Anarchy, State, Dystopia

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Art by Elliot Skow

In the popular imagination, anarchists want chaos. But sophisticated anarchists like

David Friedman

, they want order—just not government-imposed order. The things we use government to do, they want done by private companies. Roads and seat-belt laws, drug regulation and school administration, these are mere children playing on the tip of the iceberg. Security, that’s the tough nut. Did you violate my rights—steal my shoes, or step on my foot? In the anarchist paradise, I can call the rights-protection agency with whom I hold a policy, and they will send their officials to get my stuff back, and/or extract from you a bit of financial compensation. Of course it’s possible that you also hold a policy with a rights-protection agency, one different from mine (for anarchists hope there will, and believe there should, be many). And it’s possible that you have called them, and their officials are standing by to stop my officials from—as you put it—stealing your money. But your agency will have written in to its protection policy a disclaimer: it will not protect you from others attempting to take things in your possession, if you stole them, or if you owe them as compensation for some other wrong. Your officials, therefore, will not intervene, and justice will be done.

Unless...it is not obvious to your agency that the officials from my agency are in the right. What then? Guns drawn, tables overturned, a grand shoot-out at the climax?