Could anarchy work in human society?

Economics Political Theory
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Okay - in another forum, a side issue came up, largely because of my ignorance. While I’d love to discuss the possibilities, all of the anarchists I’ve encountered to date have been nihilists, with no coherent idea of how anarchist society would work. Finding a self-identified anarchist with coherent vision of how it would work was novel and delightful, but I dislike being underinformed. The thread was already dedicated to another topic, so I decided to move the discussion to here.

I can’t, without permission, quote (or even identify) the person I was having the discussion with, but I can quote myself - and I’ll start with that. Do keep in mind that, in intelligent anarchist theory, I’m a bare neophyte, horribly ignorant.

Their reply was, essentially, that the people who were irrational enough to act in that fashion would quickly find themselves extinct, improving the gene pool, and rational, peacable people would quickly become the overwhelming majority.

All I can say is that I’ve never seen it. It may be my neighborhood (Minneapolis, Minnesnowta, USofA), but if I find a discussion with my neighbors on any central topic, and find one in ten espousing rational ideas, I’m having a good day. Looking at the current edition of the local newspaper (http://www.southsidepride.com), I find:

Page 3, the article Poisoning the poor - last column, halfway down - “The rich and powerful are trampling on the rights of the downtrodden.” (I swear, it’s there.)

Pages 8 and 9, two separate articles, both of which mention that the fish in Powderhorn Lake (a small lake by local standards) were killed off accidentally in an effort to stop Brazilian elodea, a pernicious plant discovered there. Both articles admit that there are plans to restock the lake, but both are highly annoyed in tone about the whole thing - without mentioning other options that could have been pursued.

Pages 12 and 13, the longest article in the paper, devoted to an attempt to charge George W. Bush with murder in the third degree, conspiracy to raise oil prices (not illegal, or everyone wouldn’t be doing it), and conspiracy to distribute drugs in Hennepin County (which covers Minneapolis). The guy is, to all appearances, serious.

Page 16 - Rigged health care comissions circumvent democracy - again - an examination of the health care crisis, showing both sides of the market vs public good question, featuring (column 4, paragraph3) “It would be naive to think these Task Forces are simply oblivious of the gold standard solution to the health care crisis: the Single-Payer, government-funded approach.” The irony of using the term “gold standard” as a measure of quality is apparently lost on them.

Page 17 - Critical Mass defendant found not guilty - an organizer of a bicycle mass ride event, in which large numbers of bicycles jam traffic (in this case, downtown during Friday rush hour) “in support of non-motorized transportation” was acquitted of assaulting a police officer, obstructing the legal process, and fleeing a police officer. No evidence was cited about any of these crimes, nor was there any mention of the illegality of their purpose, obstructing traffic. The executive director of the Minnesota ACLU, Charles Samuelson, was quoted as saying “you can’t punish intent.” (column 4, paragraph 3) - as if he’d never heard of the difference between 1st degree and 3rd degree murder.

Not bad for a 20-page neighborhood rag, and I skipped several which would have required much more typing from me.

These are the people you expect to act rationally and reasonably? They’re my neighbors - whose political and economic ideas are remarkably common around here. From what I’ve seen of national news, they’re not uncommon elsewhere in the world.

Okay - I’ve presented some evidence, and would love to see some evidence that I’m wrong - that the majority can be expected to be rational - any place, at any time. I would dearly love to be proven wrong on this topic.

I’ll post a link to this thread in the originating thread, so the folks following that can find this easily if they wish.

Danno, just tryin’ to keep things orderly 'round here.

The right to have sex - at what age?
The right to have sex - at what age?
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I have a fairly unique view of this, but hear me out:

Under the ideal system, we’d have the exact same government we have now… except it can’t initiate the use of force! This means…

  • it must raise money through fundraisers, advertisements, voluntary charitable donations, etc.

  • it can’t enact price controls, wage controls, etc.

In other words, most of these “impossible” scenarios would play out much the same as they would today. Technically, this is anarchy. However, it’s much more palatable for people who (understandably) associate “anarchy” with black-flag-waving leftist thugs.

