Simply Anarchy - studies and history

pro-anarchy material

anti-government material

state incentives

Recommended reading

Anarchy
Anarcho-capitalism. market anarchism, free market model
Market anarchists vs anarcho-socialists
General models or compilations of systems

Private communities/neighbourhoods/cities
Law and courts
Police and protection
Defense
Roads
Market Currency
Health care and education
Public property/public goods
Land use/Air
Anarchism at a personal level

Articles and studies on historical cases
Contact me to submit an article (preferably a technical paper or article about the nature of an anarchc country, or its success or lack thereof).

The history of arbitration
Medieval Iceland
Present-day Somalia
American Old West
Medieval Ireland
Pennsylvania 1681-1690
Labrador
New Guinea highlands
Bronze Age India
Igbo tribes of West Africa
Partial anarchies and others

For anarchy and anarchic systems

Anarchy

Anarchy Unbound, or: Why Self-Governance Works Better than You Think by Peter T. Leeson
"Despite these significant arenas of anarchy we do not observe perpetual world war in the absence of global government, shriveling international commerce in the absence of supranational commercial law, or even deteriorating standards of living in Somalia. On the contrary, peace overwhelmingly prevails between the world’s countries, international trade is flourishing, and Somali development has improved under statelessness.

If conventional wisdom is right then reality must be wrong. How can this be?"

In Defense of Rational Anarchism by George H. Smith
"I call this rational anarchism, because it is grounded in the belief that we are fully capable, through reason, of discerning the principles of justice; and that we are capable, through rational persuasion and voluntary agreement, of establishing whatever institutions are necessary for the preservation and enforcement of justice. It is precisely because no government can be established by means of reason and mutual consent that all Objectivists should reject that institution as unjust in both theory and practice."

Enforcement of Private Property Rights in Primitive Societies: Law without Government by Bruce L. Benson
"Furthermore, a study of the incentives and institutions of primitive law and the resulting primary and secondary rules makes it evident that precisely the same kinds of govermnentless legal systems have existed in considerably more advanced, complex societies, ranging from Medieval Iceland, Ireland, and AngloSaxon England, to the development of the Medieval Law Merchant and its evolution into modern international commercial law, and even to the western frontier of the United States during the 1800. The fact is that much of the law that guides today's complex American society actually evolved from or is simply a reflection of precisely the same customary law sources as those underlying the legal systems discussed above. In particular, private property rights appear to be a product of customary, not government produced, law. Market prices and institutions arise spontaneously in order to facilitate interaction. Economists should not be surprised to find that private property and legal institutions can exist without government..."

Four Reasons for Humanistic Psychologists to Advocate Anarchism by Dennis R. Fox
"The third reason that psychologists should advocate anarchism, which follows from the view than anarchism is natural, is that anarchism is psychologically healthy. This central psychological claim, called by Sarason (1976) "the anarchist insight," holds that as the state becomes more powerful, people find it more difficult to fulfill their needs for both personal autonomy and a psychological sense of community."

In Search of a Word : Limited Government versus 'Anarchy' by Spencer H. MacCallum
"Practical considerations forbid that we should look on these (or any) ideal conceptions as goals or end conditions completely attainable in themselves. Their vast value lies not in their attainment but in their orientation of our energies consistently in the direction of these ultimate ideals."

Defining Anarchy by Mark Davis
"Anarchy is a functioning society free of government controls. That is individual persons operating together in harmony based on freely reached agreements concluded between individual members and groups of a society. Anarchy is simply a free society. Anarchy is not the result of a statist-government failure; that would be chaos. The chaos in New Orleans is not due to anarchy, it is an example of the failure of statist-government."

Natural Government versus Artificial Government by Jack W. Coxe
"Many people—maybe most people—might prefer not to struggle for power. But if procedures for coercion are manipulatable, then being vulnerable to legal coercion is an unavoidable fact of life. Many or maybe most people might not even realize that many things that they routinely do are power-struggling efforts to manipulate the coerciveness of law."

Natural Law by Lysander Spooner
"Certainly no man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire. Nor can any man be reasonably or rightfully expected to join, or support, any association whose plans, or method of proceeding, he does not approve, as likely to accomplish its professed purpose of maintaining justice, and at the same time itself avoid doing injustice. To join, or support, one that would, in his opinion, be inefficient, would be absurd. To join or support one that, in his opinion, would itself do injustice, would be criminal. He must, therefore, be left at the same liberty to join, or not to join, an association for this purpose, as for any other, according as his own interest, discretion, or conscience shall dictate."

Anarcho-capitalism. market anarchism, free market model

Libertarian Anarchism: Why it is Best for Freedom, Law, the Economy, and the Environment, and Why Direct Action is the Way to Get it by Daniel C. Burton
"Legislative law creates disorder, not order, because like all aspects of government, it places the good of the few and special interests above the general welfare. It benefits the few at the expense of general public order. Customary law, on the other hand, comes into being in response to people’s desire for orderly relations with others and promotes social harmony.

The expansion of government’s power to define and enforce law has generally had at its root the desire of an elite to expand its power, not a need for order, and has been met by popular resistance."

The Statist Mindset of Anarchists by Per Bylund
"It also wouldn’t be enough to oppose the state but champion a society based on some kind of system replacing the state. That’s still the same thing--statism. What you are doing is identifying the problems with the state as it is known to us today, but simultaneously proposing a new kind of government.

This might come as a surprise to you, but this is what many anarchists--perhaps a majority--are actually doing. I call it blueprint anarchism or blueprintism: the wish to abolish the state and explicit rule only to replace it with a new kind of structure which is less explicit (and not called a state) and seems “better.”"

Brief explanation of anarcho capitalism by James Donald
"Anarchists are not opposed to leaders and leadership, nor to law and laws — What anarchists oppose is that certain leaders should have a special privilege to use force, a privilege to coerce, to compel others to submit to their leadership, to use force in ways that would be impermissible for other people to use force. Anarchists favor there being more leaders, not no leaders — as many leaders as can find followers. Similarly, anarchists do not oppose law, but rather oppose the existence of any body of men with the power to make law by merely decreeing it to be law."

Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections by Roderick T. Long
mp3 file
"The alternative to government providing all the shoes is not that each person makes their own shoes. So, likewise, the alternative to government providing all the legal services is not that each person has to be their own independent policeman. There’s no reason that they can’t organize in various ways. In fact, if you’re worried about not having sufficient force to resist an aggressor, well, a monopoly government is a much more dangerous aggressor than just some gang of bandits or other because it’s unified all this power in just one point in the whole society."

Anarcho-capitalism Wikipedia entry
"Anarcho-capitalism (aka free market anarchism) is a philosophy based on the idea of individual sovereignty, and a prohibition against initiatory coercion and fraud. It sees the only just basis for law as arising from private property norms and an unlimited right of contract between sovereign individuals. From this basis, anarcho-capitalism rejects the state as an unjustified monopolist and systematic aggressor against sovereign individuals..."

Free Market Anarchism
"At least that is one area that anarchists can agree on, that the state is a completely unnecessary evil that needs to be totally scrapped. The state always enforces its edicts by force and coercion, never by voluntary cooperation. The state always portrays itself as the defender of individuals, but is the oppressor that engages in mass murder and thievery."

Anarchy, on the other hand, is a negative position - no-government. It merely states that government should not exist. This does not indicate what system will indeed exist in an anarchic society, which is why many anarchists label themselves further (such as anarcho-syndicalist or anarcho-capitalist). In an anarchy, people can assemble in any economic system they desire - socialism, capitalism, syndicalism, whatever they desire."

Libertarian Property and Privatization: An Alternative Paradigm by Kevin A. Carson
"Privatization of state property, as it is actually carried out is just another form of state capitalist subsidy. In the first state, transnational capital promotes infrastructure projects in Third World countries that are essential to returns on Western capital in those countries, as a way of subsidizing foreign investment there at the expense of native taxpayers. Next, the resulting debt load is used to discipline the country's government into carrying out policies favorable to Western capital. And finally, under the "structural adjustment" regime imposed by the IMF and World Bank, the country is forced to sell assets (previously paid for in the sweat of the native producing classes) to Western capital at pennies on the dollar."

