Indeed, in an anarchy, you don't have any regime to stage revolutions against. But violence? Oh, you'd get plenty of that. It would just be distributed, instead of organized: survival of the fittest.
And then you should also understand that anarchy doesn't mean no laws and policing. It means that people choose to live by the laws they want (and not by voting, but by becoming customers of different law firms) and people choose private protection agencies to pay to instead of being bitten by state police troopers if they disobey. If people decide they don't like the service, they stop paying and go to a competitor. Now try doing that with a state and taxation.
We may be expansive, but having your home burned cause you signed with inferior security provider is far more expansive, right?
How exactly this situation differs from payign mafia for protection? At least with state there's just one mafia to pay off, and you can vote for the godfather every few years.
Apply logic to your hypothetical situation instead of FUD and you will see how things will work. Governments are simply monopolies on power and law and we know very well monopolies do not work out good for customers.
If you say that regular people will prevent that, then you're just back to having violent revolutions, except against monopolies, instead of governments.
In the free market cartels break down very fast, because one member eventually decides to defect or because another powerful player comes to the market and realizes he can make a lot of money by providing customers with a better and cheaper service than the cartel members.
Generally, if most people agree they don't want rulers, there will be no rulers. The only reason why governments keep their power is because the managed to convince people that the alternative is a complete chaos and destruction, while in reality it is only governments who create chaos and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Even the most oppressive government can't go for a long time using just force, it has to lie and convince people. If it can't, it is brought down.
How about Google? Is there any real competition to ad words? Or google search? Does anybody use Bing without being forced? Duck Duck Go is nice, but it has worse results and will have worse results forever.
How about companies making desktop CPUs? Oligopoly isn't monopoly per se, but it's so close it doesn't matter. Nobody enforced that, it arised by itself.
Guess what - making processors in ever smaller process has huge upfront costs and small costs per unit. But that's just economic myth, right?
What I really insist on is that if a monopoly is doing a bad job and if there is no government to protect it, it will inevitably be challenged. How long did it take for Google to challenge Apple's iPhone? Not long. And they really had a huge advantage and were actually doing a pretty good job.
The only true monopoly is a government because even if you wanted to ever challenge it, you'd lose your money, freedom and possibly life. Governments have no respect for people at all because people are not their customers. They know that people have no choice but to pay.
Yep, monopoly can fall, like everything else. Still the statement "natural monopoly is a myth" is false. Besides - states can fall just like companies. They are just bigger and fall slower than companies, but they eventually all fall.
But people do have a choice, at least in the well run countries. They are more like share owners than customers - they can vote on who will be on the board. And they can migrate if they doesn't like some policy. For example in EU you can always move to another country if you don't like your own. It's why I don't support global government or too close unification of EU. I prefer to have a choice.
Proposing to change states into system of companies is a risky experiment. We know how to organize states so they are quite just. Some people doesn't want to follow that schema because they want power, but we know how to do this if we want to. On the other hand we don't know how to separate power without a state and universal laws. It all sounds nice in theory, but in practice it probably would fail spectacularly. I don't want to be part of anarchism experiment - if you want to do sth like this please do it on volunteers.
BTW google started in 1997 IIRC. It's like the old movies that came out decade age = in nineties :) Makes me feel old.
I never understood this argument. If I don't like every company, I can start my own company and disrupt the market. But if I don't like every state in existence, I cannot start my own country and migrate to it.
It is more like slavery: you can choose your master, but you can never become fully free. Just like russian Yuriy's day( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Day ): once a year russian peasants were granted the right to move to another master. "If you don't like your master, why don't you go to another?".
> if you want to do sth like this please do it on volunteers.
This is the exact problem with governments/states: people are not allowed to live however they like. It is not like anarchy is crazy social order that even anarchists are scared to try. Anarchists are simply not allowed to start their own country/city and live there.
