I’m afraid I have to agree with you, in the short run, you can’t do without a state … the first post-Cameron Big Society riots having just begun …

In the absence of a strong central government, the primary social units devolve to fiefs and tribes under the control of local warlords. I refer you to 14th century Europe and present day Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Mexican and So American drug cartels, and intercity gangs. Rather than “friendly societies” you get a Hobbsian nightmare.

George R.R. Martin examines the fictional breakdown of a structured society quite effectively in “A Song of Ice and Fire.”

IMHO, views of potential human societies ought to be informed with some knowledge of human nature and real word human behavior.

Cheers!
JzB

You do if certain things apply, e.g. if it is itself the reward for past contributions or if it is a way of buying off other harm (I can see it as part of a transition, to ease out former bureaucrats).

As opposed to, say, the rapid “de-Bathification” the neocons pulled on Iraqi society?

Abolish artificial property rights, and market competition will drive down the cost of land and capital to the actual cost of providing them; rent, interest and profit will fall precipitously, and wages will rise to equal the natural product of labor… Abolish the state-enforced monopolies of the landlord and capitalist, and employment opportunities will compete for workers instead of the other way around.

The first sentence quoted is accurate but incomplete; it is still quite possible for that “natural product” to be inadequate. Depending on circumstances, it may be necessary to have further components akin to Distributism to get to adequacy all round, from people also getting a share of returns on capital. For this reason the second sentence quoted is not necessarily accurate (in my view, it is inaccurate for how things would work out in today’s developed countries, even with the other changes).

It is only when the means of production are appropriated by a class of absentee owners who hire labor to work them, and wage labor becomes the dominant way of organizing production, that an economy becomes capitalist.

In my view, they do not need to be (physically) absentee owners for that. The significant feature is that they are functionally distinct; this would even apply if everyone were ultimate notional owners, say through pension funds and corporate layers that made their ownership as empty as the people’s ownership in People’s Republics.

In the absence of the state as the source of social services and a social safety net, I would expect society to coalesce around primary social units like neighborhood associations or cohousing units, urban communes, squats, associations of former tenants occupying buildings, extended family compounds, and intentional communities.

History suggests that most such units form in response to outside pressures, including state taxation; notoriously, the Byzantine kapnikon hearth tax that was continued by the Ottomans made incentives for the extended family compounds traditional in Albania (and still present in Kosovo after Enver Hoxha socially engineered them out in Albania proper).

Well, I think there would have to be some form of competition, simply because I reject the idea that anyone is entitled to a living from the product of someone else’s labor, against the latter’s will. And engaging in production as the source of one’s own livelihood involves the existence of willing consumers of the product of one’s labor. So unless you can force someone else to support you, or force someone else to consume your output when they really prefer something else, you’ve got to live either by producing something that someone else wants or by their voluntary gifts.

That does not follow, because it is looking at a restricted range of options, just as some of the earlier quotations did; it would be quite practical for someone to live off his or her own personal resources, if only they were there – though whether that would be desirable would be a personal choice.

And some level of competition is healthy, simply because it results in the production of any particular good or service being carried out by the person best suited to it.

That’s plain wrong – unless and until you substitute “comparatively most advantageously” for “best” (which means “absolutely most advantageously”). The best gardener won’t do the gardening, if he is comparatively an even better surgeon. Even then, market imperfections can undercut it, though they should be smaller, fewer and further between without artificial distortions.

You don’t want someone who produces stuff shoddily or at great cost occupying their productive post as a sinecure, unless you want to live in a high-overhead world like Brazil.

You do if certain things apply, e.g. if it is itself the reward for past contributions or if it is a way of buying off other harm (I can see it as part of a transition, to ease out former bureaucrats).