Old soldiers never die; they merely fade away. Would that were true of states. But states do not fade. They tend to grow, and then combust, and the people they serve get served by another state.

Contemplating the death of the state, today, seems preciously close to contemplating the death of civilization, since so much of social life is bound up in the activities of political governance. So, contemplating anarchism is a visionary act above all else, and quite radical from an institutional perspective.

But I've never worried much about that. Three hundred years ago, were you to ask every intelligent man on the planet, whether democracy would become, in a mere three centuries' time, the dominant expected and revered form of governance, you would get as many beatings as chortles. Nonsense! And yet, today, even tyrants assume a sort of democratic pose.

To not explore the idea of a stateless society is to give up on serious political theory. It cannot be seen as a live option at present, or even the near future, but to not contemplate the possible futures is to limit oneself to the present. And, considering the troubles of the present, that strikes me as an almost unconscionable thing to do.

Murray Rothbard's essay Society Without a State, recently posted to Mises.org, is a good defense of the basic idea. And yet by beginning with terminological disputes, rather than the standard practical controversy, is suffers from a pleasantly mothballish odor. Musty. Not relevant. Anarchism is still, really, in the closet, under wraps.

When I bring up the possibility of competitive government (as Gustave de Molinari designated the notion) I usually get some dismissal like this:

Privatizing security is, obviously, madness. My henchmen against your henchmen, and who will arbitrate? Sounds like modern Moscow, so, I think, no.

Well, it does not strike me as obvious madness. Take the word henchmen, so strategically placed in the above quotation (recently received by email). It's taken from the lingo of royalist skullduggery and hoodlum badinage. When I actually hire an insurance agent, or put a lawyer or arbitration organization on retainer, I do not normally use such a word as henchman. That's a pejorative, already loading the debate.

But we all do it. Is it justified in this case?

Well, not mentioned in the dismissal in question is the fact that arbitration is a huge industry in the present day. Companies often stipulate arbitration rather than civil court proceedings. Do the arbitration organizations so commonly used in business have a problem with gang warfare?

No.

Maybe in Moscow, but not in America.

The reason is simple. There's no percentage in open conflict. It's not a profitable venue for raising money, increasing profits.

Private security in America, and the private arbitrators, are all hirelings, yes. But they depend for revenue on contractual relations. People can cease an ongoing contract pretty quickly. Like with, say, an insurance company, it's not that difficult changing a security firm, or arbitration organization. Sure, there are hassles. But these firms have no pretense of hegemony. They cannot force you to pay for their services. So they have to offer good service. And, in protection as well as adjudication, reputation is a big deal.

Now, there's no doubt that in protection especially, there are crimes committed. But that's the case, also, in public police outfits.

But in all cases, getting found out is dangerous. And if a company conspires to deny the rights of some third party, in a coercive or fraudulent way, that can cause some pretty big damage. Companies have been known to go under from such.

The basic difference between government now and protective and adjudicatory services as conceived of under competitive government is the difference in contract. Governments only pretend to be bound by contract. Their basic relationship with citizens is hegemony: You must pay taxes; you must obey our laws. If a government does something you consider grossly immoral, so what? The government still compels you to pay taxes. The government only fears your vote, and your vote is a drop in the bucket.

But when you establish relations with a security agency, a legal insurance company, and an arbitration service, you are making explicit contracts. When you fire said services, you take your money with you. It's hard to go to war without money.

Which is the whole point of competitive government, really. It provides a direct feedback mechanism to the institutions that are most dangerous.

Think about it. Would you continue to do business with a protection agency that oversteps its bounds and doesn't play by the rule of law, doesn't respect the liberty and property of others? Well, maybe you're a go-alonger, but I know that most people would switch on good evidence, many that would switch even on rumor.

But the Russian mafia and Russian government do not play like this. Neither organization seeks contracts with large groups of clients. Both engage in rights violations as the reason for their existence. Both are criminal organizations. The Russian government, alas, pretends (and gets) unwarranted respect and compliance from its victims, and so continues on a history of imperialism, mass murder, massive expropriation, and violence. On the face of it, it is government that is obviously madness. Why do we give it so much power?

Now, it is possible that different clienteles would congeal around distinct institutions, and some of those clienteles would have deep biases against some people and for others, and would like to declare open warfare. But the would-be rogue institutions would still be limited to voluntary methods of gaining funds, and that would supply an amazing break on their activities.

And all it takes is a small percentage of independents (Robert Nozick's term for those who do not purchase the services of any protective or arbitration organization) forming a new service, one that upholds the principle of contracts, and such warfare becomes unlikely.