GUSTAVE DE MOLINARI, LES SOIREES DE LA RUE SAINT LAZARE (1849) “THE ELEVENTH SOIREE”
"The monopoly of government is no better than any other. One does not govern well and, especially not cheaply, when one has no competition to fear, when the ruled are deprived of the right of freely choosing their rulers. Grant a grocer the exclusive right to supply a neighborhood, prevent the inhabitants of this neighborhood from buying any goods from other grocers in the vicinity, or even from supplying their own groceries, and you will see what detestable rubbish the privileged grocer will end up selling and at what prices! You will see how he will grow rich at the expense of the unfortunate consumers, what royal pomp tle will display for the greater glory of the neighborhood. Well! What is true for the lowliest services is no less true for the loftiest. The monopoly of government is worth no more than that of a grocer's shop. The production of security inevitably becomes costly and bad when it is organized as a monopoly. It is in the monopoly of security that lies the principal cause of wars which have laid waste humanity."

Anarchism as Constitutionalism: A Reply to Bidinotto
"Bidinotto complains, as we’ve seen, that competing providers of legal services in an anarchic order will have conflicting interpretations of justice. No doubt they will. But how is this different from the system he favours? The whole point of having a checks-and-balances system presupposes that the agents who administer the system will have conflicting interpretations of justice. There’d be no point in having distinct branches of government limiting each other, or having the people limit the government through the franchise, if unanimity on questions of justice could be expected. In both Market Anarchism and limited government, then, the working of the system will involve different parties trying to enact their several conceptions of justice. The best system is not one that eliminates such conflict – no system can eliminate it – but one that does the best job of providing its constituent agents with an incentive to resolve their disputes a) peacefully, and b) in a manner favourable to individual liberty. The question is: which does a better job of this – markets or governments?"

What Are You Calling 'Anarchy'? by Robert P. Murphy
"On a deeper level, the example of Prohibition-era warfare is particularly ironic, since it only existed because of government regulation. That is, the moment alcohol was legalized, Chicago gangs stopped shooting each other. Far from being an example of anarchy, therefore, Hirshleifer's second example is really a case of violence caused when a group of armed men attempt to impose their views of justice on a population."

THE FREE MARKET MODEL VERSUS GOVERNMENT: A REPLY TO NOZICK by John T. Sanders
"Neither instability nor injustice lead to the collapse of the free market model of social organization. It has survived Nonck's criticisms."

Freedom or Government? by Harry Hoiles
"Government by its very nature must govern. To govern is to dictate. All governments are dictatorships of one form or another. They may be one-man dictatorships, constitutional dictatorships, dictatorships in republican or democratic form, majority rule dictatorships, dictatorships by bureau or what have you. But the fact remains that to govern is to dictate.

The alternative to government is freedom. The individual who believes in freedom does not seek to govern others. He merely wants to govern himself. He is perfectly willing to let other people govern themselves also."

The Capitalist Manifesto by Spencer Robert Kline
"Decisions in a free environment are made in a decentralized manner, as there exists no centralize directing authority. This is again derived from the truly egalitarian nature of a free society. The value of such a decentralized mechanism has been intuitively understood since the days of Adam Smith9, but however has only recently been articulated by the newly burgeoning field of complexity theory. Generally, when you have a mass of agents acting under the direction of a simple set of rules, higher level behavior not present in the agents themselves will result."

Market anarchism as stigmergic socialism by Brad Spangler
"So, that part of the Anarchist FAQ critique would appear to lead to an inaccurate perception of what Rothbard was arguing for. It applies to Friedman’s version of anarcho-capitalism, and Rothbard was the one who first pointed it out — long before the Anarchist FAQ was even around."

Market anarchists vs anarcho-socialists

On Peter Sabatini's "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy" by Richard A. Garner
"Here the issue really seems to be that Rothbard wants to abolish what he calls the state, but not what the author calls a state. Since the accepted definition, accepted by sociologists the world around, is that a state is an organisation that monopolizes the use of force over a particular geographic area, or, better, an organisation the promises to punish, to the best of its ability, all those who use force without its permission within its jurisdiction, Rothbard seeks to abolish the state, according to the accepted definition. After all, Rothbard's suggestion would, as Tucker pointed out, lead to the possibility of each member of a single household belonging to a seperate "state," and there being more than one "state" in England. Such an outcome is incompatible with the accepted definition of a state."

Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly-Capital: A Mutualist Synthesis by Kevin A. Carson
"The view of the present system as essentially exploitative, and of the state as the foundation for its exploitative features, are held both at the same time by only a very small segment of either the libertarian Left or Right. Despite occasional hat tips to the essentially statist nature of the corporate system, collectivist-oriented libertarian socialists like Chomsky immediately revert back to lamenting the evils of "the market" and calling for increased state intervention against "private concentrations of power"; they seem to be motivated by a largely aesthetic revulsion to markets.

Perhaps most annoyingly, they play into the hands of the state capitalists by using the terms "free market" and "free trade" as they have been defined by neoliberal politicians and intellectuals, and in the corporate press. In so doing, they concede the definition of "free market" to our class enemies."

A Critique of Anarchist Communism by Ken Knudson
"What communist-anarchists apparently forget is that workers' control means CONTROL. Marxists, let it be said to their credit, at least are honest about this point. They openly and unashamedly demand the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communist-anarchists seem to be afraid of that phrase, perhaps subconsciously realising the inherent contradiction in their position. But communism, by its very nature, IS dictatorial. The communist-anarchists may christen their governing bodies "workers' councils" or "soviets", but they remain GOVERNMENTS just the same."

Private-Property Anarchists and Anarcho-Socialists: Can We Get Along? by Gene Callahan
"All anarchists have in common the desire to eliminate the initiation of aggression as a legitimate form of social interaction. The difference between private-property anarchists and anarcho-socialists most often lies in what each group considers to be aggression. I will attempt to demonstrate that, from a market anarchist point of view, there are two distinct types of anarcho-socialists: the "good" ones, who are willing to live in peace with market anarchist communities, and the "bad" ones, who are not."

Anarchism: Two Kinds by Wendy McElroy
"For better or worse, the two schools of anarchism had enough in common to shake hands when they first met. To some degree, they spoke a mutual language. For example, they both reviled the State and denounced capitalism. But, by the latter, individualist anarchists meant "state-capitalism" the alliance of government and business. As a solution to such "capitalism," they called for measures such as free banking. In other words, they wanted to set up voluntary and more effective alternatives. And if such a voluntary society still harbored such evils as exorbitant interest rates.so be it."

Anarchism, Capitalism, and Anarcho-Capitalism by Per Bylund
"Thus it seems anarcho-capitalists agree with Proudhon in that ?property is theft,? where it is acquired in an illegitimate manner. But they also agree with Proudhon in that ?property is liberty? [5] in the sense that without property, i.e. being robbed of the fruits of one?s actions, one is a slave. Anarcho-capitalists thus advocate the freedom of a stateless society, where each individual has the sovereign right to his body and labor and through this right can pursue his or her own definition of happiness.

As we can see, the exploitative, force- and rule-based system of capitalism is not championed by any anarchists, not even the anarcho-capitalists. The critique directed from the leftist camps of anarchism towards anarcho-capitalism is therefore misplaced, inaccurate and rather ignorant. To refute the ideas and values of a philosophical movement one will have to use their definitions, or the critique will be virtually worthless."

An Anti-Capitalism Anarcho-Capitalist by Per Bylund
"Even though industrialists and “capitalists” are taxed, many corporations manage to avoid the better part of such taxes, while they through donations and lobbying can buy monopolies and other advantages to competitors, tax-payer financed infrastructure etc from power-hungry politicians. This is the greater part of the unfairness and exploitation Marx identified as “capitalism.” In this sense, I am most certainly an anti-capitalist.
Capitalism in the Austrian sense, i.e. the definition regularly used by libertarians like you and me, includes nothing of this sort. Here, capitalism is simply the voluntary agreement between free individuals to exchange products or services; and to hold the unrestricted right to what we produce: our property. Anarchists and “libertarian socialists” are usually not opposed to this. This is simply freedom, anarchy!"

Anarchism, Capitalism, and Anarcho-Capitalism by Per Bylund
"Capitalism in the sense of wealth accumulation as a result of oppressive and exploitative wage slavery must be abandoned. The enormous differences between the wealthy and the poor do not only cause tensions in society or personal harm to those exploited, but is essentially unjust. Most, if not all, property of today is generated and amassed through the use of force. This cannot be accepted, and no anarchists accept this state of inequality and injustice.
As a matter of fact, anarcho-capitalists share this view with other anarchists. Murray N. Rothbard, one of the great philosophers of anarcho-capitalism, used a lot of time and effort to define legitimate property and the generation of value, based upon a notion of “natural rights.” The starting point of Rothbard’s argumentation is every man’s sovereign and full right to himself and his labor. This is the position of property creation shared by both socialists and classical liberals, and is also the shared position of anarchists of different colors."