> BTW google started in 1997 IIRC. It's like the old movies that came out decade age = in nineties
BTW, google is not a monopoly in many countries(including USA). It doesn't even have a majority market share in every country(e.g. Russia, China)
Now, what incentive do you have to blindly protect every robber who payed you? If you try to prevent punishment of a robber, your current(as well as potential) customers won't view your services as desirable, and simply won't pay you. Then you go out of business.
I think Murray Rothbard makes a better argument(while dissecting many common objections similar to yours). I recommend the chapter "Police, Law, and the Courts" from his book "For a new liberty: the libertarian manifesto" : http://mises.org/document/1010/For-a-New-Liberty-The-Liberta...
In any case, it is similarly naive as other strands of anarchism. Power vacuums will inevitably be filled. The question is: What do you want them to be filled with.
Society needs a response against this minority, and this response needs to be organized somehow. Somebody will be in a role of organizing the defense of society against those who would seek to rule over it. But now it sounds as if that somebody (or somebodies) are in a pretty powerful position, no?
This is why so many anarchists are so counter-productive. Of course the basic notions of allowing personal liberty and to be baseline-skeptical against authority are good. The thing is, you won't actually achieve personal liberty by just getting rid of any sort of government-like thing. It would be more productive to discuss what kind of government is best suited to protect personal personal liberty.
Note that none of this is a defense of governments as they exist today. It is more a reminder that those who most seek to overthrow what they perceive to be the current oppressors are the most likely to end up being the future oppressors. Or, in comic form: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3246#comic
Precisely. This is why I'm no fan of revolutions.
> Society needs a response against this minority, and this response needs to be organized somehow
If I hire a protection/defense agency to guard against those who wish to rule me, this agency only has a very limited amount of money and power. It cannot tax me indefinitely and it cannot print money. If I suspect it does something wrong with my money, I go to a competitor - and trust me, there will be plenty willing to have my money and do a better job.
Now, as I mentioned, this is only possible if people understand there need not be any force ruling them. If people think that they just need better rulers (like, I guess, they do in Ukraine, and like they do in Russia) then they are doomed to be enslaved by their rulers without regard for their interests. Thus, I agree with you that the vacuum has to be filled if it exists (if people believe they need a ruler), but if it doesn't exist then nothing can fill it. That's why I said the problem is in the people's minds, the problem is that they believe they need a better government.
Actual defense is almost impossible if you want any mobility. Even US presidents get shot by determined citizens.
If someone is willing to give their life to kill someone else, it can be done.
With current technology, real defense is absurdly expense and still not effective.
So the way society currently works is on a system of retribution. You basically have a big paddle, and you whack people who get out of societal norms. You rely on people's (usually) occurring desire to not hurt themselves without enough reward to maintain a reasonable level of order.
So your "Defense agency", are you basically paying them to avenge you in case someone does you wrong? This has actually existed for thousands of years, it is known as "blood feuds" (except your family members do the avenging instead of a hired party).
What it leads to is different families killing one another for generations, some have lasted for multiple hundreds of years.
OK, but now in your system, it isn't families killing eachother but hired guns. Lets say now instead of 1 big paddle (the gubment), you now have 5 smaller paddles.
Human nature will have it that each of the owners of those paddles will threaten some people (usually where he lives) to give him money or else he will whack you. Now you don't freedom of choice. If you think you can funnel some more money to a different paddle to save you, that may work... until now that paddle is the biggest of the bunch and he controls your area as well. Human nature will... (look into what warlords are, read some history on the 1000-1500 years in Europe, Central Asia, Asia)
Listen buddy, humanity started with anarchism. What we have now for government is at least close to the best that we ever had before. If other forms of human cooperation were better, then they would have survived.
Human cooperation is a survival of the fittest, and currently in the world, people strive for western ideals. That means democracy, capitalism with a bit of socialism, is the best we have (and have had) so far.
See this is the bit I don't understand, my understanding of market forces is that those that do the job better will grow if they are in anyway scalable. Now your in a position were small protection rings are unable to work against there large competitors. Similar to how you say you can't compete against government in the supply of defense of sovereignty these small firms can't compete against the large firms in defense of law.
