Real world "anarchy"

Earlier in the year, the BBC featured a series of articles commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the state in Somalia. Although the articles expressed the typical revulsion at "anarchy," the series was surprisingly balanced for such a mainstream outlet. Somalia is undeniably experiencing progress according to several criteria, despite (or, some would say, because of) its lack of a strong central government.

Economists familiar with the Rothbardian tradition have taken the analysis even further, persuasively arguing that Somalia is much better without a state than it was with one. The standard statist put-down — "If you Rothbardians like anarchy so much, why don't you move to Somalia?" — misses the point. The Rothbardian doesn't claim that the absence of a state is a sufficient condition for bliss. Rather, the Rothbardian says that however prosperous and law-abiding a society is, adding an institution of organized violence and theft will only make things worse.

The BBC Reflects on 20 Years of Anarchy

As I said initially, the BBC's treatment is remarkably balanced. One article begins,

Common sense dictates that security and stability are the necessary preconditions to economic development.
Since 26 January 1991, most of Somalia has had neither, yet the economy has not only been resilient, some sectors have shown remarkable growth.
In particular, the telecommunications industry has boomed:

Somali telecoms expert Ahmed Farah says the first mobile telephone mast went up in Somalia in 1994, and now someone can make a mobile call from anywhere in the country.
There are nine networks to choose from and they offer services from texting to mobile internet access.
It's not just the telecom industry that has improved. A different article outlines the change in some major indices over the last 20 years of (relative) statelessness:

Somalia: How Has Life Changed?
Index 1991 2011 (or latest)
Life expectancy 46 years 50 years
Birth rate 46 44
Death rate 19 16
GDP per capita $210 $600
Infant mortality 116 deaths <1yr, per 1,000 births 109 deaths <1yr, per 1,000 births
Access to safe water 35% 29%
Adult literacy 24% 38%

With the exception of the drop in birth rates (which is ambiguous) and the drop in access to safe water (which is clearly a bad thing), the above chart shows incredible progress on numerous fronts. I daresay that if a UN or World Bank intervention into a state-controlled African country had yielded such results, it would be trumpeted from the hilltops. (To avoid confusion: international aid groups are currently working in Somalia, and they could be partially responsible for the improvements illustrated in the chart.)

The BBC Yearns for a Perfect Government

Despite the undeniable progress, the first BBC article nonetheless laments the anarchic situation:

On the one hand, we can marvel at the fact that business does continue in Somalia, on the other hand things could be a lot better.
The lack of taxation and regulation may mean a certain amount of freedom from interference.
But business people have to pay security firms to ensure the safety of their goods, and need to pay off different factions if they want to do any trade.
The risky situation does not deter all investment, but it would be a lot higher if a stable authority was in place.
[Telecom expert] Mr. Farah thinks that mobile phone operators would welcome an effective government.
"They will have security, they will have stability and they will be able to do their business smoothly," the telecoms expert says.
"So without a doubt, the telecom industry in Somalia needs a government."
But with the UN-backed government [which controls only a few key areas of the capital] struggling to assert its authority, it is not clear when that day will come.

Mr. Farah and the approving BBC writer here commit the Nirvana fallacy, which contrasts the flawed outcome of the market in the real world with the idealized outcome of a benevolent government in a textbook. In reality, if a single group manages to suppress its rivals and achieve domination over Somalia, business people can still expect to "pay off different factions if they want to do any trade."

What is particularly amusing is the complaint that businesses currently must pay private security firms to guard their goods. Well, a government police and court system won't work for tips — they too will need to be financed, but through involuntary taxation. As with any monopoly, the government's provision of a "justice system" will be more expensive — other things being equal — than the provision through private, competing agencies.

Fighting for Domination

Farah and other advocates of a central state might retort that right now security costs are particularly high for Somali businesses because of the fighting between rival factions ("warlords") in their attempt to control the government. That is true, but the observation doesn't prove what Farah thinks. Farah and other statists believe that it is inevitable that groups will vie for control, and domestic peace will only be achieved when one group (or coalition) is able to out-muscle all others and achieve overwhelming control. This is the logic by which the establishment of a government will (allegedly) lead to lower security expenses.

