Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics

144 <strong>Handbook</strong> on contemporary Austrian economics
members injured in battle. To apply punishments and resolve disputes
between crew members, pirates created an office called the "quartermaster."
Crew members controlled quartermasters both through their constitutions,
which prescribed the laws quartermasters could enforce and how
they could enforce them, and by democratically electing crew members to
this office.
The office of the quartermaster allowed pirates to overcome another
obstacle anarchy posed for their organization - restraining potentially
abusive pirate captains. A captain endowed with unlimited authority
would be able to prey on his crew, skimming booty, mistreating crew
members. and so on. To prevent such abuse, pirates initiated a system
of separated powers, which transferred authorities susceptible to captain
abuse to the quartermaster instead. In conjunction with also democratically
electing their captains, pirate checks and balances overcame the
threat of captain predation.
Pirates' private system of governance appears to have very effective.
Inter-pirate conflict was rare, order was well maintained, and pirates cooperated
regularly, permitting them to take massive hauls. What is remarkable
about the spontaneous order of pirate society is not only its success;
it is this order's success in a society of violent, dishonest, and debauched
rogues - a literal society of criminals.
Terry Anderson and P.l. Hill's (2004) excellent study of The Not So
Wi/d, Wild West provides another example of spontaneously ordered
meta-rules - this time in a society of mostly law-abiding citizens rather
than criminals. Between 1830 and 1900, much of the American West was
without effective government. Rather than this absence leading to society's
collapse, society seems to have gotten along quite well relying on spontaneous
order. In the early nineteenth century, Americans began migrating
westward in search of gold, land, and whatever else the expansive, unsettled
region might be able to offer a resourceful family. Without a formal
government to promote cooperation in the American West, people who
Anderson and Hill call '"institutional entrepreneurs" privately developed
associations and arrangements to provide law and order to westerners'
interactions instead.
To create and enforce property claims to previously unowned land, for
instance, frontiersmen established a variety of "claims clubs," each complete
with its own set of bylaws that created procedur~s for registering and
protecting property claims and private courts for resolving land-related
disputes. To protect westerners' cattle and create cooperation for the
purposes of grazing and recovering stray animals, westerners also created
"cattlemen's associations." Like claims clubs, cattlemen's associations
also privately provided rules for their members and hired cattle detectives/