Anarcho-capitalism
Peak influence 1970–
Disputed placement
The Democracy score is placed slightly toward the autocratic pole, which many adherents would reject. The tradition does not want a ruler, but a significant strand following Hoppe argues explicitly that democracy is worse than monarchy, and private-law communities with covenant-based exclusion are not democratic in the sense this axis measures. Others in the tradition are simply indifferent to the axis. There is no placement here that the whole tradition would accept.
Core claim
Every service a state provides, including law, adjudication and defence, can be produced contractually on a market — and the state's tax base makes it a monopolist that no market would tolerate elsewhere.
What it wants the state to do
Wants no state. Wants private arbitration, competing protection agencies, fully privatised land and infrastructure, and money issued by banks rather than central authorities.
Historical success case
Its authors point to medieval Iceland's private-prosecution legal order and to merchant law as evidence that adjudication has historically been produced without a sovereign — cases that historians read considerably more cautiously.
Historical failure mode
It has no state-scale trial. The standard objection is theoretical and unresolved: competing protection agencies with asymmetric power have an incentive to combine or conquer, which is a description of how states form.
Nearby traditions
Minarchism, which accepts a night-watchman state as the smallest defensible exception; anarcho-communism, which shares the target and inverts the property theory.
Common mix-up
It is not the far end of a single line that runs through mainstream market conservatism. It rejects national defence, borders and public courts, which most market-friendly conservatives treat as the state's core business.
Coordinates
| Axis | Value | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | +0.10 | 0.10 toward Traditional |
| Pace | +0.90 | 0.90 toward Radical |
| Economic | +0.98 | 0.98 toward Individual / market |
| Authority | -0.95 | 0.95 toward Liberty |
| Nation | -0.40 | 0.40 toward Cosmopolitan |
| Democracy | +0.15 | 0.15 toward Autocratic |
| Religion | -0.30 | 0.30 toward Secular |
| Technology | +0.60 | 0.60 toward Transhumanist |
| Ecology | -0.60 | 0.60 toward Growth |
| Military | -0.75 | 0.75 toward Non-intervention |
| Class | -0.60 | 0.60 toward Harmony |
| Rationalism | -0.50 | 0.50 toward Sceptical |