The Anarchists by John Henry Mackay
" "Would you, in the system of society which you call 'free Communism,' prevent individuals from exchanging their labor among themselves by means of their own medium of exchange? And further: Would you prevent them from occupying land for the purpose of personal use?"

Trupp faltered.

Like Auban, everybody was anxious to hear his answer.

Auban's question was not to be escaped. If he answered "Yes!" he admitted that society had the right of control over the individual and threw overboard the autonomy of the individual which he had always zealously defended; if, on the other hand, he answered "No!" he admitted the right of private property which he had just denied so emphatically."

Private Property or Possession: A Synthesis
"PROPERTY IS A TROUBLESOME issue. It is not only a matter of definition, but a matter of values. Some anarchists value property as a guarantee for freedom and prosperity, whereas other anarchists see property as a means of oppression and therefore wish to see it abolished completely. And there are other anarchists taking a “middle stance”--both pro and con--through advocating only possession. There seems to be no way around this issue, but this essay introduces a new theory combining the arguments put forward by anarchists in all three camps. Can this theory unite the anarchist movement?"

Against Anarchist Apartheid
"Tucker withheld the term from anarcho-communists like Johann Most, Pëtr Kropotkin, and the Haymarket martyrs; from Tucker’s point of view, it was they, not the Spencerians, who were “false” anarchists. Needless to say, I don’t advocate following Tucker’s example on this point; one parochialism is no improvement over the other. But the fact that the editor of Liberty – who always called his position “consistent Manchesterism” – felt less close to contemporary anarcho-communists than to the forerunners of “anarcho-capitalism” (for surely Tucker’s views on Molinari and the radical Spencerians seem like the best guide we could have to what his views would most likely have been on Rothbard, Friedman, etc.) tells against the simplistic division of market anarchists into socialistic sheep and capitalistic goats."

The Fallacy of 'Libertarian Socialism' by Perry de Havilland
"The notion that a completely politicised democratic 'society' of the kind advocated by Hain could by its very nature allow any personal liberty whatsoever in a meaningful sense is manifestly absurd. If you cannot opt out of something you have not previously agreed to, in what manner are you free? If society is totally political, then you may have 'permissions' to do this or that, won by the give and take of democratic political processes but you do not have super-political inalienable rights at all. Politics can in theory make you 'free from starving' perhaps (in practise of course it tends to do the opposite), but what about being free to try or not try, some course of action? When every aspect of life is subject to the views of a plurality of other people, there is no liberty to just try anything at all on your own initiative. What Hain is arguing for is by his own words collectivism."

Anarchism, True and False by Henry Appleton
"The philosophy of Anarchism has nothing whatever to do with violence, and its central idea is the direct antipodes of levelling. It is the very levelling purpose itself projected by republican institutions against which it protests. It is opposed, root and branch, to universal suffrage, that most mischievous levelling element of republics. Its chief objection to the existing State is that it is largely communistic, and all communism rests upon an artificial attempt to level things, as against a social development resting upon untrammelled individual sovereignty. Sifted to its elements, the government of the United States is after all nothing but a mild form of State Socialism."

"The Boston Anarchists" by Henry Appleton
"While, therefore, the Boston Anarchists are ready to denounce the savage Communists of Chicago, who, falsely sailing under Anarchistic colors, commit murder, arson, and mob violence, they yet wish to press most emphatically the fact that the so-called government is committing these very crimes every day;"

Chomsky's Statism: An Anarchism for the Next Millennium? by Joe Peacott
"Noam Chomsky is seen by many as one of the more prominent anarchists in the united states. But, many times in the last several years he has come out publicly in favor of strengthening the federal government. Moreover, he argues that there is no contradiction between this stance and his advocacy of a stateless future. Such a position is in direct conflict with the traditional anarchist insight that means inevitably influence (and frequently corrupt or totally derail) intended ends, and deserves examination and rebuttal."

The Class Struggle is not Over: Why Libertarians Should Read Marx and Engels by Christian Michel
"Maintaining an army of professional warriors to keep in check citizens who very often do not have the right to bear arms is indeed a way of enforcing your power over society, but it is not a guarantee. An insurrection, a massive taking to the streets, a general strike, can overthrow any government, even supported by the military, as history has witnessed so many times. So the ruling class always used another means of wielding its power, ideology, and understanding how ideology works may be Marx’s greatest contribution to the study of history."

General models or compilations of systems

Libertarian Anarchism by Daniel C. Burton

Free-Market Alternatives to the State
"The topics in the following list link to pages that contain brief descriptions of and links to articles available on the Internet. The articles describe how the free market has provided, or could theoretically provide, services that are often associated with the state. The articles support the idea that a voluntary society, a free nation, would be viable."

Has the State Always Been There? How Tribal Anarchy Works by Stefan Blankertz
"The basic principle of organization in centreless segmental societies is kinship. Kinship can either be defined by descendent lines of the fathers or by descendent lines of the mothers, or a mixture of both descendent lines. We do not know what makes a society to decide for either line. As far as evidence can be produced, the decision whether to take the descendent lines of the fathers or the descendent lines of the mothers does not affect the character of the tribes. It is not true, for instance, that tribes which take the lines of the fathers are more aggressive or more inclined to degenerate into statism.

The largest society organized in a centreless segmental way have been the African Tiv who in their best times counted 800,000 people."

Private communities/neighbourhoods/cities

Private Idahoes
"But the operative principle of voluntary feudalism survives and flourishes in various forms today, most commonly as residential community associations (RCAs). As of 1990, there were 130,000 RCAs operating in the United States, with over 30 million residents. The Community Associations Institute projects that more than 50 percent of all housing for sale in the nation's 50 largest urban areas--and nearly all new residential development in California, Florida, Texas, New York, and suburban Washington, D.C.--is organized in RCAs. By the year 2000, the number of associations is expected to climb to 225,000. If the new ones average the same number of residents as the old ones, over 50 million people, almost one- fifth of the U.S. population, will live in an RCA of one sort or another."

Law and courts

Anarchism and the Public Goods Issue by David Osterfeld
"It takes little imagination to envision just a few of the possibilities that such an anarchist legal order would permit. For example, those who find capitalism distasteful could pool their property and establish socialist or collectivist communities. In fact, there is no reason why such communities could not stipulate such things as, say, minimum wages or even tariffs for their communities. Other proprietary communities might establish rules prohibiting the use of drugs or permitting prostitution. So long as these commitments were made voluntarily, i.e., those who disliked the rules could get out, such activities would be consistent with the common law or the anarchist legal code. That is, since the fundamental tenet of the anarchist legal code would be voluntarism, it is compatible with numerous economic and social lifestyles. "

Market-Chosen Law by Edward Stringham
"Once again, it is helpful to reformulate the original criticisms against a market for law enforcement, this time for international business. Take the case, for example, when a producer in the United States sells goods to a purchaser in a country such as Singapore. What happens if there is a dispute? Would they both adhere to different trade customs? Who makes and enforces the rules? (...) In the case of global trade, where there is no monopolist enforcer, would there be chaos?
These questions may seem absurd, but they are all analogous to the original criticisms against polycentric law enforcement. There is no single world government that has jurisdiction over all traders, yet somehow—astonishingly—companies are able to do business. Even though anarchy exists between nations, firms are able to engage in commerce peacefully. (...) Many bodies of privately created law have been adopted voluntarily in order to facilitate business.
While there are potentially many different answers to these dilemmas, none of them involve a monopolist government."

Anarchy and Efficient Law by David Friedman
"The resulting legal system might contain many different law codes. The rules governing a particular conflict will depend on the arbitration agency that the enforcement agencies employed by the parties to the conflict have agreed on. While there will be some market pressure for uniformity, it is logically possible for every pair of enforcement agencies to agree on a different arbitration agency with a different set of legal rules."

THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW by John Hasnas
"Recent experiments with negotiated dispute-settlement have demonstrated that mediation 1) produces a higher level of participant satisfaction with regard to both process and result, 2) resolves cases more quickly and at significantly lower cost, and 3) results in a higher rate of voluntary compliance with the final decree than was the case with traditional litigation. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that mediation's lack of a winner-take-all format encourages the parties to seek common ground rather than attempt to vanquish the opponent and that, since both parties must agree to any solution, there is a reduced likelihood that either will wish to reopen the dispute. Given human beings' manifest desire to retain control over their lives, I suspect that, if given a choice, few would willingly place their fate in the hands of third-party decisionmakers. Thus, I believe that a free market in law would produce a system that is essentially compositional in nature."

