How can anarchy sustain itself?

Economics Political Theory
1

Hey guys,

I’m studying economics right now as a hobby, focusing specifically on the Austrian school. Currently I’m reading Human Action.

I have a question about anarchy that I have never heard addressed. How can an anarchical society sustain itself? I understand the whole roads thing. I understand the privatization of law. I understand how it could all work. But it seems it would only last for a relativley short time, maybe 25-50 years.

In an anarchical society, the most likely scenario would be that there would exist buisnesses that own communities. In these communities, members would pay a rate, like a tax, but voluntary, for basic utilities and law enforcement. This is where I see problems arising.

Let’s assume there is one such buisness, call it ‘CommuniCorp’, that is extremly popular. They have low rates, good service, the whole bit. Due to their popularity in the market, they soon start buying up other buisnesses and expanding their corporate empire. Before long, they own hundreds of square miles. After a few decades, they are the WalMart of the community buisness, owning thousands of square miles. At this time, there are only a few community buisnesses left, all equalling CommuniCorp in size and power. Switching between community providers is now much more dificult, as you would have to move literally thousands of miles to switch buisnesses.

At this point, CommuniCorp launches its own law enforcement branch. They start making their communities ‘safer’ by implementing all sorts of social and economic laws. They start to offer ‘complimentary healthcare’, although soon start to make it mandatory, saying that they need to keep the populace healthy in order to attract customers.

At this point, we would be back at square one; we would have states again. The only difference would be that they might be called buisnesses, and they are probably worse than the states we started out with.

As far as I know, this may have been addressed already in a book or other discussion. If so, could you please tell me where?

Thanks!

2

When switching would start to become even slightly difficult, current CommuniCorp customers would start switching before it became much more difficult.

Are you implying that it is difficult to shop anywhere else but at Walmart today?

3

Pluralistic governance is usually preceded by changes in the distribution of power. Pluralistic political institutions, such as democracy, would otherwise fail much sooner (as they often do, when they aren’t preceded by changes in the distribution of power). Anarchic institutions will require this kind of continued re-distribution, a lot of which can be achieved through progress on the market (greater competition decreases market power, for example). And, any transition towards anarchy – if there ever is such a transition – would occur gradually (and imperfectly and non-linearly), and most likely simultaneously with changes in the distribution of power.

4

The problem with switching is having to actually physically move. It would be much more complicated than just cancelling your subscription; you would have to leave your friends and job behind. Even if you just had to move across town, most people would probably rather put up with the beaurocracy of their own provider than have to do that.

I’m not implying it’s hard to shop anywhere at Walmart, but again, it would be if WalMart was your only store unless you moved a few hundred miles.

5

There aren’t large economies of scale in the provision of protection.

6

The only effective barrier to entry, even withing specific territories, is the use of violence. Modern states can find it profitable to use violence because they can extract society’s resources to pay for the costs. If we’re talking about a society that has reached the point of something like personal defense agencies, it’s safe to assume that the constraints on resource extraction area stronger. Therefore, PDAs are going to find it increasingly unprofitable to protect their businesses by establishing territorial monopolies. Wars cost resources, and resources are scarce. In a world where you can’t just extract these from somebody else, waging war becomes inefficient.

7

Well. That depends.

When you buy a piece of house, or property, and it is YOURS, YOU bought it and no one else. Then you have every right to ignore communicorp. The only way that communicorp has jurisdiction over your house, etc, is if you rent it from them, in which case it is their property and not yours.

8

Exactly, and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that after a while community buisnesses would buy up a good portion of homes and land.

9

As much as i want to live in a stateless society, I think that anarchy would not last because people will eventually want to form a govt again.

10

This disregards anarchy as a process, and imagines it as a fixed point in time. To actually make it to anarchy, we’d need a cultural shift in the people’s understanding. Once this cultural shift occurs, I find it highly unlikely that anyone would agree with the guy who says “hey, let’s create one coercive entity that forces people to do things against their will and expropriates their earnings.”

11

You might find this article useful:

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/crazy_equilibri.html

12

That’s actually a really good point, I was assuming a fixed point in time rather than a process. However, I think the same argument applies to what you said too. You said “…the guy who says…”, implying that the transition is sudden, without a process. As I said in my original post, it would take quite a while for the buisnesses to gain enough power to really become states.

The founding fathers, while not anarchists by any means, did value a small, non-intrusive government. It’s taken a few hundred years, but society has degraded back to valuing a large, all-powerful govenment again. Forward is not the only way society can move. I see no reason why an anarchical society could not also be taught to revalue government.

13

I think you overestimate the degree to which early America was libertarian. Certainly, the likes of Jefferson and Madison were. Yet you also had Hamilton and his own clique. The Constitution is an inherently flawed document, and the Civil War, and then the US’s entry into WW1, both permanently scarred the country. To say that this regression is inevitable in anarchism is a form of fatalism, and I think it’s akin to Chicken Little worrying about the sky falling. Let us try it and see what may come, and deal with it as and when, rather than submitting to the state because we fear the re-emergence of the drumroll state.

