Some of them, like Somaliland, are quite good and well-run, holding elections that are reasonably democratic, setting up infrastructure that allows commerce to function, enforcing law and order, and generally doing the things that nearly all of us agree governments should do. The main problem these “governments” have is that other nations and international bodies like the UN don’t recognize them as governments and thus refuse to do business with them as such, so they can’t do things like make treaties and trade the way that other governments do. Somaliland is what Leeson and others point to when they say that anarchism is succeeding in Somalia.

Others of these little governments, however, are warlords who control their areas of land with sheer brute force, stealing from the people under their control and doing whatever is necessary to maintain power. They’re able to do so because the historical accident that gave them power and money in the first place and others little or none gives the people over whom they rule little chance to gain enough power or money to overthrow them and form new coalitions or choose new leaders or even move someplace else where they like the reigning warlords better. I’m sure Leeson has an explanation for why these warlords don’t count as failures of anarchism, but my suspicion is that under anarchism, these sorts of warlords will always exist.

My question for anarcho-capitalists is this: if Somalia counts as an example of anarchism in action, why doesn’t our current system of “international law” also count as anarchism? We have a variety of different regions, each ruled by different systems that evolved over time and were chosen by the people who lived there, most of whom are free to leave and go somewhere else and choose a different system under which to live if they don’t like it. There is no overarching body that tells each nation whether or not it is allowed to exist and whether or not its rules are up to snuff, and if enough people dislike the laws of the system under which they live, they overthrow it and choose a new one. A lot of people suffer because there is no one person or body charged with preventing all suffering and arbitrating all disputes, but in the long run, nearly all of the most egregious offenders are overthrown or killed or phased out and suffering decreases because people refuse to stand for it. That sounds to me a lot like what anarcho-capitalists are describing.