There are two main problems with this view. First, some have argued that the warlords fight so bitterly in Somalia precisely because meddling Westerners keep trying to impose a government. In other words, the various clans might have been willing to coexist relatively peacefully, knowing that there was a balance of power and that no one group posed much of a threat. But when the UN comes in with its money and weapons, and tries to elevate one group above the others, then the excluded Somali factions rush to attack.

The other problem with this common justification for a state — namely, that rival groups will engage in civil war until one of them achieves obvious superiority over the others — is that it proves far too much. If a balance of power can't exist among the small clans in Somalia, then how can it exist across, say, Europe, or for that matter the entire world? In other words, to be consistent, Farah and others calling for the establishment of a government in Somalia — in order to eliminate civil war — should also call for the establishment of a worldwide central government over the entire planet. Otherwise, various factions within the globe might fight each other (which of course they do all the time).

Conclusion


I have answered the generic "warlord objection" to anarchy elsewhere. Regarding Somalia in particular, Ben Powell et al. have done fantastic work analyzing Somalia before and after its transition to statelessness, and also comparing its fate with similar African nations. Their conclusion is that — of course — stateless Somalia is no paradise, but its lack of a corrupt, brutal government has given it an advantage over its former self and its current peers.

Somalia has achieved remarkable progress since the collapse of the brutal dictatorship of Siad Barre in 1991. If people in the more developed countries of the world wish to help the impoverished region, we can certainly send money and even visit to offer medical services and other assistance. But if the West foists the "gift" of another state on the beleaguered Somalis, their appropriate response should be, "No, you shouldn't have."

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The Rule of Law without the State

Were there such a category, Somalia would hold a place in Guinness World Records as the country with the longest absence of a functioning central government. When the Somalis dismantled their government in 1991 and returned to their precolonial political status, the expectation was that chaos would result — and that, of course, would be the politically correct thing to expect.

Imagine if it were otherwise. Imagine any part of the globe not being dominated by a central government and the people there surviving, even prospering. If such were to happen and the idea spread to other parts of Africa or other parts of the world, the mystique of the necessity of the state might be irreparably damaged, and many politicians and bureaucrats might find themselves walking about looking for work.

If the expectation was that Somalia would plunge into an abyss of chaos, what is the reality? A number of recent studies address this question, including one by economist Peter Leeson drawing on statistical data from the United Nations Development Project, World Bank, CIA, and World Health Organization. Comparing the last five years under the central government (1985–1990) with the most recent five years of anarchy (2000–2005), Leeson finds these welfare changes:

Life expectancy increased from 46 to 48.5 years. This is a poor expectancy as compared with developed countries. But in any measurement of welfare, what is important to observe is not where a population stands at a given time, but what is the trend. Is the trend positive, or is it the reverse?
Number of one-year-olds fully immunized against measles rose from 30 to 40 percent.
Number of physicians per 100,000 population rose from 3.4 to 4.
Number of infants with low birth weight fell from 16 per thousand to 0.3 — almost none.
Infant mortality per 1,000 births fell from 152 to 114.9.
Maternal mortality per 100,000 births fell from 1,600 to 1,100.
Percent of population with access to sanitation rose from 18 to 26.
Percent of population with access to at least one health facility rose from 28 to 54.8.
Percent of population in extreme poverty (i.e., less than $1 per day) fell from 60 to 43.2.
Radios per thousand population rose from 4 to 98.5.
Telephones per thousand population rose from 1.9 to 14.9.
TVs per 1,000 population rose from 1.2 to 3.7.
Fatalities due to measles fell from 8,000 to 5,600.
Another even more comprehensive study published last year by Benjamin Powell of the Independent Institute, concludes: "We find that Somalia's living standards have improved generally … not just in absolute terms, but also relative to other African countries since the collapse of the Somali central government."

Somalia's pastoral economy is now stronger than that of either neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia. It is the largest exporter of livestock of any East African country. Telecommunications have burgeoned in Somalia; a call from a mobile phone is cheaper in Somalia than anywhere else in Africa. A small number of international investors are finding that the level of security of property and contract in Somalia warrants doing business there. Among these companies are Dole, BBC, the courier DHL, British Airways, General Motors, and Coca Cola, which recently opened a large bottling plant in Mogadishu. A 5-star Ambassador Hotel is operating in Hargeisa, and three new universities are fully functional: Amoud University (1997) in Borama, and Mogadishu University (1997), and University of Benadir (2002) in Mogadishu.

