Ancap, as we remember, is the use of market mechanisms for coordinating individual plans and the decentralization of problem-solving regarding the establishment of justice. How does such a society respond to the aforementioned challenges of an imperfect world?
Vague boundaries did not bother anyone before, but now they have begun to cause conflict. Under ancap, there is a high probability that this conflict will be viewed from a market perspective. What market benefits will the person who draws a refined boundary in a way that is more convenient for them receive? What market loss will the second party to the conflict incur as a result? Most likely, the one whose gain (from the change or from maintaining the status quo) is higher will be the one to refine the boundary in their favor, because they will be able to offer the second party more substantial compensation.
The task may prove somewhat more difficult with external effects. In some cases, it is quite simple to identify the full circle of affected persons and assess the damage caused. In such instances, the problem is solved through an amicable agreement or through a court, and everyone remains moderately satisfied with the achieved compromise. In other cases, when the damage is probabilistic, or when the circle of people affected by negative external effects is very difficult to define, or when a large number of agents produce similar external effects and the contribution of each is hard to measure—the task becomes too complex to solve in an explicit form, and will therefore be solved through the manifestation of certain spontaneous orders (that is, unintentional self-organization in society resulting from individuals following certain simple incentives).
It is difficult to predict in advance what tactics a person will use when faced with a certain negative external effect. They may limit themselves to using passive defense, reducing the harmful impact or the probability of an unpleasant outcome. Or they may prefer to destroy the source of the negative external effects, thereby escalating the conflict with the owner of that source. They may ignore the harmful impact because it is cheaper to tolerate it than to bother solving the problem. They may decide that since others are doing it, they have the right to do so as well, and begin producing similar external effects. Finally, they may leave the zone of the external effect’s operation.
However, we can predict that, gradually, such spontaneous orders will be developed by people from these elementary reactions that minimize the total negative impact of the external effect. In roughly the same way, market interaction tends toward the most efficient use of available resources. This prediction corresponds to empirical observations. For instance, legal historians claim that decisions developed by common law (i.e., through judicial precedents) strive for market efficiency (meaning the benefit to those who win cases exceeds the loss to those who lose them—taking into account, of course, that a direct comparison of values for different subjects is incorrect).