Peter Leeson

Yes it was sort of done in Somalia. That's how xeer law works -- there is a great book by Dutch lawyer Michael van Notten[0] that explains how polycentric law works in Somalia. It was found by most objective measures to be more stable and prosperous than democracy there [1] -- the researchers called it 'anarchy' but actually the period of 'anarchy' in somalia wasn't so much anarchy but decentralized legal system.

This allowed Somalia to be one of the few regions in sub-Saharan Africa that had a fairly smooth negotiation between interacting with various tribes while preventing any majority tribe from crushing the minority tribes. Tribes could still live in the same regions and practice their own laws while allowing feuds to be appealed up intertribal 'courts.' Thus even if it was just a guy and a camel and another guy and a camel, you still had law and you could even dish out the consequences yourself but still be held accountable up the chain.

I do agree the 50 states was an interesting and helpful idea. Under the constitutional form of the federal government, which narrowly restrains the federal government via the 10th amendment, there was a lot more room for states to 'compete' yet free travel and trade between the states.

You could probably get a lot closer to a hybrid of ideals by pulling the powers of the federal government way back into what the constitution authorizes. It wouldn't be polycentric law but it would make the monopoly far less onerous, as the cost…

Ok, which indicators would you like to look at? Peter Leeson, from the Dept of Economics at West Virginia University did some research and published a paper. Here's a link: http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_off_Stateless.pdf

This paper compares several indicators between the current situation and the time when they had a government.

Live expectancy is up. Physicians per 100,000 is up. Infant mortality is down dramatically, and the percentage with low birth weight is down dramatically. Sanitation, access to health facilities are both improved. Extreme poverty has declined. Radio ownership is up dramatically, as is Telephones and Television.

Adult Literacy and School enrollment are both down, but given the rise in private schools I suspect this might be due to the way the data is collected. The same thing can be said about all the other statistics, as they always should bear some analysis.

But I don't think it is the slam dunk that it is popularly assumed.

From the paper:
"The data depict a country with severe problems, but one which is clearly doing better under statelessness than it was under government. Of the 18 development indicators, 14 show unambiguous improvement under anarchy. Life expectancy is higher today than was in the last years of government’s existence; infant mortality has improved 24 percent; maternal mortality has fallen over 30 percent; infants with low birth weight has fallen more than 15 percentage points; access to health facilities has…

I don't know about HN comments, but there indeed seem to be some studies suggesting that.

http://rru.worldbank.org/Documents/PapersLinks/280-nenova-harford.pdf suggests that the private-sector economy in Somalia did OK during its period of anarchy. (Arguably it's still in anarchy, but less so than before 2006.)

http://www.independent.org/pdf/working_papers/64_somalia.pdf claims that Somalia's economic performance and standard of living "improved during its period of statelessness". Cautionary note: this paper was put out by a libertarian think tank; I don't know enough about their level of integrity to know whether that's worrying.

http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf says that the government of Somalia before its period of near-total anarchy was so awful that anarchy was better.

The main takeaway from all this is probably that a sufficiently bad government can be even worse than anarchy. But it also suggests that Somalia was in such a terrible state before its government collapsed completely that any troubles after that have a plausible explanation other than the evils of anarchy.

So, "Welcome to Somalia" was arguably unfair. On the other hand, there don't seem to be a lot of better examples of anarchies available for inspection...

I don't think Somalia can properly be considered to have been stateless, but as you seem to think so, maybe you can explain why life expectancy, immunization, birth weight, infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, access to sanitation, access to at least one health facility, extreme poverty, access to radios, telephones, and TVs, and fatality due to measles all improved after the fall of Barre's government?[0]

Somali privacy is extremely profitable because of the geography and shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden, and the pirates certainly operate on a market system, even if they don't respect outsiders property rights. It's not like the US government does either. The people who have their homes destroyed by the US military have no more chance of getting compensation than the owners of cargo hijacked by Somali pirates. If we also consider governments use of asset forfeiture, taxation, fines, licence fees, etc. I think it becomes a little ridiculous to focus on the Somali pirates. There are more piracy in the Gulf of Guinea anyway, so why single out Somalia?

[0]: https://www.peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf

Some reviews of this book:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/everyone_in_favor_say_yargh/

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/06/pirates_leftist.html

The book's author, Peter Leeson, wrote a paper which provides an interesting overview of this topic:

"An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization"

http://www.peterleeson.com/An-arrgh-chy.pdf