A minimal central government is needed (or at least it seems that way to me)

Economics Political Theory
1

First: I used to be an anarchist, and I’ve read enough literature to realize that there would not be people murdering and raping eachother in the streets if the state were abolished. Violent crime would be responded to in kind. Murderers would be murdered, thieves would be forced to pay restitution, etc.

So first off, how would an anarchic society be governed? I seriously doubt that there would be absolutely no state in a stateless society unless such a state were founded by a group of freedom-seeking anarchists. But let’s imagine that the whole world decides to abolish central governments, making the world effectively stateless.

I think a stateless society would still have small, local governments. Humans are social creatures. We’re not going to be living atomistically in some post-state utopia, there’s gonna be some kind of bonding and organizing. But it would be effective anarchy because governments wouldn’t necessarily have a monopoly on justice as there would be market competition between governments. People could just move to whatever community suits them best.

If anyone thinks that there wouldn’t be small county-level governments, please do tell me why not. But moving on with the intuitive assumption that such small, let’s imagine that two such counties have a commercial dispute over water rights or fishing rights or mineral rights, or whatever. If they can’t come to some kind of agreement, and if these communities depend upon these resources they probably won’t, then there’s inevitably going to be a war.

Now granted, its not quite going to reach the sort of scale we saw in the world wars, but the death rate would be extraordinary. We can be certain of this much because tribal warfare in modern times has extremely high mortality rates, and the sort of city-against-city conflicts recorded in the Bible and other ancient Mesopotamian sources recounts whole villages and cities being exterminated by invading armies.

Now all this could be avoided if there is some over-arching authority to settle commercial disputes between communities.

So, in sum, commercial disputes would lead to wars, and a minimal central government can help to avert these catastrophes.

What do the anarchists here think of my argument?

2

Welcome to Mises. Could you explain for me how commercial disputes would lead to wars?

3

we’re talking about a commercial dispute between two communities.

Imagine you have two coastal towns. If there were a government that transcended these two communities, like a state or country level government, then they could privatize the fisheries. Privatizing the fisheries would surely preserve the fish stock. But imagine that there is no legal authority above these two communities (as there would be in a “stateless” society). How are they going to privatize it? They both want the entire fishery. They’ll have to fight to settle their differences.

4

An interesting scenario. I do have one more question:

Who is They?

5

I would read this paper by Geoffrey Plauche about how anarchy does not disapear with a state, it just takes a different form. I think you would be surprised how little a state does to solve the desire for an overarching legal regime.

http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/5/3/0/1/pages153011/p153011-2.php

I tried to get to his website, but the link seemed to be broken. You could also pull it from here:

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:http://www.veritasnoctis.net/docs/persistentanarchyapsa2006.pdf

6

the two communities. They both want it.

Same with any other natural resource

7

Ahhhh.

Ok last question, I promise:

When we say “the two communities” are we referring to the two Governments?

8

…

So it won’t be stateless after all.

…

You said you used to be an anarchist ?

9

Perhaps he should have said two private entities, how would they sort out who owns the private fish?

10

Dunno. Ask Hobbes ?

11

Well perhaps this is why the OP is concerned about commercial disputes that could lead to wars.

12

Are we talking about a scenario where only two individuals exist, or where one a dispute between two individuals occurs within a society? The two scenarios are completely different.

If two people alone exist on a desert island, they are both best off if they cooperate. If they spend all their time fighting to enslave the other, they will both die.

If the scenario takes place within the context of society, the two individuals are incentized towards reconciliation by every other individual in society. Maybe each thinks he is in the right, but its very unlikely that the others in society will be so evenly divided. One will gain more support then the other. And since every individual has an interest in defending the system of property rights but only select individuals stand to gain by ignoring property in a particular case, property rights will tend to be enforced. This is the story of human history.

13

I believe the OP was concerned about commercial disputes between governments…

This is why I was probing before answering the question.

14

Right - and that has absolutely nothing to do with libertarianism - commercial disputes between governments and the ‘inevitable’ war that follows is pure mercantilism…

15

you could, possibly, call these two entities “governments”

Probably the best term would be “town”

16

I think I know what you mean. And I know I promised no more questions, but I have to ask one more:

We are saying that the “town” wants the water rights. In fact we’re saying that both of the “towns” want the water rights. This would be the source of conflict. But, how do we know if a town does indeed want those water rights? Who declares their intent?

17

the people who, ya know, need water, or ANY OTHER NATURAL RESOURCE.

18

Isn’t this just a textbook private property rights issue? Is everyone else missing the big pink elephant in the room? =p

Only when towns operate under a perverted idea of rights that takes the moral grounds of modern governments does a violent dispute break out.

We have this exact same scenario over at a global scale. Any existence of government will give people this false belief of entitlement and silly idea of patriotism. It breeds war on its own.

19

Wrong.

You are describing panarchy, not anarchy.

Panarchy is not the same as a stateless society, but it could be a prelude or a transitional phase towards one.

Please stop confusing the two, & you might get somewhere with this thread.

Addendum: Don’t confuse “state” & “government”; interpersonal voluntary regulation & authority would be a common occurrence in a stateless society to fulfill previous services a majority of people assumed to be justifiably monopolized by the state.

However, no territorial monopoly is implicitly required or desired in anarchism.

At most, you could say panarchial states have more anarchy relative to one another versus them under the state society as today (in the same manner that countries around the globe exist in relative anarchy to one another, as long as there is no one world government), but panarchism is still not anarchism, as statism exists, just in a more de-centralized & possibly easier to confront, manner.

You could say each sovereign individual would be governing themselves, & and the total sum of voluntary & non-coercive interactions vis-a-via the market would resemble some sort of vauge “government”, but it would not be a state.

For governence to exist, the state is not required, although those behind statism love to take all the credit & claim governance as it’s sole domain.

Don’t quite your day job. [D]

20

Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe Mines, U.K. and Canadian mining companies, respectively, have partnered together to negotiate mining rights to a Mongolian gold deposit. Mongolia has been very difficult to deal with for the miners, and talks have dragged out over 5 years. Mongolia has a total GDP of c. $9.5 B, and the combined market capitalization of Rio and Ivanhoe is c. $55 B, so the miners have abundantly more financial resources than the country. There is no world government which referees these sorts of issues, and yet, Rio and Ivanhoe haven’t given up on discourse with Mongolia and taken the resource by force.

If you can think of some reasons why that might be, you’ll see why violence has dire consequences apart from any coercive state “justice” system.