If a small town in which property rights (the societal recognition of Lockean rules as enforceable claims) are generally respected doesn’t have one individual called “the mayor” or “the governor”, society will collapse in a blaze of lead and gunpowder, Hollywood neverendingly tells us. Movie directors show us a land of arbitrary deeds from violent types who terrorized peaceful (this is the Establishment’s code-word for “harmless”) populations all throughout the land until forcible government was established and chaos turned to order.

But as several empirical investigations have pointed out, much to the so-called “conservatives” and “liberals” (actually two branches of social democracy, dogma and fallacy based, respectively) dismay, the less government there is, the more peaceful and prosperous a territory can be with respect to its own cultural potential. Why? Because no area is better served by a monopoly than by free competition: this certainly includes the provision of personal, property defense, and conflict resolution services.

Terry Anderson has a superb academic paper entitled “An American Experiment in Anarcho- Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West“ and a lighter yet not less revealing article on the subject that has been a must-read for Mises.org visitors interested in the real dynamics of society, the State and its allies’ propaganda notwithstanding. …

How wild was the “Wild West”, in fact?Read More »