a) One of the themes that emerges from power-elite analysis is that the Elites have more in common with each other than they do with the people they rule. This is particularly obvious in Europe where monarchs are frequently “imported”, that is, come from a House that has its origins in another nation. The Queen of England, for a contemporary example, is actually of a German royal House (Saxe-Coburg Gotha), a point which is not talked about openly in polite English society.
b) Long before the UN, there existed an international law code called lex mercatoria (the Law Merchant) that provided the “ground rules” for international trade where it would be difficult or impossible to bring a dispute before a court in either trading partner’s home country due to bias, etc.
c) During the Medieval era when lex mercatoria was flourishing, much of Europe was feudal, meaning that serfs were “bound to the land”. Feudal titles could be bought/sold - in compliance with locally varying rules - they could be amassed through marriage or they could be captured through battle following the medieval laws of war in which non-combatants were not to be harmed and nobles were not to be executed without proper trial. I’m not saying it was paradise, but neither was it the Bosch-like hell painted by popular history.
d) As a matter of historical analysis, large discontinuities in the power structure are very rare and those discontinuities that do occur usually consist of a triumph of a 2nd-in-line over the sitting ruler, whether through outright coup or subtler methods. I reject as ahistorical the picture of the 19th and 20th centuries as “the death of monarchy/triumph of democracy”. This narrative is simply false. Monarchy is alive and well, all around the globe and democracy has lately been shown to clearly be a sham (so clearly, even the masses are starting to catch on).
e) I understand that the Royal houses actually have something called “house law” which is kind of like the by-laws of a corporation - the house law dictates the rules of inheritance, disinheritance, name-taking, sale, acquisition and nationalization of estate assets, and so on. Because the Royal houses are inherently international, my guess is that they are in a position with respect to each other very similar to that faced by international merchants - they simply cannot take their disputes to national courts and, for privacy reasons, would never want to in any case. But this logic extends from the well-known Royal houses to the family dynasties of wealthy industrialists, such as the Rockefellers or the Mellons. Note that these families operate something called a “Family Office” which, in any practical respect, is a lot like having house law, that is, the Family Office is charged with administering the policies of the family (that is, the patriarch) with respect to its assets.
f) The de facto rights of the wealthy and powerful are very much like the rights that we describe as obtaining in Ancap/Libertopia, that is, they are secure in their persons and property, they are not subject to the arbitrary dictates of a legislature, and so on. While they exploit the masses (a right that we do not desire to have in Ancap/Libertopia), they must - by dint of logic - treat each other as peers.
g) On the basis of the prior observations, I surmise that there exists a kind of “lex mercatoria” - perhaps we could call it lex regalia - between the handful of the world’s absolutely most powerful and wealthy dynasties (and no, I don’t mean the “13 bloodlines” which I think is a bunch of disinfo crap). This “lex regalia” is a law system that does not assume any compulsion to moderate disputes because the parties at the table actually have the plenary power to launch war campaigns with all the assets at their disposal - military, financial, diplomatic, media, (yes, even religious) etc. Hence, the law which emerges in this very cloistered environment is extremely rational, equitable and fundamentally liberal (there are no monopolies of law at this level).
Hence, we see that - if we restrict the analysis to just the Elites (ignoring the masses) - they are an Ancap/Libertopia. What’s interesting is that, on this view, not only are the statists who complain “But there’s never been an Ancap/Libertopia!” just plain wrong, they completely fail to appreciate the fact that the actually existing Ancap/Libertopia rules most of the planet. So much for your “but national armies would wipe them out.” No, the Ancap/Libertopians own and operate the national armies around the globe.
In closing, this leads to at least one novel observation. Perhaps - rather than trying to “eliminate government” - what we should be seeking to do is to extend the already existing and actually just legal system enjoyed by the Elites downward into ordinary society. If we could do this, we might break the chains of the de facto system of serfdom that dominates the masses who are trapped in the national statutory law system.
Clayton -
