LA LEGGE DEL PIU’ FORTE

LA LEGGE DEL PIU’ FORTE

C’è chi la evoca come il ba-bau, rovesciando le pupille e con voce strascicata. Ma voi non lasciatevi impressionare. Per mantenere i nervi saldi pensate alla common law, un presidio di civiltà emerso “naturalmente”. Ma anche il linguaggio è un frutto tutt'altro che disprezzabile della "legge del più forte".

Una volta che siete riusciti a non scomporvi, passate al contrattacco: non esiste fonte del diritto migliore!

Le leggi di natura ingannano il profano, è difficile giudicarne gli effetti finali a prima vista. Per esempio, è nella nostra natura fare più figli possibili che facciano più nipoti possibili, ma questo non significa che tutte le donne partoriscano come minimo quindici bambini. O no?

La legge del più forte, nell’uomo, è la legge dei più deboli coalizzati contro il più forte, che regolarmente soccombe.

Questo non significa che ogni volta si debba partire dalla giungla, nelle nostre società tanto sensibili si possono anche organizzare tornei ad imitazione delle sfide della giungla. Sentire cosa dice quel “richiamo” è una bussola fondamentale per orientarsi. Si chiama “competizione”, ma io preferisco chiamarla “sperimentazione”. Non conta tanto chi vince ma quel che veniamo a sapere nel corso della lotta. Quando si dice "mettiamo delle regole", la cosa è anche accettabile, purché sia ben chiaro che non servono ad evitare il Far West ma ad imitarlo: ne abbiamo un tremendo bisogno. Sempre tenendo presente che se c’è carenza di organizzatori affidabili, la giungla resta un’opzione.

2 Why Billington Survived

2 Why Billington Survived 1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

Note:2@@@@@@@@@@@ da indicizzare fino al segnalibro 1031 poi da leggereil primo contatto tra indiani e colonigli indigeni si alleano a fini militari (x combattere meglio i nemici) non x spirito di amicizial omissione dei reali motivi è sintomatica e nn riguarda solo i testi x bimbidio e la tecnologia c entrarono poco con la sopravvivenza dei primi colonil etnocentrismo sembra universale: entrambe le parti si credevano superiorile tende indiane: tutt altro che primitivei givani indiani: bamboccionila proprietà: c era eccome... veniva poco utilizzata ma c erail capo: si votava coi piedile battaglie rrano più che altro risse... prima degli europei: una rissa continua tra tribufisicamente gli indiani erano più prestanti di noi... nn hanno conosciuto carestie o epidemie

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2@@@@@@@@@@@

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THE FRIENDLY INDIAN
Note:T

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They encouraged the exchange of goods, but would only allow their visitors to stay ashore for brief, carefully controlled excursions.
Note:la politica degli indiani nei confronti dei bianchi

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Now Massasoit was visiting a group of British with the intent of changing the rules. He would permit the newcomers to stay for an unlimited time—provided they formally allied with the Wampanoag against the Narragansett.
Note:alcune tribù sfruttano l'aiuto dei bianchi nei loro conflitti interni

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A friendly Indian named Squanto helped the colonists. He showed them how to plant corn and how to live on the edge of the wilderness. A soldier, Captain Miles Standish, taught the Pilgrims how to defend themselves against unfriendly Indians.
Note:come la etorica scolastica ha ridotto l'incontro tra indiani e bianchi

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Winslow didn’t know that fish fertilizer may not have been an age-old Indian custom, but a recent invention—if it was an Indian practice at all. So little evidence has emerged of Indians fertilizing with fish that some archaeologists believe that Tisquantum actually picked up the idea from European farmers.
Note:l'idea del pesce come fertilizzante

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omission is symptomatic of the complete failure to consider Indian motives, or even that Indians might have motives. The alliance Massasoit negotiated with Plymouth was successful from the Wampanoag perspective, for it helped to hold off the Narragansett.
Note:l'omissione fondamentale dei testi storici canonici

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This variant of Holmberg’s Mistake dates back to the Pilgrims themselves, who ascribed the lack of effective native resistance to the will of God. “Divine providence,” the colonist Daniel Gookin wrote, favored “the quiet and peaceable settlement of the English.” Later writers tended to attribute European success not to European deities but to European technology.
Note:c'è un errore opposto ovvero considerare la resa indiana una volontà Divina

