It may not stop organized gangs, but it does raise the costs of gang activity.
If paying them off ends the problem, what’s the big deal?

I just see a disconnect here. Fighting back raises the cost of gang activity, and should reduce it. Paying them off incentivizes gang activity, so will increase it.

Perhaps there’s some optimal level of payoff/gang activity, and an an-cap society will find it, at which point there will be a semi-stable equilibrium that doesn’t devolve into chaos or tyranny.

I suppose the counterargument is that in our current society (or even minarchy), government only has to fight crime hard enough to make the populace feel like they’re working hard enough to fight crime. I.e. there is still crime, and perhaps it’s sitting at some equilibrium point.

I guess the question still comes down to whether the an-cap society can hold a workable equilibrium better or longer than the minarchy society (which all experiments have shown that the minarchy government ceases to be “small” over time).

Remember, also, that utopia is not an option. The state doesn’t abolish crime, and in many countries, it is the main criminal element, in addition to the crime of its ultimate jurisdiction.

2. If paying them off ends the problem, what’s the big deal? But I don’t see this as much of a problem. Few people want criminals paid off. I would venture to say that most people believe that more spending on anti-criminal activity is always good, regardless of its effectiveness.

While you may attempt to free-ride, there will likely be social pressure to contribute. Between agencies, a free-riding agency is likely to find its customers in worse positions in cases. For example, if Alef Agency lets Bet and Gimel Agencies pick up the bulk of the crime-fighting, when Bet or Gimel’s customers end up suing Alef’s customers, Alef’s customers are likely to get lower procedural protections and/or be required to present higher burdens of proof.

Among individuals, he who doesn’t contribute ends up getting ostracised from society. If someone refuses to pay for the common defense, he’s going to have a lot more trouble in his day-to-day activities.

Moreover, again, utopia is not an option. There will be free-riding in the market anarchist system, but there is a massive amount of free-riding on the state. I’m not talking about welfare queens so much as the big corporations, both within the M-IC and without.

- Josh

1) Agreed. There would be a run on the gun store. That will go a long way towards reducing crime, but it may just force the criminals to act as a group and be even better armed. While it may deter petty crime, it doesn’t exactly stop organized gangs.

2) What if it’s more costly to round these people up than to pay them off? Again, against a violent gang, you don’t just “round them up”… You go to war with them. At what point does the cost become worth it, and at what point do I try to be a free-rider, not paying my security firm to go to war, hoping that yours does and you bankroll it?

3) This is a very strong point, and may be strong enough to make the argument. I don’t know of any situation where gangs are formed when there isn’t an illicit trade to bankroll them. I don’t know that there would be “gangs of robbers”. I’m not willing to concede the point yet, but I definitely see where you’re coming from.

Your point 3 is the main reason that, if we ever got a true system of minarchy, that I would hope to experiment with anarchy in some territories. I’d love to see if it will work as advertised.

Thank goodness that doesn’t happen now.

Less flippantly, how is an ancap society going to look? First, there is no gun control. So, a new gang forms in the area and starts terrorizing people. What happens? There’s a run on the gun store – everyone picks up a piece to defend themselves. As we know, guns deter crime.

Secondly, a new gang forms in the area and starts to terrorize people. People, of course, call their security agenc(y/ies) to round these people up. Their premiums may go up, of course, but a security agency that doesn’t respond to threats isn’t going to be in business very long.

Thirdly, under what kinds of situations do gangs form? Most of the time, they form under two circumstances: 1. there is some illegal, but widely desired, service, and 2. there is a community cut off from the legal powers around them. Number one isn’t likely to happen in an anarchist society. Number two is also unlikely, because the legal powers will have market relations, not power relations, with those it protects. If a large immigrant population moves into the city, it makes sense for a local defense agency to hire a few translators and go get that business. Not so much for the city government.

- Josh

You’re assuming that they’re going to try to “buy” those rights. My thought is that they would simply try to “take” those rights. Essentially they won’t be looking for a security firm, they would form a gang. The question is whether it’s more efficient for other security firms to go to war with them, or simply to pay them protection money.

If I’m the owner of a security firm, and to take on the local gang in a war will require me to pay outlandish sums to outfit my officers with SWAT gear, as well as pay them enough to risk their lives in a gang war, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to simply pay them a small tribute to leave my customers alone?

I think you can find the answer to that question in my _Machinery of Freedom_, published quite a long time ago. The value to the criminal of being able to steal from me (kill me, assault me) is almost always less than the value to me of his not being able to do so, hence the criminals will find that they cannot buy the rights they want at a price they are willing to pay.

If they decide to try to act as if they had those rights without having obtained agreement, their agency will find itself in a losing war with the agencies selling rights protection to the much larger number of people who don’t want to be victims.