Talk:Anarcho-liberalism/@comment-95.148.234.246-20191102152547/@comment-104.238.63.115-20191228105332

Anarcho-capitalists argue that current economies aren't truly laissez-faire due to the enormous and complicated involvement of governments in economies. For example, the UK has a heavy degree of regulation in all aspects of business, heavy taxation, manipulation of the money market through a central bank, etc. This interference tends to favor dominant companies the most as they can better follow regulations than smaller competitors and lawmakers tend to be influenced by corporate interests. Anarcho-capitalism had early advocates (such as Frédéric Bastiat and Gustav de Molinari) based on the ideals of liberty previously advocated by Locke and the early United States. However, as a modern movement it is largely inherited from the Austrian School of economics (including Eugen Böhm von Bawerk and Ludwig von Mises, included in-game as discoveries) which posits that any degree of interference in the market mechanism results in a social diseconomy or loss for everyone and is therefore opposed to any sort of socialism. Although such economists initially classified themselves as classical liberals (F.A. Hayek being foremost in this), in the mid-twentieth century this way of thinking coalesced into anarcho-capitalism as we see it today. It expanded beyond economics and now is concerned with contemporary philosophical and political issues. Stances on these are consistently anti-establishment (in terms of the modern world order and its ideals) but are radically different from anarchists of a socialist bent. Rather than rejecting hierarchy outright only coercive (that is, by force) hierarchies are opposed with natural and consensual hierarchies considered beneficial for all parties involved. Hence in a way at odds with the in-game depiction of anarcho-liberalism and with left-wing anarchism anarcho-capitalists tend to value traditional mores to a high degree.

If you'd like to learn more I recommend reading any work by Murray N. Rothbard, who developed anarcho-capitalism into what it exists today. Also useful are "Human Action" by Ludwig von Mises, who was Rothbard's intellectual predecessor, and "A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism" and "The Great Fiction" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who is his intellectual successor, "The Law" by Bastiat, and "No Treason:  the Constitution of No Authority" by Lysander Spooner, Bastiat's American contemporary. If you prefer watching videos then "The Academic Agent" on Youtube is probably the foremost anarcho-capitalist economist/philosopher there.