Help Please! I need examples of Free Societies in literature or history.

[danda]

Hey folks, I'm doing research for a liberty themed book with a constructive / hopeful message.

I'm presently looking for positive examples/illustrations of free societies from either fiction or real history.

The first two fictional examples I can think of are:
* Galts Gulch -- Ayn Rand
* Pallas -- L. Neil Smith.

L. Neil Smith did an amazing job fleshing out a fully functioning society. Can anyone think of any other examples like that? Something by Heinlein perhaps?

In real world history, I can't think of any great examples of a truly free society, though I imagine some tribes have come pretty close.

Help?

 

[jmdrake]

The Vikings were pretty free.



I think the Scots were was well.

 

[TheTexan]

Does recent history count? Because America is free'est country on the planet, and perhaps, the universe

 

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

It depends on how discretely you define "free society. If you mean a limited state with a pure free market, historical examples are hard to find. Here are a few decent faximiles (in the realm of economics at least):

Medieval Iceland
Medieval Ireland
Prussia under Frederick the Great
Russia under Catherine the Great
The American Old West
Hong Kong under British lease
Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew

 

[Indy Vidual]

In real world history, I can't think of any great examples of a truly free society...

Burning Man (One week a year w/ high levels of true freedom)

 

[VIDEODROME]

Curiously, a lot of Zombie Apocalypse movies come with an aspect of Freedom. One of my favorites is the original Dawn of the Dead. The people living in the mall are free with an abundance of supplies. One can guess that by extension, all the people that aren't careless idiots are surviving in similar circumstances.

It's important to even consider the resulting anarchy as the whole thing is ruined by a marauding biker gang.

Also before that, this movie shows and usual look a Freedom and Contentment gradually becoming a mix of boredom, restlessness, and even a little self-loathing or a desire to eventually escape from the Mall.


NOTE: There is a remake which obviously has a high budget production, but the characters are total idiots.

 

[erowe1]

Zomia.
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Not-Being-Governed-Anarchist/dp/0300169175/

Medieval Ireland. Look around mises.org and you should be able to find a lot on this. Here's one to get you started:
https://mises.org/library/private-law-emerald-isle

Ancient pre-monarchic Israel. I don't remember for sure, but I think you may find some discussion of that in here:
http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Christianity-Jacques-Ellul/dp/1606089714/

You might also include the US during the Gilded Age, roughly between Reconstruction and 1913.

 

[danda]

There's some good suggestions here, thanks.

Can anyone think of any more good fictional examples by libertarian-minded authors who envision a brighter tomorrow?

In particular, I'm interested in the types of private institutions or social customs that an advanced society might rely upon to replace current government services ... justice, civil and criminal law, roads and eminent domain, environment and "public" resources such as air, water, dealing with violent criminals, national defense, etc. I'm less interested in the dry theory of each subject than in envisioning a modern "golden age" society where all this is already working well based on first principles, ie non-agression axiom.

For whoever asked, by free I do mean truly free societies. Basically a voluntaryist or anarchist society, not a minarchy. So this implies no king or leader with power over others. Any leadership would be by example, by suggestion, reputation, etc. Not by force. Law and justice would be private. no taxation or standing army. etc. all the things that logically follow from the non-aggression axiom.

Zomia seems interesting, I will research it more. Medieval Irish law also interesting, but the article states they still had a king and some type of caste system.

thanks!

 

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

Men Like Gods by HG Wells comes to mind.

 

[erowe1]

In particular, I'm interested in the types of private institutions or social customs that an advanced society might rely upon to replace current government services ... justice, civil and criminal law, roads and eminent domain, environment and "public" resources such as air, water, dealing with violent criminals, national defense, etc.

For this I think you would probably get better ideas from nonfiction works that address these as theoretical issues than you would from fiction works or historical examples from pre-modern times.

 

[erowe1]

Medieval Irish law also interesting, but the article states they still had a king and some type of caste system.

That's true. But a pure stateless society would be one with zero theft, murder, or kidnapping. Such a thing has never existed nor will ever exist until a major metaphysical transformation of the whole universe takes place. All we have are degrees of freedom and tyranny.

 

[danda]

I sometimes despair of the same idea, that humanity is simply too flawed to ever create and maintain a free society.

But then I remember that widespread social progress has occurred where it seemed impossible before.

Imagine that you and I are both farmers in feudal England circa 1200 A.D. Our Lord owns the fields. We work them. We are allowed to keep enough to take care of our families and live a meager existence. In a good year. ...when we aren't being subscripted into another one of the Lord's battles, for example.

