Re: Creativity time: what are some interesting new business models that would crop up in AnCap?

Merlin — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:20:26 GMT

A very interesting thread.

I’ve been thinking lately that there is indeed a ‘community problem’ in urban areas, i.e. that there are services needed in a community that cannot be handled perfectly on a single-payer basis. Communal roads and especially streets would be an example, garbage collection, lighting and ‘public’ hygiene some others.

To the extent that these issues will prove significant, I can imagine single landlord coming to own an entire block-sized area, and than developing it for rent. The inhabitant’s rent would pay for all the communal services and you’d always have the owner to call for any problem. Also, he’d get to apply his own code of conduct, which would be tailored to attract a certain group of people.

Also, if ‘rent’ would not be paid in installments as it is now, but in one large lump-sum at the begging (refundable when the client vacates the premises or is expelled), that could make the arrangement more palatable than the actual renting practices.

Finally, knowing that the landlord nee not be an individual, but could be a group of individual, a company or even a mutual company of the residents, it would be nice to see which ‘governance form’ (monarchy- single owner, republic- group of owners or company and democracy- mutual) would succeed the market test. I can imagine urban life and whole cities evolving entirely along these lines.

Creativity time: what are some interesting new business models that would crop up in AnCap?

Alternatives Considered — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:59:26 GMT

I'm pretty fascinated with thinking about how the face of business would change (and how it wouldn't! I don't expect an AnCap world to be infinitely different than the current one... just better) in an AnCap society (or a minarchy, I can live with that), and in particular, how would the services currently provided by government get picked up in an AnCap/llibertarian society. But I'm not a business major, I'm a techie, and so my business imagination is more limited than I would like. I'm looking for some help imagining possible scenarios, not from a theory perspective, but from a fiction perspective (though a well supported one).

I'm interested in both the mundane and the more surprising. For example, it isn't hard to imagine Federal Express quickly putting the USPS out of business once the latter's monopoly on daily first class mail is eliminated. And we can certainly imagine that the companies that currently install security alarms in your home might evolve into more classic 'protection services'.

For roads, I personally think you would see kind of a tiered business model: local residential roads would generally be paid for by the residents for their own use and they just wouldn't find it worth the expense to try to extract use fees from others; roads that lead to commercial enterprises/districts would be paid for by those businesses to increase access to their stores and would again most likely be free to use; major thoroughfares would be owned and operated by transportation companies who specialized in various paid business models, e.g. tolls or transponders, and it isn't hard to see partnerships between such companies in places where it makes a better overall customer experience. There's a set of intermediate roads that I'm not quite so sure about, though.

I've read enough Friedman etc to have a feel for the entites that would fill in niches like legislation, arbitration, and protection, e.g. there's a huge role for insurance companies, independent arbiters kind of fill the roll of judge (and in a way legislator, though that is in combination with the protection/insurance companies), etc.

Governments can be seen as a giant "bundler" of services, so it can be imagined that some private companies will step in and partially fill the void. My favorite example is AAA, who already bundle services like travel (or did when there were actually travel agents), insurance, various licensing and registration, getting discounts, rating establishments, etc. I see this as natural: while government is often falsely justified in terms like "nobody has the time to go and test and evaluate everything, we need things like the FDA to do that testing for us and the Better Business Bureau to keep track of legit and illiegit businesses", there *is* a natural economic niche for service provider that do many of those things because yes, individuals can't do all those things themselves. Of course, *choosing* who you rely on to do those things for you is much different than being forced to rely on the government to do so, but that just means there will be a thriving business here. Another example is Consumer Reports, who I could fictionally imagine growing into a much larger role.

What other business models might thrive in an AnCap world? I suppose one source of such possibilities is to look at the things that the government currently forbids or regulates more or less out of existence, though those are a bit more obvious: we'd have pot cafes, we'd have more "unlicensed" people doing all sorts of professional things like medicine and funerals (my wife looked into what it would take to be a funeral director in our home state; the requirement was laughably large. What a government-protected cartel). I think you'd see an explosion in much cheaper (and probably a little less reliable/lower quality) versions of many existing businesses, as companies try to use the lack of regulations and an ability to get away with cheaper construction, etc., to undercut previously cartel-like protected high prices. Prostitution would become a much more visible and mainstream business; other relatively socially repugnant things would probably become more plentiful, e.g. dickhead restaurants that specialized in rare animals, or hunting ranges for rare animals (I'm not saying everyone would do this: there are still very strong social pressures against this. But I think there would be a *bit* more).

What about real estate? If we give that the government currently tracks who owns what land - and I'm not completely sure I buy that, or else why the fuck am I paying a title company $3,000 to be sure that the land I am buying is actually owned by the people that say they own it, instead of the government just saying "yep, they own it" - then how will that be tracked in an AnCap society (I'm particularly interested in a "libertarian AnCap society", that is, a zero-government society in which the participants additionally agree to the NAP)? Zoning? Clearly there is an economic demand for "zoning" at some level: how will that play out in an AnCap society? Is there a form of contract that can get the same effect, or will it be more of an economic situation (I don't want you to build a roller rink right next to my house so I pay you a fee in return for your not doing so)?

If you have any references or books or articles that address the question of "what might actually *happen* in such a world?" rather than just arguing the theory of why that should be the way the world should be, please let me know.... they are remarkably rare in the vast, vast amount of writing that has been done on libertarianism/AnCap. There's a ton of theory, a ton of critiques on the current system, etc., but very little imagining of what it would actually be *like* on a day to day basis, not 1000 years in the future, not in an alternate universe, but right here, right now.

Thanks!

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Re: Creativity time: what are some interesting new business models that would crop up in AnCap?

Creativity time: what are some interesting new business models that would crop up in AnCap?