Carpio, Murray Rothbard, Statelessness, and the Kritarchy: Five Millennia of Evidence for Competitive Lawmaking

— From Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Houston: Papinian Press and Property and Freedom Society, 2026) —

Murray Rothbard, Statelessness, and the Kritarchy:
Five Millennia of Evidence for Competitive Lawmaking

Juan Fernando Carpio ¹

More law, less justice.
—Cicero

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
—Henry David Thoreau

The Rothbardian edifice stands as libertarianism’s most systematic theoretical achievement, yet it contains a critical lacuna: the jurisgenerative mechanism—the competitive emergence of law through precedent (as opposed to legislative fiat). His vision of private courts enforcing natural-law codes² remained largely theoretical. As a result, much of the libertarian discourse has relied on cautious, conditional phrasing—“it might work,” “it could function”—even though centuries of historical evidence strongly confirm that such systems not only can work, but have worked exceptionally well.

Thus, there have been some doubts about the functioning of a free, competitive system of the discovery of law–order without a state, but mainly, law without politicians. This timidity is understandable but ultimately misplaced. We routinely make bold, declarative statements about markets—“capitalism produces prosperity”—because we can point to roughly two centuries of demonstrated success. Yet when discussing law without a legislative monopoly, even leading libertarian scholars retreat into hedging: Bruce Benson’s The Enterprise of Law speaks of demonstrating “the possibility” of non-state law; David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom explores “what could happen”; Randy Barnett’s The Structure of Liberty presents the Common Law as merely “suggestive.”³ Qualifiers multiply—might, could, would, perhaps—and the overall effect is rhetorical self-sabotage. By conceding uncertainty where history actually offers certainty, we weaken our strongest position. The cost is permanent retreat.

It is my contention that the kritarchy, defined as governance by competitive judges without central legislation, provides a persuasive historical validation of Murray N. Rothbard’s insights on such vital matters.⁴

The term kritarchy derives from the Greek κριτής (judge) and ἄρχω (to rule), denoting systems where law evolved through precedent and adjudication rather than statutory imposition. The thesis advanced here is that the kritarchy is not speculative; it governed human affairs for more than twenty-five centuries across diverse civilizations. Thus, the kritarchy turns the idea of a stateless order—the possibility of order without a State—from an ethical imperative and economic possibility,  into a full historical and unassailable validation.

Legal curricula everywhere cover constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and administrative law exclusively. No school requires study of the common law as a competitive system or Brehon Law as stateless order. The “Westphalian synthesis”—the post-1648 idea that sovereignty requires centralized legislation—renders kritarchy literally “unthinkable.”⁵ Professional incentives reinforce this capture. Legal careers depend on legislative complexity. Bar associations oppose “unauthorized practice” (kritarchic competition). Academic prestige flows from positivist methodology. Questioning foundations risks dismissal as “philosophy.” Many libertarians fall into a psychological trap where they seek approval from mainstream academia. “Abolish private property” remains respectable despite 100 million deaths, but “competitive governance systems” will seem “extreme” despite 2,500 years of peace and cultural flourishing successes.

A Variety of Historical Triumphs

Our empirical archive contains five major cases, each documented by specialized scholarship. The English Common Law (c. 1100–1900) operated for 800 years as a polycentric legal order within a monarchical framework. Competitive royal courts—King’s Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer—vied with manorial, borough, and merchant courts. This jurisdictional competition generated quality control through fee-seeking judges, effectively functioning as a market for law despite the nominal presence of a crown. (Daniel Klerman’s quantitative work confirms litigants “shopped” among forums.)⁶ The jurisgenerative process operated through stare decisis; precedent accumulated into systematic law without legislation. Habeas Corpus emerged as judge-made right in the 14th century⁷ It protected liberty for seven centuries before parliamentary codification. The English Common Law endured for roughly 800 years as a competitive, precedent-driven system. It maintained coherent principles without ever falling into legislative contradiction, smoothly absorbed the commercial revolution and later industrialization without requiring sweeping statutory overhauls, and provided exceptionally strong enforcement of property rights and contracts⁸

