Spencer-1

[David Johnston2]

Elsewhere I was answering a question about what things would be like if governments stuck strictly to law enforcement as their only allowed function when it occurred to me that it would make a workable alternate universe to visit. So here's a bit of cut and paste:

So let’s look at things government does that aren’t regulatory in nature:

Road building and repair: This is a big deal. The only paved roads outside of cities would be toll roads for high traffic corridors between relatively close cities. Railroads would be much more important as the only practical way to ship cargo cheaply over long stretches of land. Cross country driving in North America would be an adventure in the worst sense of that road. Planes would probably be smaller and less cost effective because private airports would be smaller with shorter runways on average. Maybe dirigibles would be more competitive. What’s an alternate universe without dirigibles? Cities would be only partially paved where merchants and home-owners associations ponied up for it, meaning that low income city neighborhoods would probably be immediately identifiable by their dirt (or exceptionally stinky mud) roads.

Speaking of stink you can forget about sewer systems and sewage treatment. They’d be rare and limited at best. Flush toilets would be an attribute of the affluent. Lower income life would be pretty deadly. We’d need much larger families to compensate for high levels of infant mortality.

Education: With the only education being private and religious schooling, illiteracy would be much more common. Religions would dominate schooling for the lower economic strata creating a much less secular culture rather closer to the religious culture of the middle east.

Welfare: With a significant proportion of the population reliant on charity for survival, the streets outside of gated communities would be filled with beggars (not to mention prostitutes and pickpockets)

Probably the best place to live for the working class would be company towns. Not being strictly government would mean that companies who ran their own towns would be free to provide things like sanitation, paved roads and schooling.

Mind you taxes would be really low without government having to pay for all that stuff.

[gruundehn]

If you limit government to just law enforcement, what laws exist?

Instead, try limiting government to protecting the rights of the people. You get a working society without many of the ills you manufactured for the government you supposed.

[LokRobster]

Interesting idea. Are there real world examples anywhere near this level of non-government? Maybe TL5 American West?

[Anders]

Originally Posted by gruundehn

Instead, try limiting government to protecting the tights of the people.

This is a precious, precious typo.

Who determines what rights people have?

[Flyndaran]

Well there were sumptuary laws that restricted such luxury items like certain items of clothing, and many other things.
But police enforcing the wearing or not wearing of tights is actually quite plausible.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by gruundehn

If you limit government to just law enforcement, what laws exist?

Instead, try limiting government to protecting the tights of the people. You get a working society without many of the ills you manufactured for the government you supposed.

Protecting the rights of the people doesn't pave roads and build highways, airports and sewers, provide nigh-universal secular education, or keep the indigent from starving. People don't have a right to those things.

I'm kind of interested in the impact on professional sports without state subsidized arenas.

One thing I didn't do was postulate huge amounts of air pollution, 16 hour work-days, unsafe food and drugs filling the markets, or huge numbers of workplace injuries from unsafe environments because those government functions are regulatory in nature even if they were things governments were slow to actually start doing if at all in the 19th century.

Interesting idea. Are there real world examples anywhere near this level of non-government? Maybe TL5 American West?

A bit of that. A bit of 19th century London particularly in the first half. A bit of the modern Middle East.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Speaking of stink you can forget about sewer systems and sewage treatment. They’d be rare and limited at best. Flush toilets would be an attribute of the affluent. Lower income life would be pretty deadly. We’d need much larger families to compensate for high levels of infant mortality.

Just to add one more thing to the pile: the failure to devote any public resources to public health, public sanitation, and so on, would certainly have a huge impact on the health of normal people, just as you say - but it would probably also have a pretty serious negative impact on the health of the rich, too. Disease travels!

Poor and average people would suffer most, of course, but even those few people rich enough to invest in decent sanitation for themselves alone would be exposed to all sorts of diseases incubated elsewhere. If any part of a society is incubating disease on a large scale, then the whole society suffers to some degree.

This would be yet another incentive for the rich and powerful to isolate themselves from the rest of society, exacerbating the already strong tendency of such a system to degenerate into a two tier system of elite "haves" and majority "have-nots". Yet it's really difficult for a group to isolate itself completely, so the rich would still be vastly worse off, health-wise, than they would have been in a system that devoted public resources to public sanitation and public health. After all, some normal folk probably have to be in fairly close prozimity to the rich folk on a regular basis, even if only to serve them, cook their food, etc etc....

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Joe

This would be yet another incentive for the rich and powerful to isolate themselves from the rest of society, exacerbating the already strong tendency of such a system to degenerate into a two tier system of elite "haves" and majority "have-nots".

Or you know...company towns.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Road building and repair: This is a big deal. The only paved roads outside of cities would be toll roads for high traffic corridors between relatively close cities. Railroads would be much more important as the only practical way to ship cargo cheaply over long stretches of land.

Can you build one at all? If governments are doing nothing but "enforcing law" the way that is usually meant by anti-government advocates, they can't take land by eminent domain, or even hold public lands they can lease or sell to the rail company. I expect *somebody* will refuse to participate for any major project. Indeed I don't see how they can even build roads in cities.

Not that anyone needs them much. Governments that can only enforce laws can't coin money either, so I don't expect there is much trade.

Worlds with these kind of governments are basically fantasy worlds - they *actual* rule isn't "government enforces laws" or "every interaction is by mutual consent" or whatever the author claims it is. If you look too closely it will almost certainly turn out to be "everyone acts like I think they should" or "the government does all the stuff I approve of, and none of the stuff I don't".

They're basically myth world-lines, analogous to "the kingdom of God" or "true Communism after the withering of the state" or any other utopian dream world. Trying to figure out how the mechanics would "actually" work misses the point - that this rule I like somehow produces this result I like, no matter how impossible that seems to anybody else, is the central conceit of the fantasy.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Can you build one at all? If governments are doing nothing but "enforcing law" the way that is usually meant by anti-government advocates, they can't take land by eminent domain, or even hold public lands they can lease or sell to the rail company. I expect *somebody* will refuse to participate for any major project. Indeed I don't see how they can even build roads in cities.
.

There are workarounds. One is that if you own the land you are developing for sale, the housing development you are building will certainly be worth more if you set aside enough room for roads and actually pave the darn things. Cross-country railroads and roads may end up being unnecessarily twisty just to get past property owners who weren't willing to make an affordable deal but most property owners will actually have something to gain from access to transportation routes so making a deal probably shouldn't be impossible most of the time.

I'm not looking to create an unworkable or dystopian world any more than I want a hand-waved utopia which works because I said so.

That being said, one thing I can imagine are really bad neighbourhoods which as evolved shanty towns don't even have roads wide enough for practical motor vehicle access. Nobody living there had a vehicle more expensive than a bicycle so it just wasn't an issue. It would help keep law enforcement out and that's good for gaming.