The David Friedman cited here is the son of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, and the father of Patri Friedman (former Google engineer, now director of the Peter Thiel-funded Seasteading Institute: http://seasteading.org/).
The Machinery of Freedom is a great book. One of the few capitalist-Anarchist tomes not in the Austrian tradition, and much more convincingly argued than most.
Sadly, it is little known or read. I asked David about putting the text online since sales are so small, but the publisher still owns the rights to it.
Sometimes I think, what would the world be like without the Friedmans? Definitely a grayer, less free and dynamic place.
According to "Viking Age Iceland" the Icelanders mostly settled disputed by tit-for-tat revenge killing of each others' slaves. It was all really grim.
You're probably talking about Njal's Saga. There is a feud that degenerates into exactly that--but it is also clear if you read the story that this is not the normal way disputes get settled. We got a saga out of it precisely because the standard process broke down in spectacular fashion.
You should be able to find a copy of Njal's Saga pretty easily. I recommend reading it for yourself--even apart from the historical/political value, it's just a good story.
Sorry for coming in late when no one reads anymore, but...
Clan societies (that is, most everywhere, before state monopolies on violence) had this kind of revenge for generations. Afghanistan and parts of Iraq are famous present examples.
Afaik (no references, but I think Wikipedia supports this), the research says that old Scandinavia's local ting was a bit more of a negotiating place for feuds than a governing/judging assembly.
Edit: Life on Iceland was certainly even harder than in the rest of Scandinavia. That would probably have left less time over for that time's main sports -- pillage, etc.
I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me or not.
Medieval Iceland was a violent place, and the threat of violence was much more overt than it is now. But it was not a society where disputes were primarily settled by killing.
> the research says that old Scandinavia's local ting was a bit more of a negotiating place for feuds than a governing/judging assembly.
It was a place to negotiate disputes (which sometimes ended up as feuds). It was a place to recite the (complex and sophisticated) law code of the saga period Icelanders. It was also a place to show off your prosperity and the quality of your alliances.
I have to reiterate. If you are at all interested in this stuff, read a saga for yourself. Whatever else you end up concluding, you'll get over the idea that these people were a bunch of doltish brutes.
> Life on Iceland was certainly even harder than in the rest of Scandinavia.
I'm not sure why you're certain of that. Iceland was settled by Scandinavians after all. People don't usually emigrate to a place where life is harder than where they started.
> That would probably have left less time over for that time's main sports -- pillage, etc.
Several times in the sagas you read of young men going off to raid and plunder, sometimes coming back to settle down at the farmstead. They pillaged, just not each other.
b. Check climate data; Iceland was (and is) a hard place for farming, etc. Check population density and add that to that until quite recently, Malthus' description of human deaths/births ruled (the "Essay on the Principle of Population" in itself also answers your theory that people don't generally emigrate to places where life is harder).
Would they have any other significant assets? I would expect land to be pretty worthless without people to work it (and in other countries, "land" meant "land, plus peasants who must farm on it"). So from their perspective, they were settling disputes through a DIY tort system. Sucks for the slaves, except that if they're worth something, they're worth keeping alive. In places where they're worth less, there's less of a reason to keep them alive.
I don't know if I'd call this an "absence" of government, just an example of a relatively minimal government. There was a hierarchy of some kind here, and a concept of laws. What looks remarkably different to us today is that it lacked a massive bureaucracy.
Have you ever seen one that worked at a larger scale than that? Bigger systems require more layers of organization: there are more places for disagreements to crop up, and resolving them is a bigger and harder problem. Disagreements about the fundamental defining purposes of an institution multiply, and these conflicts need to be resolved somehow. Everyone needs these definitions to be mostly compatible for institutions to function, and this just isn't feasible without some structure at larger size. At the size of a single family, it can work pretty well – doesn’t usually, but I know some families that are shockingly egalitarian. There also exist small companies, university academic departments, primary schools, research labs, etc. which are culturally uniform and cohesive enough for this to work. Even at the size of a city, I think it’s mostly impossible: the best we can hope for is widely supported representatives who operate transparently and are accountable for their actions.
Iceland is a pretty unique case: everyone there is pretty much everyone else’s cousin, and they’re on an island. They look the same, have roughly the same beliefs, etc. etc. And I’m still far from convinced that medieval Iceland was really so utopic.
I'm thinking of Sparta though, which was by many accounts pretty culturally uniform and egalitarian/meritocratic, at least for citizens.
* * *
I think the best analysis I know is still Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I also recommend The Federalist Papers, particularly Nos. 10 and 51, for a pragmatic solution to these kinds of problems, based on the decades of first-hand experience some smart blokes like Madison and Jefferson had trying to run fledgling democratic states. (And Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is probably worth a read too.)
For a more literary exploration, read some Balzac novels: early 19th century France was the beginning of the cross-over from aristocracy to bourgeoisie, and rapidly growing cities quickly accumulated bureaucracies.
Have you ever seen a working liberal democracy before US? :)
That kind of argument doesn't work for proving impossibility.
Life without violence from government (taxes) is certainly possible. In 19th century US government spendings were only 2% from GDP. Such amount can be collected with charity without force.
Of course, in the 19th century the continental US wasn't densely settled and shooting the natives was considered reasonable under many circumstances. Get real, any country in the world that found itself with vast tracts of fertile land more or less free for the taking would have a fabulous GDP - budget ratio too.
Medieval Iceland was transiting to Catholicism. It was this transition(more specifically, the involuntary chruch tithe) that spelled the end of the icelandic system of private law.
That much I think I know. Correct me if I am wrong.
