Can you imagine a society without government? Is economic and political anarchy possible?...and desirable? Benjamin Powell gives an overview of his perspective on the topic and analyses real examples of failure and success of anarchism.
In case you don’t know, anarchy is a political philosophy that advocates to self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions. Powell describes how different authors along time have described what an anarchy would be like, such as Hobbes, Buchanan and Olson, and later, modern scholars like Rothbard and Friedman addressed how a society without government would produce governance.
I think a stateless society without governance would indeed be pretty awful”
He gives a comparative institutional perspective of the outcomes with minimal state or anarchism. Later talks about past terrible consequences of anarchism, such as Pol Pot in Cambodia, Laos in China, Stalling in Ukraine and more. Later discusses the case of study of Somalia, where anarchism actually really works, and concludes they do fairly well in a comparative institutional analysis, they succeed in providing some law and order without government and they are performing better than when they had a state.
Nuestra misión es la enseñanza y difusión de los principios éticos, jurídicos y económicos de una sociedad de personas libres y responsables.
Universidad Francisco Marroquín