So you and I are out in the field, and I turn to you and tell you that I have a vision of a world where there are no more Lords, where we each can own our land and reap the profits in full, where we each can have a voice in deciding our laws and battles. Further yet, I envision that in such a world, incentives will be properly aligned and thus wonderful advancements will be made to the point where our descendants may work sitting down or not at all, that people may fly, etc.

Standing out in that field, most likely you will just laugh at me. Even if you agree in principle it should work, it would seem impossible to achieve. There will always be another Lord.

Yet somehow the necessary social change DID occur. Society DID progress. At both the individual and societal level.

I remain hopeful that it can and will again. That a true golden age is possible with the right set of principles in place. Even if it looks quite bleak right now.

That's true. But a pure stateless society would be one with zero theft, murder, or kidnapping. Such a thing has never existed nor will ever exist until a major metaphysical transformation of the whole universe takes place. All we have are degrees of freedom and tyranny.

 

[danda]

Hmm. I took a look on amazon. It seems an interesting book and kind of reminds me of the space-faring Eloi utopia in Stephen Baxter's "The TimeShips" sequel to "The Time Machine". However from the description, Welles was writing about a utopian socialist society, not a free society.

Further, those people had evolved enough to fundamentally change their human nature. That's cheating.

Men Like Gods by HG Wells comes to mind.

 

[HVACTech]

my understanding is that the best example would have been the Shaolin priests in Okinawa.

they lived without any form of "Government" for a longtime. and then, the Japanese started invading them.
statists tend to do that.
and then they invented judo or karate or whatever.
the problem (and our founders understood this) is NOT that people need "government".

the problem is the fucking statists.

left, right. or liberal and conservative. all of these discussions are a sham and a smokescreen.
the proper discussion is Anarchy or statism.
each representing polar extremes.

(end of rant)

 

[The Gold Standard]

Bob Murphy writes and speaks quite often about how the various services might be performed without a state. Just google Robert P. Murphy.

 

[VIDEODROME]

I'm interested in the Open Source Software movement. There is an unofficial leadership involved but it's a voluntary group effort. It might be a good direction for society if Technology plus Open Source Transparency changes the way collective effort is handled.

I mean the problem is we want nice things that no single person can really do on their own like build infrastructure. Open Source has been been giving us powerful software and operating systems without the usual amount of money or authority involved.

Maybe what is needed someday is Open Source government and maybe that can be accomplished through technology.

 

[fisharmor]

Look much deeper into pre-conquest Irish systems. Writing it off because there were kings in that system is like purposely ignoring what goes on in private business because they have presidents.

Also don't get caught up on "medieval" Ireland. Ireland's stateless legal system (the part that is most important) goes back to prehistory.

If you can get funding, the one place that needs active research done asap is Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. KWC was only demolished in 1994 so there are tons of people out there who can still ay what it was like and how stuff worked ... but the Chinese are probably more actively disinterested in the world finding out how it worked without a state than our gaggle of statist trolls on this forum are... and that's saying quite a lot. So there isnt going to be an indiginous effort to document it.

 

[Rothbardian Girl]

This isn't what you asked for at all, but it's still interesting.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2635646 (full paper available at this link)

Re-Evaluating Community Policing in a Polycentric System

Abstract:
Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues in The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University in Bloomington conducted fieldwork in metropolitan police departments across the United States. Their finding in support of community policing dealt a blow to the popular belief that consolidation and centralization of services was the only way to effectively provide citizens with public goods. However, subsequent empirical literature suggests that the widespread implementation of community policing has been generally ineffective and in many ways unsustainable. We argue that the failures are the result of strategic interplay between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies that has resulted in the prioritization of federal over community initiatives, the militarization of domestic police, and the erosion of genuine community-police partnerships.

 

[juleswin]

I think this whole exercise is the OP's attempt at playing gotcha. See, even in a forum of people advocating for a free society, they cannot come up with one good example of said free society in history. The truth is, before the American constitution, they hadn't been a society that guaranteed the level of freedom the constitution guaranteed. So regardless of if there has ever been one in history, we know from experience that our lives improve when it becomes freer. So I advocate that said freedom we enjoy now continue to grow until and I mean until it reaches the point of diminishing returns.

So fuck history, lets make history now.

 

[fisharmor]

I agree Jules but there is also the point that other societies enjoyed more different freedom than the US constitution allowed.

For instance in pre conquest Ireland there was no question whether women could own property, and there was no law codifying that certain people only counted as three fifths of a person.

So it makes sense to study these systems so we know what to shoot for.