I too have been thinking over the prospect of anarchism from some time. One simple problem that I wish would be fixed is the actual meaning we attribute to the word “anarchy”. It means so many different things to different people. As a result, there are so many pedantic quibbles over “anarchism” not because they disagree on the end result but because each misperceive what the other attributes to the word. It’s semantics. I’ve already said it before, but using the word anarchism is a horrible idea imho.
One interesting way of looking at the prospect of an utterly free society is to look at from the perspective of the marginal utility of cooperation. Just from what I’ve read, I think Mises overlooked this slightly. I’m sure others have already looked at it this way, I just haven’t read their work yet. A crude explanation goes some like this:
The more cooperators there are in a society the less the marginal utility of cooperating becomes, and further, the higher the marginal utility of not cooperating becomes. So at a certain point in a society were almost everyone is cooperating it will be in certain individuals interest to not cooperate as the marginal utility of not cooperating will be greater than the marginal utility of cooperating. I think this needs to be refined but it is, more or less, fundamentally correct.
That excerpt from Mises in Human Action makes it seem as though he thought that those who broke the law misunderstood their own value scales. I would really not say that’s the case. With any evolutionary process there’s never one simple way that’s the best for all individuals, cooperation in his case.
The real argument, however, is how we go about quashing the non-cooperators. It’s most obvious there will always be non-cooperators.
From what I gather, most on LvMI who consider themselves “anarchists” believe the free market would evolve to fill the role of quashing the non-cooperators, the role which government has fulfilled as far as we can remember.
On the other hand, I think that many “minarchists” perceive the idea that the free market would take on such a role, technically speaking, as itself constituting a sort pseudo-state process.
Correct me if I am wrong as I’m not that well versed in the hypothetical libertarian process of law and order. Take an example.
If there is say, a robber, and he is running around stealing from all of the cooperators. The cooperators would go to their local policeman and pay that policeman to take this guy down, he’s violating their property rights! Policeman who work for profit would most assuredely be more efficient than state policeman, that I do not doubt. The policeman would take this guy down and bring him in where the cooperators would bring their charges against the guy.
Now they all have their own private insurance companies but the robber doesn’t, so they can’t get any material compensation for what’s been stolen from them. Instead they demand punishment. But to punish the robber their must be a sort of implicit agreement amongst all members of this society that there are certain laws that exist and if those laws are broken violent force can be brought at against an individual. Now the arbitration of whether the individual has broken these implicit laws can be performed, and most efficiently so, by private judges, etc. I also agree with this idea.
But if the robber continually upholds that his actions do not constitute actions which deserve punishment, etc. then violent force must brought against him. Thus, there must be some sort of entity which takes on a role similar to that of the state. Further, the simple fact that a set of laws are implicity agreed upon amongst the free citizens is itself indicative of a sort of organized society, i.e., a psuedo-state.
Here’s the point. Even in a society where everything is provided for via the free market there would still exist some sort of organization or implicit agreement among the cooperaters such that the characteristics we attribute to the state would need to be taken on by the free market. To me this constitutes a sort of mini-statist society and that is why I still consider my self a minarchist.
Once again, I think many of the arguments could be completely avoided if we stopped using the word “anarchism” to describe the libertarian philosophy. It impedes progress in libertarian ideas substantially.