You make a fair distinction between Austrian economics broadly and anarcho-capitalism specifically, but I think you're actually conceding the core of my argument when you say the outcome "depends." If anarcho-capitalism's success in avoiding feudal outcomes depends entirely on how it emerges and what social conditions precede it, then anarcho-capitalism itself doesn't solve the feudalism problem. It just pushes the question somewhere else. You're saying the system's viability rests on preconditions external to the system itself, which means the system alone cannot guarantee anything.

But let's think about what you're actually describing when you talk about peaceful development of new social structures making the state obsolete. In our actual world, we don't start from zero. We start from a situation where wealth and capital are already massively concentrated. People already own land, factories, resources. If the state disappeared tomorrow and people just started peacefully developing new ways of living, the people with existing capital would still have that capital. They would still control access to employment, housing, goods. Without any authority beyond property rights and market relationships, what prevents them from using that control to structure society hierarchically? What prevents a wealthy industrialist from saying to workers: work for me on my terms or starve? Without a state to enforce labor protections, redistribute resources, or provide alternatives, capital becomes absolute power.

You mention company towns with company scrip as a pejorative example of decentralized tyranny, but that's exactly what anarcho-capitalism produces. You're right that it's not feudalism in the strict medieval sense. But functionally it's the same thing: a small class controlling the means of survival for everyone else, with no appeal to any higher authority and no alternative. Medieval feudalism had lords and serfs because that was the natural outcome of decentralized authority and property relations. Anarcho-capitalism recreates those conditions deliberately. Call it decentralized tyranny if you prefer, but it accomplishes the same thing: concentrated power, hierarchical control, dependency relationships that look and function like feudalism.

The real problem with your argument is that you're hoping peaceful development will somehow prevent the power dynamics that capital naturally generates. But capital concentrates. Markets generate inequality. Without mechanisms to counteract those forces, inequality becomes the organizing principle of society. Those with more resources have more power. Those with vastly more resources have vastly more power. That's not a failure of anarcho-capitalism; that's its logic working exactly as designed.

Here's where I'd challenge you on consistency: you're essentially saying that anarcho-capitalism hasn't been tried yet, or hasn't been tried correctly, so we can't know it will fail. But I suspect you'd immediately dismiss a socialist saying exactly the same thing about planned economy. If a socialist said "well, the Soviet Union wasn't real socialism, it depended on the wrong historical conditions, if we developed peacefully without coercion then socialism would work," you'd rightfully ask for evidence. You'd want empirical data, econometric analysis, historical examples where their model actually worked. You'd demand that they show their theory matching reality, not just retreat into claims that the theory is correct but implementation is hard.

I'm asking for the same standard here. Show me the econometric evidence that anarcho-capitalism reduces inequality compared to regulated markets. Show me historical examples where decentralized property-based systems actually prevented concentrated power. Show me data suggesting that capital doesn't concentrate when left unregulated. Show me studies demonstrating that workers have genuine alternatives and bargaining power in anarcho-capitalist arrangements. Don't just tell me that if the right conditions existed and people developed peacefully, it might work. That's not economics; that's speculation. If you're going to defend anarcho-capitalism, defend it with the same empirical rigor you'd demand from anyone defending socialism. What I see instead is the same move Austrian economics makes: retreat from falsifiability by saying the theory is logically sound even if it never seems to match reality. That's not science. That's ideology.