Currently, the state can (forcibly, of course) isolate a region where an outbreak of a particular infectious disease has occurred, while also taking preventive measures such as the culling of livestock. Thanks to this, it is possible to significantly hinder the spread of infection and avoid a large number of human casualties. Could the market possibly handle something like this?

анонимный вопрос

The concept of ancap is often criticized for proposing a multitude of private borders instead of a single intra-state space, which any landowner has the right to close at any moment. This criticism is countered by the fact that such a closure is, first of all, not profitable for anyone, and second, if one person goes crazy and closes their territory to passage, there will always be another who will only benefit from the traffic being diverted through them.

And now we have the opposite situation: many private borders, and those wishing to cross them, moving from the epicenter of an epidemic, pose a clear and unambiguous danger to the owner of the transit territory. Naturally, the owners will be interested in setting up checkpoints. Who will come to their aid? Of course, insurance companies, for whom every epidemic is a heavy financial burden, and if it can be localized in some way, they will make every effort to do so. Finally, meat producers from uninfected territories are, on one hand, interested in ensuring that this epidemic does not affect their herds, and on the other, will be glad if their competitors’ livestock numbers decrease, as this will increase their profits. Therefore, they will also willingly finance quarantine measures, veterinary control, and the slaughter of infected livestock. To ensure that neighbors do not stubbornly resist or cheat, they will likely even agree to establish some kind of mutual aid fund to compensate them for part of the losses from the sanitary slaughter.

So the market, unlike soulless salaried bureaucrats, will react to such cataclysms far more vividly and diligently.