The Call to "Establish Democracy"

All of this is terribly politically incorrect for the reason I suggested. Consequently, the United Nations has by now spent well over two billion dollars attempting to re-establish a central government in Somalia. But here is the irony: it is the presence of the United Nations that has caused virtually all of the turbulence we have seen in Somalia. Let me explain why this is the case.

Like most of precolonial Africa, Somalia is traditionally a stateless society. When the colonial powers withdrew, in order to better serve their purposes, they hastily trained local people and set up European-style governments in their place. These were supposed to be democratic. But they soon devolved into brutal dictatorships.

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.

The turmoil in Somalia consists in the clans maneuvering to position themselves to control the government whenever it might come into being, and this has been exacerbated by the governments of the world, especially the United States, keeping alive the expectation that a government will soon be established and supplying arms to whoever seems at present most likely to be able to "bring democracy" to Somalia. The "warlord" phenomenon refers to clan and independent militias, often including leftovers of the former central government who promise to establish a government under the control of their own clan. They often operate outside the control of the traditional elders and sometimes in opposition to them.

Hence the most violent years in Somalia were the years following 1991 when the United Nations was physically present, attempting to impose a central government. When the United Nations withdrew in 1995, the expectation of a future central government began to recede, and things began to stabilize. But the United Nations continued it efforts to re-establish a government through a series of some sixteen failed "peace conferences." In 2000 it set up a straw government, the Transitional National Government (TNG). However, not only did the northern Somali clans not recognize the TNG, it was unable to control its intended capital city of Mogadishu. Today a combined "peace-keeping mission" of United States–backed troops from Ethiopia, Somalia's traditional enemy, and Uganda under the aegis of the African Union is in Mogadishu attempting to prop up the TNG and secure its control over the rest of Somalia. Violence soars.

The situation is curiously like an event in Greek mythology. The gods on Mt. Olympus were enjoying a festive party, to which, understandably, they had not invited Eris, the goddess of discord. Eris, just as understandably, took the matter personally. She had the blacksmith Hephaestus fashion a golden apple, on which was written καλλιστι — "To the fairest." Then she opened the door a crack and rolled the golden apple into the festive hall. In no time at all, the gods were fighting over who should have the apple. The golden apple in Somalia is the expectation that there will soon be a central government. As long as there is that expectation, the clans must fight over who will control it.

Somalia and the Rule of Law

Now, I've gone this far without telling you much about Somalia. It's the Horn of Africa, that part of northeast Africa that juts out into the Indian Ocean just below the Arabian Peninsula. The Somali culture area includes all of the Horn and is home to some 11.5 million people. The colonial powers arbitrarily fragmented this culture area so that today parts of it fall under the jurisdiction of Kenya in the south, some in Ethiopia in the west, and some in Djibouti in the north. The remainder along the coast is now without a working government.

What these people have in common, even more than similar language, lifestyle, and physical character is a body of customary law, the Xeer, which differs from clan to clan in nonessential ways such as founding myths but is remarkably uniform with respect to its provision for the protection of persons and property. The Xeer provides a rule of law — customary law, that is — permitting safe travel, trade, marriage, and so forth throughout the region. The Xeer is most intact in the north of Somalia, which was under British rule; in the south, the Italians tried to eradicate it. Nonetheless, it survives to a significant degree everywhere, even in the urban areas, and is virtually unaffected in rural Somalia.

The Xeer is the secret to the whole perplexing question of Somalia's success without a central government, since it provides an authentic rule of law to support trade and economic development. Fortunately, we know something about the Xeer because of Michael van Notten, a Dutch lawyer who in the early 1990s married into the Samaron Clan in the northwest of Somalia, the fifth largest of the Somali clans, and lived with them for the last twelve years of his life. He took full advantage of that opportunity to research the Xeer. The result was his pioneering study, The Law of the Somalis (Red Sea Press, 2005). Van Notten died when his manuscript was half finished. Fortunately, he had largely completed assembling the ethnographic material. In his will, he asked that I edit and complete the manuscript for publication. The task ahead is to see the work translated into Somali.

