A true free market?

Whether such a thing is desirable or not because of many reasons, is it even possible to dispense with government and just have everything bartered privately? Obviously, the fact is that we'd still need the same things; water, power, transport infrastructure and so on. The difference is that we just wouldn't pay for it in tax (the money would churn through the economy one way or another, it's not like the government takes your cash and burns it). And of course, competition would drive down costs - although in practice this would mean choosing a water supplier that gave best value for money but with the lowest level of AIDS floating around in the product.

See Somalia (see also the external links section for unintentionally comedic defenses of Somali anarchy from the always unintentionally comedic Ludwig von Mises Institute).

All you need to do is drill your own well and have your own power generator. I know some people (cough immediate family cough) who have done/are doing it.

Sounds like a nice operation they got there. Would be terrible if something should, you know, happen to it. Fortunately, I offer a free market "security" service.

Given the one whose finished has a AK-47 collection and the ones who aren't finished are slightly less well armed you have no market ;}

He who has the biggest guns has the biggest market.

Reminded of a Michel Savage passage from his book that "violence solves everything"

Well, if everyone's dead, then no one has any problems. Problem solved!

How did James become president?

If only "there's a fine, fine line, between a libertarian paradise and anarchy" scanned into the Avenue Q song.

So basically, the only way it might be possible is to have a centralised PDA that acts as "the law", but then lie your arse off that this actually constitutes a "state" and it's still entirely a free market driven area, really.

Somalia is an example of warlordism, not anarchy. A powerful warlord coerces others and declares the territory under his influence as a quasi-state with the warlord himself being a quasi-king. Anarcho-capitalism, on the other hand, is based on the non-aggression axiom.

(Sorry to butt in, Neb)

Is there an example of anarchy that is not specially disqualified from being evidence against that particular system?

Anarchists, I feel, are the type of people who say that by definition anarchy must work. When it doesn't, it's not "true" anarchy. I've had to beat this problem out of a self-confessed anarchist before, he's almost about to grow out of it.

Depends on how you define "government." Somalia is stateless, but not "true" anarchy. However, there is similarly a big problem with describing anarcho-capitalism as anarchy. If you want, you can go back to pre-historic hunter-gatherer groups, but they weren't very capitalistic, plus they lived in (obviously) massively different cultural circumstances and a significantly different biosphere with much lower population levels.

Watching this documentary by Jeremy Paxman on the British Empire makes me think that the Empire was almost founded on this. If you look at how powerful the East India Company was, and then how most of Africa was just a bunch of people acting like lunatics and then letting others sort out the mess they left behind them. And all in the name of Victorian ideals of free and open trade.