Hi there!
I’m relatively new to anarchism, so I’d like to ask a few questions. I was very inspired by the book by F. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) which changed my mind and convinced me why regulation doesn’t work. Before this book I believed in the world trend towards regulation for the common good. Now I’m looking for a more general book on why government doesn’t work at all. What can you recommend? I’m an engineer and prefer more economic and less philosophical books (like one by F. Hayek). Is there anything like that?
And more generally, what is the general opinion on private property in the anarchist community? I tried to google it but found controversial views. I know there are left-wing (Geoism/Georgism?) and right-wing (anarcho-capitalism?), but I think there should be something common about the property question…
Thanks in advance!
Anarchists are anticapitalist and oppose private property. Georgism and “anarcho-capitalism” are mostly unrelated schools of thought. Capitalism is a hierarchical system with employers having power over employees. Owning private property can only really happen if it’s enforced though some form of police.
Georgism is more about the way that land is controlled and taxed, and doesn’t really go into how the government is structured. It’s sort of a stepping stone toward socialism, where they think land fundamentally belongs to everyone, so all taxation should be based on the value of land and distributed as needed. Its not that common anymore, because if you extend that concept to stuff besides land like factories and apartment complexes, you wind up with one of the various forms of socialism. I feel like it can be a good stepping stone for people who have been conditioned to hate socialism, but it still has oppressive capitalist systems built into it.
Ancaps just appropriated the name despite more than a century of anarchist theory and history saying it is fundamentally anticapitalist. Anarchists tend to view ancapism as a sort of a neofeudalism. It basically turns landlords into actual lords, with contracts acting as laws for anyone who lives there. It takes the power the government has and moves it to private companies, who can control what they own with private police, at which point they’re basically mini nations with the government terms relabled to corporate speak.
Regarding regulations, it’s not as straightforward as that. Different parts of a government can be at odds with with each other, or with companies. Often regulations prevent something obviously worse. The police upholding private property so a company can pollute their own land is much more oppressive than regulations against it. Other times regulations exist to increase bureaucracy so only a huge company with a team of specialists can navigate it. There’s plenty of examples of regulatory capture out there, where companies influence what regulations they have to follow.