Highlights of the Xeer

There is time in this short talk to give you only some of the highlights of the Xeer. First, law and, consequently, crime are defined in terms of property rights. The law is compensatory rather than punitive. Because property right requires compensation, rather than punishment, there is no imprisonment, and fines are rare. Such fines as might be imposed seldom exceed the amount of compensation and are not payable to any court or government, but directly to the victim. A fine might be in order when, for example, the killing of a camel was deliberate and premeditated, in which case the victim receives not one but two camels.

Fines are used in another interesting way. It is expected that a prominent public figure such as a religious or political dignitary or a policeman or a judge should lead an exemplary life. If he violates the law, he pays double what would be required of an ordinary person. Also, it should be noted, since the law and crime are defined in terms of property rights, the Xeer is unequivocal in its opposition to any form of taxation.

Second, in order to assure that compensation will be forthcoming even in cases where the perpetrator is a child, or penniless, or crazy, or has fled abroad, the Xeer requires that every person be fully insured against any liability he might incur under the law. If an individual cannot make the required payment, a designated group of his kin is responsible. Van Notten describes in an interesting way how this happens:

A person who violates someone's rights and is unable to pay the compensation himself notifies his family, who then pays on his behalf. From an emotional point of view, this notification is a painful procedure, since no family member will miss the opportunity to tell the wrongdoer how vicious or stupid he was. Also, they will ask assurances that he will be more careful in the future. Indeed, all those who must pay for the wrongdoings of a family member will thereafter keep an eye on him and try to intervene before he incurs another liability. They will no longer, for example, allow him to keep or bear a weapon. While on other continents the re-education of criminals is typically a task of the government, in Somalia it is the responsibility of the family.
If the family tires of bailing out a repeat offender, they can disown him, in which case he becomes an outlaw. Not being insured, he forfeits all protection under the law and, for his safety, must leave the country.

Customary law is similar in this and many other respects throughout the world. An instance is told in the founding legend of my own Clan MacCallum in Scotland. The founder of the Clan supposedly was exiled 1,500 years ago from Ireland because he was a hothead whom his family disowned for embroiling them in fights. In the loneliness of his exile on the North Sea, he became a man of peace. He couldn't return to Ireland, as he was no longer under protection of the law and could have been killed with impunity. So he went instead to Scotland and there founded our clan.

A third point about the Xeer is that there is no monopoly of police or judicial services. Anyone is free to serve in those capacities as long as he is not at the same time a religious or political dignitary, since that would compromise the sharp separation of law, politics, and religion. Also, anyone performing in such a role is subject to the same laws as anyone else — and more so: if he violates the law, he must pay heavier damages or fines than would apply to anyone else. Public figures are expected to show exemplary conduct.

Fourth, there is no victimless crime. Only a victim or his family can initiate a court action. Where there is no victim to call a court into being, no court can form. No court can investigate on its own initiative any evidence of alleged misconduct.

Last, the court procedure is interesting. From birth, every Somali has his own judge who will sit on the court that will judge him should he transgress the law. That judge is his oday, the head of his extended family consisting of all males descended from the same great grandfather, together with their spouses and children. Several extended families make up a jilib, which is the group responsible for paying the blood price in the event a member kills someone of another jilib or clan. The oday, or judge, is chosen carefully, following weeks or months of deliberation by elders of the clan. He has no authority over the family but is chosen solely for his knowledge of human affairs and his wisdom, and he can lose his position if his decisions are not highly regarded in the community.

When an offense is committed, the offender goes first to his oday, who then forms a court with the oday of the plaintiff. If the two odays cannot resolve the matter, they form another court made up of odays representing additional families, jilibs, or clans. A virtue of each person knowing from birth who will be one of his judges, and vice versa, is that an oday knows each person in his extended family intimately and can observe and counsel him before what might seem to be a small problem escalates into a crime.