Pursuing Justice in a Free Society: Part II The Liberty Approach by Randy E. Barnett
"Contrary to contemporary preferences for a unitary legal system, it is the pluralism of the Western legal order that has been, or once was, a source of freedom. A serf might run to the town court for protection against his master. A vassal might run to the king's court for protection against his lord. A cleric might run to the ecclesiastical court for protection against the king.
(...)
Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the Western legal tradition is the coexistence and competition within the same community of diverse jurisdictions and diverse legal systems. It is this plurality of jurisdictions and legal systems that makes the supremacy of law both necessary and possible.

The modern monopolistic conception of a unitary legal system threatens this vital diversity."

Customary Law With Private Means of Resolving Disputes by Bruce Benson
"Every aspect of government involvement in law and order started out to be very limited (or nonexistent). Royal courts in England, for example, initially had very limited juridictions.' Then they began competing with other courts in adjudicating increasingly more diverse laws. They had a "competitive" advantage in that part of the cost of using them was not born by litigants. Various interest groups were happy to shift their costs for protection services and the enforcement of their laws onto others by using government courts, and later government watchmen, police, prosecutors, and so on. Government entities were happy to oblige. The combination of power seeking and bureaucratic growth by government officials and transfer (or rent) seeking by interest groups inevitably turns limited government into big government."

POLICE, COURTS, AND LAWS---ON THE MARKET by David D. Friedman
"How, without government, could we settle the disputes that are now settled in courts of law? How could we protect ourselves from criminals?"

Do We Need a Government? by David Friedman
"A second advantage of private law is that it avoids the public good problem associated with rationally ignorant voting. What determines the legal rules of the private market for law is individual choice-the same mechanism that determines the characteristics of ordinary private goods. The individual consumer who decides that agency A has, on the whole, chosen a better set of legal rules for its customers than agency B is free to switch agencies, just as a consumer is free to decide to buy a different brand of car. He pays the cost of his research-and gets the benefit. We expect rational individuals to be better informed about their market choices than about their political choices-and in this system, law is chosen on the market."

Law as a Private Good by David Friedman
"In a system of a hundred agencies of equal size, one of which is an outlaw, each of the ninety-nine others settles ninety-nine percent of its conflicts by arbitration and one percent by violence. The outlaw agency settles a hundred percent of its conflicts by violence. Since violence is much more expensive than arbitration, the outlaw's costs are much higher than the costs of its competitors. Agencies that are unwilling to sign arbitration agreements acceptable to most other agencies with which they are likely to come in conflict are prevented from gaining market share not by some collective action by "the network" but by the difficulty of selling a product when your production cost is much higher than your competitors'."

Outline of a Critique of Tyler Cowen's "Law as a Public Good" by Bryan Caplan
"Let me outline my picture of the defense industry in an anarchist society, to contrast it with Cowen's. There would probably be a middling number (10? 20? 30?) of weak networks; the networks would be bound to each other by bilateral contracts. Basic standards like adherence to peaceful and orderly procedures, willingness to negotiate, fair trials, and so on would be enforced by self-interested boycotts. Collusive standards, in contrast, would probably be too hard to enforce for all of the reasons suggested. It also seems likely that local firms might have more precise and detailed contracts with each other, since most crime is local in nature."

An Uncivilized Argument for Anarchy by Per Bylund
"Also, whoever came up with the idea of presenting a blueprint for anarchy? The very idea of a free society is that there can be no blueprint! That is what free means; you cannot make society into something of your preference. A free society is voluntary, spontaneous and will be whatever it will be depending on the billions of choices made by individuals acting to the best of their knowledge and in their interest."

The Role of Personal Justice in Anarcho-capitalism by Karl T. Fielding
"If one examines the purpose of a judiciary one can discover why a free-market court system is superior to a governmental court system. The courts' purpose is to enable men to settle disputes so as to avoid violent resolution as well as aggression-overcompensation cycles. Regarding the courts' decisions as legitimate is the only way for the litigants to avoid personal judiciary actions. But, courts' decisions are regarded as legitimate only if they are pronounced fairly and impartially."

Less Law Than Meets the Eye by David D. Friedman
"So far as Ellickson could tell, the legal rule on who was liable for straying cattle had no effect at all on the behavior of ranchers and farmers, insofar as it involved cattle straying onto the farmers' land. His observations and interpretations appeared in a series of articles, of which the best known is probably "Of Coase and Cattle: Dispute Resolution among Neighbors in Shasta County." (...) One of his conclusions is that law is very much less important than most of us believe."

The Possibility of Private Law by Robert P. Murphy
"In anarchy, people would demand judicial services for all the reasons that people desire law itself: They would want to satisfy their desire for abstract justice, but they would also want to foster predictable business relationships, as well as enjoy a good reputation among their neighbors."

Reciprocal Exchange as the Basis for Recognition of Law by Bruce Benson
"The primary purpose of this presentation has been to illustrate that the private sector has had a very significant historical role in the production of law and order in America. When state-backed law has been unavailable or undesirable to a particular group, private options have filled the void. Furthermore, law backed by reciprocity and enforced without the authoritarian institutions of the state still supports social interaction and promotes order today, despite widespread beliefs to the contrary."

Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State by Murray N. Rothbard
"Thus, we have seen (1) that no existing State has been immaculately conceived - quite the contrary; (2) that therefore the only minimal State that could possibly be justified is one that would emerge after a free-market anarchist world had been established; (3) that therefore Nozick, on his own grounds, should become an anarchist and then wait for the Nozickian invisible hand to operate afterward, and finally (4) that even if any State had been founded immaculately, the fallacies of social contract theory would mean that no present State, even a minimal one, would be justified. "

Polycentric Law by Tom W. Bell
"What do these many historical examples of polycentric law tell us? After a wide review of the field, Benson concludes that each customary legal system has six basic features:

1) a predominant concern for individual rights and private property;
2) laws enforced by victims backed by reciprocal agreements;
3) standard adjudicative procedures established to avoid violence;
4) offenses treated as torts punishable by economic restitution;
5) strong incentives for the guilty to yield to prescribed punishment due to the threat of social ostracism; and
6) legal change via an evolutionary process of developing customs and norms. (Benson, 1990, p. 21)"

Why Objective Law Requires Anarchy by Roderick T. Long
"What do these1)"

Restitution: Justice in a Stateless Society by Christian Michel
"Yet, it is clear that punishment does not work.1 Firstly, violence against the author of a crime does not negate the original violence perpetrated against the victim, it simply contributes to the total amount of violence committed in the world. Secondly, the deterrent effect of punishment has still to be proved. Throughout history, the most horrific tortures publicly inflicted on delinquents, have never acted as a real deterrent; if they had, our forefathers would have enjoyed the benefits of a crime-free world. If punishment were a deterrent, jails would be empty, and if jails worked, they would not be needed. Thirdly, this cycle of violence does not seem to benefit anyone. It has no redeemable value to the criminal; indeed, it is generally accepted that prisons are schools for crime. Prison terms are not only grossly inefficient, but they are irrational as well. They put the costs of dealing with criminals squarely on the shoulders of the victims or potential victims."

Legal Systems Under Anarcho-Capitalism by Gary Greenberg
"Courts should be established by a group of individuals who rely on their reputation and earn their sanction from the public on the basis of their reputations. Another possible method of earning sanction where the court has no reputation to rely on would be through the franchising of the sanction of professional associations of lawyers or scholars. For example, the New York Bar Association (a lawyer’s group) could publish a list of organizations whose integrity is respected by the NYBA. Similar lists could be published by the National Association of Manufacturers orr the AFL-CIO, the Better Business Bureau, or any other group. The important thing is to remember that appearing on a list does not guarantee validity; it is only a means for establishing respect among as many individuals as possible. Organizations could also publish list of courts of which they disapprove. The effectiveness of a court is ultimately based on a large scale acceptance or indifference. Where a court has substantial opposition it will be ineffective and lose clients."

