What is the closest a well-known author has come to portraying the stateless society?
Schools are labour camps.
I think Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? David Friedman lists novels that portray anarcho-capitalism in the appendix of his Machinery of Freedom.
To darkness I condemn you...
Yeah, Mike was one smart cobber.
"The power of liberty going forward is in decentralization. Not in leaders, but in decentralized activism. In a market process." -- liberty student
J. R. R. Tolkien has some interesting and not so obvious examples
The Shire - has some formal features of a monarchy (thain) and republic(mayors), usually ceremonnial only, but de facto families govern their own affairs. Hobbits generally prefer eating six times a day to taxing and killing.
Bree - several villages without even a formal ruler or mayors. They're even multiracial, with hobbits and men living together peacefully and prospering.
Some human settlements in the North. Not many details are provided, but they must be either like Bree or the tribes similar to the Rohirrim before they settled down and founded the Kingdom of Rohan.
Silmarillion and, in more detail, Children of Huring mention fortified households that help each other defend against common enemies but without a single ruler.
I wonder if the Dunedain of the North can count too, after the fall of the last Kingdom. They became a wandering folk and the Kings' heirs, up to Aragorn, are Chieftains, acknowledged out of respect and tradition more than anything else.
If I hear not allowed much oftener; said Sam, I'm going to get angry.
J.R.R.Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
The one ring takes on a whole new aspect when you find that out that Tolkien meant it specifically as an analogy for political power. Destroying the one ring rather than using it against "evil" was a direct rebuke of the idea of that
"we have got to accept Big Government for the duration–for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged...except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores"
though, Tolkien wrote it during WWII, not the cold war.
The ring, like the state, is an instrument of evil, that can never be turned towards good. It will always destroy, no matter who wields it.
Vernor Vinge in his "Across Realtime" stories. Many of his other works also have libertarian themes.
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
JonBostwick:The ring, like the state, is an instrument of evil, that can never be turned towards good. It will always destroy, no matter who wields it.
What's more, it destroys the wielder, which is not far from reality as power corrupts even the "good" people.
Even without the Ring, some powerful folks (Saruman and Denethor, in particular) think that the end justifies the means and ending up the tools of Sauron.
I haven't read this yet, but I hear it's a take on AnCap. It seems like a positive review...although Stephenson likely does not properly conceptualize free market money. It appears they continue to use the hyperinflated dollar even after the government is obsolete.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
Also, I think BioShock the video game was an anarcho capitalist experiment gone wrong.
Check my blog, if you're a loser
I found that The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is the most vivid description of such a world, not because there is a utopian society but because it depicts how the "old world" of states continues to conflict with the "new world" of stateless groups. The story centers around a civil war in China over the control of what appears to be the last secular state in the world, while the setting is the impossibly complex patchwork of what used to be the Anglo-British world (United States, Canada, Britain, South Africa, and so on).
Microsecession as a strategy for revolution | Challenge to minarchist | How would a private road system work?
Found this link
Yes, BioShock's setting was supposed to be an anarcho capitalist experiment gone wrong. Whole thing felt like a parody of Ayn Rand. Evidently, the game's creator was exploring the theme of experimental perfect societies failing miserably. I suppose they chose anarcho-capitalism as the basis for this dystopia since whacko religious cults and hyper-egalitarian managerial-states are cliche.
I find it ironic Rapture (the city in BioShock) was anarchist when Rand herself was not. Granted, the only reason they even added Objectivism in was for an excuse for an underwater city.
Jennifer Government by Max Barry has something like an anarcho-capitalist society, though his bias against it shines through. Definitely falls into the "companies would fight and use violence" fallacy. But, it's a good read nonetheless.
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