[AFAIK]

If I owned an estate/ gated community and wrote up contracts that anyone wishing to enter or live on my property had to agree to; could they contain provisions that allowed me to pass “legislation”?
1- Could I levy a progressive income tax in exchange for the right to live in the area? The tax would be used to pay for various services that would be available to all residents and free at the point of use.

2-Could I place a provision that gave me a legal monopoly on the use of force or stated that all grievances’s had to be resolved in my courts?

How close to recreating a govt. / state could I get?

[Rothbardian]

The thing that makes a state what it is, is its monopoly on violence. Assuming you acquired your property legitimately, meaning you acquired it by means that would be allowed to every single other person on the planet, you wouldn't be a state, even if you copied the current government in every other way.

If you think about it, governments are an exercise in property rights. For example, the government of France claims the right to make its rules because it owns all of the land/property within its boundaries. It cannot make laws that apply to England because it doesn't own England (the island itself). The problem is that it did not acquire that land legitimately, so it has no right to make those rules, but it all boils down to property rights.

[AFAIK]

I think this concept presents an existential threat to anarchy. People will be attracted to the guaranteed protections that I offer and willing to sacrifice 10% of their income as "tax". The contract will be 'til death do us part' so people can emigrate to my estate during a recession then leave when jobs become available. They will have to pay 10% income tax on all their earnings regardless of the place of work and/ or reside. They may be some form of conscription so unemployed people could contribute to security by joining my "police force" or working in my courts. Communal spaces/ infrastructure will also require maintenance.

Over time more people sign up, the community grows into a city state, more tax comes my way and my security forces can be mobilised to overwhelm others with aggressive force. I seize their property, murder, kidnap and torture those that resist and offer the same contracts I have always offered to those that surrender.

I am violating NAP but whose going to stop me? If other city states are behaving the same way those seeking shelter may not wish to stop me as long as they are protected. People may we willing to exchange fundamental liberties in exchange short term security. Of course they will end up with neither.

[Eran]

I think this concept presents an existential threat to anarchy. People will be attracted to the guaranteed protections that I offer and willing to sacrifice 10% of their income as "tax". The contract will be 'til death do us part' so people can emigrate to my estate during a recession then leave when jobs become available. They will have to pay 10% income tax on all their earnings regardless of the place of work and/ or reside. They may be some form of conscription so unemployed people could contribute to security by joining my "police force" or working in my courts. Communal spaces/ infrastructure will also require maintenance.

So far so good, provided, as Rothbardian stressed, that the land on which your city is built was acquired by you legitimately.

Over time more people sign up, the community grows into a city state, more tax comes my way and my security forces can be mobilised to overwhelm others with aggressive force. I seize their property, murder, kidnap and torture those that resist and offer the same contracts I have always offered to those that surrender.

Your ability to do that (which is obviously no longer legitimate) doesn't only depend on your wealth and military power. It very much depends on the norms within your society. For example, there is no doubt that the US could militarily overcome many if not most of the world's current states.

The reason it limits itself to one or two has to do with norms both within and outside its borders.

I am violating NAP but whose going to stop me?

As I said - it all depends on norms. Your starting point was an anarchy (you established your city without worrying about the state). A stable anarchy requires certain norms to be stable, just as a stable democracy does.

Who would stop the President of the US from ordering its armed forces to take over Congress, cancel the next elections, declare martial law, and execute the USSC?

[Husky]

But Eran, what would compel an anarchy to have "certain norms to be stable"?

My main, almost knee-jerk reaction to anarchy that I cannot wrap my head around is, as AFAIK neatly described in that scenario, The chance of protection agencies or powerful landlords becoming a de facto government seems very high.

[AFAIK]

Who would stop the President of the US from ordering its armed forces to take over Congress, cancel the next elections, declare martial law, and execute the USSC?

There is a clause in the US constitution that allows the President to suspend habeas corpus during a rebellion or invasion. I believe Lincoln suspended the entire document during the civil war.

What stopped the govt. from passing and enforcing the sedition act for several decades? Or the espionage act today?

[Rothbardian]

But Eran, what would compel an anarchy to have "certain norms to be stable"?

My main, almost knee-jerk reaction to anarchy that I cannot wrap my head around is, as AFAIK neatly described in that scenario, The chance of protection agencies or powerful landlords becoming a de facto government seems very high.

The motive to established certain norms is the stability that comes from established norms. Who wants to live in chaos? No one, that is why people naturally develop rules to live by. You don't have to agree with everything 100%, you just have to agree enough to accept the functions of the society you inhabit. Government is not the services it provides. It's not laws and courts and police and infrastructure, that can be and has been all developed without governments. A government is just a group of people that claim a right to a monopoly on violence.

Do you really need someone to point a gun at you for your to understand that having a structure to society is better than living like Mad Max? I hope not.

[Eran]

But Eran, what would compel an anarchy to have "certain norms to be stable"?

