Hanarchy Montanarchy wrote:heydaralon wrote:Hanarchy Montanarchy wrote:A private mercenary army can enforce contracts as well as any state.
Hmm. I realize you are joking around, but this is an interesting thought experiment. I would argue that the private mercenary army, or the company that is employing them is kind of the state in this stateless society. You could make an argument either way I suppose.
You are right, that would be a kind of state.
That being said, I would argue that a contract is meaningless if one side has a private army to enforce it, and pointless if both sides have private armies to 'litigate' disputes.
Very true. The thing is, in order to have an economy that produces goods that people want at a fair price, you need some kind of state. Liberty is also artifact of Leviathan, because without a state to ensure these liberties, you basically need to heavily arm yourself to ensure that you have any liberty at all. This is something that many Libertarians ignore. Liberty is not a free floating Platonic ideal. It exists if and only if enough people in a society agree it has value. It is a bit like money. Paradoxically, states are also eager to exert as much control and restrictions as they can, so Liberty is always in a precarious spot. There really isn't a good solution to this problem. I suspect that in the future there will always be free states and tyrannical states, but there is absolutely no guarantee that they will be the same ones that they are at the moment. What are your thoughts on this Hanarchy?