Who are the major anarcho-capitalist thinkers?
The first known anarcho-capitalist is Gustave de Molinari, who wrote the seminal piece, The Production of Security, in 1849. But the term “anarcho-capitalist” had not been invented yet. The “father of anarcho-capitalism” is Murray Rothbard, who combined the individualist anarchism of Lysander Spooner, the economic of the Austrian School, and the anti-interventionism of the Old Right, to create the modern meme of anarcho-capitalism. Not that he did it alone! Other prominent anarcho-capitalists are David Friedman, Wendy McElroy, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Walter Block, Brian Caplan, Jan Narveson, Anthony de Jasay, George H. Smith, Wolf DeVoon, Jeremy Sapienza, Lew Rockwell, and others too numerous to mention. Note that not all of these refer to themselves as “anarcho-capitalist,” e.g. Lew Rockwell, who edits the most popular anarcho-capitalist ezine LewRockwell.com, calls himself a “paleoconservative.