3

I recommend you read Chaos Theory by Robert Murphy. It’s a very quick read, and it helped me out a lot when I was trying to understand how anarchy could exist without complete chaos.

4

Initiating force? Okay - say they stumble into my hypothetial situation, in which force has already been initiated between two citizens - so they can step in, use force to prevent the further use of force between two citizens, and cite a law that decides which of us is in the wrong. Would this be permissible, and who decides what rules are used to make one side ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’?

For myself, I understand that labels are awfully convenient, but individuals rarely fit them perfectly. It was my understanding that an overriding government that can make such decisions was the antithesis of anarchy. Are we, perhaps, using different definitions for that word?

Thanks for the pointer - I’ll check it out.

Danno - more confused, which usually means I’m about to have another damned learning experience.

5

A state in which coporatism, neo-feudalism, oligarchy, perpetual warfare, “compassionate” statist conservative socialism, statist leftist socialism, lack of free association, lack of opting out ot he state without being, technically, a criminal, lack of free markets, lack of respect for the NAP, full on present coercion by the state, etc. doesn’t sound like something anarchists would really agree to; I hardly see how you can say “exact same government we have now” with a straight face :\

Also, saying ‘understanably’ is sounds like saying that the mis-use of said association (the black flag waving leftist thugs) is valid, when the perception itself is actually quite irrational. Would it not be better to address such misconeptions instead of pandering to irrational beliefs? If you want to teach someone how to add, you don’t rationalize their wrong answer of “5” when “2 + 2 = 4”.

If you are saying that some of what we currently have in terms of lifestyle wouldn’t drastically change, I would agree with you to some extent. Overall however, things would eventually become drastily different; saying “exactly the same” might imply minarchism, which clearly isn’t anarchism.

In hindsight, I’m thinking something along the lines of “Anarchism for Dummies” might be in order at some point.

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I’m not sure what you expect from people brought up in public schools. They know no better. Anyway, The Market for Liberty, For a New Liberty and Democracy - the God that Failed all present a positive theory of how market anarchism will work.

-Jon

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You’re asking the wrong question…

It should be has anarchy worked in human society?

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Did I not say that the state can’t initiate force? How could any of those things happen? It’s a way of framing the debate that isn’t shocking for people raising a family, afraid of leftist anarchist thugs rioting through their neighborhood.

Irration beliefs? Words are defined by their current usage; “anarchy” now means “rampant lack of respect for property rights”, even in cases where there is still technically a government. You could use the word “anarchy” if you really want, but why do you want to handicap yourself?

Again, it’s all about framing the debate in a way that’s palatable to the greatest number of people.

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No, I’d say that ‘understandably’ is merely acknowledging that someone’s misconception is not irrational - in this case, that it’s remarkably easy to run into folks who paint an encircled ‘A’ for grafitti, and assume that because they claim the label, that they represent the whole of the philosophy. Addressin’ such misconceptions was what I was trying to do here.

Correcting mistaken beliefs without denegrating the holder of such beliefs is usually more effective than claiming intellectual superiority to those who had such erroneous ideas. Honey and vinegar, y’know.

That’d be pretty close to what I’m lookin’ for.

Danno

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At times I share your dim view. At other times, I ntoice how many times per day people–including stupid people–interact voluntarily without anyone making them do so.

Spontaneous anarchy broke out at Tiananmen Square.

At a communter parking lot, I saw people forming a queue for the bus. Without a word, a “front” and “back” were selected for the queue, and folks getting out of their cars voluntarily took the “back” of the line, which was to outward appearance undistinguishable from the “front” of the line. I actually defied the unspoken agreement and got in “front” of the line, and nobody said a word to me–but most everyone in the line glared at me. When the bus stopped, the “second” in line slipped onto the bus ahead of me, closely followed by the “third,” and all without a word they pushed me to the back of the line without any coercion or even discussion.

Or consider even the miracle of the four-way stop sign. People negotiate wordlessly and take turns. If statists’ view of humanity was right, a four-way stop sign would be the constant scene of four-car collisions.