So now you have a system were you have these large protection firms consolidating absorbing any small upstarts and focusing on specific territories (to become more efficient).
Soon you've carved up the protection by geographic region and these companies have carte blanche in their own regions with a few places having oligopolies. Now these groups were obviously very friendly during this time and obviously never abused their position because the market is good at incorporating moral values into the cost of what they buy... but you would have to admit that as they are now acting as the sole provider in a specific location then it makes sense for them to extort that region at an amount that is lower than the cost of leaving for those extorted.
Truth is, governments are only able to run this charade because of the combination of power and brainwashing. Take one component away and it's gone.
Of course you might say "but people are so easily brainwashed, of course those firms are gonna be able to do it and convince people that them being de-facto government is a great thing". Well, ask yourself, these days, how many people can you convince that slavery is a good idea?
As to what it's called; the extortion would be called a compulsory service fee, war would be called large scale protective operations. What people call it privately isn't a problem until the point at which the extortion is costing them more than they think they can save by revolting.
As to why would the business do this? Because they can make more money doing this and it's not illegal because they are the law. They do not care about the good will of the customer, because the extra cost to the customer is not enough for the customer to act on. Prices are set to what the market will pay, in this case it's as close to revolt as the business can get away with.
I would also like to point out that I don't disagree with your assertion that their are negatives with a government controlled monopoly on law enforcement, I disagree with the idea that a free market system for it would not be subject to worse corruption/abuse.
Well, ask yourself, these days, how many people can you convince that bullying is a good idea? Just because an idea is not something that you would choose if you're enlightened, does not mean that people will not backslide into it.
You're missing the point. Paying service fees is never taxation because the result of not paying for a service is denying that service, while the result of not paying taxes is forceful alienation of property and possibly imprisonment. I am yet to hear of a private company who threatened its customers with all that if they cancel their subscription. If this happens in the free market with the said protection agency, my point is that it will be called extortion and recognized for what it is. That's important because the threshold of compliance in people lowers when they recognize they are being robbed.
> Prices are set to what the market will pay, in this case it's as close to revolt as the business can get away with.
I don't understand this point. What prevents a competitor (say, a big investor) from entering the market and establishing another big protection firm with lower prices and better service? If you say "they all will form a cartel" then I will point out that cartels are always very unstable and someone deserts or another outsider disrupts the market, historically this has been true.
> I would also like to point out that I don't disagree with your assertion that their are negatives with a government controlled monopoly on law enforcement, I disagree with the idea that a free market system for it would not be subject to worse corruption/abuse.
What could be worse than conducting a theft from people calling it taxation, then be bribed by corporations and using those tax money to serve corporate interests? Simple math: a company bribes an official with $1, the official spends $10 of somebody else's stolen money (so it doesn't cost him anything) for that company interests and that makes the company $100. In the free market, companies at least deal with the money they actually made, so there's no "free" money for them and no one to bribe.
Why doesn't another competitor enter the market? Well considering the market the competitor needs to be big enough to stand up to a literal attack by the incumbent. In the best case the incumbent and the newcomer both end up being about the same size and they compete. Alternatively as this hypothetical investor who has the capital to get about half of this large market I would do better spending the same investment on a smaller market were I can capture the whole market and force a higher percentage return on the investment. You can look at comcast/time warner to get an idea why these two big encumbents might not compete even without forming a cartel. If someone was to point me at google fiber as an example of how the market will be disrupted I'd point out the fact that the local companies are trying to use the legal system to thwart google fibers growth even within the city and if these companies were the enforcement of the legal system I don't particularly believe google would get a fair shake of the stick.
What could be worse? What could be worse than conducting a theft from people calling it a service fee, then be bribed by corporations and not delivering the service to serve a corporate interests? Simple math: a company pays (it's not a bribe it's legal) the protection company with $1, the protection company allows $10 of somebody's stolen property to be used (so it doesn't cost them anything) for that company and that makes the company $100. In a system with a democratic government, the official has to at least pay lip service to working for the public good and it's illegal to accept that payment.