Privately Produced Law by Tom W. Bell
"As we have been seen, polycentric legal systems tend to generate successful claims to restitution. Just as the claim to a commodity can be transferred from one party to another (via the exchange of banknotes), so too the right to restitution can be transferred from one party to another (via the exchange of “courtnotes” we might say). For example, individuals in a polycentric legal system would probably buy insurance to protect themselves against losses due to others’ illegal activity (in addition to buying insurance to cover their own liability). When insurance companies had to cover their clients’ losses they would assume the rigth to demand restitution from the responsible parties. The claim to restitution would thus transfer from the original victim to the insurance company. Insurance companies would probably transfer claims to restitution among themselves to settle their accounts, giving rise to features analogous to those that arose among private banks: transferable courtnotes, clearinghouses, and client information bureaus."

Police and protection

Why Abolishing Government Would Not Bring Chaos by Brad Edmonds
"Mary Ruwart, in her book, documents examples of private police departments in the US. These agencies charge subscription fees and provide patrol services. In each case, the private police cost substantially less than the government police yet produce significant decreases in crime by, among other things, patrolling more often and actually checking the doors and windows of homes when there is no one there. In other words, the private policemen work all day instead of driving around intimidating innocent drivers or sitting in donut shops and speed traps. In some cases Ruwart recounts, local governments have forcibly shut down the private police and replaced them with government police. Crime and cost both increased dramatically thereafter."

Networks, Anarcho-Capitalism, and the Paradox of Cooperation by Bryan Caplan and Edward Stringham
"There is a tension between libertarians' optimism about private supply of public goods and their skeptical of the viability of voluntary collusion. (Cowen 1992; Cowen and Sutter 1999). Playing off this asymmetry, Cowen (1992) advances the novel argument that the "free market in defense services" favored by anarcho-capitalists is a network industry where collusion is especially feasible. The current article dissolves Cowen's asymmetry, showing that he fails to distinguish between self-enforcing and non-self-enforcing interaction. Case study evidence on network behavior before and after antitrust supports our analysis. Furthermore, libertarians' joint beliefs on public goods and collusion are more theoretically defensible than Cowen and Sutter (1999) indicate."

But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? by Robert Murphy
"It is not enough to demonstrate that a state of private-property anarchy could degenerate into ceaseless war, where no single group is strong enough to subjugate all challengers, and hence no one can establish “order.” After all, communities living under a State degenerate into civil war all the time. We should remember that the frequently cited cases of Colombia and now Iraq are not demonstrations of anarchy-turned-into-chaos, but rather examples of government-turned-into-chaos."

Efficient Institutions for the Private Enforcement of Law by David D. Friedman
"The purpose of this paper is to show that the inefficiency Landes and Posner have demonstrated in the particular private enforcement institutions they describe can be eliminated by minor changes in the institutions. The result is a system of private enforcement that is equivalent to an ideal public system, and hence superior to any likely public system."

Defense Services on the Free Market by Murray N. Rothbard
"On the free market, defense against violence would be a service like any other, obtainable from freely competitive private organizations. Whatever problems remain in this area could easily be solved in practice by the market process, that very process which has solved countless organizational problems of far greater intricacy. Those laissez-faire economists and writers, past and present, who have stopped short at the impossibly Utopian ideal of a "limited" government are trapped in a grave inner contradiction."

Private Police: A Note by Patrick Tinsley
"Factual agreement, it seems, attaches to only the most incontrovertible of data: the murder rates. It is generally conceded that swollen murder rates reflect something other than a growing tendency to report the deed—what with corpses presenting a rather conspicuous presence and murdered persons a conspicuous absence.

And the murder rates in large American cities between the years of 1963 and 1971—a period of less than a decade—escalated at a show-stopping 100%. This leads an urbanite to the clear conclusion that he is more likely to be murdered than was an American soldier likely to be killed in World War II combat—a datum in which the safety afforded to American citizens by the public police fails to compare favorably with that afforded American soldiers by the Nazis."

The Invisible Hand Strikes Back by Roy A. Childs
"The maverick agency must and does establish a good record, to win clients away from the mere ultraminimal state. It offers a greater variety of servkes, toys with different prices, and generally becomes a more attractive alternative, all the time letting the state spy on it, bugging its offices, checking its procedures, processes and decisions. Other noble entrepreneurs follow suit. Soon, the once mere ultraminimal state becomes a lowly dominant agency. It finds that the other agencies have established noteworthy records, with safe, non-risky procedures, and stops spying on them, preferring less expensive arrangements instead."

The Legal Landscape for Subscription Patrol and Restitution in Texas by Gil Guillory and Carrie Ann Sitren
"We review the laws of Texas as they apply to a new business model: subscription patrol and restitution. It is unlikely that the business would be regulated as an insurance company, but would be regulated as a patrol/guard company and an investigation company. For criminal offenses by perpetrators, the business is subject to some mandatory involvement of government law enforcement, such as having duties to report certain crimes to the police and when using either the citizen arrest power or the privilege of preventing the consequences of theft. Further, there are limitations on private investigation of crime scenes, especially with regard to destruction of evidence and destructive analysis of corpses. Certifications, qualifications, fees, and taxation of the subject business model are summarized. Civil liability due to the novel practice of issuing Notices of Refusal to Arbitrate is addressed."

Vigilantes of Montana by Thomas J. Dimsdale
"Sometimes on the American frontier settlers had to take the law into their own hands because the federal government had no meaningful presence there yet and the territorial government had not been created. This was not the case in Virginia City and Nevada, Montana. The citizens of these mining towns did not lack government law enforcers. What they lacked was honest and effective law enforcers. They had a duly elected sheriff and legally appointed deputy sheriffs to enforce law and order, but, unfortunately, the sheriff was the leader of the road agents and his deputies were his partners in crime."

Institutional Bases of the Spontaneous Order: Surety and Assurance by Albert Loan
"Suretyship and assurance are closely related institutions in which each member of a group assumes some form of responsibility for the others in the group, thereby diffusing among the group the burden of risks which might otherwise fall on a single individual. Suretyship involves members of the group assuming some degree of responsibility for any unpaid debts, defaults on agreements, negligence, and so forth of other members of the group. In the case of assurance members pool resources to provide for relief from a hazard they face in common as members of that group. Both, though the precursors of the modern institutions of insurance, are in their purest form reciprocal arrangements, whereas insurance generally involves one party (designated in advance as the insurer) assuming some of the risk faced by another (the insured) in exchange for a monetary premium. All three institutions operate on the principle of diffusing the burden of various kinds of risk, but in the case of insurance it is a specialized intermediary who manages the diffusion of the risks and in the end takes final responsibility."

Life Savings by James L. Payne
"But running the lifeboats and paying the thousands of rescue workers does not cost British taxpayers a penny. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is a private organization, supported, as it proudly says on its letterhead, "entirely by voluntary contributions" and managed by its own trustees and staff. The RNLI will rescue you whether you are rich or poor, whether you have donated to it or not."

Defense

The Private Production of Defense by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
"However, as unlikely as this may be, what would happen if a state still attacked and/or invaded a neighboring free territory? In this case the aggressor would not encounter an unarmed population. Only in statist territories is the civilian population characteristically unarmed. States everywhere aim to disarm their own citizenry so as to be better able to tax and expropriate it. In contrast, insurers in free territories would not want to disarm the insured. (...) To the contrary, insurance agencies would encourage the ownership of weapons among their insured by means of selective price cuts."

Free Market Defence: Anarchist Insurance Will Work Best by Gareth Williams
"The financial liability facing the insurance industry would, if no cheaper effective defence could be found, justify sufficient funding for a conventional military to defend the territory. However the insurance industry would only be concerned with defence and not external aggression (under the many guises it is currently justified), and would have no interest in national prestige, thus many options would significantly undercut current defence budgets. Two schemes to replace a conventional military could be considered. Firstly they may consider financial payments to a defensive alliance (e.g. NATO) in order to receive defence from it. Secondly they may consider the possession of a nuclear deterrent, such as two or three nuclear submarines (given orders to retaliate uncompromisingly), with the capacity to hit and destroy an invading country. Whatever the decision of the insurance industry we can be sure that it would seek a defence scheme which was credible in the eyes of threatening foreign powers, and as cost efficient as was consistent with its defensive objectives; the industry has no interest in spending more than is needed to meet its objectives, but if its objectives are not met it would face a huge liability."

Privateering and National Defense: Naval Warfare for Private Profit by Larry J. Sechrest
"The attack on national defense as a public good which must be provided by the state will be two-pronged. One part, the briefer of the two, will raise theoretical questions about public goods in general and national defense in particular. The second part will be devoted to a detailed survey of privateering, a form of naval warfare conducted by privately-owned ships which lasted from the twelfth century to the nineteenth century. What privateers were, how they operated, the legal customs that grew up around them, how effective they were, how profitable they were, and why they disappeared will all be addressed. The common employment of privateers during wartime will be offered as empirical evidence that defense need not be monopolized by the state."

