Market anarchism

All services usually provided by the state, including security and law, can be supplied by competing firms and voluntary associations in a free market.

Gustave de Molinari's 1849 essay on the production of security is the classic origin. David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom (1973) makes a consequentialist case; Benson adds historical arguments about private law.

• Friedman points to medieval Iceland, where law enforcement relied heavily on private action.
• Private security and arbitration play large roles inside modern states, but always under a state backstop.

Nozick argued that competing protection agencies would tend to consolidate into a dominant one — a minimal state. Critics add that enforcement for the poor and for third parties is weak without a public guarantor.

There is no contemporary society organised on market-anarchist lines. The concept remains a theory tested only in fragments.