Oke; I’m going to try to approach this from a different angle. I have no hope in convincing Rettoper; but maybe this is interesting for the innocent bystander. As some might now, I’m a graduate in philosophy, but I’ve taken some courses in economics and political science, because, as Mises said, in order to be an economist, one must be a generalist. This is also true for philosophy. I’m going to approach this from a political science perspective. This is, however, not my main subject, so if anyone has any comments, feel free to add.
The central idea, I think, of Rettoper is that there is a constant struggle for resources and (relative) power relations, which will go unchecked in an anarchist world, but in a democratic world they will be checked. In international relations theory - the study of the global system of politics, in this day and age, the study of the interactions between states - there are 2 checks on democratic government: internal (‘the people don’t want it’) and external (‘other countries might retaliate’). Rettoper has referred to democratic peace theory a couple of times. I, basically, agree with a softer version of this theory, something like: democratic nations don’t fight high resource-consuming, enduring wars. This is an empirical generalizations, but there is some relatively clear conceptual theory behind it. (Democratic peace theory does not say that democracies don’t fight war. Some theories regarding democratic peace even predict that democracies might even indulge into the most terrible wars vis a vis non-democracies, e.g. the democratic peace theory based on the electorate theory.)
My ‘favorite’ theory in IR is a combination of constructivist thought - you really want to read Wendt’s his ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’ - and the English school (especially Bull’s ‘Anarchical Society’). The main idea is that ‘anarchy’ at the state level doesn’t predict anything (or at least: not that much). This is because anarchy only means there is no overarching world government, but it doesn’t mean that there is only one game that can be played (unlike the realists, who say it’s only a striving for power - or relative power, if one reads someone like Waltz.) But the problem with the ‘power struggle’ is this: why doesn’t the USA attack something like Panama? It would be a piece of cake! The idea is that ideology matters though at the state level; you couldn’t justify a war against panama because it’s a relative democracy and not at this current moment a thread to the USA. Another example is, say, Venezuela, which is a thread to a lot of American ‘resources’ (companies and all) there. There is, however, no war at this moment. Other examples can be constructed. The idea is that to choose for war ideology matters and one can’t just justify a war. Another thing related is shared conceptions. If the UK would announce that they would increase their nuclear weapons, the (American) reaction would be different than if, say, Iran said they are going to stock up, no? The idea is that even in anarchy there can be cooperation and shared values, even if there is no overarching hierarchy. It doesn’t follow that the UK always does what to USA wants - choose any other Western Nation if you don’t agree with the UK example.
The main reason why I’m saying this that it’s unclear to me why Rettoper thinks why similar mechanisms won’t play a part in an anarchist society. He has commented a lot that a PDA only can aim for profit, because you can’t pay an army with psychological benefits. But this doesn’t follow. In IR; one of the main reasons why there is peace between Western-Europe and the USA is a shared conception of the good, mutual cooperation between the citizens, etc. Why is it that unlikely that this won’t happen between PDA’s?
Even if one accepts the (neo-)realist theory of Waltz; i.e. that states aim for relative power (you’re not aiming to be the hegemone; you are aiming to be relatively unattractive to be attacked. You can do this by force or by cooperation); why can’t similar effects come in to play? It’s not clear why the ‘monopoly of coercion over a given territory’ or ‘democracy’ change the way that this game is played. The way I read these theories is that it’s a theory of international relations; which happens to be states. But ‘democracy’ is a decesion making process, that for this purpose can be substituted by market preferences and the monopoly of coercion also isn’t that relevant - the fact that they are they are the organization that provide safety and judicial services is. But again; if you look at standard IR theory - which assumes sort of anarchy - and they predict peace because of it, what’s the quintessential difference between ‘the state’ and ‘the pda’ so that the pda will cause a wave of violence and ‘the state’ won’t (in the face of other ‘states’). The whole theory of ‘underevaluated resources’ is also relevant in the world we live in - i.e. with states - so why doesn’t the USA attack Luxemburg or whatever?