{"id":377,"date":"2002-06-08T20:39:05","date_gmt":"2002-06-09T04:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ogre.nu\/wp\/?p=377"},"modified":"2009-02-16T14:36:48","modified_gmt":"2009-02-16T22:36:48","slug":"iceland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=377","title":{"rendered":"Iceland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For three centuries beginning in 930, the Norse settlers of Iceland enjoyed the literate world&#8217;s nearest thing to a stateless society; possibly the largest non-nomadic society ever to lack territorial monopolies in government.  Competition between the <i>go&eth;ar<\/i> (customarily and poorly translated as &#8216;chieftains&#8217;) is often blamed for the feuds that led to annexation by Norway in 1262; so why did the evils of anarchy happen only when the system became <em>less<\/em> competitive?<\/p>\n<p><a href=http:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/orig3\/long1.html>Roderick Long<\/a> (cited at <a href=\"http:\/\/gnxp.blogspot.com\/2002_06_01_gnxp_archive.html#85147032\">Gene Expression<\/a>) concisely explains what went wrong.  As usual, the fatal flaw was a non-competitive element: a church tax, imposed on the households of a territory.  Another flaw was a restriction on the number of go&eth;ar &ndash; analogous to taxi medallions.  These two features concentrated wealth and power in a few families.<\/p>\n<p>I think it was indirectly through a link from Long&#8217;s essay that I found Sean Gabb&#8217;s <a href=http:\/\/www.seangabb.co.uk\/flcomm\/flc047.htm>&#8220;How to Destroy the Enemy Class&#8221;<\/a>, a manifesto for the first libertarian Parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For three centuries beginning in 930, the Norse settlers of Iceland enjoyed the literate world&#8217;s nearest thing to a stateless society; possibly the largest non-nomadic society ever to lack territorial monopolies in government. Competition between the go&eth;ar (customarily and poorly &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=377\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitution","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2220,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions\/2220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}