Roads

Free Market Transportation: Denationalizing the Roads by Walter Block

Private Highways in America, 1792-1916 by Daniel B. Klein
"The notion of private highways, which would seem fantastic to our parents, was commonplace to our great-great-grandparents. Initiated in the 1790s in the growing Republic, these roads stimulated commerce, settlement, and population. During the nineteenth century more than 2,000 private companies financed, built, and operated toll roads. States turned to private initiative for much the same reason they are doing so today: fiscal constraints and insufficient administrative manpower. Knowledge of our toll-road heritage may help encourage today’s budding toll-road movement. "
Abolishing Government Improves the Roads by Brad Edmonds
"Our time is worth a few pennies to us. Cirrus and Pulse would charge us, wild guess, $3–4 a month to provide magnetically encoded stickers for your car. Machines scattered about the roads, or sensors under the pavement, would record your comings and goings. That information would go to Cirrus and Pulse, and from them to your road providers. You might get three or four monthly bills, or just one, depending on the wherewithal of your road owners."

A Practical Proposal for Privatizing the Highways (and Other Natural Monopolies) by Bryan Caplan
"Let us suppose that our national highway system is a "natural monopoly," as economists use the phrase. How could it be privatized? In particular, how could it be privatized in a way which would:
(a) create private enterprises' usual incentives to keep prices and costs low and quality high
(b) create incentives for innovation
(c) keep the low transactions costs of free public provision
(d) eliminate any need for continued regulation typical of "contracting-out" schemes
(e) be simple enough to win public support?"

Liberate the Roads! The Benefits That Will Come From Road Privatisation by Martin Ball
"Any shifting of the cost burden to road users is morally proper. It is right that those who receive the most benefit from a road — its heaviest users — should pay the price for being able to do so. It is not right that those who rarely or never use roads should have to pay the bill for those who do."

The Private Ownership of Public Space: The New Age of Rationally Priced Road Use by Brian Micklethwait
"But look our roads! What the hell do you think a traffic jam is, if not a queue for the use of a road, caused by the fact that the price of using the road is held artificially below the market level by a government of impenetrable economic illiteracy, regularly reelected by a similarly boneheaded electorate? And if you can’t see that, dear reader, then would you please tell me how your brain can in any way be regarded as superior to that of some witless Polish housewife who still believes in price control for bread, on the grounds that bread is too important for anybody to be allowed to make money out of it, and as a result finds herself, still, with no bread?"

Market Currency

Money and how to Privatise it: An Introduction by Roderick Moore
"After the currency reform the banks all changed over to the new Swiss franc, and an increasing number of new banks were founded, some of them private, others owned by local governments. The banks gradually entered into bilateral clearing agreements with each other, and the system worked very well. Only one Swiss bank ever failed under free banking; the Valais Cantonal Bank collapsed in 1870 because of deficits in the cantonal budget, but the government of the canton redeemed all the notes in full. In 1874 Switzerland abandoned the silver standard in favour of gold, but this had little effect on the banking system. A more significant change came in 1881, when a new law curtailed the banks’ freedom by requiring them to maintain a very high reserve ratio. Free banking was finally abolished, not because it had failed in practice, but because a central bank was believed to be necessary on theoretical grounds. This came about in 1907 when the Swiss National Bank was founded and given a monopoly of the note issue."

Currency Competition: Some Options Considered by Antoine Clarke
"A frequent objection to the introduction of competing currencies is the “access problem”, otherwise known as the “you first” phenomenon. People may continue to use a currency which is unsatisfactory, because alternative currencies are not widely accepted. Therefore, banks wishing to issue private currencies would probably wish to employ a similar initial value to pounds sterling and a similar name, so as to allow comparison of its merits to that of the present monopoly currency. Thereafter, a successful private currency could provide a progressively greater incentive to switch from sterling, by not depreciating as quickly as the statist currency.

Another objection levelled at proposals for choice in currency is that the “inconvenience” would outweigh any potential benefits. The economic historian Hugh Rockoff has offered evidence which suggests by analogy that the benefits of a multi-issuer system may in fact outweigh the possible inconvenience to consumers."

Health care and education

Health Care Without Government by Joe Peacott
"Besides being able to provide for all the health care needs of individuals, a society without government would also produce a new, more egalitarian relationship between health care practitioners and their customers. Instead of a relatively small, privileged class of people who control the access of others to medicine and treatment, physician, nurses, homeopaths, and other health care workers would become service providers like any other. People would be able to shop around for doctors, as they now do for plumbers and car mechanics, and would not feel they needed to defer to their health provider anymore than they do to their grocer or bookseller. While health care is essential to our quality to life, so is food, plumbing, and intellectual stimulation. Our doctors deserve no more deference than do the other people who supply us with the means to go on living our lives as we see fit. A respectful relationship between equals is as appropriate in a doctor-patient relationship as it is in any other."

Welcome to easyLearn, Class 1 by James Tooley
"But these parents don’t sit by, waiting for their politicians to do something. Instead, they put their children into the burgeoning private schools. My recent research has shown that between 65 and 75 per cent of children in the poorest slums in Africa and India are now in private schools. These schools charge low fees, perhaps a couple of pounds per month. They are run by proprietors who are not heartless businessmen, but who provide free places to orphans and those with widowed mothers. When they tested large random samples of children, my teams found that these schools outperform the government alternative. And they do it with teachers paid a fraction of the unionised rates."

Public property/public goods

Funding Public Goods: Six Solutions by Roderick T. Long
"Leaving governmental coercion aside as both unethical and dangerous, I here offer five other solutions to the funding of public goods. (My list here is not meant to be exhaustive, and I welcome further suggestions.) As I go along I will consider in particular how each solution might apply to what is generally considered the most difficult public-goods problem: national defense."

Common Property in Anarcho-Capitalism by Randall G. Holcombe
"The point of this paper is only to demonstrate that common property would be a natural feature of anarcho-capitalism. This analysis does not say whether common property is desirable or efficient. However, the examples in this paper do suggest how common property might be managed efficiently in anarcho-capitalism. It is worth emphasiz- ing that common property is not the same as government property, and it is not the same as collectively owned property.

A Plea for Public Property by Roderick T. Long
"Libertarians often assume that a free society will be one in which all (or nearly all) property is private. I have previously expressed my dissent from this consensus, arguing that libertarian principles instead support a substantial role for public property."
br> The Private Supply of `Public Goods' in Nineteenth Century Britain by Stephen Davies
"At the start of the nineteenth century this provision was mainly in the hands of chartered private water companies. Ever since the famous 1842 Sanitation Report these private bodies have had a very bad press from historians. Their strictures were often justified, particularly in London. Yet the picture was rather more complex than a simple reading of the 1842 Report would suggest. In some areas, such as Ashton-under-Lyne, the water companies worked effectively, providing a constant supply at high pressure. As most contemporary commentators noted, the central problems were the lack of competition and the chaotic state of local government - London had 300 separate bodies operating under 250 local Acts. In Manchester local initiative had in 1796 brought about the creation of a Board of Health independent of central government; it led to a marked improvement in sanitation."

Privateering and National Defense: Naval Warfare for Private Profit by Larry J. Sechrest
"The attack on national defense as a public good which must be provided by the state will be two-pronged. One part, the briefer of the two, will raise theoretical questions about public goods in general and national defense in particular. The second part will be devoted to a detailed survey of privateering, a form of naval warfare conducted by privately-owned ships which lasted from the twelfth century to the nineteenth century. What privateers were, how they operated, the legal customs that grew up around them, how effective they were, how profitable they were, and why they disappeared will all be addressed. The common employment of privateers during wartime will be offered as empirical evidence that defense need not be monopolized by the state."

Land use/Air

"Beyond the Wit of Man to Foresee": Voluntaryism and Land Use Controls by Carl Watner
"There are two major differences between contractual communities and the typical community political government. First, the governing body of a contractual community (usually called a residential community association) does not have the power to levy taxes like its political counterpart. The fees that they charge are based on market place competition, not political whims. Secondly, in a contractual community the relationship between the party that owns the property and the people who live there is based upon an explicit contract entered into by both parties. Such a contract cannot be changed unilaterally, nor by the majority of residents. In political communities, the relationship is non-contractual (what the government would call "constitutional") in nature, and can be changed by the government or a majority of the voters."