But anyhow, back to competition. First of all, for a competition to exist, it doesn't have to take 50% of the market. It only has to be sure that it is cheaper for the monopolist to compete with it fairly than to go to war using tactics such as predatory pricing or actual violence. In almost all cases fair competition is more profitable in the long term. It is established by many industry experts and economists that predatory pricing doesn't actually work. Only legislators seem to not grasp it and there's a good reason why: because their pay depends on the fact that they are supposedly protecting the public. I've read an awesome book about Airlines once (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W6871G/) and at the time it was a big surprise for me to find that governments very often launched predatory pricing and anti-competitive cases against discounters, who tried to disrupt the market of big established carriers.
> In a system with a democratic government, the official has to at least pay lip service to working for the public good and it's illegal to accept that payment.
The difference is, in a democratic government official when elected knows almost definitely he's not going to lose his job for the next n years. He knows people will keep paying taxes. How does that create any incentive for him to work in the interests of the public? This kind of situation only creates incentives to accept bribes and use the position of power. If this official does this carefully, he will never face allegations, let alone jail time, because, of course, the judges and the police work in the same system with him and it is HIM who pays them, although not from his own money. The only people who go to jail are in the lower echelons of power and those are the ones who weren't careful enough to not piss off their masters. The Democratic system the west adores so much is just civilized and institutionalized corruption. It's a theatre pulled over the eyes of the people and it's so sad many people have this blind faith or at best acceptance of it.
So to sum up why you'd keep paying a protection monopoly even if it was abusive to you is because unless you have an effective alternative protection arrangement they have the power to do what they like to you and if you rock the boat you give them a reason to.
I'll have a look at that book and the premise that in free market competition these monopolies wouldn't form or would behave fairly to competitors if they did (Though normally I'd argue that you wouldn't have seen AT&T and Standard Oil stopping their practices without the oncoming threat of government intervention.) I will instead point out the question of “A rich merchant with a bag of gold, the king, the pope, and a man with a gun are alone in a room. Who is the most powerful?”. The answer is it depends on the man with the gun. The point being that while there are several different forms of power the ability to inflict violence is one of them and it's master is not necessarily market forces especially since it can shape the market. So how do you ensure a free market system?
There are several countries where you could visit and pay the local warlord money to ensure you're not harassed inside their territory. Whether they stick to the deal is somewhat questionable but several do, this does not mean I'd feel secure in their justice if one of their men decided to beat me, and I would be more than a fool to expect a refund if they did. Why would I pay the warlord instead of putting all my money toward bodyguards? Because the cost for the warlord if everyone does this is higher for him than losing men the first few times and then having a steady income. Why haven't all those who believe they will visit these countries to hire a large mercenary force to stabilize the region? Is it just more efficient to keep the local warlord? Similar abuses occurred with the mafia before an outside supplier of greater protection stepped in, unfortunately in the free market that outside supplier could just as easily be the more efficient yakuza.
I'd also like to point out that the demand to not be shot in the head is inelastic and a local provider of the service can manipulate the supply of not being shot in the head to reach a price to his liking.
Now if I grant you democracy is a more corrupt system would you still suggest to me that it is worse than what I conclude a system with a free market on protection would devolve into?
A great example of a market force that prevented an entity from growing is a recent Bitcoin incident in which one hashing pool was close to 51% of hashing power, which would give it an ability to double spend or otherwise compromise the network. So people simply spread awareness and many withdrew from this pool, effectively lowering its market share. What makes you think this is impossible with other businesses?
As to your second point nothing makes me think it's impossible when people are paying attention to the business. But I believe that apathy is a large factor. Not only that but in this unregulated world how would you even know that this business has enough of the market to be a threat. Why would you change to a worse service if you only suspect they're getting a bit big and it has real financial or service impacts for you. You in turn need to pass on to your customers these impacts making your business less appealing even though your competitor isn't.
