No taxes, no legislature, no democracy -- No state

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

So .... you're under the impression that the IRS cares if you're on a boat come April 15th?

As far as I can tell, our operating definition of a government is:

A body that exercises the prerogatives of an organization with the threat of violence.

I am having a hard time understanding how that definition doesn't apply to a pirate ship and her crew.

The pirate crew (or the private community, or the commune, or whatever) is based on:

1. Consent
2. Right to Exit

Organizations that violate either of these become persona non grata among civilized society. Not - Not - NOT a utopian concept.

The, ahem, utopian concept, if you prefer, i.e., that of a central authority providing this that and the other to the demos, is both (1.) compulsory and (2.) mandatory.

That Hasnas essay linked in the OP is really worth a small amount of time, IMNSHO.

If for no other reason, then as a thought experiment about how you might steel-man the next anarchist you run across standing in line at the weed shop.

I get my weed delivered to my house - like a civilized human being.

More to the point: I am taking issue with the claim of unanimous consent. Autocrats the world over claim their rule is supported by unanimous consent and bang on about their right to exist.

A society of a hundred million pirates in unanimous consent about the rules. What could go wrong? The 'obviousness' of how superior this would be is astounding.

This governance/government distinction is wordplay. Governance is enforced by "diverse agents," so it isn't a Government? "Spontaneously ordered" by some force that will ensure compliance without violence?

Dissenters to the spontaneous order enforced by diverse agents would surely find themselves oppressed by the power of governance - but, at least it isn't a Government.

Of course, I could be wrong. We've never tried REAL anarchy, after all.

[Fife]

What do you do if your weed delivery service that started out great turns into a big pain in the ass, e.g., they are late, they send the wrong thing or a fake thing, they mess up billing, and are non-responsive about the problems they create?

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Tort law, which
provides protection against personal injury; property law, which demarcates property
rights; contract law, which provides the grounding for exchange; commercial law,
which facilitates complex business transactions; and even criminal law, which
punishes harmful behavior, all arose through this evolutionary process. It is true
that most of our current law exists in the form of statutes. This is because much of
the common law has been codified through legislation. But the fact that politicians
recognised the wisdom of the common law by enacting it into statutes, hardly proves
that government is necessary to create rules of law. Indeed, it proves precisely the
opposite.

Here is a Hasnas straw-man.

Government isn't needed to create the rules, ergo it is not needed.

What happens when there is disagreement about the meaning or application of these spontaneously ordered laws? Who adjudicates? Who enforces the decision?

Am I free to leave the range of authority over which 'diverse agents' exercise their authority if I dissent from the consensus - spontaneous as that consensus may have originally been?

[DBTrek]

More to the point: I am taking issue with the claim of unanimous consent. Autocrats the world over claim their rule is supported by unanimous consent and bang on about their right to exist.

A society of a hundred million pirates in unanimous consent about the rules. What could go wrong? The 'obviousness' of how superior this would be is astounding.

The governance contracts were on a per-ship basis. Each ship had to make an offer to crew members that was appealing enough for 100% of a pirate crew to unanimously accept. No pirates who disagreed with any portion of the contract were accepted as crew members. Why is that so hard to fathom?

Not only did it work, it put pirate captains in competition with each other to attract the best crew members. If a particular pirate didn't like the rules offered on ship 'A', they could shop their services to ship 'B', 'C', or 'D' for a better deal.

How is any of this confounding, or beyond the realm of fathoming?


Y'all are familiar with professional sports teams and free agency right?
Or is that shit voodoo to you too?

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

What do you do if your weed delivery service that started out great turns into a big pain in the ass, e.g., they are late, they send the wrong thing or a fake thing, they mess up billing, and are non-responsive about the problems they create?

Petition the authorities for a redress of grievances.

If they didn't exist, we would have to ensure the smooth transaction of goods and services with threats of personal violence.