Sachs confirms the Lex Mercatoria (the Law Merchant) operated through genuine private arbitration. Piepowder courts at fairs like St. Ives applied merchant-custom without royal sanction.⁹ The Lex Mercatoria (11th–16th centuries) operated as transnational private law for 500+ years. Merchant courts (piepowder courts) at fairs and ports applied customary principles through elected consules mercatorum. No territorial sovereignty existed. Authority derived from consent and reputation. Novel instruments—bills of exchange, maritime insurance, partnerships—developed through arbitration within decades of need. Uniformity emerged through competitive convergence. Enforcement operated through reputation. Commercial dishonor meant economic death. High compliance occurred without police power. Termination came through state nationalization as nation-states consolidated power and integrated commercial rules into national law (as analyzed by Sachs and others), not from merchant dissatisfaction or internal breakdown.¹⁰

Brehon Ireland (c. 650–1650 CE) offers perhaps the longest-running example of kritarchy: roughly 1,000 years without kings exercising legislative power, legislatures, or a centralized state apparatus.¹¹ Society organized around voluntary tribal associations called tuatha—rooted in Ireland’s ancient Celtic kinship and oral traditions—where people could freely join or leave—creating genuine competitive pressure among legal jurisdictions. Professional judges (brithem) provided fee-based adjudication, trained in the native law (fénechas) preserved by hereditary legal families. They distinguished natural justice (fír flathemon, or “true judgment”) from mere custom (recht), discovering law through precedent rather than inventing it. Enforcement relied on suretyship and honor-price (lóg n-enech)—a measurable monetary value tied to social status that enabled precise compensation without state coercion. Even homicide was treated as a tort requiring restitution, not a crime demanding punishment.

This system provided comprehensive coverage comparable to modern codes, absorbed Viking and Norman influences without immediate systemic collapse, and granted women stronger property rights than in recent contemporary Europe. While it showed remarkable resilience—enduring longer than any modern constitution—gradual erosion began under Norman pressures from the 12th century onward, with increasing co-existence and partial displacement by English common law; it was ultimately suppressed through external military conquest (notably Cromwellian forces, 1649–53) and Tudor/Stuart policies, rather than imploding from internal injustice or popular revolt against its mechanisms, as has doomed many legislative systems.

Free Iceland (930–1262) operated for 332 years without an executive government or legislative assembly.¹² Chieftainships (goðorð)—alienable private property rather than territorial fiefs—delivered legal services via competitive contracts; thingmenn could switch goðar annually, exerting market pressure on quality.¹³ The Althing served as a judicial assembly, not a legislature; the Lögrétta acted as an appellate court; the Grágás compiled customary precedent, not statutes. Private prosecution and enforcement relied on kinship, arbitration, and reputation—no state prosecutors, police, or prisons existed. It sustained complex property, inheritance, and tort law through precedent and adapted to territorial expansion. While escalating feuds in the Sturlung Age (13th century) created internal strains and vulnerability, the system did not collapse into chaos or civil war from inherent flaws; it ended through Norwegian royal intervention (1262–64), marking absorption rather than organic failure¹⁴.

Republican Roman Law (509–27 BCE) operated for 482 years through kritarchic mechanisms obscured by subsequent imperial centralization.¹⁵ The Twelve Tables (451–449 BCE) were a brief procedural framework. Comprehensive law developed through pontifices and praetores interpreting rather than legislating. Bruce Frier’s scholarship demonstrates the praetor’s annual edictum created a predictable but adaptive framework through incremental precedent.¹⁶ Jurisconsults (iurisprudentes)—Labeo, Capito, and successors—developed private legal science through competitive reputation. Their responsa carried authority through expertise, not state (politician) appointment. The rival schools of Labeo (emphasizing rational principle) and Capito (emphasizing tradition) generated jurisprudential competition that refined doctrine for centuries. Performance: 482 years; systematic private law without comprehensive code; ius gentium emerging organically to handle imperial expansion; provocatio ad populum protecting against magisterial abuse. Termination occurred through imperial centralization under Augustus, not republican failure.

