The new chapter of The Machinery of Freedom, Default Rules, Economies of Scale, and the Stability Problem, is a more in-depth analysis of the possibility of a stateless society’s collapse compared to the first edition of the book. Forty years ago, the author’s mood was more overconfident, but later serious objections were raised against the proposed model, and he had to make a number of clarifications.

The key clarification was the idea that regardless of whether a state exists or not, the social contract is simply a peaceful agreement on which distribution of rights will not provoke people’s desire to violently change the status quo. This echoes, in some ways, my formulation that rights are claims that are tolerated. Then, Friedman adds the apparatus of Schelling points used in several previous chapters and shows that a stateless society is indeed susceptible to the danger of collapse during its formative stage, but if the rules become more or less settled, the resulting inertia will then provide the necessary stability.