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“Indians were seen as trivial, ineffectual patsies,” Salisbury, a historian emeritus at Smith College, told me. “But that assumption—a whole continent of patsies—simply didn’t make sense.”
Note:gli indiani non erano considerati un popolo arretrato e barbaro

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The fall of Indian societies had everything to do with the natives themselves, researchers argue, rather than being religiously or technologically determined.
Note:le cause della sconfitta indiana

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When native met newcomer, both groups tried to benefit, as people will. In almost every case, each side believed itself to be superior—ethnocentrism seems to be a near-universal human quality—and
Note:i due gruppi si ritenevano entrambi superiori

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Tisquantum was not an Indian. True, he belonged to that category of people whose ancestors had inhabited the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years.
Note:l'amico indiano non era affatto un indiano

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As Tisquantum’s later history made clear, he regarded himself first and foremost as a citizen of Patuxet,

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lui stesso non si riteneva tale

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Ten thousand years ago, when Indians in Mesoamerica and Peru were inventing agriculture and coalescing into villages, New England was barely inhabited, for the excellent reason that it had been covered until relatively recently by an ice sheet a mile thick.
Note:il Nord America una periferia dell'Impero

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The ancestral language may derive from what is known as the Hopewell culture. Around two thousand years ago, Hopewell jumped into prominence from its bases in the Midwest, establishing a trade network that covered most of North America. The Hopewell culture introduced monumental earthworks and, possibly, agriculture to the rest of the cold North.
Note:la prima cultura del Nord America di cui abbiamo traccia

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Nor did the English regard the Dawnland wetu as primitive; its multiple layers of mats, which trapped insulating layers of air, were “warmer than our English houses,”
Note:gli indiani non erano considerati dei primitivi dai coloni

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Europeans bemoaned the lack of salt in Indian cuisine, they thought it nourishing. According to one modern reconstruction, Dawnland diets at the time averaged about 2,500 calories a day, better than those usual in famine-racked Europe.
Note:abitazioni e cucina indiane erano ammirate e limitate anche dai coloni

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Wampanoag families were close and loving—more so than English families, some thought. Europeans in those days tended to view children as moving straight from infancy to adulthood around the age of seven, and often thereupon sent them out to work. Indian parents, by contrast, regarded the years before puberty as a time of playful development, and kept their offspring close by until marriage.
Note:famiglia presso gli indiani

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The primary goal of Dawnland education was molding character. Men and women were expected to be brave, hardy, honest, and uncomplaining.
Note:pedagogia indiana

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When Indian boys came of age, they spent an entire winter alone in the forest,
Note:cccccc

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To master the art of ignoring pain, future pniese had to subject themselves to such miserable experiences as running barelegged through brambles.
Note:dominare il dolore

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(Dawnlanders lived in a loose scatter, but they knew which family could use which land—“very exact and punctuall,” Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island colony, called Indian care for property lines.)
Note:il sistema della proprietà

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sachems had to gain the consent of their people, who could easily move away and join another sachemship. Analogously, the great sachems had to please or bully the lesser, lest by the defection of small communities they lose stature.
Note:gli indiani potano con i piedi

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In consequence, boundaries between groups were becoming more formal. Sachems, given more power and more to defend, pushed against each other harder. Political tensions were constant.
Note:cresce il numero degli indiani cominciano le prime tensioni territoriali

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Armed conflict was frequent but brief and mild by European standards. The casus belli was usually the desire to avenge an insult or gain status,
Note:i conflitti sono numerosi ma poco intensi per lo standard europeo

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Women and children were rarely killed,
Note:cccccc

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Nevertheless, by Tisquantum’s time defensive palisades were increasingly common, especially in the river valleys. Inside the settlement was a world of warmth, family,
Note:warfare indiano

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outside, as Thomas put it, was “a maze of confusing actions and individuals fighting
Note:tutti contro tutti

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TOURISM AND TREACHERY
Note:ttttttttt

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The earliest written description of the People of the First Light was by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian mariner-for-hire commissioned by the king of France in 1523 to discover whether one could reach Asia by rounding the Americas to the north.
Note:il primo a descriverli

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Europeans described the People of the First Light as strikingly healthy specimens.
Note:sani e aitanti

