It’s true that states exist, but to my knowledge, no existing state arrived at statehood from anarchy through a process even remotely similar to what Nozick describes, which I think gets us back to Brian’s point about the calculation debate and the likelihood of stable cartels. The existence of existing states tells us very little about the likelihood of collusion among private defense agencies since no existing states arose that way.

Your point about the unlikelihood of perfect competition in the third scenario as a result of increased barriers to entry is well taken. I’m reminded of that scene in The Godfather where all the various mafia dons are sitting around the table trying to come to some workable solution. I haven’t seen the movie in a while, but I don’t think the meeting ended well.

It also seems quite similar to the role of the United Nations. Different countries get together and try to resolve their differences amicably. They don’t always succeed. And it’s certainly difficult to start a new country, let alone gain recognition for one in the U.N. But only the sort of conspiracy theorist who goes on and on about sovereignty truly believes that the U.N will inexorably lead to an all-encompassing world government, no?

Then again, perhaps the difference between the U.N. and the above mentioned third scenario prediction turns on the issue of geographical monopoly. I’d have to reread my ASU to understand this difference; it’s been a while.

On a related topic, have you read John Hasnas’s Reflections on the Minimal State, 2 Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 115 (2003)? Hasnas neatly skirts the present Nozickian controversy, arguing that even if the market failure critique of fully private law is correct, the minarchist solution of government provision of law doesn’t necessarily follow. It’s a neat argument; I think you’d like it.

I’m familiar with the calculation debate, but I think there’s a fairly straightforward two-word possibility proof here: States exist.

Whaler-

I’m not denying at all that there’s a normative dimension to Nozick’s argument. My point is that he is not just making an argument that it is *possible* for a monopolistic state to emerge within this model where everyone makes a good faith effort to act morally. He’s presenting an argument for why, even under those circumstances, a monopoly state *will tend to arise*.

M. Rothbard takes a similar view (to Childs and Sanchez) of what Nozick is trying to argue.

“The Nozick contention that a dominant agency would develop in each geographical area, then, is an example of an illegitimate a priori attempt to decide what the free market would do, and it is an attempt that flies in the face of concrete historical and institutional knowledge. Certainly a dominant protective agency could conceivably emerge in a particular geographical area, but it is not very likely. And, as Roy Childs points out in his critique of Nozick, even if it did, it would not likely be a ‘unified federal system.’ Childs also correctly points out that it is no more legitimate to lump all protective services together and call it a unified monopoly than it would be to lump all the food growers and producers on the market together and say that they have a collective ’system’ or ‘monopoly’ of food production.”

http://www.mises.org/story/2650

After all, (pg. 4), he opens the section by claiming to take the moral assumptions of anarchist theory seriously. His argument clearly is not this frankenstein (as you seem to be suggesting): anarchy is impossible, a monopolistic state *will always* emerge, therefore anarchy ought to be abandoned.

If you’re doing the back work on Barnett’s point, consider pg 5: “If one could show that the state would be superior even to this most favored situation of anarchy, the best that can be realistically hoped for, or would arise by a process involving no morally impermissible steps, or would be an improvement if it arose, this would provide a rationale for the state’s existence; it would justify the state.”

To distance himself even further from what you’re saying here, Nozick adds a footnote to that last sentence: “This contrasts with a theory that presents a state’s arising from a state of nature by a natural and inevitable process of deterioration, rather as a medical theory presents aging or dying. Such a theory would not ‘justify’ the state, though it might resign us to its existence.”