[koanarc]

As a self-described anarcho-capitalist, I have to say that most such theories of privately-owned and -operated courts and police that I see thrown about on the internet are terrible, extraordinarily simplistic systems that just make us all look like naive utopians.

To my mind, a much more sensible system would resemble the federalized structure we have now in the States, only without physical/territorial borders preventing an individual's migration from one jurisdiction to another, and without any considerable barriers to entry for emergent States.

Essentially, a minimal and immutable Constitution with a federal registry of member states and arbitration services -- member states which any group of people may establish on their own, and to which any individual may freely subscribe (or renounce); arbitration services publicly listed, from which the member states (and individuals) could select ordered preferences for, with a Federal arbitration council as a final fall-back option, should no parties have coincident arbitration services on their lists.

My notion of anarchism is not that it is against laws or the establishment of governments, only against compulsory subscription and subjugation to them. Removal of territorial borders as the basis for what constitutes a "State" and allowing a free market in decentralized legal systems to arise, under controlled conditions that provide rules and means for these budding governments to interact and cooperate with each other within a larger scope of law, is the only way any stable form of anarchism could ever occur.

tl;dr As an AnCap, I support a federalized breed of constitional clan politics, NOT Rent-A-Cops and Kangaroo Courts.

[andrewflnr]

Can states in your system overlap physically, or would they have borders at all? In either case, how would jurisdiction be decided?

[koanarc]

No borders, so yes, they would necessarily overlap physically. In more sparsely populated areas, of course, you'd likely find most people (and thus, their private property) falling under only a handful of different jurisdictions, and so mostly resembling counties/states as we have today.

But jurisdiction in cases between two or more parties who subscribe to different states/clans/legal systems could be determined in any number of ways: - by (most commonly, I'd expect) arrangements and treaties between the most prominent/populous states; - by having largely mutual sets of common law to begin with; - by smaller states having statutes deferring to others' laws except in particular types of cases (a sort of inheritance system, allowing smaller states to mirror the laws of larger states which have existing treaties and case law); - by arbitration through mutually agreed-upon services, or the federal arbitration service; - or even by federal statute, in Constitutional cases, human rights cases, and cases against states/clans themselves.

Yes, inter-state law could in many situations become extremely complex, particularly in metropolitan areas with diverse populations; however, the low barrier to entry for states and the fluidity with which a person could change their affiliation would allow legal systems to evolve at such a rapid pace that overcomplicated, unjust, or murky bodies of law would be weeded out or refined by actually having to compete with the creation of simpler and fairer ones -- a process that politics today seems designed to avoid entirely.