Voluntaryist = ... well, I am Carl's webmaster, so I'll just editorialize a bit. Let it be known, however, that Carl and I are able to find esoteric items on which we disagree, sometimes for a long time, and sometimes for a short time. In a nutshell, voluntaryism is simple to me: if you don't feel threatened by violence, then everything you do is voluntary. If you leave everyone else in that same state (don't create any threats of violence), then you are practicing voluntaryism. Even if you do feel threatened by violence and your behavior reflects it, you are still practicing voluntaryism by virtue of your avoidance of the threat-of-violence strategy.
Anarcho = no ruler. This means that an anarcho-capitalist does not behave as if any other person (or himself or herself) is subject to any rules except those that are self-imposed. Such a person will have order in his or her dealings with others only because he or she follows a set of rules he or she freely chose. The -capitalist part means a respect for the ownership of the means of production. This means that any scarce thing can be owned if the owner defines its boundaries, thereby creating a theoretical concept to represent a chunk of reality. Obviously, if parts of that defined concept intersect with parts of something someone else has already claimed as their property, a conflict will ensue, which is why anarcho-capitalists are necessarily reasonable. Their reasoning powers allow them to solve such conflicts and thereby remain at peace with each other. Were they to resort to violence, they would no longer be "anarcho-," but rather more at "krony-" capitalists - those who employ violence to maintain their control over stuff.
Agorist = believer in the market (Agora is the Greek word for "marketplace"). An agorist tends to rely on the market to enforce whatever rules happen to be good for society. For example, a custom might develop that people travel on the right side of a road. Those who choose to go against this custom clog up roads and cause accidents and other problems. The results of all that mayhem tend to convert any such contrarian into someone who follows the "common law" or the rules that develop naturally in a free market. The agorist relies on this effect to create and maintain the best possible set of rules for market participants. The agorist, therefore, is also an anarchist ("no rulers"). An agorist may choose to create rules and then pay someone to enforce them using violence, but, when pressed, would admit that such behavior is immoral. As with immoral behavior generally, the parties violated by such enforcement may use self-defense (or hire their own enforcers), and this would tend to cause a lot of suffering. Therefore, it is difficult for agorists to maintain the strategy of inventing and enforcing rules, and most would reject the idea in the first place.
Voluntaryist = ... well, I am Carl's webmaster, so I'll just editorialize a bit. Let it be known, however, that Carl and I are able to find esoteric items on which we disagree, sometimes for a long time, and sometimes for a short time. In a nutshell, voluntaryism is simple to me: if you don't feel threatened by violence, then everything you do is voluntary. If you leave everyone else in that same state (don't create any threats of violence), then you are practicing voluntaryism. Even if you do feel threatened by violence and your behavior reflects it, you are still practicing voluntaryism by virtue of your avoidance of the threat-of-violence strategy.
ReplyDeleteAnarcho = no ruler. This means that an anarcho-capitalist does not behave as if any other person (or himself or herself) is subject to any rules except those that are self-imposed. Such a person will have order in his or her dealings with others only because he or she follows a set of rules he or she freely chose. The -capitalist part means a respect for the ownership of the means of production. This means that any scarce thing can be owned if the owner defines its boundaries, thereby creating a theoretical concept to represent a chunk of reality. Obviously, if parts of that defined concept intersect with parts of something someone else has already claimed as their property, a conflict will ensue, which is why anarcho-capitalists are necessarily reasonable. Their reasoning powers allow them to solve such conflicts and thereby remain at peace with each other. Were they to resort to violence, they would no longer be "anarcho-," but rather more at "krony-" capitalists - those who employ violence to maintain their control over stuff.
Agorist = believer in the market (Agora is the Greek word for "marketplace"). An agorist tends to rely on the market to enforce whatever rules happen to be good for society. For example, a custom might develop that people travel on the right side of a road. Those who choose to go against this custom clog up roads and cause accidents and other problems. The results of all that mayhem tend to convert any such contrarian into someone who follows the "common law" or the rules that develop naturally in a free market. The agorist relies on this effect to create and maintain the best possible set of rules for market participants. The agorist, therefore, is also an anarchist ("no rulers"). An agorist may choose to create rules and then pay someone to enforce them using violence, but, when pressed, would admit that such behavior is immoral. As with immoral behavior generally, the parties violated by such enforcement may use self-defense (or hire their own enforcers), and this would tend to cause a lot of suffering. Therefore, it is difficult for agorists to maintain the strategy of inventing and enforcing rules, and most would reject the idea in the first place.