John, there has been plenty written in the academic journals over the past decade debating your questions. For theoretical arguements look up Tyler Cowen "The Economics of Anarchy" in Economics and philosophy and David Friedman's response. Dan Sutter's paper "Asymetric Power relations in Anarchy" in the Southern Economic Journal (1995). Caplan and Stringham have responses to the above in a forthcoming Article in the Review of Austrian Economics (Bryan is this available on your website?). All of these articles address the problems you mention much more seriously than the naive Hobbesian vision. Perhaps more interesting than just the theoretical literature are the historical accounts of interaction without the state. Fred Foldvary has mentioned David Friedman's research on Iceland, also there is the classic by Terry Anderson and PJ Hill "America's Experiment with Anarcho Capitalism: The NOT so Wild Wild West" in the Journal of Libertarian studies, availible online at www.mises.org . Also not to be missed is much of Bruce Benson's work including his book "The Enterprise of Law, Justice without the State". Hope you find these references helpful in answering your questions.
Ben Powell --- john hull <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What prevents a particular private law enforcement > agency from engaging in mob-style "protection"? For > example, in Friedman's "Anarchy and Efficient Law", > he > states that, "The most obvious and least likely is > direct violence-a mini-war between my agency, > attempting to arrest the burglar, and his agency > attempting to defend him from arrest. A somewhat > more > plausible scenario is negotiation. Since warfare is > expensive, agencies might include in the contracts > they offer their customers a provision under which > they are not obliged to defend customers against > legitimate punishment for their actual crimes." > (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Anarchy_and_Eff_Law/Anarchy_and_Eff_Law.html) > First, if war were so expensive relative to peace > why > does it exist? Maybe peace is more expensive, in > terms of risk for example, than open warfare. > Second, > I might say that going to war isn't expensive, going > to war against ME is expensive, because I'm going to > recruit the demons who walk the earth. I won't put > Charles Manson in jail, I'll put him on the payroll. > > This is an honest question, one that has been vexing > me. > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up > now. > http://mailplus.yahoo.com > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