Once a court forms and accepts jurisdiction over a case, its first action is to appoint a recorder, who will repeat loudly during the hearing each important point made by the speakers. The court then announces when and where it will hear the case. When the court session opens, the court invites the plaintiff to state his case. The plaintiff has the right to appoint a representative to make the presentation on his behalf. During the presentation, the plaintiff has opportunity to confer with his family to make sure that he has not forgotten anything. When the plaintiff has finished, the court asks him to summarize his case and state his demands. Lastly, the court asks the defendant to present his defense and any counterclaims.

Then the court adjourns to deliberate on whether any witnesses should be heard. A disputed fact is admitted as evidence only when three witnesses have testified to its truth. The parties can also call in experts and character witnesses. If the victim has died or has been wounded, the court will instruct a religious dignitary to assess how the victim died or was wounded. These dignitaries assess injuries usually by applying the standards enumerated in the commentary of the twelfth-century Muslim scholar al-Nawawii's Minhaaj at-Talibiin. When the plaintiff has elaborated his case with witnesses and evidence, the defendant is given a chance to refute the plaintiff's charges, arguments, and evidence. It is not customary to cross-examine witnesses.

Finally, the court adjourns again to evaluate the evidence. If less than three witnesses support a fact, or if the witnesses contradict each other, the court will proceed to oath taking. There are several types of oaths. The simplest starts by the oath giver saying, "I swear by my virility." Alternatively, he can say, "I swear by Allah." A stronger oath is the so-called triple oath, in which he swears the same oath three times. A stronger oath yet is the one that is repeated 50 times. Also, there is the so-called divorce oath, in which the oath giver swears by his marriage(s). If it is later found out that he lied, his marriage(s) become null and void.

It should be noted that even when the plaintiff fails to convince the court of his case, the court will usually not rule in favor of the defendant until the latter has taken an oath of innocence.

$30
In a longer talk, I could discuss the role of police and enforcement of judgments, but this much should give some flavor of the legal system practiced by the Somalis. It provides an effective rule of law entirely without the backing of a government.

The Xeer takes its place among such great legal systems of the world as the Roman law, the English common law, the Law Merchant, and the Jewish traditional law (Halacha). It must be extremely old and is believed to have developed in the Horn of Africa. There is no evidence that it developed elsewhere or was greatly influenced by any foreign legal system. The fact that Somali legal terminology is practically devoid of loan words from foreign languages suggests that the Xeer is truly indigenous.

Michael van Notten's book describing this system of law deserves to be better known and widely read. It is the first study of any customary law to treat it not as a curiosity of the past, but as potentially instructive for a future free society. In his book, Van Notten lays out some practical applications to the world in which we find ourselves today, applications I haven't had time to touch on here. Whether or not the intervention of foreign governments, which has intensified with the refusal of Somalis to die or remain poor, will frustrate this potential, only time can tell.

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DontxTrip wrote:lol @ somalia, itll never happen here or on a global scale.

RC wrote:

DontxTrip wrote:lol @ somalia, itll never happen here or on a global scale.

Lol at i'll never happen here. What are you, a future teller..

Point is, if it could happen in Somalia and Ireland, then it could happen here, or pretty much anywhere.

RC wrote:Lol at "it was corrupt"

All of them are corrupt. Its just a matter of degree. And most people assumed they would get worse when their state collapsed.

RC wrote:

DontxTrip wrote:lol @ somalia, itll never happen here or on a global scale.

Lol at i'll never happen here. What are you, a future teller..

Point is, if it could happen in Somalia and Ireland, then it could happen here, or pretty much anywhere.

RC wrote:We just have a different history and culture here.

I think the fact that a place plagued with tribal conflict and dire poverty can see improvements without a strong central state speaks volumes..

Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government

Mises Daily: Wednesday, December 25, 2002 by Thomas Whiston

Those who claim that government is the source of social order say that in its absence there would be violence, chaos, and a low standard of living. They cite civil wars in Africa, drug wars in South America, or even Gengis Khan in Mongolia. They claim that these things, which are actually examples of competing governments, are what life without government will produce.

Another common objection to stateless legal enforcement systems is to ask for "just one example of where it has worked."

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.

Because of Iceland's geographical location there was no threat of foreign invasion, so the demand for a national military force was absent. Icelandic settlers held similar ideological and philosophical ideas toward the state and the law as where held by the founding fathers of the United States, including distrust of a strong central government.

