Re: "Starship Stormtroopers"

Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Mon, 5 Jul 1999 11:28:34 +0100

On Sat, Jul 03, 1999 at 09:46:31AM -0400, John Clark wrote:
>
> Theta 8008 <ubergoo@hotmail.com> On Friday, July 02, 1999 Wrote:
>
> > their argument against Anarcho-Capitalism is that "bosses"
> >and managers constitute a state.
>
> It's easy to start my own company, it's not easy to start my
> own state.
>
> I'm a little curious, what euphemism for "state" have the
> "stateless socialists" invented to describe the entity that forces
> people who don't want to be socialists (like me) to give up their property?

One word: "family".

Strange but true: even the most dedicated anarcho-capitalists don't usually think too hard about the fact that they live in a communist institution that relies on cooperation, forcible sharing of property, and cooercion ("you WILL wash the dishes up or ELSE!"). They don't even think too hard about forking over their hard-earned capital to someone else for spending on items of dubious utility, many of which will be consumed by that person!

I am _aghast_ at this tolerance for stalinism in the domestic world! Housework should be a billable activity and parasitism should be grounds for divorce!

(Or, to put it another way: non-coercive communal living, as long as the perceived benefits outweigh the costs, is something that many people engage in: it's called marriage. Similarly, it is possible to envisage other non-coercive communal lifestyles that provide benefits outweighing the costs. The problem isn't communism; it's coercion.)