[cname]

I'm not sure how you can say hierarchical organizations that use violence/coercion are in any way anarchist. Anarcho-capitalism requires voluntary engagement in a system of contracts and so forth. (Whether that could actually work in the real world is debatable but beside the point.)

[tomrod]

I'm not saying the organization exists in anarchy -- we completely agree there.

I'm suggesting that a corrupt state, which cannot prevent the rise of a counter-state power like the cartels, and the evolution of anarcho-capitalism are similar.

The flaw I see with AC is that once the private police force and the private court system in an anarcho-capitalist state combine, there is nothing to prevent them from coercing the organization's will on all around. This is a de facto state. Given that this state may not have primacy, other groups may oppose -- civil war in a supposedly stateless society.

My thought here is that the cartel is the counter-state to Mexico, a state-in-waiting/hierarchical body capable of providing similar "services" that the state typically provides -- defense, mission-definition, communication access, as so on. Whether or not the people under their thumb agreed to this transfer of power is not really necessary to consider, as it is the circumstances at play.

Anyhow, my two cents.

[matt4077]

You're using different meanings of the word 'anarchy':

2. (uncountable) Anarchism; the political theory that a community is best organized by the voluntary cooperation of individuals, rather than by a government, which is regarded as being coercive by nature.

3. (countable) A chaotic and confusing absence of any form of political authority or government.

4. Confusion in general; disorder.

[cname]

tomrod used the term "anarcho-capitalism", which is a specific strain of political anarchy, and that is what I was responding to.

[losteric]

Aren't consumers technically voluntary, if we assume no one's getting addicted to heroin at gunpoint?

[tomrod]

Most of the time. Some counterexamples exist (e.g. buy from the limited healthcare options available to you or be fined [via tax]).

[losteric]

In general, sure, but the context of this thread is drug cartels.

Their unregulated businesses use capital to aggressively expand into other markets, destroy competition, and oppose democratic regulations - behaving similarly to legal capitalist corporations. Though, granted, they conquer with guns and gangsters instead of legal loopholes and lawyers.