[palmfacehn]

There's an important distinction between observing the status quo and holding or aspiring towards ideals. If we only observed what is and ignored principles and ideals, we would never be able to improve the human condition.

Even so, I doubt we'll be able to see eye to eye given your starting premises about collectivism. I'd venture that the individual does own himself and that the liberal tradition starts from this point.

A consequentialist might venture that some of the darkest events in history flow from the collectivist ideologies. The opposing deontological view would be that the individual does own himself and private property does exist. We would struggle to define fraud and theft without these premises. Indeed, objecting to fraud and theft becomes problematic when you are simultaneously arguing that private property, individuals and free exchange are impossible.

[RandomLensman]

I don't think we are that far apart. I don't disagree that there are certain ideals to aspire to.

However, practically, we find out time and time again that these ideals are not enough to sustain themselves and that in the defense of those ideals there are trade offs to be made that compromise them to some extent. Realising some idealised version would require different humans and I don't subscribe to ideas of realities that need those (in the same way that that speaks against idealist versions of collectivism).

The real debate is then what trade offs to make and there we might not agree but that is totally fine and part of the process.

[palmfacehn]

"Making the perfect the enemy of the good"

It is similar to the argument against utopia. It is true that we probably will not achieve the anarchocapitalist ideal within our lifetime. Any steps towards a freer and more prosperous society are still laudable. Those incremental steps would most likely involve pragmatic compromises.

Asserting that free-markets don't exist, because they have never lived up to the utopian ideal is a stretch. More so in the context of the discussion. There are already private financial ratings agencies, auditors and more. If people don't like cryptocurrencies or Kraken, they can simply choose not to participate.

The human condition will always contain challenges. This is what gives us the opportunity to improve. When we speak of laissez-faire, the claim is not that it will bring about a utopia or that living within a perfect ideal is a possibility for imperfect humans. The claim is that moves towards the ideal will offer an incremental improvement. History has illustrated this well.

[RandomLensman]

Ok, then we fundamentally disagree as I don't see anarchocapitalism as an ideal to strive towards. Not because I am a collectivist, but because philosophically I think it a far too narrow ideal for humans to aspire to.

In a similar vein, I don't think free markets exists because of how humans are, not because they don't live up to some utopia. We might move towards certain ideals, but there might be a limit how close we get and beyond that there is no net improvement.

Also, no, people cannot just not participate: if cryptocurrencies cause some wider issue then everyone will have to pick up the tab one way or another.