Fortunately, it doesn't come up because we live in a well ordered society where we give the monopoly of violence to the state, and my weed delivery service can operate smoothly and cheaply without passing on the overhead created by employing a private army for protection to me.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Not only did it work, it put pirate captains in competition with each other to attract the best crew members. If a particular pirate didn't like the rules offered on ship 'A', they could shop their services to ship 'B', 'C', or 'D' for a better deal.

Like federalism.

Still government.

[DBTrek]

Not only did it work, it put pirate captains in competition with each other to attract the best crew members. If a particular pirate didn't like the rules offered on ship 'A', they could shop their services to ship 'B', 'C', or 'D' for a better deal.

Like federalism.

Still government.

It's mildly charming the way limited people project their limitations onto the rest of society.
Sure, Hanny.
Since you can't see a difference one obviously doesn't exist.
If it did, you'd see it.
The rest of us are crazy.
You have no blind spots.


(Exactly like Federalism. Ask the Southern States. You can leave when you disagree with the rules, right? Derp)

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

The virtue of settling disputes in this way was that the moot had an institutional
memory. When parties brought a dispute before the moot that was similar to ones
that had been resolved in the past, someone would remember the previous efforts at
settlement. Accommodations that had failed in the past would not be repeated; those
that had succeeded would be. Because the moot was a public forum, the repetition
of successful methods of composing disputes gave rise to expectations in the
community as to what the moot would recommend in the future, which in turn gave
the members of the community advance notice of how they must behave. As the
members of the community conformed their behavior to these expectations and took
them into consideration in the process of negotiating subsequent accommodations,
rules of behavior gradually evolved. This, in turn, allowed for the transformation
of the dispute settlement procedure from one dominated by negotiation to one
consisting primarily in the application of rules. The repetition of this process over
time eventually produced an extensive body of customary law that forms the basis
of English common law.

Uh-oh. Looks like I can be born into a system of governance whose rules I wasn't consulted on, over which I exercise no authority.

The moot decides and agrees on how to apply spontaneously generated law, and I comply - voluntarily, of course.

[Fife]

What do you do if your weed delivery service that started out great turns into a big pain in the ass, e.g., they are late, they send the wrong thing or a fake thing, they mess up billing, and are non-responsive about the problems they create?

Petition the authorities for a redress of grievances.

If they didn't exist, we would have to ensure the smooth transaction of goods and services with threats of personal violence.

Fortunately, it doesn't come up because we live in a well ordered society where we give the monopoly of violence to the state, and my weed delivery service can operate smoothly and cheaply without passing on the overhead created by employing a private army for protection to me.

So you would do all of that, and meanwhile keep on using the same shitty skunk delivery company?

How well-ordered you are!

[Fife]

The virtue of settling disputes in this way was that the moot had an institutional
memory. When parties brought a dispute before the moot that was similar to ones
that had been resolved in the past, someone would remember the previous efforts at
settlement. Accommodations that had failed in the past would not be repeated; those
that had succeeded would be. Because the moot was a public forum, the repetition
of successful methods of composing disputes gave rise to expectations in the
community as to what the moot would recommend in the future, which in turn gave
the members of the community advance notice of how they must behave. As the
members of the community conformed their behavior to these expectations and took
them into consideration in the process of negotiating subsequent accommodations,
rules of behavior gradually evolved. This, in turn, allowed for the transformation
of the dispute settlement procedure from one dominated by negotiation to one
consisting primarily in the application of rules. The repetition of this process over
time eventually produced an extensive body of customary law that forms the basis
of English common law.

Uh-oh. Looks like I can be born into a system of governance whose rules I wasn't consulted on, over which I exercise no authority.

The moot decides and agrees on how to apply spontaneously generated law, and I comply - voluntarily, of course.

As relates to the portion of Hasnas you are reading, if you were gonna give me the TL;DR one-sentence most important difference between common law as used in England and America and the statutory law as used in England and America, what would it be?