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Criticism of anarcho-capitalism can focus on either of its two variants, or on the elements they share. The Natural Law approach encounters criticism from those who maintain that human beings cannot be considered property, even their own, and/or that private property in general is illegitimate (or immoral), or that private ownership of natural resources is so in particular. Natural Law anarcho-capitalism is also criticized by those who have a different view on what exactly is "natural law", and by those who believe that natural laws or rights do not exist (i.e. that laws and rights are a human invention, a product of human society).
The idea that people have the right to own the result of their work, which anarcho-capitalists claim to champion, is in fact upheld by a number of different political movements, who interpret it in very different ways. For example, many branches of socialism hold that capitalism is unjust precisely because the workers have a right to own the results of their labor and because capitalism denies them this right (since the result of a worker's labor becomes the property of the businessman who hired him). Some critics of capitalism also argue that, while one has the right to own one's own labor, no such right exists in the case of natural resources; and since natural resources are ultimately required in the construction of any object, it can be concluded that all property is illegitimate.
Criticism of the utilitarian anarcho-capitalist approach argues that anarcho-capitalism does not maximize utility; indeed, most critics contend that it would fall far short of that goal. This kind of criticism comes from a variety of different political views and ideologies, and different critics have different views on which other system does or would do a better job of bringing the greatest benefits to the greatest number of people.
One of the most common criticisms of anarcho-capitalist prescriptions is that, in practice, the free market "defensive agencies" that they envision providing defense services will collapse into monopoly governments, creating (at best) local governments controlled by market wealth in the place of larger constitutional governments. This amounts to arguing either (a) that governments represent natural monopolies rather than coercive monopolies on the defensive use of force, or (b) that anarcho-capitalism will make it more likely for coercive monopolies (in the form of local plutocracies) to form. Considering the merits or demerits of this charge requires a consideration of the anarcho-capitalist understanding of monopoly.
Anarcho-capitalists are not opposed to natural monopolies (or de facto monopolies, in which a company happens to currently be the only provider of some service due); rather, they are opposed only to coercive monopolies (or de jure monopolies, in which a company or a cartel of companies is guaranteed a monopoly through the use of political force). Or rather, to be more precise, anarcho-capitalists are not politically opposed to natural monopolies--that is, they do not advocate the use of political force to prevent them or break them up. Many anarcho-capitalists are economically opposed to natural monopolies or quasi-monopolies as inefficient methods of production, and may support economic actions against natural monopolies that abuse their market position, such as boycotts and worker strikes. But precisely because they see natural monopolies as inefficient, they also endorse economic arguments that natural monopolies can exist only transiently, usually due to some recent technical or organizational innovation that hasn't been copied by competitors yet. They argue that if goods or services come at prices that are too high or quality that is too low, customers will look for alternatives, and entrepreneurs will soon be able to make a killing by entering into the monopolist's market. Thus, moral purchasing rather than political force is the motto of libertarians in general, and anarcho-capitalists in particular. Applying this reasoning to the protection of individual property rights, most anarcho-capitalists do not fear the emergence of local monopolies or oligopolies in the justice market — as long as the individual right to secede and choose a new defense agency, or start a new one yourself, is respected.
Another related argument, characteristic of opposing anarchist views, is to deny the claim that natural monopolies cannot be coercive. This view holds that capitalist defense agencies and the owners who employ them would constitute de facto monopoly governments in themselves due both to the economic powers they hold and their exclusive right to legitimate defense of those properties they claim. Proponents of this view say that a cooperative group which sets to enforce its claims in such a manner, without accounting for the active involvement of dissenting parties, would amount to the very same monopoly on violence that anarcho-capitalists claim to reject. As such, some hold anarcho-capitalist businesses to be identical to a state in all but name - thus incompatible with anarchism.
Anarcho-capitalists were the first group to claim the title anarchist while expressly embracing private property and capital. Given this, many anarchists have questioned the legitimacy of the title "anarcho-capitalist," claiming that anarchism is essentially antithetical to capital relations due to their perception that capitalism inhibits individual freedom. Because these forms of anarchism originally arose, in part, to decry capital relations, anarchists of many different factions have a diverse set of arguments against property (which some distinguish from possession). All of these arguments, some of which occupy the space of several books, would thus apply as arguments against anarcho-capitalism. One brief example of such an argument is to consider private property an institution enforced privilege, and so regard individual or collective defense of it to be a form of coercive violence used to oppress non-owners. Anarcho-capitalists, on the other hand, typically argue that a broad classical liberal conception of private property is justified independently of the State, either by utilitarian considerations or by natural law. Thus, they argue that individuals can use force to defend a wide range of private property, and they can cooperate with others or hire a defense agency to defend whatever they can rightfully defend on their own. There are several critical responses and counter-responses to these arguments and others.
Some of these conflicts are the result of debates over fundamental perspectives on issues of social organization, justice systems , property, self-defense, and so on. Many anarchists approach these from a socialist standpoint, whereas anarcho-capitalists consider any kind of collectivist politic as oppression of the political minority by the political majority. In response, collectivist anarchists tend to argue that anarcho-capitalism would involve the oppression of the political majority by the economic minority, and that collectives based on consensus would by definition not be able to oppress a political minority.
Other anarchists, like the individualists, are also wary of collective arguments, but critique anarcho-capitalism on other grounds. For example, some individualists argue from the labor theory of value to conclude that capital enforcement, and thus the institutions of rent and interest, are destructive of free market relations. Others argue that wage labor is exploitative and thus incompatible with individual freedom. Still others, like the egoists, deny the validity of property claims altogether, arguing that they are mere "spooks," nothing more than figments of the mind that serve no essential purpose.
These debates, in turn, are often seen as fruitless by anarchists who view the "left-right spectrum" as an irreconcilable and artificial abstraction that simply institutionalizes debate about an existing property rights system, as opposed to examining the life-purposes fulfilled by such entities. One such example is "Greens and Libertarians: the Yin and Yang of our political future", in which Dan Sullivan , a Libertarian from the United States, explores common attitudes about monopoly and draws a new bottom-to-top spectrum, claiming that the Green and Libertarian political movements disagreed on the appropriate scale of solutions, but that they generally saw many of the same problems and disdained left-right arguments. The common belief in natural law made it at least possible to debate differences amiably, in a way that the traditional worker-manager divide did not permit.
Some people believe that there are some problems that anarcho-capitalism is ill-equipped to solve because of the free rider problem. For example, it is impossible for a defense agency to prevent a missile from blowing up its customers without also preventing that missile from blowing up the non-customers who live nearby; thus people could rationally choose not to pay the defense agency, assuming that enough other people will pay it. Similarly, some people believe that anarcho-capitalism is ill-equipped to manage commons. For example, owners or managers of factories may choose to pollute the air, rather than voluntarily joining pollution-management agreements; a common proposal is to treat the right to emit substances into the air as private property owned by someone, but only owned in measurable quantities. Those who may be harmed by emissions would have actions against those who emitted more than their (tradeable) rights allowed, and the parties to such a dispute would then use the usual arbitration system.
Such a system, already in existence in some respects, would internalize the costs of pollution. Nonetheless, some regard more thorough reliance upon such schemes as an untested thought experiment that would introduce problems of its own.
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