely to be a global trend than an isolated incident, I just picked the most "difficult" example explain for completeness' sake.) would repel 100% of all invasion attempts, just that it stands a better chance, all things being equal, than an equivalent state.

>Militia

Like I said in my post, I don't deride the supreme effectiveness of guerilla infantry wreaking havoc on a wealthier foe, I've used that argument myself before. One thing to keep in mind (and an argument used against me) is that Afghan guerilla fighters have had much steeper casualty rates than American forces; they were victorious yes, but at a price.

As for incentives, you are right in that there really aren't any. I gave that hypothetical of insane commie that wants to firebomb the disgusting capitalists that dare to abide by nonagression and private property as a worst-case, devil's advocate sort of scenario.

You provide solid points, anon. Like I said in the OP, I'm really not trying to dismantle anarchocapitalism or anything like that, and have a healthy respect for Austrian economics. Defense is the one area I floundered a bit on last time I argued fought about this in the meatspace. When that kind of thing happens, I like to reflect a bit and check whether it's because I'm just not completely informed or if there truly is a hole in my beliefs.