But this scenario strikes me as an atavism fossilized. That is, it takes a scenario from our current situation and applies it to a completely different situation without any concern for new structures of feedback, opportunity, and learning potential. Thus a problem of crime and state is shorn from the context of monopoly justice provision and placed in a competitive, rule-of-law environment, and said to apply.

This is the greatest kind of social theoretic folly. But it is most common in political thought. It's why 300 years ago savants could not have been expected to understand the triumph of democratic ideology, or Amenist priests in ancient Egypt the triumph of Islamic theology in modern Egypt. We understand our contexts not in their systemic nature, but as prejudice, and then apply our pet notions to new situations.

Who will arbitrate in a demonopolized society? That's a good question. There's a vast literature on this. People who have not read it can't be expected to know this literature. But they should be interested in it once pointed out.

Who arbitrates now? Private adjudicators. Or judges elected and appointed in our monopoly-system republic.

This latter, state-sponsored adjudiation, is a remarkably better system than some others, no doubt. But most people have never heard of the frankpledge and tithe; the judges who adjudicated mercantile disputes in medieval and early Industrial Britain; or the Icelandic mode of justice. These people cannot really be expected sensibly to answer the question.

The question reminds me, in a sense, of socialists who wonder how goods and services could possibly provided without an over-arching plan. They have no idea how multiple plans can dovetail in markets, to form what has been called a spontaneous order. And, needless to say, these days people are so used to legislatures making law that they have no comprehension of how common law worked, according to Blackstone. Blank out. Whole chunks of the history of law and order are missing in their minds, and they have no idea how naive their questions seem.

Right now, any American can be taken to court, and dispossessed. Why would anyone allow that? All it takes is a few guns and willingness to do some night-time sharpshooting, and any one of us well-armed Americans could take out a half-dozen police and several judges in just a few days.

So why doesn't it happen? Why, now, isn't individualist revolt common?

Because you'd most likely get caught, of course.

And that's not merely because the experts would ferret you out and nab you, or (more likely) gun you down. It's also because the citizenry would be on the look-out and turn you in on suspicion.

And there's another reason. Most people have been nurtured to obey the law. Even when they are persecuted unjustly by the instruments of law (and this happens quite often in these United States), people just don't go into revolt, and they don't expect their family and friends to join the cause.

Most people, even criminals of various sorts, have been (to varying degrees) psychologically civilized. Made compliant. Accepting of the socially agreed-upon norms and institutions.

Just so in a system of competitive government. The whole system would rest on the legitimacy of contract. The reason for coercive process by the police and courts would be in defense against, or retaliation for, deliberate breaches of contract, or of the rights upon which contracts rest.

So, though a person may resent and be even deeply angered by prosecution at law, that person is as unlikely in a free society to take up arms against the system as that person is today.

Do you think that the agency rebelled against itself would not defend itself?

Do you think that other agencies would not also come to its aid?

Do you think that clients of those agencies would not side with the peace doers?

And do you not think that, with all this arrayed against him, and public opinion as well, the person would also not revolt?

Individualist revolt is not likely. Everyday criminality would, of course, remain common, and regain the focus of the institutions arrayed against such acts. And gang warfare would remain a danger, as warfare is today, and yet it would be constrained by public opinion and the direct feedback mechanism of the contract.

This last is the factor that would likely do the most good. It should be mentioned that philosophers as far back as Aristotle likened the legitimation of the state to a contract, and came up with elaborate theories of the social contract to prove the legitimacy of compulsion by the state. And yet, as anyone with a lick of horse sense knows, when reading this literature, is how unrealistic it is. Social contracts are fake contracts, at least when described by defenders of the state? Why? Because they seek to extract actual compliance out of faked agreements, fantasy negotiations, and the physical practice of duress — which invalidates real contacts in private law and public law — are built into the system of the state's most intimate relations with its citizens. There is no possibility of escape from a state's contract, barring flight to another land and . . . another state.

Social contract theory is riddled with unrealities, all designed to bolster the legitimacy of an institution that has killed billions of people in warfare and mass slaughter; regulated the lives of subjects and citizens down to the sexual positions they may engage in; and taxes them at rates, these days, that caused a secessionist rebellion in America a mere 230-odd years ago.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of what Rothbard called anarchocapitalism, that de Molinari called competitive government, and de Puydt called panarchism. Make institutions we now call government compete for our allegiance and their support. Anything less will be doomed to fail.

As all attempts at republics have — America being the prime example of success at empire and failure at limited government.

There are many problems associated with this kind of system, and a lot of work needs to be done. But every time I come across a complaint, an objection to the notion, in my mind, anyway, the idea gains ground. The biggest trouble associated with panarchism is simple: getting from here to there. A revolution in paradigms is not easy to negotiate. Not by plan, anyway.