The main reason the Vikings moved from Norway to Iceland in the first place was to avoid the feudal relationship between the king and his lords and serfs and thus the Icelandic settlers developed a decentralized system of governance.

Iceland did not have an executive branch of government. Instead of a king they had local chieftains. One permanent official in their system was the "logsogumadr" or law-speaker. His duties included the memorization of laws, the provision of advice on legislative issues, and the recitation of all legislative acts one time while in office.

Instead of a judicial branch of government there were private courts that were the responsibility of the godar. To solve disputes, members of this court system were chosen after the crime happened. The defendant and plaintiff each had the right to pick half the arbitrators. There was another level of courts called the Varthing. This was a Thing court in which the judges were chosen by the godar of the Thing. David Friedman has found that these courts were rarely used and not much is known about them. [1] Then there was the National Assembly or the Althing. Each quarter was represented by their own Althing. If a dispute was not settled by the private courts, the dispute would go up the ladder to the next highest court until the dispute was resolved.

There was no public property during the era of the Vikings in Iceland, all property was privately owned.

The settlers of Iceland divided the country into 4 regions. Each region had 9 godord and the godord were divided into three things. The godord were divided into groups of three and each thing had three godord.

The word 'godord' has two definitions. Godord represented a group of men. These men gave allegiance or alliance to a specific godi. A godi is the leader or chief who constructed a place of worship for his pagan followers. The godord was also a collection of rights, the right to represent the law making body of Iceland.

David Friedman states, "…seats in the law-making body were quite literally for sale." These men who were law-makers did not have power just because they held the title godord. They were powerless "unless he could convince some free-farmers to follow him." [2] This kept tyranny and injustice in check.

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. It creates secession down the level of the individual, making all governance structures formed truly voluntary.

This unstable relationship between the godi and the thingmen in Iceland helped to keep government out of the lives of its citizens fairly effectively; law and arbitration were done justly.

How were people held accountable if they did commit a crime? In much the same way as the current United States civil court system works today. Criminals were forced to pay fines. These fines did not go to the state, but were restitution. If the criminal could not pay the fine imposed on him, then he could go to his godord or a group of family and friends, or some other alliance, and have them pay the fine for him, or if no one would represent him, he could work the fine off via slavery. The poor were at no disadvantage. The poor could sell their right to justice to someone, such as a chieftain or another respected peer, who could collect or make right upon the victim. In this respect, the right to transfer restitution acted as an equalizer for the poor. In cases where the victim did not want restitution, the guilty parties had no obligations imposed on them.

If a criminal would not pay his fine or submit to slavery, he was either outlawed or would possibly lose the support of his peers, depending on the severity of the crime, eventually discrediting himself. [4]

Even in times of war, it was understood that every man that was killed had to be paid for. [5] This kept feuds short, there were never any real wars, and the violence could be classified as either a family feud or a battle. Battles were short and lasted a couple of days at most. [6] Both parties always had the incentive to compromise and make amends because sustained violence is costly in this type of institutional framework.

Iceland collapsed in the year 1262, 290 years after it was founded. Roderick Long points out that it only took 85 years for the United States to have its first civil war. That Iceland lasted so long is impressive.

The collapse did not occur until after almost three centuries of relatively peaceful living had gone by. Roderick T. Long states, "We should be cautious in labeling as a failure a political experiment that flourished longer than the United States has even existed."

When one truly looks at Iceland's history objectively, one can see what the real causes of Iceland's collapse was. The lack of competition and the monopolistic qualities that eventually came about when five families cornered the chieftaincy market was one reason. These five families bought the majority of chieftaincies. They controlled the court and legal system to a significant extent. This meant that there were not as many chieftains to choose from. This led to less competition, creating opportunities for increased exploitation over the free farmers, eventually leading to a revolt against the 5 families.

Roderick Long also addresses the fact that the introduction of the tithe in 1096 may have aided in the collapse of Iceland. The tithe was a tax paid for the upkeep of the Catholic Church and to pay church officials. The only stipulation was that the money appropriated to the upkeep of the church went to the private landowner (usually a chieftain). It is also no surprise that the chieftains were exempt from paying this property tax. Chieftains had expropriated earnings from free farmers and the free farmers had no way to keep the chieftains in check.