Remember, they live in an environment where coercion is a given. It’s perfectly understandable that they attempt to steer that coercion in directions agreeable to themselves. It’s also immoral (almost) all of the time, but the very existence of government presents them constantly with the false choice of being coerced into A or being coerced into B. In their personal dealings, people grasp private property and non-aggression very well indeed, and most people behave morally most of the time.

No, they can’t. The first principle is an absolute recognition that the aggressor is in the wrong, and the defender is in the right. When you find two people fighting, the fight is either consensual or non-consensual. There is either zero or one aggressor. You don’t know who is the aggressor, but that doesn’t change the fact. If you decide to intervene, any force used against the defender is itself aggression, and you’re guilty whether or not you realize it. If the defender then defends himself against you, using lethal force if necessary, he’s fully justified despite all your good intentions. If you and the aggressor manage to kill the defender, and then the aggressor tells you that HE was the defender, and you and everyone else in the world believe him, then a crime was committed, whether or not it’s ever exposed, and you’re a criminal, whether or not you or anyone else ever realizes it. Since humans are fallible, that will sometimes happen.

So the bottom line is that intervening is a serious matter, and you shouldn’t enter into it lightly. If you see a rape in progress, you can be nearly certain that you know who the aggressor is, and you’re probably not a criminal if you intervene. But if you intervene in a conflict, and turn out to be wrong, then you bear the consequences of your decision.

Probably. Hoppe’s definition of government, which I think is the simplest and best, is “an agent claiming territorial monopoly on the use of force and the resolution of conflict (including conflict against itself).” In other words, government claims a monopoly on judging who is wrong, even when government itself is the accused, and then claims a monopoly on force for defense, punishment or war-making, in a specified terrritory.

Everything government does can be done privately through contracts. The existing government would be legitimate in an anarchic society if everyone under its jurisdiction agreed voluntarily to pay taxes, obey laws, etc. In other words, if the “social contract” were a real contract and not a fiction. Indeed, a slight twist on the Articles of Confederation would make the original United States into a fascinating anarchic experiment: suppose that one could declare citizenship in any state of one’s choosing, regardless where one lived or owned property! I.e., if Pennsylvania’s laws were too oppressive, I could simply declare myself a Virginian (presumably, subject to consent from Virginia), and would be bound by Virginian law and exempt from Pennsylvanian law, without relocating. I could also declare myself stateless, but in that case I would have no access to defense or other services provided by the various states. Ego is envisioning something between those two possibilities. It’s legit anarchy, if nobody can be compelled without consent to be subject to the “voluntary government” (which is, you rightly note, an oxymoron meant to describe something else).

I applaud your efforts. The graffiti artists might join this forum and embroil themselves in endless controversy, by failing to realize that “anarchy” means something very different around here than they think.

References given earlier in this thread are excellent. Also, anything published through Mises.org will tend to explain what anarchists here are mostly about. Folks published on LewRockwell.com are not all anarcho-capitalists, but many, perhaps most, are. The Mises.org podcast has some excellent anarcho-capitalist material, and anything by Walter Block or Hans Hoppe is a particular joy to read.

–Len

11

Actually, I think it’s “could archy work in human society”.

(And the answer is “no”)

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Okay - I’ve read the Private Law essay by Robert Murphy (thanks much for the pointer!), and on the surface, it seems reasonable. It also seems like a fine society in which to run an insurance company, since everyone’s going to need a remarkable range of policies. I’m not yet convinced, though.

Among other things, there are some services that do not lend themselves to competetion. Local roads, for example - if Citympls Co. owns the local roads, and does its maintainence remarkably stupidly, Countyhenn Co. can’t come in, buy land, and set up an alternative road system, looking for subscribers. Whichever company owned the roads would have a monopoly, and would be the de facto government for those roads - until someone came up with an attractive alternate solution.

Businesses, writing nonessential clauses into their contracts, and insisting upon such a contract before being willing to do business, would replace the legal system. Uh-huh. If Acme grocery store won’t sell cabbage to me until I’ve signed an agreement to not commit rape, I’d expect Emca grocery store to open up, skip the expensive paperwork, hire armed guards to protect themselves, and pass the savings on to the consumer - and sell me some cabbage.