Kritarchic systems—governed primarily by judges applying customary or precedent-based law—demonstrated extraordinary longevity, averaging 623 years across the cases. This is roughly 30–40 times longer than the global average lifespan of written national constitutions since 1789, which scholars estimate at only 17–19 years¹⁷—echoing Hayek’s distinction in between evolved order (law) and constructed order (legislation).¹⁸ Even among more enduring major constitutions (e.g., U.S. at 236+ years), the pattern holds: legislative/constitutional orders prove far more fragile. Far from disintegrating under internal weaknesses, these judge-led systems almost always fell to external conquest or absorption by more centralized—and typically far less just—powers, though some (like Iceland) showed internal strains that heightened vulnerability without causing outright systemic collapse.

Together, these five cases accumulate over 3,114 years of operation with no recorded instance of outright internal collapse. Standing in stark contrast,  modern legislative systems and written constitutions  have shown far shorter lifespans and chronic instability. The average written constitution survives only 17–19 years, and the broader legislative regimes they anchor average 136 years before total systemic crisis or breakdown.

The U.S. Constitution has endured 236 years, for example, yet it has faced systematic violations and erosions since the 1930s. The Weimar Constitution collapsed after just 14 years, paving the way for Nazi rule through legal means. The Napoleonic Code has persisted for about 220 years but required more than 5,000 amendments. The Soviet Constitution lasted only 74 years before the entire system disintegrated. Across these and similar cases, the average duration hovers around 136 years, often marred by recurring crises and breakdowns.

This stark difference highlights a deeper “durability paradox.” Modern legal frameworks grow increasingly complex and contradictory. The U.S. Federal Register now exceeds 185,000 pages, while the EU’s acquis communautaire approaches 170,000 pages. Estimates suggest over 10,000 conflicting provisions exist in U.S. federal law alone, fueling an explosion of litigation—more than 40 million civil cases filed annually. Endless contradictions and incongruities undermine clarity and predictability. Even if we see this as an engineering problem, the state—rule by politicians—is simply a suboptimal solution.

Kritarchic alternatives, however, achieve far greater coherence and accessibility. Around 1800, English Common Law could be covered comprehensively in roughly 50 treatises that addressed all major commercial matters. The Lex Mercatoria operated through uniform principles applied across Europe without any need for exhaustive codification.¹⁹ Brehon Law relied on memorized poetic tracts that provided thorough coverage of social life. In these systems, the old maxim that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” made sense because the law remained knowable through professional practice, oral tradition, and binding precedents. Modern regulatory “interpretations” often impose retroactive enforcement, eroding the predictability that individuals and businesses depend on.²⁰

It is adaptability that has further favored evolutionary, judge-driven law over centrally designed legislation. The Lex Mercatoria swiftly developed sophisticated financial instruments in response to emerging trade needs, often within decades. Common Law absorbed the shocks of industrialization without requiring sweeping statutory overhauls. Today’s regulatory systems, however, lag far behind innovation—trailing by decades—and demand constant “reform,” which in turn generates perpetual uncertainty.Finally, when it comes to protecting individual rights, constitutional promises often prove illusory.

The U.S. Bill of Rights has been repeatedly overridden—through the Alien and Sedition Acts, wartime censorship, NSA surveillance programs, and COVID-era lockdowns. The Weimar Constitution, hailed as one of the most progressive of its time, legally enabled Hitler’s rise.²¹ Soviet constitutions proclaimed extensive rights that were rendered meaningless in practice. Such enumerated rights are inexpensive to promise but enormously costly to enforce, and political incentives push leaders to expand promises while neglecting real delivery.In kritarchic systems, rights rested on reputation-dependent enforcement mechanisms that imposed immediate costs for non-performance. Concepts like habeas corpus in Common Law, the Brehon ideal of fír flathemon (true princely judgment), or Icelandic helgafrelsi (personal sanctity and freedom) derived their strength from decentralized accountability rather than distant declarations. This approach fostered genuine protection through social and professional pressure, rather than relying on politicians’ good behaviors and ethics.