Again, if people are apathetic about something, then what right on earth does a government have to extract money from them and teach them what's good and what's bad on this money, regardless of whether they agreed with that or not?
If people are apathetic about the property rights of their neighbour what right does the government have to step in and stop them taking that property?
In fact how would that even work in this pay for protection system? The neighbour will buy into a protection firm that will take the property back and a fee? If they can't pay the fee they will be placed in a work camp to deter the same action from others? Unfortunately the cost for board is higher than what your paid in the work camp. Is this perfectly acceptable under your system? If not how is it prevented? Does that man buy protection from a second company that will go in and storm the workcamp? If you're too poor to buy protection from one of the companies how is it illegal for them to just be collected and put in work camps? I just can't see your system of pay for protection being less abusive than one with a government.
You pay your taxes, don't you? Why wouldn't you pay private firms instead to do the same job more effectively? And then, of course, it's easy to imagine that such a regulator would only provide information to paying customers using a smartphone app, for example.
> How do we know the regulators aren't influenced by whichever of the protection firms they buy from?
How do you know your government regulator is not in bed with the company it regulates? In fact, you don't and in fact most of them are. You can only elect government officials (and not regulating agencies themselves) and then they stay in power for n years almost indefinitely.
On the free market, there's competition of regulators. If I suspect one regulator takes bribes, I switch to another. Or maybe I subscribe to both and compare their info. Or alternatively, if I saw they were all in bed with consumer businesses, I'd stop paying them completely, as would many people, and that means they'd go out of business.
> If people are apathetic about the property rights of their neighbour what right does the government have to step in and stop them taking that property?
This one I didn't understand. In fact your last paragraph looks very odd and I don't understand how you came to imagine such a scenario. One thing I can tell you is that the poor will be able to afford protection agencies, just like they can afford owning a car or a pair of jeans or a computer. A protection agency doesn't have to be expensive to be profitable and it doesn't mean having personal body guards. There are various segments on that market and each can be covered. The crucial difference is that the poor will now be customers of the protection agency, whereas in the current system, I guess you're not going to argue, it is the poor who most often become victims of police brutality and injustice - the reason is, they're not customers, the police and the judges will be paid indefinitely and they know it.
I'll provisionally agree that enough people could buy into regulatory information assuming it's useful enough. I'll even allow that it's not corrupted (though I have written a paragraph below on why I believe this wouldn't be the case). I'll allow that the regulators are able to discover who own the company above a protection firm all the way to the top. I'll allow that people will actively switch between companies to stop a local monopoly forming (though I've written another paragraph below saying why this might not be true). Is there any way you can stop an investor buying up all the competition in a small region at a price above market value for a competitive market and below market value if you had a monopoly and were willing to abuse it?
Ignore the next two paragraphs if you want as they're the ones referred to earlier: I don't know that the regulators aren't in bed with the regulated in the public system. I do know that if people care about it enough they can effect the regulators. I believe it's easier for the regulators in a free market system to get in bed with the regulated because those most motivated in regulating a specific industry are those within the industry itself.
You may believe it's obvious that consumers will switch to the better option in the market but the vast majority don't because the majority of people can't pay attention to everything they spend money on all the time. If you look up the “What's my number” campaign in New Zealand you'll see that simply reminding people they could change electricity providers and giving them an easy way to compare them hugely increased switch overs. The point being in this protection market which would be a service you just pay every other month would be something to easily forget about until it's to late. Even given advertising by concerned parties how do I trust advertising anymore when there's no one regulating it, I could put out an advert saying I'm the official spokesperson for a company and what would be the consequence?
My last paragraph was admittedly a quick example without explaining the reasoning behind it. I'll explain my reasoning now. You say that protection and laws will be decided by what protection company you subscribe to. You obviously don't have a system outside these providers to enforce other laws except market forces.
These providers can decide what services they offer. One of these services will obviously be protection from theft. i.e. If I stole from you your protection service will take action against me in some form.