If I’m under fire by some self-righteous nincompoop who is convinced that they’re acting in self-defense when they try to kill the awful tobacco user, who do I call for backup? If I’ve contracted with Arbitrators, Inc., and Nincompoop has a contract with Judgements, Ltd. - this could get downright ugly. If I’m estranged from my birth family, and my children predecease me in the firefight, who is there to object? According to Len, my neighbors would have plenty of reason to not get involved, unless we had a mutual defense agreement - so people without a legal clan of heirs would do well to join in such agreements, probably based upon physical location.

If my block’s mutual-defense society had a dispute with the MDS across the street, and it devolved into a shootin’ war, it would behoove both sides to enlist allies - make agreements with adjoining MDSs. Pretty soon, the whole thing is being run by the power bloc who can field the most force. An intriguing study of how that has worked in the past can be found in the story of the Cowboys vs. Wyatt Earp - a good, fictionalized version that covers the facts pretty well can be found in Tombstone, a pretty good movie. There, the rival gangs were the cowboys and the U.S. Marshalls - one had “legal” standing and better backup, but they were, to all intents and purposes, rival gangs.

It still looks like it’d be lovely, but for the loopholes - and I’m a loophole kinda guy. While I’m usually unwilling to initiate force, I’m probably overwilling to escallate a physical dispute pretty steeply - shootin’ the kid who I catch syphoning my gas tank just seems reasonable to me, though it’s likely to seem unreasonable to his clan. Based upon this, I’m most likely to contract with the arbitration company that has the reputation for permitting the most overkill in response to petty theft. A few years into this, and I’ll be contemplatin’ pre-emptive strikes against the remains of his clan, just to get some sleep at night - his MDS is gonna have my name on their “better dead” list.

Nope - as peaceful as most are, there have always been those who would cheerfully loot and assault others. If enough of them band together to become a serious problem, the peacable folk would have to band together to face that problem, and we’re back to having a government. Probably a better government than we have now, but a government nonetheless.

Len - I’ll agree with you - Hoppe’s definition looks clear, accurate, and succinct to me. But unless there’s some sort of monopoly on non-contract dispute resolution, there’s gonna be bloodshed - and if there is one, it’s called a government - even if it’s a publicly-traded corporation.

It’s entirely likely that there have been solutions to the noncontractural squabbles that would arise from theft and agression - but until I see a convincing one, I’m gonna have to remain skeptical.

Danno, thinkin’ it would have been lovely…

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Go ahead: as long as you continue enquiring reasonably, as you’re doing here, your skepticism is healthy.

Most of your objections seem to boil down to: what happens when two defense agencies get into a shooting war? That’s addressed in the literature, though I don’t have pointers at the tip of my fingers. To sum up the general answer: your defense agency exists to make money; going to war over your petty squabbles is at least as bad for business as failing to provide the protection you paid for. You agency and the anti-smoking-zealot’s agency will give you the choice of entering arbitration (or some other rough equivalent of “going to court”), or else have your defense contracts terminated. They will not spend the millions a shooting war would cost in order to defend your stinkin’ stogie.

Your concern about roads amounts to a “natural monopoly” argument. Having socialized roads doesn’t solve that problem: it simply makes government an honest-to-goodness, enforced-with-guns monopolist–with the resulting high prices, poor quality, graft and corruption. At worst, you’re talking about trading a government monopolist for a bunch of small local “monopolies” that can hardly be worse.

But they’re not really monopolies at all. Suppose I own a parking lot, and carve out a square in the center, put a house on it and sell the house to you, you could call me a “local monopolist”: you can’t leave your home without passing through my property. This is the extreme case of what you’re describing, since the road owner might not have you completely surrounded. You might be able to cut through the woods and escape the locally-owned roads entirely.