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Because famine and epidemic disease had been rare in the Dawnland, its inhabitants had none of the pox scars or rickety limbs common on the other side of the Atlantic.
Note:poche carestia e poche epidemie

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The Pilgrims were less sanguine about Indians’ multicolored, multitextured mode of self-presentation.
Note:i nostri sempre più malaticcii

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And the hair! As a rule, young men wore it long on one side, in an equine mane, but cropped the other side short, which prevented it from getting tangled in their bow strings.
Note:la grande bellezza dei capelli

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As for the Indians, evidence suggests that they tended to view Europeans with disdain as soon as they got to know them.
Note:il disprezzo delle indiano per il bianco

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With striking uniformity, these travelers reported that New England was thickly settled and well defended.
Note:una terra ben difesa

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THE PLACE OF THE SKULL
Note:ttttttt

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To be sure, the Pilgrims had intended to make most of their livelihood not by farming but by catching fish for export to Britain. But the only fishing gear the Pilgrims brought was useless in New England. Half of the 102 people on the Mayflower made it through the first winter, which to me seemed amazing. How did they survive? In his history of Plymouth colony, Governor Bradford himself provides one answer: robbing Indian houses and graves.
Note:come sono sopravvissuti i padri fondatori?

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The Pilgrims were typical in their lack of preparation. Expeditions from France and Spain were usually backed by the state, and generally staffed by soldiers accustomed to hard living.
Note:i Padri Pellegrini all'avventura

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Huddled in their half-built village that first terrible winter, the colonists rarely saw the area’s inhabitants, except for the occasional shower of copper- or claw-tipped arrows. After February, glimpses and sightings became more frequent. Scared, the Pilgrims hauled five small cannons from the Mayflower and emplaced them in a defensive fortification. But after all the anxiety, their first contact with Indians went surprisingly easily. Within days Tisquantum came to settle among them. And then they heard his stories.
Note:primi contatti tra i padri e gli indiani

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The Indians’ appearance in this European city surely caused a stir. Not long before, Shakespeare had griped in The Tempest that the populace of the much bigger city of London “would not give a doit [a small coin] to a lame beggar, [but] will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.” Hunt managed to sell only a few of his captives before local Roman Catholic priests seized the rest—the Spanish Church vehemently opposed brutality toward Indians. (In 1537 Pope Paul III proclaimed that “Indians themselves indeed are true men” and should not be “deprived of their liberty” and “reduced to our service like brute animals.”)
Note:gli indiani in Europa. Il fenomeno da baraccone. L'opposizione cattolica ad ogni brutalità.

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the Europeans carried a disease, and they bequeathed it to their jailers. Based on accounts of the symptoms, the epidemic was probably of viral hepatitis, according to a study by Arthur E. Spiess, of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, and Bruce D. Spiess, of the Medical College of Virginia.
Note:la strage. I prigionieri europei erano malati. Probabilmente si trattava di epatite. il contagio fu terribile nelle sue conseguenze

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In their panic, the healthy fled from the sick, carrying the disease with them to neighboring communities.
Note:cccccccc

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The religious overtones in Morton’s metaphor are well placed. Neither the Indians nor the Pilgrims had our contemporary understanding of infectious disease. Each believed that sickness reflected the will of celestial forces.
Note:la mancanza di nozioni sulla viralità scatenò interpretazioni di carattere religioso

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Until the sickness Massasoit had directly ruled a community of several thousand and held sway over a confederation of as many as twenty thousand. Now his group was reduced to sixty people
Note:Il prima è il dopo. Sintesi, dapprima gli indiani si alleano con gli europei in cerca di alleanze strumentali ai loro conflitti interni. La strage avviene a causa dell'epatite portata da alcuni francesi

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The Pilgrims held similar views. Governor Bradford is said to have attributed the plague to “the good hand of God,” which “favored our beginnings” by “sweeping away great multitudes of the natives … that he might make room for us.”
Note:l'interpretazione della strage. Il nostro Dio ci favorisce. È la stessa interpretazione degli indiani medesimi

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The epidemic, Gorges said, left the land “without any [people] to disturb or appease
Note:l'epidemia lascia un territorio deserto da conquistare

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Now he told the Pilgrims that he was willing to leave them in peace (a bluff, one assumes, since driving them away would have taxed his limited resources). But in return he wanted the colonists’ assistance with the Narragansett.
Note:altra richiesta di aiuto da parte dei capi indiani per combattere i loro nemici. Ora vogliono le nostre pistole.

