Private Utopias

So I’m struggling my way through Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (is that the order, I think I change it each time), and after Nozick makes this large book-long argument premised on the assumption that we have Lockean natural rights, and from that point, a redistributive government is an illegitimate one, we get to the last portion of the book, where Nozick argues for private utopias with exit rights as opposed to statist redistributors. The Kibbutz instead of the Warsaw Bloc, if you will.

Apparently, small communities can violate libertarian constraints as long as they operate within a laizzes-faire framework — similar to California banning taxes but allowing binding homeowner’s associations. Interesting. If we banned government from picking up the trash, we would band together and create a track-pickup association or hire a trash-pickup association.

One major problem for small groups of individuals trying to band together and form smaller more efficient entities is the availablility of capital to fund such experiments. Being civic-minded instead of profit-minded, is it harder to find investors? (Not sure — do the math on the principals taking out a loan to set it up & then paying the loan back over a term of years — shouldn’t really be a problem — of course then you have a state — but a voluntary one).

Suburban government and private rule. Libertarian Heterotopia.

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