Hello there! My name is Teo Samaržija, and I used to be a radical anarchist. Now I am a moderate libertarian who realizes that the world is complicated, and that sometimes the government is the only realistic solution. So, I am about to make a video called "How to covincingly argue against anarchism?".

Step number one, stop using the variants of the argument "Police keeps us safe.". That's so unlikely to be convincing. It doesn't make sense either theoretically nor empirically. Theoretically, how exactly does police keep us safe? Police nearly always come *after* a madman has already murdered somebody. And when they come, they almost always respond by putting that madman into a prison or a jail. A prison or a jail is not a place from which that madman will return sane, it's a place from which he will return with even more psychological problems that made him murder in the first place. When you consider what the police actually does, it seems like the police is probably making things worse, right? Empirically, it also doesn't make sense, because countries with higher incarceration rate, that is, with greater proportion of people in prisons, tend to be higher in violent crime, rather than lower. The country with by far the highest incarceration rate is the US, and it is also a developed country which is relatively high in violent crime. As well, what about the Middle Ages, which were much more policed than today's world is, but were much higher in violent crime? You might argue for gun control or death penalty, those things are probably wrong, but they at least make far more sense than the argument "Police keeps us safe.". It's at least obvious how death penalty could work, it prevents recidivism. It prevents the criminals from doing the crime again. And it's obvious how gun control could work, it makes it harder for criminals to get a gun. But it's not at all obvious how police even *could* work. So don't use that argument. Even if you do have some kind of an explanation as to how police could work, don't use that to argue against anarchism, because that's still unlikely to be convincing to anarchists. As a side note, back when I was an anarchist, I didn't mention it on YouTube or my blog, but I used to believe crazy things about politics such as that prisons and jails don't exist, and that everybody who claims to have been in a prison or a jail is delusional or lying. That no rational person can believe that prisons are a good thing, so that it follows from the Karl Popper's Principle of Rationality that they don't exist. So, yeah, if you are going to discuss prisons with anarchists, be prepared to deal with stuff like that.

Step number two, acknowledge that the vast majority of laws we have are unnecessary at best, if not outright harmful. The reason cars aren't randomly catching fire any more is not the government regulation passed after Ford Pinto, it is the fact that engineering of cars has advanced a lot over the decades. The reason vaccines today don't cause anything like the Cutter Vaccine Scandal is because today we are using RNA vaccines, rather than attenuated virus vaccines. Science has advanced, and that has little or nothing to do with the government regulation. And I think you should explicitly acknowledge that to show the anarchist you are arguing with that you know where they are coming from.

Now let's talk about things I think you *should* do when arguing against anarchism.

So, step number three, ask the anarchist you are arguing with to explain how the anarchy should deal with the problem of superbacteria. When I was an anarchist, I used to believe that the problem of superbacteria is a very temporary problem and that lab-grown meat will soon solve it. That is, as I realize now, not the case. The vast majority of antibiotics these days are used in the egg industry, and science is still very far from making lab-grown eggs, it cannot even make good lab-grown muscle meat. So, explain the problem of superbacteria in detail to the anarchist you want to convince, including what the governments are doing about it. That is what shaked *me* out of my anarchism.

Step number four, ask the anarchist you are arguing with to explain in detail how the Internet should work in an anarchy. Specifically, what incentive might the ISPs have to set up their DNS servers properly in an anarchy? Improperly set up DNS servers, which respond to requests from all IP addresses, rather than just the IP addresses they are supposed to respond to, can easily be used to amplify denial-of-service attacks, since DNS servers sometimes respond with huge responses to short queries. Almost every country has laws against open DNS servers, but an anarchy obviously won't have them. So, how should that problem be solved? Somehow force the ISPs to use DNS-over-HTTPS, because you cannot make DNS-over-HTTPS requests while spoofing your IP address? Well, how would that be enforced? Somehow set up deep-packet-inspection middle-boxes everywhere to filter out the unencrypted DNS protocol? Do you realize that would drastically slow down the Internet? As well, how do you make all the computers and mobile phones and everything connected to the Internet in your anarchy compatible with DNS-over-HTTPS? Internet in an anarchy, if possible at all, would be a huge engineering challenge. That's, in my opinion, a good argument against anarchy, for the same reason a smart grid being a huge engineering challenge is a good argument against a fast switch to renewable energy sources.

Step number five, ask the anarchist you are arguing with to explain how the economy should work without contradicting the game theory. Because the anarchists schools of economics, such as the Marxist school of economics or the Austrian school of economics, seem to be incompatible with game theory. Anarcho-communism, which corresponds to the Marxist school of economics, is even more so than anarcho-capitalism, which corresponds to the Austrian school of economics. Marxism appears to contradict the Tregedy of the Commons, while Austrian School of Economics appears to contradict the Paradox of Thrift.

Anyway, that's all for this video. Thanks for watching!