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Contemporary research suggests that indigenous peoples in New England were not technologically inferior to the British—or, rather, that terms like “superior” and “inferior” do not readily apply to the relationship between Indian and European technology. Guns are an example. As Chaplin, the Harvard historian, has argued, New England Indians were indeed disconcerted by their first experiences with European guns: the explosion and smoke, the lack of a visible projectile. But the natives soon learned that most of the British were terrible shots, from lack of practice—their guns were little more than noisemakers. Even for a crack shot, an unrifled, early seventeenth-century gun had fewer advantages over a longbow than may be supposed.
Note:un luogo comune da sfatare. La superiorità tecnologica degli Europei. È vero, le pistole fecero da prima impressione agli indiani ma si rivelarono ben presto solo degli aggeggi molto rumorosi e poco pratici.

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At the same time, Europeans were impressed by American technology. The foreigners, coming from a land plagued by famine, were awed by maize, which yields more grain per acre than any other cereal. Indian moccasins were so much more comfortable and waterproof than stiff, moldering English boots that when colonists had to walk for long distances their Indian companions often pitied their discomfort and gave them new footwear. Indian birchbark canoes were faster and more maneuverable
Note:d'altro canto gli europei stupirono per la tecnologia indiana. Il mais, i mocassini, e molto altro

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the stunned British eagerly exchanged knives and guns for Indian canoes.
Note:gli europei scambiarono ben volentieri i loro coltelli e le loro pistole con le pratiche canoe indiane

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Massasoit, if this interpretation is correct, was trying to incorporate the Pilgrims into the web of native politics. Not long before Massasoit had expelled foreigners who stayed too long in Wampanoag territory.
Note:gli indiani vedevano gli europei come un'ennesima tribù con cui allenarsi

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MACHINATIONS
Note:tttttttt

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In the next decade tens of thousands of Europeans came to Massachusetts. Massasoit shepherded his people through the wave of settlement, and the pact he signed with Plymouth lasted for more than fifty years. Only in 1675 did one of his sons, angered at being pushed around by colonists’ laws, launch what was perhaps an inevitable attack. Indians from many other groups joined in. The conflict, brutal and sad, tore through New England. The Europeans won. Indeed, after the war Massachusetts sold more than a thousand Indians into slavery—perhaps one out of every ten native adults in the region. Most went to the Caribbean, but a few ended up as far away as North Africa.
Note:il patto tra coloni e indiani durò 15 anni. Fu infine rotto dagli indiani che scatenarono una guerra vinta dagli europei. I vincitori schiavizzarono i vinti e li vendettero spedendoli soprattutto ai Caraibi e in Africa

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The historian Alan Gallay has estimated that between 1670 and 1715 English slavers in the South sold somewhere between thirty and fifty thousand native people.
Note:numeri

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What happened? Europeans won military victories in New England, historians say, partly because they were divided among themselves. Indians were unwilling, too, to match the English tactic of massacring whole villages.
Note:perché i coloni vinsero le loro guerre? Non per la presunta superiorità tecnologica ma per la maggior coesione. Le tribù indiane erano divise e incapaci di coalizzarsi.

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But another, bigger part of the reason for the foreigners’ triumph was that by the 1670s the newcomers outnumbered the natives.
Note:ci fu poi la questione del numero da una certa data in poi gli europei erano superiori anche per numero

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Groups like the Narragansett, which had been spared by the epidemic of 1616, were crushed by a smallpox epidemic in 1633.
Note:infine un ruolo fondamentale continuarono ad averlo le epidemie

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Their societies were destroyed by weapons their opponents could not control and did not even know they had.
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Non sparate sul Far West

Per qualcuno anarchia = caos.

Per qualcuno la vita non presidiata da un “governo legittimo” è brutta, breve e crudele.

Si ripete, per giustificare i governi attuali, quello che si diceva nel ‘600 per giustificare il tiranno.

Ma (fortunatamente) forse non è così: ci sono ragioni per pensare che le cose vadano altrimenti. Ci sono ragioni per pensare che l’anarchia generi regole più che caos.

E poi c’è la storia, ovvero i casi concreti: la storia del Far West, per esempio.