There aren’t large economies of scale in the provision of protection.

Because economic calculation problem.

14

So what you’re worried about is

  • Walmart, with its 34.16 square miles of commercial real esate right now,
  • Would gather tens of thousands of square miles of low prices and Chinese-manufactured goods to sell to consumers,
  • By expanding its stores, remaining competitive in terms of prices,
  • And yet also somehow invest resources into a secret plan to build up an arsenal so it can develop a protection monopoly,
  • Then end up as strong and powerful as the US federal government, which can live off the resources contained within 3.79 million square miles,
  • Without any of its customers abandoning it long before that process turns it into the state of Walmartistan,
  • Thereby depriving it of the voluntarily given money that it would need to invest not only in low priced goods but also weaponry…

…right?

Is that the logical progression you’re working with for your scenario?

15

Hi RumblyElk, welcome to the forum! I feel I can address your question.

No, this is incorrect. What you’re envisioning is not anarchy, but a patchwork of small states. In anarchy, the security/law providers do not own communities or people or land. They offer a service and contract with customers. Think of Internet Service Providers. If one single ISP has a 90% market share in one town, we do not say the ISP owns the town, and that is true even if they have a 100% market share, as long as people can choose not to contract with their ISP, if they so wish.

Just like with ISP’s today, in anarchy you could have two neighbors who contract with two different security/law firms; there is no reason for the security providers’ customers to be geographically contiguous with each other, necessarily. A map of an anarchic land would look nothing like a map of states, not even crazy maps of medieval Germany with hundreds of small states. A security-provider map in anarchy would look more like an ISP map today… full of multi-colored dots representing individuals, not areas of land, and many of them switching color often. Unlike states, where the laws they produce apply to a certain area (i.e. it’s territorial monopoly area) and all the individuals within that area, the security/law firms’ laws apply to certain individuals, specifically those that have voluntarily contracted with the firm. You do not have to move house to switch ISP, and in anarchy you won’t have to move house to switch security provider.

So this ‘Communicorp’ isn’t an anarchic security provider that becomes a state. It is a state at the beginning of your scenario.

This means that your argument does not address the question ‘how can anarchy sustain itself?’ but a different one: ‘how can a patchwork of small states avoid forming into a larger state?’. And your argument is correct in that, yes, a patchwork of small states does tend to emalgamate into one larger state, e.g. the EU.

16

Then, obviously, if this would be such a pain, you would be wise to consider it before you moved in (subscribed) with CommuniCorp or you sold your property to it.

Depends on the disutility imposed on you by this “bureaucracy”. Maybe you make this mistake once, and become more careful when shopping for your next protection provider. You seem to be implying that CommuniCorp would be all peaches and honey, accumulating happy-camper customers at an exponential clip, then once it has everyone corraled and duped, it turnes into a violent aggressor. How exactly does this happen?

I guess there is a reason why it would be extremely difficult for Walmart to become the only food provider in a free market. The same would apply for CommuniCorp.

What if someone bought the whole universe? We’d be all screwed. Hence, a state. QED. (?)

17

  1. There’s no reason to believe that such a large and centralized monopoly would ever come to power.

  2. There’s no reason to believe that people would submit to these laws. Anarchy would be nearly impossible to destroy from the inside because of the ideology that would have to exist for it to come about in the first place.

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Exactly… Think about the amount of time that will be/is required to bring about the anarchy itself. I mean the age of enlightenment was necessary to bring about the revolution of America in the first place - which has slowly deteriorated from classically liberal to statist over the course of 237 years.

20

Thanks Graham,

You raise a good point in that my question isn’t really about anarchy, but more about many, many small states. Didn’t think of it that way.

Toward the beginning, I think your scenario is quite likely. Individuals would pay security providers for their services. Before long, however, security providers would start offering ‘block bundles’ in which a group of houses can all use the same provider together and get a discount. This would be cheaper for the homeowners, and easier and more profitable for the provider.

I think it is likely that there would arise businesses, partnered with the security companies, that would buy and rent land. They would also likely be partnered with the power and water companies. The advantage to being a customer of these land renting businesses would be the same as the block bundles of the security companies; all members get their power, water, and security at a bargain price while water, power, and security companies would essentially have entire neighborhoods belonging solely to them.

Only after the businesses got sigificantly larger would they implement their own law enforcement, and it would be as a mere feature that the businesses offered. This would likely deprive the security company they had been using of most of their business, all but driving them out of business. The people who weren’t members of communities at this point would suddenly not have law enforcement and would be all but forced to join a community.

Switching providers wouldn’t be impossible, but it would require significat trouble, just as changing citizenship is now.