What is the incentive for your provider to not offer varying plans that we find socially objectionable but say 5% of society is ok with. i.e. Plan A we imprison the perpetrator for these crimes. Plan B we cut off their hands for these crimes. Plan C (our platnium package) we shoot the guy for any crime against you. Plan D (our cheapest) we take the perpetrator to a work camp were he works off his debt to you. (Plan D is at a work camp were room and board costs more than what we pay the perpetrator). These providers also offer lower penalties i.e. no work camp penalty to those who are customers.
So obviously the next step is your provider comes up with a set of rules that limit what other providers can do to you without some form of retribution. What form of retribution is this? Is it a financial penalty? If so how do I stop a rich man from saying I'll double the cost of the penalty just get rid of this man. If it's physical retribution does that mean we accept people being beaten up in the street by the protection providers as part of our daily lives?
Let's say one provider has imprisonment as a penalty, why would I pay more for a provider that offers the same service but there prison is nicer that the alternative provider. Unless say the providers have a reciprocal agreement were they place their own customers in their own prison, which of course means the rich get to live in a country club for the duration of their sentence and the poor get whatever they can afford.
Finally the fact that everyone can afford a provider. While I do not agree that everyone will be able to afford a provider and there won't be any homeless who can't be preyed on with impunity, or that there are no poor that can't afford health insurance (sorry I meant protection) we'll ignore that. Instead consider what happens if for the sake of argument I forget my payment one month or I'm outside of my protection services city/village. Am I suddenly no longer protected and subject to others whims? Are there roaming fees for protection? If it's a sunday night and I need to drive to the other side of the country to get to my dieing mum am I able to be beaten up at any gas station along the way with no penalties for the offender, and possibly penalties for me if I fight back?
Assuming we surmount these regional justice issues and we also get a system were the providers effectively offer an equivalent and fair level of 'justice' no matter who you subscribe with how do you stop one growing on the basis of being the most efficient and then leveraging economies of scale to get into a monopoly position. When the monopoly is established how do you expect a new upstart in the region to be able to get a reciprocal 'justice' agreement with the monopoly when from a business point of view it is better to not have the competition.
> I believe it's easier for the regulators in a free market system to get in bed with the regulated because those most motivated in regulating a specific industry are those within the industry itself.
You do know that ex-regulators and those closest to the political elite are usually hired by companies to serve as lobbyists (usually called something like "consultants" or "advisors")?
> You may believe it's obvious that consumers will switch to the better option in the market but the vast majority don't because the majority of people can't pay attention to everything they spend money on all the time.
Absence of a government doesn't mean people would need to waste more time tracking things. It means they would have a choice of who would track all these things for them. So, for instance, I subscribe to consumer protection agency A and it then simply drives my choices based on its research. People wouldn't need to choose everything by themselves.
Also, you can't excuse forcing people to do certain choices because they, allegedly, are not willing to make them on their own. It smells nanny state and unless you give people choice of experiencing why is it important to make choices and giving them time to make them, they will never learn. When slavery was abolished, many slave owners used to say that black people cannot survive on their own, they don't know how to work for money and how to spend it properly, so they would be much better off with their master. Indeed, in some cases that was true, because it's very difficult to learn to do things you never tried doing before. Eventually, they did learn.
> Instead consider what happens if for the sake of argument I forget my payment one month or I'm outside of my protection services city/village. Am I suddenly no longer protected and subject to others whims? Are there roaming fees for protection?
The way the market would work nobody can predict. What I can say is that it would find a way to provide you with what you need. One can imagine that when you go to a different territory you are protected by another company with which your company has a contract. If your company doesn't have a contract with another company or you are a poor person who can't afford protection, my guess is that you would still be able to count on some minimal level of protection: if people in my neighborhood are getting robbed, I as a paying customer of my protection agency would want them to prevent this happening regardless of whether the victim is their client or not, because next time it could be me.
