Here is brainpolice on “Heathian anarchism.” What are your thoughts on the subject?
I don’t see what’s objectionable about Heathian anarchism. Is there something unlibertarian if, in a voluntary society, a person or corporation owns a large tract of land, builds residences and/or industrial space, and then rents out these spaces? Is there something objectionable about home owners associations? Business and industrial parks? As MacCallum himself has argued, hotels and shopping malls provide the same public goods as the state: security, internal dispute resolution, common spaces, utilities, avenues for transportation, etc. Is the owner of my apartment building no better than a feudal lord?
You can’t get away from the territorial aspect. If you consider the defining feature of a state to be its territorial control of certain goods, then you’re certainly going to run into a lot of problems and contradictions.
Of course, the market will decide whether a single corporation could effectively manage an entire city. I find it credible that, in a free society, propertarian neighborhoods would be a cost effective way to provide roads, utilities and similar goods.
Not only do I think Heathian Anarchism is not objectionable, I find it very very difficult to imagine a scenario where competing security agencies could avoid the problem of conflict escalation.(Unless of course, they cooperated to such an extent that resembled one security agency.)
I only made it through a few minutes of his droning, but I got the point. I find it hard to believe that a single corporation would come to legitimately own any large city anyway. There’s a sort of governance from reactive legal measures, then there is a sort where problems are anticipated and contracts are drawn up ahead of time.
I might hire police firm A to respond to my call but I know that they, not having a territorial monopoly on service, only patrol my street 70% of the time, while company B comes by 20% and C 10%. Disputes between me and a subscriber of C may have been agreed to be arbitrated by D (then E and F if appealed).
I’ll agree to have company G be allowed to dig up a part of my yard to repair water pipes. G is cooperating with H to provide purification and I to provide billing services. I could keep going but I think this isn’t so hard to get. BP somehow imagines a single company would or should own large areas of land where people choose to live.
Read Spencer Heath MacCallum and Michael Van Notten’s “Proposed Contract Agreement for a Freeport-Clan” in Law of the Somalis.
The idea is that the land-lease will be initial contract, and all other contracts (read: claims) shall be individually negotiated. Then, the original land-leasing company will try to provide those goods that make it attractive for people to lease land from it from revenues (and make profits also, if it does a good job).
Thus, a quick way for getting customary law up and running (at the expense of it not being as initally decentralized as the Leoni/Hayek varients, whcih don’t have any initial contract at all). In the limit however, as the number of contracts grows, the constitution is more and more customary law.
Edit: Only judges are not provided by the entrepreneur. On the other hand, revenue from land lease provides money for a police. Judges are chosen by claiments, and so on until a satisfactory settlement (compensatory settlement) is reached.