The first problem with this “monopoly” is the question how it arose: did you buy the house without stipulating that I’d let you at least enter and leave it? That was pretty stupid. What would you pay for a home on those terms? Five dollars? Similarly, the owner of a residential road would grant certain guarantees, in the form of rights-of-way, to home owners on his street–because if he didn’t, the property value would plummet. I have no idea what those guarantees would look like exactly, but after the market explores the issue a while, they’ll settle down to a few standard forms quickly. For example, you might always be allowed to enter and leave your property on foot, but must pay to use a motor vehicle. Or you might be allowed to ride with neighbors, taxis that have contractual arrangements, etc., even if you don’t pay your fees. There are many possibilities. But a property in which I can imprison you at whim, if it existed at all, would be cheap enough a hobo could afford it.

The next problem is that it isn’t a “monopoly” if equally serviceable goods are availabe from another source. You can escape the “local monopoly” by moving to another town. That’s a pain, and might be costly, but it remains an option. We must be careful not to confuse the cost of a choice with not having a choice; that’s how leftists conclude that capitalists “coerce” their employees: after all, unemployment is costly, and changing jobs is a pain.

In a nutshell, you’re right that road providers can’t compete by laying three roads to your door. But that doesn’t mean they can’t compete.

–Len

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And besides, there are firms competing on the market for corporate control, however blunted it might be at present due to state meddling.

-Jon

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So, I’d pretty much have to enroll with a local defense agency? Mostly, I’m one of those annoyin’ do-it-yourselfers - if there’s not a local group that has me vastly outnumbered, claiming a monopoly, I’ll do it myself. However, I’ve never signed a contract sayin’ I wouldn’t smoke tobacco, and he’s never signed a contract agreeing to allow second-hand smoke - so there’s a sincere conflict of interest, and a not-unreasonable level of contention over which of us is the actual agressor. Is his defense agency going to force me, at gunpoint, into arbritration?

I’ll cheerfully acknowledge that even expensive choices are choices, but “you do this or we shoot you” does not fit within my idea of voluntary choice.

Nor do I see voluntary contract as the sole arbiter in such disputes. The secondhand smoke thing may seem petty, the traffic exhaust from the nearby major road is less petty, but it’s still hard to prove actual damage. The neighbor next door who is burning her old spare tire collection is even more noxious, but I don’t have a contract with her about how she’s turning my house paint black - what recourse would I have, short of viewing her action as aggression and defending myself violently?

It’s not even so much the difficulty to arrange a universal contract regarding air quality that gives me pause - it’s the plunderers. You may, as a rational capitalist, realize that war is not profitable - not on a large scale. However, nobody ever told the Vikings this, and they raided quite successfully for many centuries. The ‘local government’ Irish couldn’t prevent them from doing this, it took a ‘large government’ force, after they’d been conquered by Britain, to bring it to an end. This is one of the (few) uses of government - to amass enough force as to make aggression from outside unprofitable. I’d have a tough time doing that on my urban lot.

The one advantage that government ownership of the roads gives me is that it’s elective - the folks running the roads commission want to be re-elected, and thus have some interest in customer satisfaction. I’m an urban dweller, so roads are hard to go around - but even as a rural dweller, the local network of roads is likely to have a single owner. The people with a practical choice between different road systems will have more roads than are needed in their neighborhood.

The larger road systems are likely to be more profitable, and thus expand - there’s economies of scale to deal with.

Once that monopoly is in place, there’s likely to be very little incentive to put more than the minimum into maintenance - they’ll want to maximize profits, after all. Without practical competition, I’d expect to need to buy suspension parts for my car much more frequently, and pay the price demanded - or forgo transporting myself.

Yes, I’d have a choice about where to live - but road quality is remarkably variable, and the choice I’d have would be which monopoly to do business with - and that is unlikely to be a prime consideration when I chose where to live. You don’t, after all, hinge your relocation decision on which cable company has service in that area - you decide on the more-important factors, and live with what you get in the minor factors.

If the roads in a particular place got totally awful, it’d be a poor long-term business decision on their part - but businesses have been known to make poor long-term decisions, or even ignore the long-term issues in pursuit of short-term profits. If I owned the roads, I’m quite certain that my contract with users would have an “as-is” clause - it’s not as if they’d have much of a choice, and lawsuits are so inconvenient.

