See, the answer to all of this ultimately is to get a group of people together to perform these various public services that are essential for a civilized society to function at all, in order to support the free market entrepreneurs conducting business.
Just don’t call it a government or you have tyranny again.
Oh, and all those capitalists chip in a bit of their profits voluntarily to ensure the system can be maintained, and to compensate those public workers for their time and efforts.
If businesses don’t opt in, though, you, uh… Hmm. I mean I guess the ones that don’t opt in will still benefit but without paying for it are at a clear advantage, which means that only an idiot with bad business sense would contribute. Why donate your profits at the expense of shareholders (and yourself for that matter)?
But you can’t force everyone to contribute because again, tyranny, blah blah blah.
Gosh, this free market utopian fantasy stuff is hard!
You mean besides voting? Who would run these mechanisms? Corporations specializing in property disputes perhaps? I bet they’d want to get paid. That’s our only option if you don’t want the dreaded government involved. Either way, it results in you giving money to somebody if you want your property rights secured. You can either pay a lawyer a retainer, or pay government taxes.
Ya know…I bet some of those corporations would like a fancy title to differentiate themselves from the hoi polloi. Maybe something like Polis or Domain or Kingdom or something like that. Those have a nice ring to them. And of course, they’ll need to hire some muscle to ensure their decisions are carried out if anybody decides they just don’t want to play anymore. Maybe call them, I dunno, an Army or something. Of course, the Army would only be employed against people who don’t want to abide by the decisions of the Kingdom. And ya know…maybe the head of the Kingdom has a feeling they were specially chosen…maybe their Rights are Divinely inspired, so they are the ‘best’ decision-makers after all!
Nope, nothing like a government at all. And nothing like any form of government we’ve ever tried before. Nope.
IIRC, you agree on which private court when you initiate any contract. Sit down at a restaurant? Before checking the menu, check which private food inspector they use, which private court will arbitrate, and so on. (Check it even if you’ve been to the restaurant before — unscrupulous vendors often change their contractors.)
Your smart-phone will have an App telling you what your private court and insurer think about the restaurant’s court and insurer. Make sure you verify the check-sums — the restaurant’s DNS server may be routing you to bogus info. (Everything is legal when there are no laws.) If you order fish, check the fine-print of the restaurant’s food inspector’s brochure: some don’t cover …
Come to think of it, maybe you should just stay home and prepare a meal from your own garden.
It’s confusions like this that make me doubt Farnaby has ever read a history book. Safe roads for travelers are routinely cited as a primary benefit of Europe’s early strong central governments.
But how do I go about ensuring the manufacturer of the smartphone and the apps are reliable? And how did I get to the restaurant in the first place since there aren’t any government-provided roads?
Better question, since the goverment’s completely out of the picture, what am I using to get this nifty meal at the restaurant? Do I just roll on up with a wagonload, er, carload of stuff to barter?
Yeah, I can see how this won’t go over well for a celebratory dinner.
Presumably shiny metal and or stones. Check the web-site for what they accept, and hope their in-house appraiser accepts the quality you claim for your payment method.
ETA: Like a stopped-clock that’s correct twice a day, Farnaby may be right about one thing. The nearly half-century of success for modern fiat money is anomalous. Following the recent Bubbles of Asian Debt, Dotcoms, and Housing, Donald Amstad now thinks we’re in a "bubble of ‘risk-free assets’ "! For the first time in my life, I’m taking a significant position in precious metals.
Europe had no early strong central governments unless you’re going back quite a bit. Italy and Germany were decentralized and ahead of backwaters like France.
The structure of civil society has been so eroded by authoritarian governments that supposedly literate individuals can not conceive of a society that is not forced by the threats of the government. Very sad situation.
You’re using real money. You know — Bitcoins!