Ce la ricordano Terry L. Anderson e P. J. Hill nel saggio “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism - The Not So Wild, Wild West”.

Nel Far West – il periodo esaminato va dal 1830 al 1900 -il monopolio della violenza era una chimera, il governo federale lontano e impotente. Insomma, si viveva nell’anarchia.

Nel nostro immaginario fu un periodo di sparatorie e violenze continue. Un errore di percezione che fa il paio solo con i pregiudizi sul medioevo….

… this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed…

Chi offriva questi servizi tipicamente governativi?…

… Private agencies…

Naturalmente in competizione tra loro. Nessun monopolio.

Ma come mai queste agenzie non si scontrarono tra loro in una guerra totale?…

… They soon discovered that "warfare" was a costly way of resolving disputes… lower cost methods of settlement (arbitration, courts, etc.) resulted…

Molti ritengono che ci voglia un governo per avere “beni pubblici”, e i “beni pubblici” per eccellenza sono la legge e la sicurezza.

Nel Far West legge e sicurezza si produssero spontaneamente senza gli inconvenienti di un governo e di una burocrazia.

L’anarco-capitalista è colui che crede in questo spontaneismo. La domanda a cui deve rispondere è la seguente…

… how can law and order, which do require some coercion, he supplied without ultimately resulting in one provider of those services holding a monopoly on coercion?…

L’anarco-capitalista vede nella ricerca del profitto la chiave di volta…

… a faith in the profit seeking entrepreneurs…

Chi contrasta la visione anarco-capitalista vede un finale a tinte fosche…

… Conflicts may occur, and one agency will win… a single protective agency or association will eventually come to dominate…

A giudicare la disputa è comunque il tribunale dei fatti…

… there is the empirical question of whether competition can actually provide the protection services…

Chi crede nello spontaneismo crede nell’esistenza di diritti naturali che la mente umana percepisce e a cui si uniforma…

… the Lockean concept of mixing labor with resources to arrive at "natural rights"…

Un contesto storico come quello del Far West è ideale per testare se anarchia = caos, se law&order possono essere prodotti in competizione su un mercato, se l’uomo riconosce spontaneamente dei diritti naturali ecc…

… Even in the absence of any enforcement mechanism, most members of the western society agreed that certain rights to use and control property existed…

Esempio…

… when a miner argued that a placer claim was his because he "was there first," that claim carried more weight than if he claimed it simply because he was most powerful…

Cosa conta per l’ happy end?

… Tastes, culture, ethics…

E infatti con gli indiani (popolo nomade) le cose andarono un po’ diversamente…

… The long period of conflicts between the Indians and the settlers can be attributed to a lack of any such…

Esiste una leggenda del Far West a tutti ben nota anche grazie ad Hollywood…

… histories describe the era and area as characterized by gunfights, horse-thievery, and general disrespect for basic human rights. The taste for the dramatic in literature and other entertainment forms has led to concentration on the seeming disparity between the westerners' desire for order and the prevailing disorder. If the Hollywood image of the West were not enough to taint our view, scholars of violence contributed with quotes such as the following: "We can report with some assurance that compared to frontier days there has been a significant decrease in crimes of violence in the United States."…

iN “Frontier Violence: Another Look”, Eugene Hollon scrive…

… “the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society is today."…

Robert Dykstra…

… in five of the major cattle towns (Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell) for the years from 1870 to 1885, only 45 homicides were reported-an average of 1.5 per cattle-trading season.') In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, "nobody was killed in 1869 or 1870. In fact, nobody was killed until the advent of officers of the law, employed to prevent killings."' 4 Only two towns, Ellsworth in 1873 and Dodge City in 1876, ever had five killings in any one year…

Frank Prassel nel suo "A Legacy of Law and Order"…

… "if any conclusion can be drawn from recent crime statistics, it must be that this last frontier left no significant heritage of offenses against the person, relative to other sections of the country."…

Bisogna poi pensare che…

… preference for order can differ across time and people…

Alcuni preferiscono più sicurezza e meno dinamismo, altri il contrario…

… To show that the West was more "lawless" than our present day society tells one very little unless some measure of the "demand for law and order" is available…

Così come certe leggi aumentano il caos, la violazione di certe leggi non costituiscono di per sé “disordine”…

