S9 E3: Joshua Scigala on the Philosophy of Anarcho-Capitalism & Voluntaryism

Imagine there’s no government, it’s easy if you try. Roads still built by privates, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living life in peace and without the oppression of an almighty monopoly on violence.

This is what this interview with Joshua Scigala is all about: explaining how a society could function while being governed only by the dynamics of a free and competitive market. The Vaultoro CEO, who is also responsible for pitching this season that’s dedicated to Bitcoin philosophy, tells the story of a world in which people can resolve disputes to private courts on whose authority and jurisdiction they mutually agree. He also expands upon the idea by introducing multiple other courts where the parties can go to find justice.

Will an anarcho-capitalist society have police forces? Well, Joshua Scigala argues that these elements of public order would be even stronger and efficient if they got picked and paid directly by the beneficiaries of physical security. Today, those who have a choice between using the governmental police forces or a private security firm most likely go for the latter even if it costs more. It’s all a matter of incentives and accountability.

Throughout the interview, Joshua Scigala rejects specific distinctions between labels and doesn’t get into the differences between libertarianism, agorism, and voluntaryism. Instead, he takes it all back to first principles: do not cause harm and do not steal. Under these two principles, he thinks that a society that’s based on free markets and choice would be absolutely viable.

Joshua also agrees that everything that we enjoy under a governmental framework with “public goods” which get subsidized by taxes would also exist in a world without states. In the end, he will argue that it’s not about removing education or healthcare, but rebalancing the ways through which these services get accessed to maintain a prosperous and peaceful society. The debate is about the means to getting to a goal, not the goal itself.

Another important part of our conversation concerns the ideological differences between early bitcoiners and 2021’s newbies. In the beginning, freedom and ideology were much more important than getting wealthy enough to buy a Lamborghini and institutional adoption was only a meme.

Last but not least, we discussed about gold and bitcoin – a topic that you just can’t ignore when you deal with a long-time hard money advocate.

Listen to Joshua Scigala on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!

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This episode is sponsored by Vaultoro & Wasabi Wallet

Joshua from Vaultoro is a big fan of the show and I’m happy that he sees potential in my work and supports it without caring about numbers and growth statistics. So I must thank him for his generosity and invite you to check out Vaultoro – the exchange where you can trade with honest money (bitcoin, gold, and silver). 

None of this is financial advice from me, but I’m pretty sure that the shiny rock is a better store of value than any fiat currency or “stablecoin”, so maybe it would be wise to use this commodity to preserve your purchasing power during bear markets and get back into bitcoin as soon as you’re convinced that the downwards movement are over. You can also have the gold bars delivered to your house… because you know, if it’s not in your safe then it’s stored somewhere in Switzerland where you can’t touch it whenever you please. For more information, check out Vaultoro’s website.

Also, Joshua from Vaultoro is sponsoring a Lightning Network faucet – he hopes that Bitcoin’s second layer will one day become potent and popular enough to replace the smart contract and tokenization features of Ethereum. And he also supported Giacomo Zucco’s layer 3 RGB Spectrum experimentation from 2019. So if you’d like to get 10 bits/100 sats on the Lightning Network, you’re gonna have to listen to the latest Bitcoin Takeover Radio broadcast and be the first to figure out the secret.

And if you would like to increase your network-level and transaction privacy, you should download Wasabi Wallet on your computer. It routes your connection through the Tor network to hide your IP, it downloads block filters so you validate your own transactions locally without appealing to a trusted third party, and it also connects to your own full node to boost your financial sovereignty. Extra features include advanced hardware wallet integrations, easy UTXO management, address reuse prevention, and even a lurker wife mode.

Wasabi is best known for its link-breaking CoinJoins, which are giving a hard time even to the EuroPol. Use the wallet to increase your financial sovereignty, but don’t do any illegal stuff – use your financial sovereignty with responsibility (also read the Wasabi terms of service).

Time stamps:

4:17 – Why did Joshua get into Bitcoin?

10:02 – Who builds the roads?

12:09 – People getting angry at voluntaryism and anarcho-capitalism

14:43 – What is the difference between agorism and voluntaryism?

16:11 – The basic blocks: don’t hit, don’t steal

22:43 – The only downfall of anarcho-capitalism

24:00 – Why revolutions from above are a bad idea and almost never decentralize

32:12 – Government always finds a way to reinvent itself

35:55 – The free market can fix driver licenses 

38:25 – How anarchy usually gets portrayed by governments

44:03 – Charity in a tax-free society

44:35 – A brief history of nation states

48:50 – The issue with communism 

49:10 – UBI and communism

52:28 – Extreme UBI

54:00 – It’s a miracle that our system is working

55:30 – Private courts in an anarcho-capitalist society

1:03:08 – Private police services in an anarcho-capitalist society

1:12:30 – In James Bond films, the villains are always wealthy private individuals that the government must fight

1:13:20 – Anarchy isn’t about the absence of rules, but the absence of rulers

1:15:00 – Cyberpunk novels are pretty statist

1:18:54 – Monarchies suck

1:25:18 – In defense of democracy

1:29:18 – El Salvador using bitcoin as legal tender

1:31:40 – Early bitcoiners were more concerned about personal philosophy 

1:39:08 – The competition between Bitcoin and Ethereum

1:43:19 – Vaultoro’s gold-backed RGB tokens, built on top of Lightning

1:46:20 – Vaultoro’s new gold-backed tokens and why they’re not on Bitcoin (yet)

1:57:03 – Bitcoin vs gold

2:07:00 – Bitcoin is every pirate’s dream

2:18:30 – It’s not the outcome, but the means of reaching it