What are the implications of the policies in Viking Age Iceland and how do we apply them to the modern world? Sure, after so much development in the last 700 years there could be difficulties in the simplicity of Iceland's political system, but with great advances in technology there is also a greater potential for coordination in a more decentralized market system.

The history of Viking Age Iceland has lessons to teach. One is the importance of a decentralized enforcement power. Iceland's decentralized legal system managed to keep its leaders on a short leash for much of its history. Chieftains only had power if they could convince people to follow them, without the use of coercion. This minimized the principal-agent problem. Who wants to voluntarily follow an incompetent or evil leader? And even if an evil leader did sucker a few free farmers into following him, in the long run he would lose credibility.

Another important lesson is to turn criminal into offenses civil offenses and make the victim's claim transferable. The victim should have a transferable property right in restitution. This helps the poor protect their natural rights. It also helps to defeat the public good aspect of criminal enforcement, by giving the victim more of an incentive to bring the criminal to justice.

Another important lesson is that private law enforcement agencies can protect people in a free market. This will enable them to use economic calculation. Public police forces do not have this guide. Rothbard states, "Its allocations of funds are then subject to the full play of politics, boondoggling, and bureaucratic inefficiency, with no indication at all as to whether the police department is serving the consumers in a way responsive to their desires or whether it is doing so efficiently." [7]

In the public sector there is no economic indicator for success, but in the private sector firms have profit and loss accounting.

Public law enforcement, assumes absolute protection [8]. Police protection is not an infinite good that can be consumed to no upper limit. The government police system has a limited budget derived from limited taxpayer resources. Another reason private police agencies would be more effective is the fact that private firms want to maximize profit. How can a firm maximize profit without fulfilling the consumers' demands? A government police agency gets its money coercively, so it does not have to satisfy citizen desires the same way. Any private firm that does not put profit as a top priority will be driven out of the market in the long run.

Viking Age Iceland has much knowledge to offer on the privatization of law, courts, and enforcement agencies. The Icelandic Free State lasted longer than the United States has been in existence by 106 years. Iceland did not have a civil war in the first 300 years of its existence. It took only about 80 years for the United States to have its first civil war, and after the war, arguably was no longer the same system of government as it was before.

The public provision of law, courts, and police protection, encounter all the same incentive and calculation problems that any socialized industry does. If these services can be provided in a market setting they will be able to be more efficiently provided.

Medieval Iceland provides evidence that they can be privately provided, without violating anybody's rights, and the results were not chaos. There was not continuous fighting. The "Hobbesian Jungle" didn't create a state of nature that was a war of all against all, where life was nasty, brutish and short. In comparison to many governments in the 20th century, medieval Iceland could be a much safer place to live.

In a stateless society, men are selected according to their ability. Status, money, power, and greed, everything that the advocates for a strong central government stand for are not prerequisites for leaders. The worst are not selected to get on top. The men chosen in a stateless society are chosen because they are entrepreneurs, and those entrepreneurs who best satisfy consumer demands will be the ones whose agencies grow. In a stateless society, the only person who is "King" is the consumer.

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DontxTrip wrote:

RC wrote:We just have a different history and culture here.

I think the fact that a place plagued with tribal conflict and dire poverty can see improvements without a strong central state speaks volumes..

soon as its in any kind of decent shape itll be conquered..thats why anarchy isnt sustainable

DontxTrip wrote:Maybe sustainable wasnt the right word, maybe I should of said a long term viable option for humans. I just don't think itll ever happen because its not how humans think, its not so much as "unnatural" as much as it is "inhuman" its just not how we think as a species, and thats just how our brains work. The brain looks for patterns and categorizes and structures everything and the more developed cognitive capacity of the human brain extends the pattern recognition into everything. Its just how people are naturally, they'll always seek some type of order and structure in life.

DontxTrip wrote:

RC wrote:We just have a different history and culture here.

I think the fact that a place plagued with tribal conflict and dire poverty can see improvements without a strong central state speaks volumes..

soon as its in any kind of decent shape itll be conquered..thats why anarchy isnt sustainable