… many violations of formal law… more truly reflected community customs…

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I comitati di vigilanza sono una delle istituzioni spontanee destinate a mantenere l’ordine nel Far West…

… vigilance committees… sprang up in many of the mining towns…

Spesso si affiancavano ai servizi governativi…

… They proved that competition was useful in cases where government was ineffective…

Alcuni esempi…

… as in the case of San Francisco in the 1850' s… where government became the province of criminals who used the legal monopoly on coercion to further their own ends, as in Virginia City, Montana Territory in the 1860' s.lY Even in these cases, however, violence was not the standard modus operandi…

San Francisco visto da vicino…

… San Francisco vigilante committee was reconstituted in 1856… During this period, San Francisco had only two murders, compared with more than a hundred in the six months before the committee was formed…

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Il mondo degli squatter è il mondo anarchico per eccellenza…

… pioneer settlers who often moved into the public domain before it was surveyed or open for sale by the federal government…

Definire ed applicare i diritti di proprietà in condizioni del genere è sempre un problema. Per la legge erano abusivi, di fatto erano onesti contadini…

… result was the formation of "extra-legal" organizations for protection…

Nacquero i “club” o “land club”.

Benjamin F. Shambaugh:

… we view these clubs "as an illustrative type of frontier extra-legal, extra-constitutional political organization in which are reflected certain principles of American life and character."…

La mentalità americana nasce da esperienze del genere.

Frederick Jackson Turner:

… an excellent example of the "power of the newly arrived pioneers to join together for a common end without the intervention of governmental institutions. . . ."…

La mentalità anarchica ha fondato l’unica superpotenza oggi sulla piazza.

Questi gruppi adottavano una loro “costituzione”, per esempio la “Association of Johnson County” in Iowa: un presidente, due vice-presidenti, alcuni impiegati, sette giudici, due sceriffi…

… The constitution specified the procedure whereby property rights in land would be defined as well as the procedure for arbitrating claims disputes. User charges were utilized for defraying arbitration expenses…

I processi si tenevano previa deposito di somme da parte degli attori.

Sanzioni: la violenza era una possibilità ma si preferiva proscrivere o boicottare.

Cosa importante: le costituzioni variavano secondo le preferenze dei membri…

… resolutions of all claims clubs were not alike suggests that preferences among the squatters did vary…

Come veniva motivata la necessità di una costituzione?…

… “the need of protection .against 'reckless claim jumpers and invidious wolves in human form…”…oppure  “need 'for better security against foreign as well as domestic aggression."… oppure… “opposing "speculators" who were attempting to obtain title to the land”…

Alcune costituzioni richiedevano certi lavori per diventare proprietari di un terreno. Altre ne richiedevano molti di meno per incoraggiare la speculazione. Diverse soluzioni convivevano in competizione tra loro.

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C’erano poi le associazioni tra allevatori (Cattlemens' Associations)…

… Initially "there was room enough for all… "as early as 1868, two years after the first drive, small groups of owners were organizing themselves into protective associations and hiring stock detective"…

La genesi secondo due esperti come Ernest Staples Osgood e Louis Pelzer…

… it was "the failure of the police power in the frontier communities to protect property and preserve order," which "resulted over and over again in groups who represented the will of the law- abiding part of the community dealing out summary justice to offenders."…

Gli allevatori erano gente più violenta dei contadini (gestire i diritti di pascolo è un casino), e questo si rifletteva nei loro metodi e nelle sanzioni (il boicottaggio non bastava come deterrente). Sul mercato si reperivano i mezzi per applicare la legge…

… Expert gunmen-professional killers-had an economic place in the frontier West… Like all mercenaries, they espoused the side which made them the first or best offer… hut Bill became Montana's first stock detective… Bill's choice was not dictated by ethics… At any rate, he became a hired defender of property…

La legge era una legge privata…

… the earlier versions evidently enforced their own laws much of the time rather than serving as simply an extension of the government's police force…

Un’ovvia preoccupazione aleggiava…

… enforcement agencies will themselves become large-scale organizations that use their power to infringe upon individual rights…

Ma…

… Major economies of scale did not seem to exist in either enforcement or crime…

Le testimonianze scritte parlano chiaro…

… numerous records of gunslingers making themselves available for hire… no record of these gunslingers discovering that it was even more profitable to band together and form a super-defense agency…

Nessuna traccia di monopolio, come invece previsto dalla dottrina prevalente.

