Everyone is used to the existence of government. If the police were suddenly replaced by a dozen private police firms, people would expect CEOs to say, “Let’s attack the competition and become the new government.” Since people would expect this, many CEOs would expect such a proposal to succeed – and some would advocate it. Since these CEOs wouldn’t sound crazy, many of their underlings would go along with their plan – and their plan (or a rival’s) would probably come to fruition.
So far, so bad. Suppose however that a stable anarcho-capitalist system existed. Then this logic reverses. Since everyone is used to this system, people expect private police firms to amicably resolve disputes. In such a setting, a CEO who advocates a war of conquest would seem crazy – and his pleas to his co-workers would fall on deaf ears. In a stable anarcho-capitalist society, a war-mongering CEO doesn’t get a war. He gets fired.
Bryan makes a similar point subsequently.
Is the equilibrium locally stable or globally stable? Think of a roulette wheel stopped with ball resting in number 12. If there is a small disturbance, such as slowly spinning the wheel, the ball will remain where it is, in a locally stable equilibrium. However, if you take the ball out and spin the wheel, the ball could land in any slot. There is nothing globally stable about number 12. If it turns out that no matter where the ball starts it always lands on number 12, a gambler would say that the wheel is fixed*, and an economist would say that 12 is a globally stable equilibrium.
Bryan is arguing that democratic government is only locally stable. If the roulette wheel enabled us to land on anarcho-capitalism until we got used to it, we would not return to democratic government. A similar argument might be made about higher education. If the roulette wheel landed us in a culture in which not going to college is regarded as higher status than going to college, then we would not return to treating a college degree as important.
My own view is that the college equilibrium is not globally stable but that the democratic government equilibrium is globally stable. That is, I think that once the college equilibrium becomes sufficiently disturbed, it will never return. However, in the absence of government, my guess is that social norms would not be sufficiently strong to protect people from defecting coalitions. I think that government is likely to return.
*(meaning that it has been tampered with to make it unfair)
I don’t read Bryan as saying anything that strong, that anarcho-capitalism is “globally stable,” and I don’t think your language of “equilibrium” helps clarify anything. I think all he’s trying to say is that culture and expectations are extremely important in what kinds of institutions you can raise. In the barbarous culture of a thousand years ago, democracy may have been unstable, because all the local despots would attack it. But in the more civilized culture today, democracy has spread widely. Bryan is arguing the same for anarcho-capitalism in some future, even more civilized culture, but I don’t think he’s saying much about stability. Democracies return to despotism all the time, even today.
Institutions like democracy or anarcho-capitalism are merely tools that can enable and reinforce the pre-existing culture and as an anarcho-capitalist myself, I believe it will allow us to fulfill our highest potential. But I readily admit that if it were tried on a bunch of savages somewhere, it may not yield the best results, just as democracy has failed almost everywhere it has been tried, from Venezuela lapsing to the despot Chavez to the largest democracy in the world, India, bogging down in poverty for decades and decades. The most successful democracy in the world, the United States of America, had some unique circumstances for 150 years, a culture that thrived with and supported a limited, democratic republic.
In sum, I don’t think the mathematical language of “stability” and “equilibrium” is useful at all, particularly since there’s always a chance of transitions to chaos or despotism. And Bryan’s case for culture is paramount: institutions like democracy or anarcho-capitalism or only possible in the right cultures, but if you can get there, the latter can yield a much better society.
“Suppose however that a stable anarcho-capitalist system existed.”
Should we assume a can opener, while we’re at it?
Bryan seems to think that cultural expectations or morals or taboos regarding the use of force can effectively replace the functions of the state in deterring aggression, exploitation, etc. I doubt that. It seems to me that the persistence of those taboos would require the continued existence of a state, also, with its deterrent effects and its uniform educational systems. I would point to Douglas North and Barry Weingast and say that Bryan is simply not grappling with how societies deal with the problem of organized violence.
I think you’re taking what Bryan said a bit too far. He clearly notes that an anarcho-capitalist society would have “private police firms” to deal with your “problem of organized violence.” Rather, the question is one of stability. Would democracy survive among barbarians? Likely not. Yet, enough time has passed and we’ve become civilized enough that most countries today are democracies. Similarly, as we get more civilized, some will try anarcho-capitalism and those with the best culture to handle it will thrive.
In theory, that sounds reasonable, but this seems to assume a future that is largely free of barbarians. Is that a realistic expectation? A private police force might do an adequate job of maintaining internal security (although it might also pose a security threat itself, in some ways), but what about external security threats, particularly from organized groups with political or economic aims?
My suspicion here is that a society which can use coercive taxation to fund a military build-up will have a distinct advantage over an anarcho-capitalist society where the incentive for each citizen is to free ride on the security services paid for by others.
Why does it “assume a future that is largely free of barbarians?” Barbarians could not compose a democracy or a working anarcho-capitalist system, but just as democracies today are often surrounded by despots and survive, anarcho-capitalism would survive external threats from barbarians also. I’m not well-read on anarcho-capitalism, but I think the common answer to external threats is to mobilize the private police firms for external defense also. Do you think these police departments and a populace armed to the teeth couldn’t rebuff Mexico or Canada? 😉 They could band together under such extreme circumstances and the private security firms would go back to competing with each other once the external threat is neutralized. But that’s only my answer, you may want to read The Machinery of Freedom for a more widely accepted answer.
The experiment has been done: Saga period Icelandic Godar approximate anarcho capitalist security CEOs. Sometimes a godar would stretch legality until it bent – but he would not openly engage in a blatant war of aggression
Further, when one Godar stretched legality unreasonably far, other Godar might encourage offended individuals to illegally kill him. This was a drift towards civil war, but at its most violent, every individual killed was named, remembered, and blood money paid for him – it never quite became civil war.