The question of how norms are adopted and evolve within societies is a complex one.

What has caused the adoption and strengthening of democratic norms in growing parts of today's world?

In part, it is the perception that such norms are pragmatic and helpful, strengthened by widely-known and regarded success stories and/or high prestige adopters.

Thus a highly successful anarchy (e.g. seasteading, or a free city), together with the imminent collapse of state-capitalism could lead the way.

My point isn't that anarchy is inevitable or even likely. Nobody, a few hundred years ago, could have said the same about parliamentary democracy, today globally entrenched as a virtual monopoly in the world of legitimate political systems.

Rather, my point is that once ideological conditions have been established, an anarchy can be as stable as a democracy.

My main, almost knee-jerk reaction to anarchy that I cannot wrap my head around is, as AFAIK neatly described in that scenario, The chance of protection agencies or powerful landlords becoming a de facto government seems very high.

I will try to answer that concern in three stages:
a. Establish that norms are indispensable for the stability of sophisticated political systems including both anarchy and constitutional democracy. Constitutional democracy, especially in countries such as the US in which there is also a written document called "Constitution", deceptively appear to rely in their stability on the existence of that document. That is an illusion. Constitutional democracies work well without a written constitution (UK), while perfectly-worded constitutions fail to guarantee the stability, as a liberal democracy, of many a regime.

b. Establish that the norm of using the NAP as the constitutional basis for the institutionalised use of force in society would lead to a stable anarchy, and

c. Exploring the range of norms common within historic societies, establish that the NAP norm is easily within the range of norms that one can expect human societies to adopt, differentiating it from utopian preconditions of pure communism, for example.


Questions along the lines of "why doesn't the President take over" are aimed at establishing (a) above, namely the indispensability of supportive norms for the continued stable existence of other forms of government, focusing on the one we are most familiar with, namely constitutional democracy.

It is easy to answer the question in terms of a concrete chain of reasoning by decision-makers. But consistently, that chain of reasoning will rely, time and again, on the democratic norm being strongly and widely established within society, from its academics and intellectuals to its foot-soldiers.

To be fair to an anarchy, then, we must explore the incentives and constraints that its decision-makers face. We can rely on the familiar constitutional democracy as a starting point, with arguments along the lines of (1) X is more likely in a democracy than in an anarchy, (2) X is generally considered highly unlikely in a democracy, (3) therefore, X is going to be even less likely in an anarchy.

There is a clause in the US constitution that allows the President to suspend habeas corpus during a rebellion or invasion. I believe Lincoln suspended the entire document during the civil war.

Indeed. And under a severe state of emergency (e.g. widespread pandemic), it is easy to see civil liberties being temporarily suspended. One can even see that temporary state of affairs become established long-term.

Absent such unusual state of emergency, however, you'd agree with me that a coup scenario by an elected President would appear inconceivable to most Americans.

Yet comparing the position, incentives, character, constraints and temptations of a President to that of, say, the CEO of a private military force or large, national enforcement agency, easily shows that a President (acting within a society in which the Constitution is the fundamental political norm) is much more likely to usurp power illegitimately than a CEO (acting within a society in which the NAP is similarly the fundamental political norm).

[Rainbow Crow]

There was a supreme court case on this when an oil company built an entire community in Alaska and did what you're mentioning. The decision was that you can do a lot o things, but it won't extend to police authority.

You can however use the terms and conditions to remove people you don't like, if I remember correctly.

[AFAIK]

I could use propaganda and spin.

Some scary brown people are "2 days drive from Texas". We need to launch a pre-emptive strike.
A Libyan blows up an aeroplane. Other attacks may have been planned. Time is of the essence. I will kill the planners extra-judiciously rather than pursuing justice through the courts.
I have a schizophrenic attitude to Sadaam Hussein. Currently I'm concerned about WMD- "45 minutes"- and will launch a pre-emptive strike.

[Nunt]

I always find it striking that people first lay out the dangers of private companies obtaining a monopoly of force, then proceed to say that the solution against this is to install the most powerful monopoly of force possible and hope for the best. To just hope that this monopoly of force will proceed to behave kindly. Unfortunatly, if you criticize the possibility of a monopoly of force in an anarchy, then you cannot do anything but logically argue that a monopoly of force is much much worse. And if you think: "oh but its the government, they are the people, they only serve the public good, then you are deluding yourself".

Just look at the numbers. At the moment only 11.3% of the world's population is living in a full democracy, 37% live in authoritarian regimes (source: democracy index), while the rest of the population are living under some mixed democracies. Does not really speak for the advantage of a government.

The main advantage of an anarchy is that: IF a monopoly of force arises and starts abusing its power, then this monopoly is deemed illegal and immoral in an anarchy. If governments become authoritarian, then their actions are seen as legal and moral, no matter how awful they are. Even the so-called full democracies are committing some crimes. Who knows who gets killed by drone strikes somewhere far out in a desert?