Anarchism at a personal level

Personal Anarchy by Michael Ziesing
"My goal is to be as free as I can in this world - in the here and now. I'd also like to help others be as free as they can be. That I'm not absolutely free and others are not is certainly true. Becuase freedom is an open-ended concept, no person or group can ever be totally free. The point is to try to live our lives as a movement toward freedom, away from coercion, and as a process involving openness - i.e., choice. If we operate on that principle, we are living in the spirit of anarchy. Whenever we try through coercion, threat, or violence to force people to do things our way we are opposing the spirit of anarchy. Everything in opposition to the spirit of anarchy is anti-freedom."

The history of arbitration

Stateless, Not Lawless: Voluntaryism & Arbitration - by Carl Watner
"Business arbitration in this country and Europe certainly pre-dated Washington's will. Americans used arbitration during the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-66 when their refusal to pay British taxes blocked their access to colonial courts. In May 1768, the New York Chamber of Commerce appointed an arbitration committee "for the settlement of commercial disputes outside of the courts." Referred to as "the oldest American tribunal," the New York Chamber of Commerce "has continuously, except for a short time at the beginning of [the 20th] century, maintained some form of arbitration procedure." The New York Stock Exchange, founded in 1792, provided for arbitration in its Constitution of 1817. The oldest arbitral institution in the cotton trade is to be found in Liverpool, England, where the first rules of cotton trading, which included rules governing arbitration, were published in 1863 by the Liverpool Cotton Exchange."

Anarchy in the U.K. The English Experience With Private Protection - by Roderick T. Long
"Is insurance for security a libertarian fantasy? On the contrary — it's history."

Private Courts - by Shannon P. Duffy
"While a patent case in federal court can easily cost more than $1 million and take 19 months on average to litigate–with some cases costing as much as $9 million–an NPB case can be decided for as little as $100,000 to $150,000."

Medieval Iceland (930-1264 CE)

PRIVATE CREATION AND ENFORCEMENT OF LAW: A HISTORICAL CASE - by David Friedman
In this article, Friedman notes that whole Iceland had some properties of anarchy, there was still a law code and a legislature, so it wasn't technically an anarchy. Nevertheless it provides a case example that anarchic systems can subsist for very long periods of time.
"Enforcement of law was entirely a private affair. And yet these extraordinary institutions survived for over three hundred years, and the society in which they survived appears to have been in many ways an attractive one. Its citizens were, by medieval standards, free; differences in status based on rank or sex were relatively small; and its literary, output in relation to its size has been compared, with some justice, to that of Athens."
Also read his rebuttal to an email concerning a FAQ against his thesis.

Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government by Thomas Whiston
"Medieval Iceland illustrates an actual and well-documented historical example of how a stateless legal order can work and it provides insights as to how we might create a more just and efficient society today.
(...)
Jesse Byock states in his book that, "leadership evolved in such a way that a chieftain's power and the resources available to him were not derived from an exploitable realm." This was because free farmers could change allegiance between godi without moving to a new geographical location. "The legal godi-thingman bond was created by a voluntary public contract." [3] The ability to switch legal systems with out moving, is key to a decentralized system."

Privatization, Viking Style: Model or Misfortune? by Roderick T. Long
Reading the Icelandic Sagas initially gives the impression of unremitting violence – until one notices that most of the feuds they describe consist of low-casualty skirmishes at long intervals. Though often referred to as "Vikings," Icelanders made their living for the most part through farming and trade, and violence was sporadic; thanks to the economic incentives provided by Iceland’s legal system, conflicts were settled in court more often than in combat...

To keep Icelandic feud in perspective, one may contrast it with continental Europe, whose princes, blessed with "mutually exclusive territories," launched massive wars. As Solvason points out, Icelandic society was "more peaceful and cooperative than its contemporaries"; in England and Norway, by contrast, "the period from about 800 to 1200 is a period of continuous struggle; high in both violence and killings."

Ordered Anarchy: Evolution of the Decentralized Legal Order in the Icelandic Commonwealth by Birgir T. Runolfsson Solvason
"Reciprocal behavior on the part of the Icelanders initiated and created the cooperative institutional system. The keys to stability of the system are found in the encouragement of reciprocical behaviour, where the future repeated engagements are important enough to discourage defections. The Commonwealth was a decentralized structure, based mostly on voluntary cooperation, and enforcements of judgements were private."

The Decline and Fall of Private Law in Iceland by Roderick T. Long
"The Icelandic Free Commonwealth's downfall was not that it was too anarchistic, but rather that it was not anarchistic enough!

Suppose Iceland had maintained competition in religion the way it had competition in law. Or again, suppose Iceland had continued to rely solely on voluntary support for religion rather than making the tithe mandatory. In either case, the owners of Churchsteads would not have had an automatic guarantee of income, and so could not have accumulated wealth and power without being subject to competition and accountable to their clients.

Moreover, if the upper limit on the total number of Chieftaincies had not been fixed by law, new Chieftains would have been able to arise and challenge the emerging ruling class. The ruling families' strategy of buying up all the Chieftaincies would have failed, because it would not have decreased the potential number of independent Chieftains; hence competition would not have been undermined."

Institutional Evolution in the Icelandic Commonwealth by Birgir Runolfsson Solvason

Present-day Somalia

Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse by Peter T. Leeson
"The government’s collapse and subsequent emergence of statelessness opened the opportunity for Somali progress. This paper uses an “event study” to investigate the impact of anarchy on Somali development. The data suggest that while the state of this development remains low, on nearly all of 18 key indicators that allow pre- and post-stateless welfare comparisons, Somalis are better off under anarchy than they were under government. Renewed vibrancy in critical sectors of Somalia’s economy and public goods in the absence of a predatory state are responsible for this improvement."

Stateless in Somalia, and Loving It by Yumi Kim
"The BBC's country profile of Somalia sums up this view as widely publicized by the mainstream media: "Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Fighting between rival warlords and an inability to deal with famine and disease led to the deaths of up to one million people."

The first sentence is indeed true: when the president was driven out by opposing clans in 1991, the government disintegrated. The second sentence, however, depicts Somalia as a lawless country in disorder. As for disorder, Van Notten quotes authorities to the effect that Somalia's telecommunications are the best in Africa, its herding economy is stronger than that of either of its neighbors, Kenya or Ethiopia, and that since the demise of the central government, the Somali shilling has become far more stable in world currency markets, while exports have quintupled."

Anarchy and Invention by Tatiana Nenova and Tim Harford
Despite their anti-anarchy bias, these two economists have to admit the facts : Somalia works, and it works well.
"Somali entrepreneurs have used three methods to compensate for the lack of effective government regulation (table 2). First, “importing governance” by relying on foreign institutions—for example, for airline safety, currency stability, and company law. Second, using clans and other local networks of trust to help with contract enforcement, payment, and transmission of funds. Third, simplifying transactions until they can be carried out with help from neither the clan nor the international economy."
Also see a Market Anarchist analysis of this article: "One, Two, Many Somalias," by Michael Tennant.
FROM NATION-STATE TO STATELESS NATION: THE SOMALI EXPERIENCE by Michael van Notten
"As mentioned above, this system of law has produced peace among the Somalis and set the stage for a return to prosperity. But that is not all. It has done so at almost no cost to the nation as a whole, and without taxation. The judges and policemen of the Somalis do their job on a part-time basis, and without remuneration. It is considered to be a great honour to be a judge. Indeed, in a kritarchy, the best people tend to get to the top of 'the system', whereas in a democracy...

Another virtue of the Somali system is, that it is fairly immune against political manipulation. Hence, no laws exist that serve primarily the interest of a particular political pressure group. Also, the Somali law tends to be in tune with the values held by the entire population because it has a built-in system for adapting itself to those values."

Somalia and Anarchy by Jim Davidson
"Your neighbors don’t make you free, the police don’t make you free, and your education doesn’t make you free (though it can be very helpful). You are the only person who is able to make you free. You either arrange for your freedom by cooperative means and fight for it when necessary, or you submit to those who command your obedience. If you are not willing to pay the cost of freedom, you won’t have it."

The Answer for Africa by Shafer Parker
"Like plants sprouting after a forest fire, Somalis have managed to survive and build on their own, in some respects with more success than developing nations on the receiving end of international aid and advice."