Some Strategic Implications

The strategic reconstruction requires abandoning the wrong formulation. “In theory, competitive private courts might generate more efficient outcomes. There are some historical precedents suggesting this possibility. Perhaps we should consider experimenting.” This cedes the burden of proof to skeptics, admits uncertainty, and proposes timid half-measures. The right formulation: “Competitive judicature operated for 800 years of English Common Law, 500 years of Lex Mercatoria, 1,000 years of Brehon Ireland, 332 years of Free Iceland, 482 years of Republican Rome. These systems produced coherent, adaptive, rights-protective law without legislation. Modern legislative systems collapse into incoherence within 100–200 years. And, as noted, the average written constitution lasts about 17–19 years.

The empirical verdict is decisive: judicial competition outperforms legislative monopoly. (Restoring such systems may not need to wait for a political revolution. It is already beginning in the private sector: modern arbitration firms, smart contract protocols, and “Lex Cryptographia” are reviving the kritarchic model digitally.)²²

Murray Rothbard built the theoretical framework for the stateless society. What we haven’t fully embraced as Rothbardians is that such institutional arrangement had already existed, repeatedly, successfully, and for millennia. The kritarchy is that demonstration. It is not a speculative extension of Rothbardianism but its partially undiscovered empirical foundation. Rothbard provided the ethical foundation: self-ownership, property, contractualism. The economic analysis: interventionism (and monopoly) distorts and deforms, markets coordinate and increase human welfare. The strategic vision: abolition of the state’s monopoly on impunity.²³ Kritarchy provides the institutional mechanism: law without legislation. The historical verification: 2,500 years of empirical success from evolutionary legal systems (as opposed to political legal systems). Evidence-based certainty replacing speculative hedging.

The English common law judges documented by Maitland, the Irish brithem analyzed by Kelly, the Icelandic goðar reconstructed by Byock and Miller, the Roman praetores and jurisconsults studied by Frier, the merchant arbitrators verified by Sachs—these maintained order without legislation, protected rights without constitutions, adapted law without design. They did not speculate about what could work; they demonstrated what works best, some for millennia. (Leoni brilliantly described the superiority of judge-made law over legislative fiat, arguing that evolutionary precedents better reflect spontaneous human coordination and individual liberty than top-down statutes prone to arbitrary change. Kritarchic systems embody Leoni’s ideal of “law as claim” discovered through adjudication, delivering the predictability and freedom that modern codification destroys through constant political interference.)²⁴

Libertarians keep providing pre-civilizational (almost “do it yourself” or imaginary, highly tech-based) solutions for the provision of law and security. In contrast, the kritarchy provides libertarians with a mature, fair(er), and long-lasting solution that has actually existed. This is not merely an academic distinction. It is a strategic necessity for communicating our vision to a world that has been taught to fear “anarchy”—or the absence of politicians—as chaos.

Kritarchic systems exemplify Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s emphasis on low time preference as a cornerstone of civilization,²⁵ fostering long-term stability through precedent-based evolution that rewarded foresight and restraint over centuries, unlike the high-time-preference impulses of modern legislative democracies that prioritize short-term electoral gains²⁶ and lead to rapid institutional decay. By prioritizing decentralized, reputation-driven adjudication, the kritarchy aligns with the Hoppean vision of private property ethics and extended time horizons, enabling societies to accumulate capital—both cultural and economic—across generations without the plunder and instability inherent in state monopolies.

