Mises Wire

"The peoples of the vast Southeast Asian region of Zomia were successful in providing incentives against statecraft--that is, they successfully prevented their own appropriation by external states and successfully prevented local state formation--for most of their long history. James C Scott notes that Zomian populations disincentivized statecraft via 'patterns of settlement, agriculture, and social structure.' We describe these interrelated mechanisms--settlement, agriculture, and social structure--more broadly as (1) locational, (2) productional, and (3) cultural mechanisms to repel states."

—Edward Peter Stringham and Caleb J. Miles. Repelling States: Evidence from Upland Southeast Asia