Alcuni pistoleri entravano e uscivano dal mondo del crimine ma non si formò mai un soggetto monopolista in grado di vessare la cittadinanza.

Le agenzie più grandi e, se vogliamo, più “minacciose”…

… Pinkerton Agency and Wells Fargo…

… erano in realtà sussidiarie del potere federale.

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Un’altra forma di auto-regolamentazione furono i “Mining Camps”.

Nel 1848 la presenza dell’oro fu scoperta in California. In molti accorsero occupando “anarchicamente” queste terre…

… Later the same experience occurred in Colorado, Montana, and Idaho…

Ma “anarchicamente”, ormai lo sappiamo, non significa disordinatamente: esisteva un ordine naturale che informava e facilitava l’ordine spontaneo...

… The invaders were remitted to the primal law of nature…

A volte ci si organizzava in anticipo…

…  many of the groups of associates who came seeking their fortunes organized and made their rules for operation before they left their homes…

Di certo la legge del gruppo era la più alta fonte di diritto.

Anche qui:

… rules under which the companies were organized varied according to tastes and needs of the company…

Si fissavano i metodi di pagamento, i doveri di cura dei malati, l’uso di alcolici e altre droghe, le multe per le infrazioni disciplinari. Tutto all’unanimità, sia alla partenza che dopo…

… Those who wished to purchase other "bundles of goods" or other sets of rules had that alternative…

Le regole funzionavano finché si trattava di regolare dispute “in famiglia”, ma se la diatriba coinvolgeva gente di campi diversi?…

… additional negotiation was necessary…

Un arbitrato (che stabiliva un precedente tra i due campi) risolveva la questione. E qui va sempre ricordata la grande fiducia nel diritto naturale e nella proprietà.

Una questione spinosa era legata alla statuizione del diritto di scavo su certe terre…

… Gregory Gulch in Colorado provides an example. A mass meeting of miners was held June 8, 1859, and a committee appointed to draft a code of laws. This committee laid out boundaries for the district, and their civil code, after some discussion and amend- ment, was unanimously adopted in mass meeting, July 16. 1859. The example was rapidly followed in other districts, and the whole Territory was soon divided between a score of local sovereignties.'…

la presenza di militari dell’esercito governativo non interferiva sulla legge privata della città, i soldati erano lì per gli indiani…

… In California, military posts were established to take care of Indian troubles, but these governmental enforcement organizations did not exercise any authority over the mining camps… No alcalde, no council, no justice of the peace, was ever forced upon a district by an outside power…

Il distretto era l’unità politica e le consultazioni tra delegati stabilivano convenzioni tra distretti facendo sorgere un diritto variegato e conforme alle preferenze locali. Il tutto in linea con la teorizzazione anarco-capitalista (vedi David Friedman: Machine Freedom)…

…. boundaries, or matters of local government, and reported to their respective constituencies in open-air meeting, on hillside or river-bank…

La presenza di avvocati era osteggiata e la professione di avvocato spesso bandita…

… Union Mining District. Resolved, that no lawyer be permitted to practice law in this district, under penalty of not more than fifty nor less than twenty lashes, and he forever banished from this district'…

Le abitudini, le tradizioni e i costumi della comunità avevano una grande importanza. Avvocati e uomini del diritto erano vissuti come una minaccia a tutto cio’…

… When outside laws were imposed upon the camps, there is some evidence that they increased rather than decreased crime… One early Californian writes, "We needed no law until the lawyers came," and another adds, "There were few crimes until the courts with their delays and technical- ities took the place of miners'…

Le dispute erano risolte da un giudice minatore e gli accusati difesi da amici minatori. La giuria ovviamente composta da minatori.

