Institutionalised force

I define a state as an organization which claims a monopoly of the use of force, of legislation, of inner and outer defense (police and military), and of taxation, over a given territorial area. The usual defense for the state, as opposed to anarchy, goes something like this: "Without a state, there will be chaos. Society will fall apart, and biker gangs and other criminals will be the new rulers".

Let's stick to the facts. Government, in its better forms, is what you have in countries like Denmark and New Zeeland. In its worse forms, government is what you have in countries like the Soviet Union and Pol Pot's Cambodia. Anarchy, i.e. stateless society, has succesfully been practised in Iceland and the American West, and less succesfully in Somalia (which I still find preferrable over Cambodia).

Actually, I sincerely believe that the state increases the amount of force in society. The reason for this is that government and its institutions provides a power structure for power freaks and others with attitude problems. I doubt that my readers are surpriced by my claim that many police and military officers are aggressive and violent, and that many bureaucrats are rud. I believe this aggression, violence and rudeness from government is made easier (for government) by the lack of competition in those areas which have been monopolized by government.

The reason for this is that government can externalise its costs to the tax-payers. The tax-payers do not pay taxes voluntarily. They pay because government forces them to do so. In a stateless society, it is reasonable to suppose that protection will be offered by private defense agencier (PDAs). I cannot predict human action in detail, since human action to an extent is unpredictable. It is not, however, completely unpredictable. Conscious beings, e.g. humen, respond to incentives, and since firms (such as PDAs) are run by humen, firms too respond to incentives.

A PDA cannot externalise its costs the same way as a government does, because the PDA's revenues are paid by customers. A PDA cannot force its customers to hire them. A PDA which engages in harassments of innocent people or warfare will have to charge its customers more. I do not believe that most people are willing to pay more without getting something in return, and thus a PDA which involves itself in destructive action (i.e. harassment and/or warfare) will be out-competed by PDAs which stays out of that.

It should also not be forgotten that governments can be corrupted, much easier than a PDA is corrupted. It is a fact that both local and national governments are corrupted, and there are examples of this in my hometown of Oslo, Norway, as well as of mafia influence of (previous?) Italian governments and the Enron scandal in the US. The incentives for governments not to be corrupted are non-existent or small, since the tax-payers are not allowed to stop paying taxes or to withhold taxes from government.

In the case of a PDA, the situation is different, because a PDA operates on a free market. If a PDA is corrupted, it will lose customers. When it loses customers, it loses revenues, and it will then be less attractive to investors as well as to "corruptors". These facts point to a simple conclusion: a stateless society, where defense is provided by PDAs, will not be a corrupted, violent and chaotic society, but a peaceful and prosperous one.