Well it took ~200 years from when they first decided to adopt Christianity to the collapse of the commonwealth (if http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iceland#Commonwealth... is to be believed). I suspect the tiny population was a much bigger factor. The article doesn't even address the question of population size or density and the idea that you can freely scale up from a small agrarian society is a rather big assumption.
Mr Whiston mentions slavery in the context of working off a debt, implying that slavery was only a temporary condition, but in fact it seems to have been institutionalized in early Icelandic society. So I suppose this system is good if you are born into a family of free farmers, but if you happen to be the offspring of a slave you might not think it was such a hot proposition.
He makes much of the fact that the poor could sell their right of retribution to a chieftain with the economic or military wherewithal to enforce such a claim, but I fail to see how this is very different from a law firm taking a case on a contingency basis if they think there's clear evidence of a tort having been committed and the chance of a sufficient payout.
>In a stateless society, men are selected according to their ability. Status, money, power, and greed, everything that the advocates for a strong central government stand for are not prerequisites for leaders
I was unable to make any sense of this, or the rest of the final paragraph. Surely having money and power could help you to get a position of authority in a stateless society. E.g. by advertising, bribing, spending the money on popular philanthropic projects, etc. etc. The possibilities are endless.
(In fact, isn't it almost tautologically false to claim that power is "not a prerequisite" for being a leader? Leaders have power virtually by definition.)
And as far as "men" being selected based on their ability, why on earth should abolishing the state suddenly give everyone perfect judgement?
Check the wording carefully...by saying they are "not prerequisites" this does not mean having money can't help you.
It's a matter of degree. With a powerful state people are more likely to obtain positions of power due to favors, or who they know rather than merit. The reason being that if you're a government official and you hire the senator's son over a more qualified candidate (to gain his favor) it's not as big of a deal if he screws up because it's not your money he is losing (it's the tax payers).
In a free society you're more likely to hire the best person for the job because it's your own money on the line if he screws up.
As Milton Friedman once so elegantly put it, you always spend your own money more carefully than you spend someone else's. And this can be a powerful incentive.
The reason being that if you're a government official and you hire the senator's son over a more qualified candidate (to gain his favor) it's not as big of a deal if he screws up because it's not your money he is losing (it's the tax payers)
You must hate most corporations then - all-powerful executive, weak and passive boards of directors, and shareholders with little influence who have to take the haircut for executive screwups.
Why is it that most of the institutions of capitalism have such hierarchical structures? Seen any anarchist corporations on the stock ticker lately? No? Maybe that's because when laissez-faire capitalists start talking about freedom, they're talking about what they want for themselves, not everyone else. As Adam Smith observed, men of the same profession seldom come together save with the intent to defraud the public.
Yeah, but shareholders in corporations have a much more credible threat of exit. The more people exercise said right the more the price falls, and eventually the management is replaced.
Maybe it is, but that's not really how he presents it.
As far as hiring decisions are concerned, I think you're just picking one factor our of many thousands that are operative and assuming that it has the biggest influence.
The article mentions several times that the Icelandic form of government lasted longer than the US - if anything I see that as a negative indicator, given how little actual progress occurred during that time. Compare the impact the US system of government has had with the impact the Icelandic form cited in this article had. The indigenous populations of North America and Australia have been around for thousands of years as well, with their "chieftain" systems of government, and similarly they just stagnated.
> Compare the impact the US system of government has had with the impact the Icelandic form cited in this article had. The indigenous populations of North America and Australia have been around for thousands of years as well, with their "chieftain" systems of government, and similarly they just stagnated.
I don't see where randomness comes into his explanation. Rather, I see his explanation for technological success as hinging on massive societies which specialize, which is in turn based on highly developed domestic agriculture, which is in turn based on the East-West axis of Eurasia with origins in the Fertile Crescent and East Asia.
By "stagnate" you perhaps mean "failed to achieve massive technological progress and massive population growth".
If the areas in question lived well and were happy with how they lived, then this would be a good thing. If they lived badly and were miserably, then it would be, indeed, a bad thing.
So your comment leaves with the original question of whether life in these societies was desirable or not.
Interestingly, this reminds me of the distributed cultural nation-states based on interests as described in _The Diamond Age_. The idea of non-location-based national affiliation has interested me since I read about that, and though I've read some about old Iceland's political system, I never knew they had such a thing.
> the idea of non-location-based national affiliation has interested me
Interests me too. There's got to easily be at least 10 million, 20 million people who think the way I think, but we're all spread out and surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who want to force us to do their bidding, impose their morals on us by force, and so on. Individually we couldn't stand up against a horde, but if we could become part of the same recognized affiliation and negotiate and work together voluntarily - that'd be something.
While I am now very interested in learning more about Medieval Iceland and it's government, I do wonder if some type of "federal" authority would have prevented it's demise?
Now, I am not in favor of the current heavy federal government and its power over the states here in the U.S. I think the balance between Medieval Iceland and the U.S. is to shift power back to our 50 states, and have our federal government there to do what it was originally intended: prevent what was the demise of Medieval Iceland.
Its demise was the introduction of the involuntary church tithe which forced the free farmers to pay the chieftain. This create a capture audience, allow cheftains to concentrate their power, and create a less competitive market for law and abritation.
A "federal" authority would concentrate and centralize power and create the same situation exactly the opposite of what we want.
Thanks for that clarity and helping me arrive to that answer more quickly. I would have eventually got there when I started loading information about this history tonight.
Intriguing that this history isn't referenced more often.
His book The Machinery of Freedom has a lot more about law without government, both historically and speculatively: http://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capita...
His weblog is pretty good reading for HN fans too: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/