Thread by @PnictogenHorses

one of the sillier manifestations of right-wing ideology in this era of electronic mass communication—which seems to have dissolved all political discourse into a soup of memes and buzzwords—is the oxymoronic "anarchocapitalism", or #AnCap. it's big with computer geeks.

(cont'd)

surely a large fraction of the @elonmusk / @mtaibbi / @ShellenbergerMD right-wing Twitter clique—which attracts mostly people who enjoy the luxury of "passive income" through non-productive means, like management or cryptocurrency—fancy themselves "anarchocapitalist".

(cont'd)

why not? the average @elonmusk / @mtaibbi fan has a purely emotional and aesthetic appreciation of political and economic terminology. they don't think of "anarchism" as a body of political theory, but as a mood or a pose—being rebellious, breaking all the rules, etc.

(cont'd)

the difficulty is that "anarchocapitalism" is a contradiction in terms. #capitalism requires rigid enforcement of rules in order to work; capitalism cannot function in an anarchist society, because capitalists need some way to *enforce* their massive hoarding of wealth.

(cont'd)

central to capitalism is the assertion that the primary goal of businesses in the capitalist economy isn't furnishing goods and services or even employment; it's the amassing of great surpluses of *capital*—wealth hoarded with the idea of investing it elsewhere.

(cont'd)

without massive stockpiling of capital by business owners, so the logic goes, it wouldn't be possible to start *new* businesses, nor to assure the survival of existing businesses through lean times. but capitalists also assert total control over their hoarded wealth.

(cont'd)

capitalists claim that they need to hoard wealth for legitimate business reasons, but in practice capitalists spend their hoarded wealth on themselves—and they decry any attempt at external regulation that forces them to spend their capital on (say) higher wages.

(cont'd)

in fact, that refusal by capitalists to submit to any sort of *policing* of how they dispose of their hoarded capital is roughly how capitalists can get to convincing themselves that they're somehow "anarchists": business owners regard external regulation as *tyranny*.

(cont'd)

"if I don't hoard wealth," the capitalist says, "how can I create jobs and pay good wages?"

"so, you'll submit to legislation that requires you to create jobs and pay good wages?" says the liberal politician.

"no! I believe in freedom!" says the "anarchocapitalist".

(cont'd)

there's one little problem with this scheme: in a truly anarchist system, there's no *law* to prevent capitalists' hoarded wealth from being robbed. if hoarding wealth is permissible under an anarchy, then so is stealing; the "anarchocapitalist" shouldn't complain.

(cont'd)

nor would an anarchy prevent people from retaliating against a stingy capitalist in other ways—cheating them on transactions, say. or poaching their workers, or stealing their trade secrets, or sabotaging their operations—ALL of these things are fine under anarchy.

(cont'd)

needless to say, *no* capitalist—certainly not @elonmusk nor anybody in the @mtaibbi / @bariweiss / @MrAndyNgo club of fashy Musk-sniffers—is actually willing to endure the freebooting nature of anarchical society. all capitalists, in practice, demand _law and order_.

(cont'd)

and thus in Western society there's a huge body of law that protects corporate operations, and capitalists can call upon government bureaucracies (including the police) to enforce their wishes. or they employ "private" law enforcers and mercenaries, to the same effect.

(cont'd)

@elonmusk, corporate aristocrat, is only able to go on with his career as a celebrity #entrepreneur because he's got massive government support—not merely in the form of subsidies and contracts, but a huge system of law enforcement that safeguards his corporate affairs.

(cont'd)

the chance that @elonmusk would be able to survive on his own without being propped up like this is zero—the man has no visible skills, and he's only famous at all because in earlier years, before his stupidity was more obvious, he was heavily advertised and marketed.

(cont'd)

and @elonmusk is hardly the only capitalist to daydream about being some self-reliant John Galt figure, able to build mountains from nothing through sheer greatness and willpower, even though they're entirely dependent upon government enforcement and government subsidy.

(cont'd)

every now and again, some grifters and their suckers try to make the #AnCap dream come true, even though it's impossible. here's an entertaining summary of one such boondoggle, @anarchapulco, the brainchild of @BeerwickJeff of @dollarvigilante - archive.is/6IXAL

(cont'd)

such attempts to create #AnCap paradises inevitably die out, crumbling into a chaos of cheating, fraud, and violent crimes—because capitalism and capital-hoarding ultimately cannot function without violent enforcement of wealth inequality. capitalism *implies* tyranny.

(cont'd)

I mean...just look at @elonmusk, if you must.

~Mona Drafter of Pnictogen

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