Table of Contents
Preface
If you mention anarcho-capitalism in polite society, you’ll likely get some eye rolls. The funny thing is that anarcho-capitalism is not even a daring thought experiment. It is, in fact, our lived reality.
Never Bet Against Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes popularised the term “State of Nature”, meaning a perpetual state of war where no one is secure and everything is fair play.
If you’re an average Joe, you can put the war with your neighbors on pause by conditionally surrendering your sovereignty to a “Leviathan”. Hand your rights to a Big Guy and accept that life by the rules imposed from above beats the alternative. It’s a solid setup, but the Big Guy himself can’t really escape the state of nature, and you just became his leverage.
There are a few Leviathans who have managed to subjugate all human beings, but there is no one above them. No treaty restrains an empire, and no international court can drag a true sovereign to justice.
You Can’t Escape Anarchy
The social contract forces you to surrender your freedoms, pay ever-increasing taxes, and obey even the most idiotic laws. In return, you might feel a bit safer.
Needless to say, safety is important, so there is no shame in taking this route. But the people you surrendered to are still operating in an environment with zero restraint. They can change the rules, tax you to death, or throw you into a meat grinder whenever they want to. This contract is not a fair one because one side can redefine the terms, and the other side can’t do anything except to trigger a risky state of war against the more organized, dug-in elites.
The people with the least power live under the most rules, and the people with the most wealth and power live under no rules. That’s exactly what an anarcho-capitalist system is expected to produce.
2026 is Fun
If this all sounds too abstract and far-fetched, 2026 is doing a great job of liberating people of the delusion that we live in a rules-based international order. Let me give just a few examples:
A head of state was kidnapped. I’m not going to name names, because it’s not important. The point is that sovereign immunity, one of the most sacred doctrines of international relations, is treated as a suggestion at best by anyone with enough guns and financial leverage.
A new surprise (not really) war started, and a head of state was killed along with his family. The big guys did what they wanted. The smaller ones were too afraid to even criticize this act. Most were just mumbling about trade disruptions without mentioning the cause.
The International Criminal Court came under direct attack this year. Its judges were intimidated and sanctioned, and its credibility was shredded in public by senior officials of nations that once championed its founding.
The WTO and the UN are no longer functional in any meaningful sense. They continue to exist, but they have no purpose. Their rules are not followed. Once the illusion is shattered, there is no going back.
Ancapistan Was Always Here
Once you accept that we live in anarcho-capitalism, everything starts to make sense. The powerful compete in a Hobbesian arena with force, financial leverage and narrative control. The weak compete in a regulated sandbox. Both worlds run on the same principle: do what you can get away with.
Bitcoiners often say Bitcoin is a hedge against this. In some narrow sense, it is. But Bitcoin does not abolish the state of nature. At best, it just gives us a way to opt out of some abuses within this system.
What I find genuinely helpful is the clarity. People stop expecting things they were never going to get. The ICC probably won’t save humanity from a Hitler 2.0, and no one is taking the WTO or the whole free-market narrative seriously anymore.
That doesn’t sound optimistic, but it also prevents people from outsourcing their ethics to institutions that have none. If you want to live by certain principles, you have to enforce them yourself. If you want to be treated fairly, you have to build the relationships and the infrastructure that make fairness possible.
Definitions Matter
Some would say I’m misinterpreting anarchy. I’m describing raw, concentrated power, and anarchy is supposed to be its opposite, with no hierarchy, etc. An old argument about definitions distinguishes between two kinds of anarchy: lawlessness and a flat distribution of power. I’m obviously talking about the first one, but anarchy itself is just the absence of rulers enforcing their rules. If there are no rules preventing rulers, we will always be ruled.
To tackle this “bad” anarchy and progress toward its “good” cousin, people need to accept that there are no rules for the rulers and that delegating up is not a solution. Disillusionment is the only route to enlightenment, and the latest developments make me cautiously hopeful. People are waking up and getting angry about the fact that concentrating power doesn’t bring safety or stability. We got scammed.
Welcome to Hell
So is anarcho-capitalism a pipe dream? No. It’s the only accurate description of the world we live in. The only reason it’s treated as a fringe idea is that accepting it forces you to give up a very comforting belief that somewhere, somehow, everyone follows the rules and the game is not rigged.
The sooner you make peace with reality, the sooner you can stop being a useful idiot. We need to stop expecting international institutions to constrain the very powers that fund them. We need to start building the kind of life, the kind of community, and the kind of infrastructure that don’t depend on the goodwill of the big guys.
Welcome to hell. We have always been here.