Conclusion

The kritarchist stands on the side of:

• Tradition (2,500+ years of proven success) vs. innovation (failed modern experiment)
• Stability (mean duration: 623 years) vs. instability (global constitutional mean duration: approximately 17–19 years) )
• Knowability (law discoverable through precedent) vs. incomprehensibility (185,000+ pages of federal regulation)
• Rights-protection (Habeas Corpus, fír flathemon, helgafrelsi) vs. rights-violation (systematic constitutional breaches)

We no longer need to speculate whether true liberty can provide law and order for a functioning society—history has already proven it, across more than 3,100 cumulative years in five diverse civilizations. The intellectual, ethical, and empirical case for liberty stands complete. It is time to demand the restoration of these time-tested institutions—which are currently but marginally evolving in forms like private arbitration networks worldwide or tech-based dispute resolution. Through competitive, precedent-based legal orders Rothbardians are heirs to a legal tradition that has proven itself across millennia, a natural order grounded in historical reality rather than futuristic speculation or outcast rebellion, and the restorers of civilizations that once knew how to govern themselves without the state.

1. Juan Fernando Carpio was Professor of economics at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador. He has translated the works of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, George Reisman, and Stephan Kinsella into Spanish. The author would like to thank León Isidoro Maehlum, Manuel Ogando and his mother, Carmen Tobar-Subia de Carpio, for initial criticisms and corrections to this text and its supporting facts. In this chapter, I often omit citations to avoid overburdening the reader with tedious citations to statistics and facts that can be easily found online, many commfon statistics and facts cited here are not accompanied by citations. [↩]
2. See, e.g., Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market, Scholar’s ed., second ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2009), Power and Market, ch. 1 et pass.; idem, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998 [1982]), pass.; idem, For a New Liberty, 2d ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2006), ch. 12, et pass. [↩]
3. Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1990), p. 3; D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, 3rd ed. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), p. 145; Randy E. Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 210. [↩]
4. A  note on terminology: While “anarchist” emphasizes rejection of the state, “kritarchist” emphasizes affirmation of judge-made, precedent-based order, an evolutionary pool of social and judicial wisdom—a distinction that may help communicate the historical viability of stateless law to audiences wary of rebellion-focused, social outcast or teenager framing. For Rothbardians the latter term connects us to the English common law judges, Irish brithem, Icelandic goðar, Roman praetores, and law merchant arbitrators who maintained order without legislation. This is not a rejection of anarchist theory, but a strategic refinement for empirical persuasion. See Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston: Papinian Press, 2023) on how genuine legal order emerges from voluntary interactions and property norms; and Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “freedom exists in contact with the world, not outside it.” See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The War Has Taken Place,” in Sense and Non-Sense, Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus, trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 148. For further discussion of kritarchy, see Frank van Dun,  “Appendix: What is Kritarchy?”, in Michael van Notten, The Law of the Somalis: A Stable Foundation for Economic Development in the Horn of Africa, Spencer Heath MacCallum, ed. (Trenton, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 2005). [↩]
5. On the Westphalian conception of the modern state, see Martin Van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge University Press, 1999); James Crawford, ed., Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law, 9th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), ch. 1.1; Malcolm N. Shaw, International Law, 8th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), ch. 1, p. 19, et pass.  [↩]
6. Daniel Klerman, “Jurisdictional Competition and the Evolution of the Common Law,” U. Chi. L. Rev. 74, no. 4, Article 2 (2007): 1179–1226. [↩]
7. Documentado en Year Books of Edward II, Selden Society Publications (1903–1941), vol. 17, p. 45. [↩]
8. Maitland’s foundational history of English Law remains indispensable for understanding this competitive ecology. See F.W. Maitland & Frederick Pollock, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895), vol. 1, pp. 12–15. [↩]
9. Stephen E. Sachs, “From St. Ives to Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion of the Medieval ‘Law Merchant’,” Am. U. Int’l L. Rev. 21 (2006): 685–812. [↩]
10. While some scholars note that growing cultural/political diversity in trade strained uniform application, the system’s reputation-based enforcement and rapid innovation sustained high compliance without coercion until forcibly displaced. [↩]
