Peter T. Leeson - Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think

Anarchy Unbound

Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think

In Anarchy Unbound , Peter T. Leeson uses rational choice theory to explore the benefits of self-governance. Relying on experience from the past and present, Professor Leeson provides evidence of anarchy working where it is least expected to do so and explains how this is possible. Provocatively, Leeson argues that in some cases anarchy may even outperform government as a system of social organization, and demonstrates where this may occur. Anarchy Unbound challenges the conventional self-governance wisdom. It showcases the incredible ingenuity of private individuals to secure social cooperation without government and how their surprising means of doing so can be superior to reliance on the state.

PETER T. LEESON is Professor of Economics and the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at George Mason University. He is also the North American editor of Public Choice . Previously, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, the F.A. Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics, and a Visiting Fellow in Political Economy and Government at Harvard University. Professor Leeson is the author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates (2009) and a recipient of the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Order's Hayek Prize, which he received for his research on self-governance.

Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society

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Timur Kuran

Duke University

Peter J. Boettke

George Mason University

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Anarchy Unbound

Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think

Peter T. Leeson

George Mason University

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Peter T. Leeson 2014

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First published 2014

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Leeson, Peter T., 1979

Anarchy unbound : why self-governance works better than you think / Peter T. Leeson, George

Mason University, VA.

pages cm. (Cambridge studies in economics, choice, and society)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-107-02580-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-107-62970-7 (paperback)

1. Anarchism. 2. Autonomy. I. Title.

HX833.L4135 2014

321.07dc23 2013024739

ISBN 978-1-107-02580-6 Hardback

ISBN 978-1-107-62970-7 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgments

The ideas presented in Chapters of this book were developed with coauthors to whom Im greatly indebted: Alex Nowrasteh, David Skarbek, and Claudia Williamson. I also thank Scott Parris, my editor at Cambridge University Press, and Peter Boettke and Timur Kuran, the editors of Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society, the series in which this book appears, for their encouragement and for providing me the opportunity to share my thinking about self-governance with others. As usual, Chris Coyne provided excellent thoughts and suggestions, which improved my discussion considerably. My discussion also benefited from the comments of three anonymous reviewers. Finally, I thank the Earhart Foundation for generously supporting this book.

1 Anarchy Unbound

This book consists of several essays. Their central argument is simple: anarchy works better than you think .

My thesis sets a low argumentative bar. If you're like most people, you don't think anarchy works at all. Such readers are in good company. One of the most important figures in the history of social thought, Thomas Hobbes, shared that thinking.

In 1651 Hobbes famously described life in anarchy as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. His reasoning is familiar. In anarchy, property is unprotected: there's nothing to prevent the strong from plundering the weak, the unscrupulous from bamboozling the unwitting, and the dishonest from defrauding the honest. There's no social cooperation, only social conflict, no civilization, only chaos.

Hobbes's path out of this anarchic jungle was government. By making and enforcing rules that protect individuals property, he argued, government will create social harmony. Indeed, government will create society.

Hobbes was wrong on both counts. Individuals have secured property protection and social cooperation without government and still do. Moreover, in much of the world, government has proved to be the greatest depredator of property rights, creator of conflict, and instigator of chaos, rather than an innocuous antidote to anarchic afflictions.

Govern ance social rules that protect individuals property and institutions of their enforcement doesn't require govern ment , which is but one means of supplying governance. Hobbes overlooked the possibility of self -governance: privately created social rules and institutions of their enforcement. He also underestimated the possibility of truly horrible governments. It's therefore unsurprising that he saw anarchy as anathema to society and government as its savior.

Some readers may not be quite so optimistic about government, or quite so pessimistic about anarchy, as Hobbes was. Today it's widely acknowledged that many governments fail to live up to what their advocates hope for. Indeed, some governments do far worse than that. Instead of promoting cooperation, governments in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and North Korea, to name but a few, severely undermined cooperation in their societies (and in the case of North Korea still do), with devastating consequences. Because of this, you may be (or at least should be) less sanguine about the possibility of government as society's savior than Hobbes's rhetoric suggests.

Today it's also acknowledged that at least some social interactions can be, and are, carried off cooperatively without government's assistance. Hobbes's characterization of anarchy expresses basic prisoners dilemma logic. A well-known result of that logic is that mutual noncooperation is the unique Nash equilibrium when such games are played but once. An equally well-known result is the possibility of cooperative equilibria when they're played infinitely or terminate with some constant known probability.