As relayed by Bonnie in her compelling "debate" post, Dan McCarthy has offered some tough criticisms of anarcho-capitalism. Anarcho-capitalists typically oppose the state because they believe it is an unjustified monopoly of aggressive violence and an illegitimate concentration of power. However, Dan asks:

[W]hat good will it do to abolish the state if one proceeds to sell what would otherwise be called power on the open market? That is, if it’s the case now that wealthy interests manipulate to their advantage a system that supposedly is not subservient to the highest bidder, how will matters be different under a system whose whole point is serve whoever pays the piper?

Anarcho-capitalists typically dismiss to this problem by saying that combining market forces with certainty of (good) rules will minimize any such collusion, and uphold equal treatment under the law for everyone. But, Dan asks, isn't this premise of "equality," in the legal market, or "market for justice," ripe with egalitarian assumptions? 

Are modern an-cap libertarians displaying atavistic marks of distributist liberalism? Or an even deeper republican heritage? (Republics, after all, require a balance, if not equality, in citizen wealth, power, and status.)

 

It's an interesting argument. If we are to say legal services are a market "commodity," isn't it necessarily egalitarian, and thus, heretical to libertarianism, for one to assume that they will be distributed "equally?"

To respond to all this, I'll begin a bit modestly by defining anarcho-capitalism for some of our unfamiliar readers.