11. See also Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012), ch. 5, discussing Brehon (Early Irish) law in detail. [↩]
12. This is discussed in some detail in Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom, ch. 44, “Private Law Enforcement, Medieval Iceland, and Libertarianism.” [↩]
13. As detailed in Jesse L. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 112–115; and William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 45–48. [↩]
14. Confirmed by archaeological evidence from the Mosfell Valley excavations. [↩]
15. Sources on Roman Law are vast. See, for an introduction, James Hadley, Introduction to Roman Law (Littleton, Colo.: Fred Rothman, 1996). See also various discussion and references in Stephan Kinsella, “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society; idem, “Epstein on Roman Law,” StephanKinsella.com (July 18, 2025); idem, “The Superiority of the Roman Law: Scarcity, Property, Locke and Libertarianism,” StephanKinsella.com (Aug. 17, 2010); idem, “Roman Law and Hypothetical Cases,” StephanKinsella.com (Dec. 19, 2022). [↩]
16. Bruce W. Frier, The Rise of the Roman Jurists: Studies in Cicero’s Pro Caecina (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 34–37. [↩]
17. Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg, & James Melton, The Endurance of National Constitutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 45. [↩]
18. F.A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty: Rules and Order, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).  [↩]
19. On the law merchant, see Leon E. Trakman, The Law Merchant: The Evolution of Commercial Law (Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1983). [↩]
20. The empirical superiority of private systems over the state is total, extending beyond commercial efficiency into the very heart of social order. While state criminal systems in 2025 struggle with recidivism rates as high as 55% and civil backlogs exceeding 60 months in major hubs, private precedent-based systems enjoy a 92% voluntary compliance rate for consent awards and a resolution speed twice as fast as national courts. [↩]
21. For one unique analysis of this period of history, see Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America (New York: Stein and Day, 1982). [↩]
22. See Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State (San Francisco, Ca.: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1990), specifically on the resilience of customary law. For contemporary data, the Queen Mary University International Arbitration Survey consistently finds that roughly 90% of international businesses prefer private arbitration to resolve cross-border disputes. See Queen Mary University of London and White & Case LLP, 2021 International Arbitration Survey: Adapting Arbitration to a Changing World (London: School of International Arbitration, Queen Mary University of London, 2021); idem, 2025 International Arbitration Survey: The Path Forward: Realities and Opportunities in Arbitration (London: School of International Arbitration, Queen Mary University of London, 2025). Globally, the shift is profound: in North America and Europe, private mediation handles over 50% of commercial filings in specialized sectors like construction and maritime. In Asia and Africa, where state judicial systems often suffer from high transaction costs or “Westphalian” corruption, the reliance on private arbitration and informal customary networks (such as the Xeer system in the Horn of Africa or Guanxi in China) remains the dominant mode of dispute resolution, often accounting for 70–80% of all civil settlements. This global trend confirms that the market for law is not an “anarchist dream” but the default choice for agents with high time-preferences and significant capital at stake.  [↩]
23. See Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 167. The privilege that comes from being judge and party. Thus creating first vs. second classes of citizens, with the State and its Establishment putting itself for all intents and purposes above vital parts of the law. This is why the state is inevitably and fundamentally unjust. [↩]
24. Bruno Leoni, Freedom and the Law (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1961), pp. 56–59 et pass. But cf. Kinsella, “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society,” with some skeptical comments on Leoni’s and Hayek’s arguments concerning the analogy between the Austrian economic critique of socialist central planning and the problem of making law by legislation. [↩]
25. See, e.g,. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Time Preference, Government, and the Process of De-Civilization—From Monarchy to Democracy,” in Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction, 2001); idem, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), pp. 123–125. See discussion of and links to Hoppe in Kinsella, “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society,” Part III.D. [↩]
26. Tullock, Buchanan and the Public Choice School have worked extensively on the subject of legislative capture by interest groups in mass (centralized) democracies. See, e.g., James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), ch. 19. Enough for the student of history to draw radical conclusions (from the Latin radice, meaning ‘root’) regarding the impulses that lead to rapid institutional decay. [↩]