Is Somalia a Model?
"With the demise of the Republic, control passed to the local community and the port began to be managed on a commercial basis. A lively import/export trade developed and soon reached an estimated value of U.S. $15 million per year. Private enterprise provided essential public services such as trash collection and telecommunications. In eight years, the population grew from 5,000 to 150,000. Parents and teachers put up schools for their children and even built a university. In the absence of a government-run court system, the heads of extended families of contentious parties settled disputes on the basis of customary law."

Somalia, Anarchy, and Capitalism
"So, do I consider Somalia to be an anarchy? From just reading this article, I'd say it might as well be. Does it exist in a form that individualist anarchists want their ideal society to be? Not quite, because private property is routinely disrespected and there is too much violence and coercion in the streets. The state is essentially gone, but that isn't the only condition anarcho-libertarians want for that society. Stronger foundations of civilization are desired before the great weight of culturally acknowledged complete personal responsibility can be allowed to happen."

The Answer for Africa by Shafer Parker
"All kinds of private enterprise is flourishing. Mogadishu now boasts a spaghetti factory, a plastics factory, a mineral-water plant, a bakery, and two fiercely competitive cable companies. And contra the protestors that have flocked to the G-8 summit to scream out their belief that economic fairness means the UN must be allowed to forcibly redistribute the world’s wealth, Somalia’s nouveau riche even give something back to the community. For instance, Abdirizak Osman, an entrepreneur in the desert town of Gaalkacyo who started with phones, then branched out to electrical generators, now provides street lights and free electricity to the local hospital."

Can anarchism save Somalia?, blog entry at blagnet.net
"Democracy is unworkable in Africa for several reasons. The first thing that voting does is to divide a population into two groups — a group that rules and a group that is ruled. This is completely at variance with Somali tradition. Second, if democracy is to work, it depends in theory, at least, upon a populace that will vote on issues. But in a kinship society such as Somalia, voting takes place not on the merit of issues but along group lines; one votes according to one’s clan affiliation. Since the ethic of kinship requires loyalty to one’s fellow clansmen, the winners use the power of government to benefit their own members, which means exploitation of the members of other clans. Consequently when there exists a governmental apparatus with its awesome powers of taxation and police and judicial monopoly, the interests of the clans conflict. Some clan will control that apparatus. To avoid being exploited by other clans, each must attempt to be that controlling clan."

American Old West

An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West by Terry L. Anderson and P.J. Hill, Department of Economics, Montana State University
The West during this time often is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life. Our research indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which prop- erty was protected and conflicts were resolved. These agencies often did not qualify as governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on "keeping order." They soon discovered that "warfare" was a costly way of resolving disputes and lower cost methods of settlement (arbitration, courts, etc.) resulted. In summary, this paper argues that a characterization of the American West as chaotic would appear to be incorrect.

How the Western Cattlemen Created Property Rights by Robert Higgs
"Once the cattlemen had established their claims to individual portions of a district—usually by first occupancy and public announcement or by acquisition of legal title to a small area adjacent to the water source nearest a grassland—they formed associations to prevent overgrazing. These groups strove to prevent newcomers from entering an already-occupied range, to keep the existing occupants from overstocking it, and to ensure that each firm provided bulls in sufficient quantity and quality to bring about the healthy reproduction of the herds."

Medieval Ireland

Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law by Joseph R. Peden
"[T]he idea of private ownership permeates those aspects of [Celtic Irish law] which have been subjected to recent study. The Irish frankly and openly used assessments of property as the criterion for determining a man's social and legal status, the extent of his capacity to act as a surety or compurgator, and to fix the amounts of compensation due him as a victim of crime or any kind of injury. (...) The legal capacity of women showed exceptional development and gave women property rights in the 8th century that were centuries ahead of those enjoyed by English women. The fact that lrish law was the creation of private individuals who were professional, even hereditary, jurists, gave to the law both a conservative yet flexible and equitable character. Their power rested upon the free consent of the community in choosing them as arbitrators in disputes; and this made equity and justice more likely than in royal courts where the interests of the State and its rulers are paramount."

Stateless Societies: Ancient Ireland by Joseph R. Peden
"How was this law of the filid enforced? The law was enforced by the action of private individuals allied with the plaintiff and defendant through a system of sureties. Men were linked together by a number of individual relationships by which they were obligated to stand surety for one another guaranteeing that wrongs would be righted, debts paid, judgements honored, and the law enforced. The system of sureties was so well developed in Irish law that there was no need for a Statist system of justice. "

Extract from the book "For a New Liberty", chapter 12 - The Public Sector, III: Police, Law, and the Courts - by Murray Rothbard
"How then was justice secured? The basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the tuath. All "freemen" who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of a tuath. Each tuath's members formed an annual assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their "kings." An important point is that, in contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound to a given tuath, either because of kinship or of geographical location. Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from a tuath and join a competing tuath."

Pennsylvania 1681-1690

Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690 by Murray N. Rothbard
"Having founded the new colony and its government, and hearing of renewed persecution of Quaker at home, William Penn returned to England in the fall of 1684. He soon found his expectations of large proprietary profits from the vast royal grant to be in vain. For the people of the struggling young colony of Pennsylvania extended the principles of liberty far beyond what Penn was willing to allow. The free people of Pennsylvania would not vote for taxes, and simply would not pay the quitrents to Penn as feudal overlord. As a result, Penn's deficits in ruling Pennsylvania were large and his fortune dwindled steadily."

Labrador

No papers found yet. Contact me to submit one (preferably a technical paper or article about the nature of this anarchy, or its success or lack thereof)..

New Guinea highlands

This example is reported in the book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, pp. 284-285.
"I have presented New Guinea highland casuarina silviculture as an example of bottom-up problem-solving, even though there are no written records from the highlands to tell us exactly how the technique was adopted. But it could hardly have been by any other type of problem-solving, because New Guinea highland societies represent an ultra-democratic extreme of bottom-up decision-making. Until the arrival of the Dutch and Australian colonial government in the 1930s, there had not been even any beginnings of political unification in any part of the highlands: merely individual villages alternating between fighting each other and joining in temporary alliances with each other against other nearby villages. Within each village, instead of hereditary leaders or chiefs, there were just individuals, called “big-men”, who by force of personality were more influential than other individuals but still lived in a hut like everybody else’s and tilled a garden like anybody else’s. Decisions were (and often still are today) reached by means of everybody in the village sitting down together and talking, and talking, and talking. The big-men couldn’t give orders, and they might or might not succeed in persuading others to adopt their proposals. To outsiders today (including not just me but often New Guinea government officials themselves), that bottom-up approach to decision-making can be frustrating, because you can’t go to some designated village leader and get a quick answer to your request; you have to have the patience to endure talk-talk-talk for hours or days with every villager who has some opinion to offer.

That must have been the context in which casuarina silviculture and all those other useful agricultural practices were adopted in the New Guinea highlands. People in any village could see the deforestation going on around them, could recognize the lower growth rates of their crops as gardens lost fertility after being initially cleared, and experienced the consequences of timber and fuel scarcity...

Besides thereby solving their problems of wood supply and soil fertility, New Guinea highlanders also faced a population problem as their numbers increased. That population increase became checked by practices that continued into the childhoods of many of my New Guinea friends – especially by war, infanticide, use of forest plants for contraception and abortion, and sexual abstinence and natural lactational amenorrhea for several years while a baby was being nursed. New Guinea societies thereby avoided the fates that Easter Island, Mangareva, the Maya, the Anasazi, and many other societies suffered through deforestation and population growth. Highlanders managed to operate sustainably for tens of thousands of years before the origins of agriculture, and then for another 7,000 years after the origins of agriculture, despite climate changes and human environmental impacts constantly creating altered conditions."

Contact me to submit one (preferably a technical paper or article about the nature of this anarchy, or its success or lack thereof)..

Bronze Age India

An Ancient Stateless Civilization: Bronze Age India and the State in History by Thomas J. Thompson
"The urban civilization of Harappa in southern Asia flourished economically and culturally for seven centuries, leaving archeologists with artifacts galore but with no evidence of wars or threats of war—or even a state. Most likely, Harappa’s archeological uniqueness has to do with the civilization’s having generated purely voluntary government."

Ibos tribes of West Africa

"Sitting on a Man": Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women by Judith van Allen

Partial anarchies and others

Examples: the Huron Confederacy, Medieval commercial "free" cities, Holy Roman Empire, post-Napoleonic German Confederation. No papers found yet. Contact me to submit one (preferably a technical paper or article about the nature of this anarchy, or its success or lack thereof)..

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