We always hear Anarchists say that there are rules in anarchy but no rulers, but what if i told you that premise totally misunderstands what Anarcho Capitalism truly is. In a private property society where everything is privatized, the property owners are the rulers of their lands and they get to decide who comes on their property and who doesn't. The richest and most influential landowners would be kings over their large estates and rule the people that live and work on them. There would be many people that could not afford to buy their own land and as a result they would have to live on a land owner's estate, meaning they would have to leave under the rules of their landlord, pay rent and other fees to their landlord. If an individual earns enough money to afford a small plot of land, that individual can offer to buy that plot of land from the landlord and if the landlord sells, that individual would have his own land and he would rule over it.
If you studied the founding of the American colonies, you would know about a group of noblemen and businessmen that got royal charters from English Monarchs like Charles I and Charles II to found colonies such as the Province of Avalon, Province of Maryland, Province of Barbados, Province of Carolina, and Province of New Jersey. These individuals were called Lords Proprietors and they were granted these royal charters for their exceptional service to the English King. These Lords Proprietors goals were to set up a Proprietary colony where they were given almost absolute power and full autonomy from the English Monarchs to compete with other Proprietors to attract colonists to live in their respective colonies and to export natural resources back to England. They did this by selling a huge parts of land for dirt cheap, being tolerant to different religious faiths, and allowing more political freedoms. They drafted constitutions, set up publically elected assemblies, maintained a low level of taxation while organizing a militia, they suppressed revolts, and fought in successful battles against Native American tribes near their colonies. The title Lords Proprietor was not a noble title but was for the most part hereditary unless a Lords Proprietor sells his shares to an outside individual or organization.
This unique experiment came to an end in the in the 1720’s when all but one of the Lords Proprietors were forced to sell their shares to the British Government, leading to the Province of Carolina to be split into North and South Carolina and the British government taking full control over the colonies, beginning an era of centralization, which would later result in the American Revolution. As a former AnCap, I look back at this period in Western Civilization as the closest a civilized society has gotten to an Anarcho Capitalist society and it would be wise for AnCaps to study about the Proprietary colonies in great detail.
Property exists by grace of the law. It is not a fact, but a legal fiction.
What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing.
-Both by Max Stirner
Absent a state, enforcement would be an issue. I have a few issues with the AnCap model, and the property rights spook is really one of them.
It seems like it could grow into a pseudo feudal system with large property owners being the kings of "their property" as it would fall to them to enforce their rules themselves, probably by hiring enforcers at the expense of their tenants... You know, because of the terrorists or organized crime or something.
Potentially, a class of property owners could affiliate with each other to establish a ruling class (For lack of a better word, I know that is a loaded phrase.) that controlled a majority of land, they could even partially "sell" the land to others, while maintaining an interest and charging taxes! Kind of like what we have going on now with the state.
It seems all too easy to devolve into a "sign the contract or leave" kind of setup. You owe the land owner 30% of your labor and if you don't like it, go to Somalia.
In the events you mentioned, these autonomous land owners were serving at the pleasure of the crown, so they never actually "owned" their property, the crown did. The tenants were subject to not only these land owners, but also the crown. The Crown is the one with the means to enforce its claim of property.
Anyway I'm a bit conflicted on property rights in ancapistan. I'm sure there would be some benefits to that system, and it might be 100% better than now, but it seems like human nature to dominate his fellow man is a tough egg to crack.
Somehow we have to get to where the individual becomes the only authority that he answers to. Tyranny by informed consent is still a bad idea, though its better than the social contract model many of us currently enjoy.
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