[rprasad]

> In fact, violence can be very profitable.

It can be, sure, but it's extremely expensive and extremely risky. That was my point.

Violence is only risky because government makes it risky to commit violence.

Reality does not bear out your claims that turning everything over to private parties would magically solve the violence problem. In fact, places like Somalia and every conflict in Africa and the Middle East are strong evidence that violence would increase tenfold without a strong government. In contrast, the places with the lowest levels of violence are frequently places like Singapore or Europe with the highest levels of government.

[baddox]

> Violence is only risky because government makes it risky to commit violence.

Not true. Government law enforcement obviously contributes, but the tendency for people to defend themselves (and for third parties to intervene against perceived injustice) is the primary source of risk.

> In fact, places like Somalia and every conflict in Africa and the Middle East are strong evidence that violence would increase tenfold without a strong government.

I'm glad someone finally mentioned Somalia. Unfortunately, your beliefs are incorrect, and are in fact the opposite of the truth. See http://rkba.org/libertarian/maccallum/MacCallum-Somalia98.ht... and http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf .

[rbarooah]

Those are interesting pieces, and I feel as though my time was well spent reading them.

I can't see what they have to do with this argument though. The first one is basically a speculative essay with little to support its ideas, interesting though they are.

The second one is more rigorous, but it seems to me that it works against your argument.

It contends that Law and Order is provided by Xeer, Somali customary law, which is a tribal artifact that has developed over centuries, and depends on people being recognized as having loyalty to a tribe because it makes the tribe responsible for harms done its by members to other tribes. Thew piece also states that although private courts exist (funded by successful businessmen), Shari'a courts perform an instrumental function in creating legal order.

Both pieces also state that the Somali central state, when it existed, was weak, rampantly corrupt and never successfully displaced these tribal and religious institutions.

All this really seems to be saying is that, just like everywhere else before the emergence of the nation state, Somalia was governed by tribal law and religion. In the case of Somalia, a functioning nation state never really emerged, and so it fell back to tribal law and religion.

This turns out not to be as bad as the failing central state, or the horror stories portrayed by the mainstream media, but although falling back to tribalism and religion might not be as bad as the media portrays, it hardly seems like a model for how to improve on what we have.