If the roads get bad enough, folks would move away - but this would cause a remarkable drop in property value. A well-financed, monopolistic road company could easily become the only buyer who wants the land - and in a buyer’s market, value gets transferred from the seller to the buyer, often at the seller’s expense. For a “reasonable” extra fee, the road company could offer to do maintenance to X level of quality in an area, add a few nifty extras to the contracts, and offer remarkably low prices on land, homes, and immobile capital that they’ve acquired at “nobody else wants it” prices - enticing new folks to move in, and turning a remarkable long-term profit on the whole thing. With the contractual “we won’t do it again” clause, it’d be a one-shot project - but it’d be an awfully tempting project, wouldn’t it? I’d probably not do such a thing, and you probably wouldn’t - but someone almost certainly would.

Thanks for bein’ patient in explaining where I’m missing something - I appreciate the education.

Danno

16

Hmm… if, by ‘archy’, you mean ‘-archy’, it’s never failed to compete successfully with it’s lack. If I’m not understanding you correctly, I’d appreciate some enlightenment.

Danno

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“Did I not say that the state can’t initiate force? How could any of those things happen?”

They can happen if The State exists; you would be surprised at the political manuvering involved in turning “force” into "help, or “force” into “defense”, or “defense” into "force, etc. etc. In short, I ultimatley would not trust the state, even if it seemingly can’t initiate force.

Googled “rampant lack of respect for property rights”; did not find any referrences to anarchy other than, oddly, this thread popping up :\

Again, appeasing to what’s palatable puts your argument on crutches; but I guess it would be easier to give in to someone’s misconceptions & opinions, rather than actually attempting to dissasemble their ‘logic’ in discourse.

You talk about framing the debate to greatest number of people, but wouldn’t that mean not lying to them? Wouldn’t that mean explaining, appropriatly, the law would still exist under anarchy, just not law as we know it (law by the state) ? Giving into fears & misconceptions about somehing people do not understand, due to that very fear, is not furthering the debate at all.

Treating as if you need to make your message moderate waters down the very principles that are needed to be explain & dissemineate the misconceptions in the first place. An example would be possibly using minarchism as a vehicle to address the problems of the state, in an effrot to make the advent of “smallest state just shy of the lack of state”, when the state would still exist regardless.

If you were to “campaign” your message to greatest number of people, you are more or less a politican, and your “message” , or efforts of framing the debate to be more “palatable” will eventually reduce itself to a former shell of whatever your original intentions were, as they have with the LP party since it’s inception in the 70’s. Although, I do admit, it, the LP part, is looking like that ‘hip’ new conservative vehicle some praised Buckley of promoting to libertarians (in the past) in an effort to convert them, as the republican party is the farthest from conservatism it has ever been, and the LP party is increasingly moderate & less radical.

As for the family with children, because after all, we must think of the children, it is their perogative if they want to put their surival of their children before changing their views, and vice-versa. However, what they could not deny is that what someone would have to say regarding anarchism (and tearing apart misconeptions, etc.) could impact their children’s future; would they want their children growing up knowing nothing of alternatives to The State, or would they want them to know the alternatives?

That enters into a field of parenting that I cannot (and I don’t think you can, unless you are a parent) vouch for due to lack of experience. Although, it seems like a similar choice in whether or not allowing your children to watch TV before a cetain age is appropriate or not. I will not kid myself into denying that single individuals, as opposed to married individuals with childrend, are easier to talk about regarding this subject (in ways), but that honestly depends upon the individuals involved. For all I know, I could attempt such with a couple I know now, and they could actually be very interested.

The main point I would bring up before hand though, is that The State is not required for society to operate, to have a daily life, a job, to raise children, to get married (or whatever the stateless alternative would be, if the state is required for such) etc. It simply would be different means for such, and it would be up to the parents to decide if it would be worth informing their children, as well themselves, of such alternative thought.

