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That right there is one of the reasons Libertarians get a whopping 1-3% of the vote. A substantial fringe of them are anarcho-capitalists who don’t understand that you need an unbiased sovereign to administer the law. Private competing law enforcement does not work.
I suspect it’s not a parody. It’s hard to be sure though.
Marvel’s 2099 universe worked like that. Except that the mega corps had standing armies and warred with each other.
Vinge’s novella “The Ungoverned” is about a local protection company (styling itself the “Michigan State Police” (but that’s just a name) dealing with its everyday enforcement issues - and with an invasion by a nearby area so primitive that it has a government. Natch, the libertarians win, cause their hearts are pure
PS It’s a well written story; I just don’t buy the setting.
Read em. Good stuff.
That’s the book I was thinking about. Early on, after she first lands on Freehold, she gets into an accident where the other person is at fault. Various insurance companies start showing up out of the woodwork, and basically throwing money at her to settle the account. I was thinking, “That’s great, except that not how any insurance company in history has ever acted…” Take a look at US health insurance. “Deny everything” is pretty much the first step in their process, and you have to fight them to get money out of them.
So, yeah, if we could fundamentally alter the behavior of large insurance firms, this could work 
More importantly, what happens if Ring just doesn’t agree with the arbitration, and doesn’t stand down? This whole thing is founded on the idea that companies will contract with each other and do what they’re supposed to do, because NOT doing it will make them bad business partners and they’ll make less (or no) money. Sort of a social credit thing for businesses.
The article implies (“enormous costs of war”) that these companies would be empowered to use force against each other if the negotiations didn’t pan out.
Which is ridiculous, as the monopoly on the legitimate use of force is pretty much THE thing that underpins every government everywhere.* Would anyone really want that NOT to be a monopoly?
- that’s also a piece of the 2nd Amendment rhetoric as I’ve heard it- having guns is a way to keep that monopoly on force in the people’s hands, not at a remove through the police or military, since we’re a government of the people, by the people, for the people as the saying goes.
I’m not seeing much of a free market that can be moved by consumers in that meme. Isn’t that one of the key points of libertarianism?
It’s simplified. In ‘the real world’ they imagine, there’s tons of companies competing to be YOUR private security firm, so you’d have ADT, LoneStar Security, Peacekeepers, and dozens of others, each offering the best service and lowest prices to get your bucks! But your neighbor might have someone else, and the “honest competition” will keep quality high and prices low.
Or that’s the assumption. And that’s what’s show in the fictional world of Freehold I and @Horatius mention.
And I share the sentiment. It sounds good, and if everyone was smart and honest and forthright and there were only a “few” outliers, and enlightened self-interest in search of reasonable but not excessive profits somehow overwhelmed all of the historical precedents at maximizing profits, cheating, cutting costs, and out-and-out scams than maybe it would work.
I’ll let you know after I manage to re-engineer the species.
“Extreme libertarianism” is really just anarchy for the very rich. The poor get screwed, of course, as is only fair from the very rich people’s perspective.
Now don’t ask me what kind of fool would be an adherent of this “philosophy” (for lack of a better word) and poor. But they exist.
Just can’t let this very apt comparison go by without comment. Yes, the system depicted is absurd and outrageous. And, yes, it’s largely how we handle our health care, which is equally absurd and outrageous.
What if Walter also is a customer of ADT? Will ADT and ADT agree to arbitration, and will ADT punish their own customer if he is found liable? What if Walter is a “premium” customer of ADT and Marie is “basic”?
Let’s be fair, if Walter is a VP at ADT, Marie should just hope ADT forgets the whole thing rather than punish HER for slander.
More from them on this Twitter thread. I’m like 90% sure they are trolls at this point:
Seriously, I’d take the cannibal marauder warlord over a HOA any day of the week.
Again, a non Twitter version:
But if I’m choosing protection companies on the free market, would I want the one that stands down and lets my stuff be taken, or would I want the one that refuses to stand down and continues to look out for me even after judgement goes against me? The Free Market would lead to companies behaving in the opposite way they suggest.
Then it’s your choice…
THUNDERDOME!!
Well, I think under these conditions, ADT would look more like fictional companies like OCP, Wayland-Yutani, Tyrell Corporation, Umbrella Corporation, McCandless Corporation. Big multinational corporations involved in everything from toothpaste to aerospace that had standing private armies and proprietary security “products”.
As others pointed out, your “rights” would be dictated by the market. In absence of any sort of traditional government or legislature, that role would be filled by whatever megacorporation dominated the region you lived in. And there would most likely be one for the same reason there tends to be only one cable company or energy provider.
Your relationship with the megacorp would be a) employee - if you had marketable skills they could use b) customer - whether you liked it or not as any business operating within the domain of the megacorp would be forced to pay some sort of “insurance” or “security fees”. In a sense, an old fashioned “company store” relationship. Or c) some sort of non-entity living on the fringe of society. People who can’t or won’t pay for services and for who the megacorp disregards because they have nothing to offer.
I would not anticipate any sort of “free market”. As I mentioned, any territory would tend to have coverage by one Megacorp because the effects of natural monopolies. And I don’t imagine these Megacorps would be open to customers or employees defecting to other Megacorps.
And it’s not like they need to argue the details of a non-compete agreement or customer’s terms and conditions in a court of law when they have an army of highly trained and well equipped enforcers.
Wrong dystopian movie.
ROLLERBALL!
Rollerball appeals are handled by the circuit court of DEATH RACE!
There’s a more fundamental problem. Arbitration costs money, especially if it drags on. Those costs will be passed along to subscribers. However, if John steals from Bill, but both John and Bill subscribe to Ancap Security Services (or whatever) then there’s no need for arbitration. That saves money. Those savings will also be passed along to subscribers.
Let’s say there are two security companies and everyone in town belongs to one or the other. Let’s say company A has 60% market share and company B has 40%. More of company A’s disputes will be internal, and therefore cheaper to resolve. Assuming both companies operate with maximal efficiency, company A will always be able to pass more savings along to consumers than company B. Since price is the most important factor for most consumers most of the time, the more savings company A offers, the more clients they’ll be able to poach from company B until company B can no longer afford to operate because nearly all of its cases will likely involve entering into costly arbitration with company A.
Long story short, this kind of system will inevitably devolve into a single entity having a monopoly on force. Which is what we have now.
You get just as much protection as you pay for. If you are a Gold policy holder, they will mobilize a maximum of two squads to protect you. Not enough? Too bad; should have bought Platinum.