This one took me a bit longer to read than some of the others. It's a pretty philosophically demanding book. Tremblay does a fine, and French toned, presentation of the ideals of Market Anarchy and, perhaps more importantly, a beautiful and optimistic look at the future evolution of society.

One of my favorite ideas from "But Who Will Build The Roads?" is one which I originally rejected: That the moral value of a choice can only be analyzed in reference to the values of the individual making that choice. At first glance, this would appear to be a relativist stance, but upon reflection of what it means for something to be a value, it is not.

My long standing theory of morality is that morals are derived from the evolved nature of the human species. This turns out to be fundamentally the same as Tremblay's version of morality, if differing in the details. Tremblay's morality takes into account family, cultural and evolutionary values, weighted accordingly, where my own fails to account for the former two.

To see how this does not lead to relativism, we need only remember Maslow's hiearchy of needs. All human beings have certain needs in common and, as such, will value certain things. This in turn will lead to largely common moral principals. Those behaviors which aid in satisfying needs are largely good and those that do not are largely bad.

The practical benefit of Tremblay's presentation is that it allows those who are in society with each other to make certain moral statements about actions which are not dictated by evolved nature. If a person is in society with me by choice, then I can expect that they value that relationship. Given this, I can make a statement such as "his action was wrong in as much as he values our association." On the face of it, this may seem like a weak statement, but it brings the forces of the market to bear on morality. If a person values the society of people who value clean air, it becomes a practical, moral decision whether to pollute or not.

I've probably spent too many words on the topic of morality, so I'll let that be the end of it for now.

The true beauty of Tremblay's ideas didn't hit me until late in the last chapter of "But Who Will Build The Roads?". Here, he presents a compelling argument for the possibility of market anarchy replacing state not through violent revolution or catastrophic failure, but through simple replacement to irrelevance. My friend Frank had already primed me for some of these ideas by his argument that post-state we would see communities composed of like-minded, self-regulating groups connected by high-speed communications networks (such as the Internet). Tremblay seems to portray a future where increased self-regulation and self-policing among people, communities and businesses will eventually render the state without a job to do. At some point, a state police person will order a "citizen" to do something and the "citizen" will simply laugh, knowing that his own contracted protection agency and that of the street he is paying to use are far more widely accepted as authorities than this laughable state peon.

I may be misrepresenting Tremblay here slightly, but that's the vision that his writing evoked. The idea may seem laughable, but we need to remember that gated communities, large businesses and private security companies already do a fair amount of self-policing. Moreover, the state has more and more been contracting with private companies to wage its wars (Blackwater).

I (obviously) don't know what the future holds for freedom, nor for the state, but I remain quite confident in my (not previously expressed in this blog) prediction that the "United States of America" as an entity will no longer exist by 2025 (90% confidence date). Tremblay's vision gives me actionable guidelines for what to do in the meantime (other than stocking up on food an ammo). If we want to see a stateless society thrive then we should invest in private alternatives to state run monopolies. Ship UPS and FedEx; if private roads exist in your area, use and pay for them; use private arbitration rather than state small claims courts; etc.