Besides, the action of arriving at such, via Agorism most likley, does not happen instantly, so the point of dealing the state as a monopoly over the way we run our lives, until we strong enough to over-ride it with counter-economics, would also appeal to parents looking to ensure “secruity” for their children. Also, I would not talk down to them, nor ridicule their own opinions, nor would I attempt to use their children as a barganing chip; I’d imagine any parent being very outraged if anyone did such.

Refinforcing idiotic imagery of thugs rioting (oops, not all thugs are leftist, whatever you mean by “leftist”, this time), of the certain individuals who may actually believe that (I think it’s generalizing way too much to think that everyone views anarchy as such) is not something that furthers understanding, education, debate, etc.,

As for using the word anarchy, there a number of approaches involved that do not water down your argument: You can ask them what they think the definition is, ask them why, ask them do you think The State is needed in all areas of life?, ask them why or why not. Listen to them before they listen to you.

If it’s really a big deal to you, you could possibly say “stateless society”, or “open-ended society”, or whatever, and then eventually get a meta-argument going on the controversey over the mis-uses of the word anarchy, and how idiots who advocate looting, rioting, force, etc. co-opt the word and give it a bad name.

I think as long as one does not jump into someones face, yelling “ANARCHY OR DIE”, or “YOU ARE WRONG@#!$$”, you can get a productive conversation going.

18

No offence, but shouldn’t this debate be moved to another thread dealing with the appositeness of semantics such as “anarchy” vs “polycentric” &c.? This thread regards the practicality of anarchism per se.

-Jon

19

Of course not! You can get a dog, or get a gun, or get a burglar alarm, or put up scary signs, or study judo, or simply hope for the best. You can do anything you want to. Every decision has costs, benefits and risks. What I think is bothering you is the thought that, without a defense agency, people would be flocking to your house to rob, rape and kill you and your family. That’s pretty much the fear that makes people cling to the state, because they fail to notice two things: if people really were like that, they’d be acting that way now; and the folks who really are like that are probably cops or politicians today.

Since Mises.org is lousy with economists (of which I’m not one), it’s probably a bad idea to keep calling them “monopolies.” A local road company isn’t the only provider of roads in the world, so they’re not a monopolist in any sense–but even being the world’s only supplier doesn’t make one a monopolist to an Austrian economist. To be a monopolist, you must have the power to bar competition, and the only way to bar competition is by force. So one can only be a monopolist by running a criminal gang or government (but I repeat myself), or else by colluding with said criminals. Electric plants used to be monopolies in the US, because the government would arrest anyone trying to open a competing utility. Roads and the postal system are government monopolies. Etc.

What you mean is that you get to decide “who you’re stuck with,” which is indeed mostly true. But that’s an improvement over today, where you don’t get to decide who you’re stuck with! You’re stuck with the government, which gives us horrible roads at ridiculous cost, on which 40,000 Americans die every year (i.e., approximately one 9/11 per month, since long before 2001).

Unlike government? At least when a businessman does something bad, you can do something about it. When government does something bad, it can shoot you for complaining.

By the way, down that road are lots of claimed “market failures.” When you look into cases where businesses do terrible things, you will almost always find the government at the root of it. For example, before power companies’ government-granted monopolies, there was a free market in power. It was extremely competitive, prices were low and services were good, and the power companies themselves clamored for regulation to “protect” themselves from “ruinous competition” that would “drive them out of business,” supposedly leaving no sources of electricity standing. The result was government-protected monopolies, higher prices, less competition, and by the way, more “externalities” like polution. After all, two power companies at the same price can compete on the fact that one doesn’t stink like eggs.

That’s a kind of parody of the market. Road commissioners compete for votes, which isn’t the same as competing for customers. For example, giving kickbacks to construction companies can buy votes at the expense of “customers.” But in any case, they’re protected from failure: if you refuse to pay them for their “services,” you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you’ll be subdued or even killed. The more you ponder the notion that you own the roads, and exercise your ownership by voting, the more you’ll realize what a farce it is. As South Park portrayed it, every election in the end is between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

–Len.

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Yeah, I second that, although the question “Can anarchy work in human society” tehcnically covers the seemingly off-topic acvtivity here. I apologize for furthering off-topic activity, though.