Anarcho-Capitalist
David D. Friedman, in 'The Machinery of Freedom,' presents an economic argument for Anarcho-Capitalism, proposing private agencies handle security and justice through competitive markets. Rejecting state authority, this system relies on voluntary contracts, arbitration, and private property as the foundation of order and governance.
What it believes
The market entire: law, police, courts, and defense supplied by competing agencies under insurance and arbitration, property absolute, and the state revealed as just a monopoly that forgot it had competitors.
The appeal
It is the boldest consistency claim in the atlas — if competition beats monopoly everywhere else, why exempt governance? — and its thought experiments (Friedman's Iceland, private arbitration's real success) keep the question honestly open.
Where it breaks
Protection agencies with armies are governments in larval form: the equilibrium of competing enforcers is either cartel (a state), conquest (a worse state), or Somalia's decade of warlord clearing prices. No polity has ever stayed in this cell; things pass through it, in one direction or the other.
Among its neighbours
The Minarcho-Capitalist above keeps the state's nameplate this cell unscrews. The Crypto-Anarchist beside it builds the infrastructure this cell's agencies would bill through. The far end of this row — the Anarcho-Communist — shares the abolition and disputes everything else: the two poles of the stateless dream, glaring at each other across the whole map.
Figures — real and imagined — who share the Anarcho-Capitalist base ideology. They differ only on the third axis: from radical to restorationist, each is a different face of a Anarcho-Capitalist.
The company you keep.
The social axis (progressive ↔ traditional) splits Anarcho-Capitalist into nine named shades. Take the quiz to find out which one is yours.
- Radical Anarcho-Capitalist
- Progressive Anarcho-Capitalist
- Reformist Anarcho-Capitalist
- Heterodox Anarcho-Capitalist
- Anarcho-Capitalist
- Rooted Anarcho-Capitalist
- Traditional Anarcho-Capitalist
- Reactionary Anarcho-Capitalist
- Restorationist Anarcho-Capitalist