That research was probably conducted in rainforests protected as a national park, right? At least, I highly doubt that the pharmaceutical companies actually acquired the land before conducting research, or that they would bother buying entire rainforests (to protect the ecosystem) if there wasn't a state to protect them.
An anarcho-capitalist may suggest that the pharmaceutical companies could create a fund with other people who care about preserving the rainforests, to acquire and protect the rainforests. But then, that fund would have to raise as much money as the potential profit to be made by cutting it all down - which is terribly perverted, I think. Still, such a fund would unlikely be universal enough to protect all rainforests and other important ecological centers. The point stands that whatever land a logging company acquires, it will want to destroy.
Logging is far too prevalent as it is - with all the regulation and restrictions imposed on it by modern states. I'm not sure how the argument could be made that logging would be less prevalent if there weren't any states to stop it.
> an alternative would be to argue that all resources in public domain actually belong to everyone, rather than no one
This is a nice idea in theory (and is semi-applicable in anarcho-communism too), but it can't realistically be determined what to share (e.g. these bison were on my property), how to enforce it (e.g. knowing who's harvesting what), or how to handle it (e.g. how to allocate compensation for killing a whale).
I'm not sure why we have to go through these economic gymnastics just to avoid the concept of having an association of democratic governments banning whaling or deforesting. What's so wrong with that?
> the state I grew up in, IL, and how incredibly, unflinchingly, and stunningly corrupt that state, and more specifically, the city of Chicago is
I have connections to Chicago, and can relate :-)
In my ideal world, Chicago would be broken up into governments even smaller than the City of Chicago today, which spans about 15km x 40km it seems.
I think many city councils are "optimized" for administration, and not for representation. If each of these small states were completely autonomous, and had to legislate their entire body of law, the citizens would care more, and they would develop more representative and accountable voting systems and institutions, due to the extent of the government's responsibilities.
Also, to make the point again, if a certain state is known to be corrupt, and does nothing to address it, it will probably lose business and residents to nearby states that aren't. Similarly, neighboring states would have an interest in supporting one another, and would try to discourage corruption (e.g. avoiding companies that bribe officials elsewhere).
The key point for smaller states, in my opinion, is that their constituents care. I feel like people are more apathetic in larger states, because they have less power individually, and their responsibility to keep their government accountable is further absolved. When you get people to care, and give them power collectively, everything else follows.