Again, I think you have interesting questions, but I believe this discussion can go endlessly. At this point, I'd like to recommend you one book, it is called "The Machinery Of Freedom", written by David D. Friedman, who is an economist and a lawyer. In it, he thoroughly describes how a society without government would work. One of the most interesting chapters is about competing protection agencies and why they in fact wouldn't turn into de-facto government-like mafia. He also has some very interesting talks on YouTube which I recommend. I think this book would definitely be of interest to you. You may not be convinced by it, but it presents some great mental exercises and it would at least provoke you to look at the world from a different point of view. If it happens so that it does change your mind, please email me, I'd be very pleased to know that happened :)
Now how come I can't choose what laws I can live by? I don't see people suggesting we all vote for one specific kind of car we are all going to drive for the next 4 years. Yet when it comes to laws it is considered normal that one group suffers because another, slightly more powerful group, wants them to live by their rules.
If you're talking about examples of societies with no government then there are a couple of those in history (Iceland and Ireland being two of them), but the more important point is that sometimes you don't have examples. If you went back to the 17-th century, would you find any example of a country where slavery was outlawed? Yet these days, it is gone almost completely and remains only in illegal forms.
There are huge regulatory hurdles to releasing an automobile, for good reason.
Insisting on absolutely no government sounds dogmatic. Surely we can have enough government to negotiate a truce between warring police tribes.
Now the central question here is not whether regulations are a good idea or not, but whether it's a good idea to allow those regulations be issued by one central authority. What if you had like 2-3 agencies inspecting each car manufacturer, then presenting their reports to road companies, who would in turn decide whether or not to allow certain types of cars on their roads? Wouldn't you say that this kind of competition would, in fact, reduce the possibility of corruption? What you have now is a monopoly on regulations, which usually leads to governments abusing this power to prevent certain players from entering the market for their own benefit (bribes from lobbyists for companies that already are on the market).
A hypothetical company called Roads LLC owns a 20km strip of road that goes through a tunnel in a mountain. Due to the geography, all alternative routes require an extra 200km detour. Let's also say, for the sake of argument, that you can't just build another tunnel either, because the mountain would collapse.
Since there are no direct competitors, the company is well-aware of the leverage it has, so it constantly keeps the toll price well above what the maintenance costs are, making huge margins.
So, I assume that your position is that this situation (quite inefficient from the customer's perspective) is better overall than having a government that manages that road, due to all of the other evils you perceive it brings. Even if there was a legitimate mechanism (the democratic process) for changing a particular inefficient government.
I guess my response is that governments seem like they could be efficient in theory, although most are grossly inefficient in practice. In contrast, anarcho-capitalism seems inefficient even in theory.
Imagine you are an investor who wants to build that important tunnel. If there is a demand, obviously you wouldn't be the only one. So each of you, investors, would come up with offers for the potential customers for this road. The one who offers the best conditions - for instance, fixed low price for the next 10 years - gets the most customers and proceeds on building that tunnel. If that investor later decides to cheat and raises prices then he would have to deal with law firms of his customers, which would potentially be costly.
So here you see how this potentially difficult situation can be resolved without the need for any government whatsoever.
Many flat out deny the existance of natural monopolies, for example:
http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf
Others argue that the hypothetical company would face competition by other means of transportation.
Finally, others who are not anarchists, speak of a libertarian government that would curb such abuses.
The Wikipedia article acknowledges your point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_roads
"n many parts of the world land use patterns mean that building two or more highways in parallel isn't practicable. Kroeger claims, "This would result in an incredibly inefficient use of land resources."[citation needed] When there is only one highway connecting points A and B, the main advantage of privatization, competition, disappears. In absence of regulation a private highway operator is likely to charge an exorbitant monopoly price, resulting in huge profit margins and few benefits for drivers."
If your answer to that is to let it depend on the goodwill of the community/family (to do it themselves or pay syndicates to do it), you're setting things up for a large number of people to be left rotting in the streets.
Anyway, still offtopic, I'm quite eager for the reasons why you both discard democracy (no rulers, but government exist) without even a comment (am I missing something that obvious?).