From the intro: > Anyone with a little imagination can dream up a radical new structure for society, anarcho-capitalist or otherwise. The question is, will it work? Most people, when they hear my description of anarcho-capitalism for the first time, immediately explain to me two or three reasons why it won't. Most of their arguments can be reduced to two: The system will be at the mercy of the mafia, which can establish its own 'protection agency' or take over existing ones and convert them into protection rackets. Or else the protection agencies will realize that theft is more profitable than business, get together, and become a government.
The text that follows explores and answers that objection, always keeping in mind that utopia is not an option - our existing system already is a cartel that screws its customers in many ways and is very hard to hold accountable for its actions. "perfect" isn't an option, but "better" might be achievable.
I read it, and I admit, in my teens, I had a similar sort of wishful thinking about ideal societies, but it's ignoring a couple of issues.
Firstly, it's basically a kind of for-profit government. Will that ultimately be better? Look at how many companies screw their customers now, often without their customers noticing. Of course once customers notice, they can switch, _if_ there is sufficient competition. But companies love merging, and at some point, a powerful protection agency can dictate terms to smaller agencies. The largest agencies can form a cartel to concentrate and divide even more power. And sure, you can switch to a small, independent agency, but will they be able to protect you against the big guys? Maybe if enough people switch, but that takes time.
In the end, you're trying to play one protection racket against another protection racket, but in the end, you're still stuck with a protection racket.
Let's first try to get honest competition working in something fairly innocuous like telecommunication, before we start giving those companies real power, okay?