Portal:Libertarianism/Market

100px The Market for Liberty is an anarcho-capitalist book written by Linda and Morris Tannehill, which according to Karl Hess has become "something of a classic." It was preceded by the self-published Liberty via the Market in 1969. Mary Ruwart credits the Tannehills and their book with winning her over to anarchism. Doug Casey was also converted to anarcho-capitalism after reading the book at the behest of Jarret Wollstein. It was the first big anarchist tome to hit the movement, beating Rothbard's Power and Market (which had been written a decade or more earlier) to print by a year.

Like Murray Rothbard, the Tannehills oppose statutory law and advocated the usage of natural law as the basis for society; however, unlike Rothbard who aimed to explain what sort of libertarian legal code the market would create in an anarcho-capitalist society, the Tannehills saw it fit to merely point out that society would not be lawless in the absence of the state. Conversely, the Tannehills, in The Market for Liberty, spend a great deal of time outlining how different businesses and organisational structures would interact in a laissez-faire society, and how these interactions would create checks which would ultimately keep the tendency for crime low.