Well, let’s say, in Somalia, Micronesia, and other failed states, since it is easier there to achieve a more or less even balance of the potential for violence with relatively small resource expenditures (conventionally speaking, buying a Kalashnikov) due to the absence of an overwhelmingly powerful agent enforcing a monopoly on violence in that territory, as well as the culture of servility and economic structure that has formed around it?

L29Ah (the question is accompanied by a donation of 0.00013567btc)

I will remind the readers that the balance of the potential for violence is one of the criteria for the stability of a stateless society according to Hirschleifer. Other criteria are a stable community composition and the absence of a significant number of people pushed to the brink of survival. Indeed, some secluded tropical paradise where coconuts fall right at your feet and where peaceful, smiling natives with Kalashnikovs live can easily build an anarchic society. But it is not enough to have anarchy; what is desired specifically is anarcho-capitalism.

And anarcho-capitalism requires a bit more than the absence of a state. It requires capitalism, which means commodity-money relations. So our imaginary tropical paradise will need a full-fledged commodity economy integrated into global trade. But international trade requires international recognition, and that is a serious limitation.

While composing his Meganesian cycle, Aleksandr Rozov particularly emphasized that the stateless society in the Pacific Ocean is being built not by real natives, but by outsiders. In reality, they are full-fledged white people with the notions of property, freedom, and law appropriate for white people—they simply deny the state. They only pretend to be natives in order to legitimize their claims in the eyes of the international community and avoid becoming pariahs leading a miserable existence under economic sanctions.

In real life, a similar project of anarcho-colonialism was attempted by the Seasteading Institute, but it encountered numerous legislative and technological restrictions, and now, judging by the website, it has degenerated from a libertarian project into something smelling of eco-activism.

So it is hard to say what is easier: to ensure the transition to anarchy in a capitalist state, to ensure the transition to capitalism in a failed state, or to organize a “freedom landing” in some toy state in Oceania. One thing can be said for sure: the matter is not limited solely to the balance of the potential for violence.