Le secessioni erano frequenti: bastava un voto a maggioranza per decidere…

… If a majority favored such action, the district was set apart and named… old district was not consulted on the subject, but received a verbal notice of the new organization…

Testimonianza…

… "The work of mining, and its environment and conditions, were so different in different places, that the laws and customs of the miners had to vary even in adjoining districts."…

in Colorado la concorrenza tra tribunali in stile anarco-capitalista era evidente…

… The miners' courts, people's courts, and "provisional government" (a new name for "Jefferson") divided jurisdiction in the mountains… Appeals were taken from one to the other… judgments accepted from one court by another… there was undoubtedly much less crime in the two years this arrangement lasted than in the two which followed the territorial organization and regular government…

Gli appelli alle sentenze seguivano percorsi un po’ strani e non ben prevedibili, sta di fatto che i nodi venivano risolti pacificamente con un accordo tra corti che consentiva alla causa più ostica di giungere a sentenza definitiva in breve tempo.

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Anche le carovane dei pionieri costituivano delle società anarchiche…

… they moved across the plains in search of California gold… region west of Missouri and Iowa was unorganized, unpatrolled, and beyond the jurisdiction of the United States law…

i pericoli della convivenza forzata in condizioni estreme erano notevoli…

… the tedious journey and the constant tensions of the trail brought out the worst in human character, the pioneers…

Le carovane creavano una legge privata e la applicavano privatamente, un po’ come in quel tempo facevano i navigatori dell’ oceano.

In alcuni casi ci si ispirava alla costituzione degli stati Uniti.

L’esempio della “Green and Jersey County Company”…

… “We, the members of the Green and Jersey County Company of Emi- grants to California, for the purpose of effectually protecting our per- sons and property, and as the best means of ensuring an expeditious and easy journey do ordain and establish the following constitution”…

Si stabiliva la legge, le modalità applicative, il diritto di voto, i giudici, l’espulsione dalla carovana, la regolazione dei giorni festivi, i giochi consentiti, i doveri di guardia, i doveri lavorativi nella costruzione di strade e ponti…

La negoziazione era complessa ma esisteva un saldo punto di riferimento (Schelling point) che facilitava tutto: il diritto di proprietà. Un diritto naturale riconosciuto da tutti…

… it is clear that the travelers did negotiate from Schelling points to social contracts without relying upon the coercive powers of government. And these voluntary contracts did provide the basis for social organization… The Schelling points from which the individuals negotiated included a very well accepted set of private rights especially with regard to property…

Una testimonianza dalla quale si evince la centralità della proprietà privata…

… In his article, "Paying for the Elephant: Property Rights and Civil Order on the Overland Trail," John Phillip Reid convincingly argues that respect for property rights was paramount. Even when food became so scarce that starvation was a distinct possibility, there are few examples where the pioneers resorted to violence… The emigrants were property minded…

In genere le carovane si organizzavano come “mess”…

… the mess allowed individuals to contribute inputs such as food, oxen, wagons, labor, etc. for the joint production of travel or meals. In this way, the mess, which allowed the property to remain privately owned, differed from the partnership where property was concurrently owned…

Al sorgere dei conflitti, si rendeva necessaria una rinegoziazione. In alcuni casi, anche questa soluzione era impossibile cosicché si doveva procedere ad uno scioglimento. Esempio di documento…

… We concluded the best thing we could do was to buy him out and let him go which accordingly we did by paying him one hundred doll[ ar] s. He shoulder[ ed] his gun, carpet bag, and blanket and took the track to the prairie without saying good by to one of us…

I documenti disponibili non testimoniano degenerazioni violente in queste controversie, anche in assenza di forza pubblica. E chi lasciava una “mess” poteva entrare in un’altra.

Un esempio importante di scioglimento fu quello della Boone County Company…

… When negotiations appeared at an impasse because of the indivisibility of units and differences in quality, prices were assigned to units and the groups resolved the issue by trade. However, a $ 75 claim of the majority group proved even harder to resolve… Unable to settle the dispute, arbitration came from a "private court" consisting of "3 disinterested men," one chosen by each side and a third chosen by the two. Their decision follows…

Il punto decisivo:

… when the Boone County Company could not renegotiate its initial contract the members did not resort to force, but chose private arbitration instead…

Morale:

… many companies which crossed the plains "were experiments in democracy and while some proved inadequate to meet all emergencies, the very ease with which the members could dissolve their bonds and form new associations without lawlessness and disorder proves the true democratic spirit among the Ameri- can frontiersmen rather than the opposite."…

in sintesi…

… Competition rather than coercion insured justice…

Bisogna riconoscere che in una carovana…

… the demand for public goods was probably not as great as found in more permanent communities… schools, roads, and other goods which are publicly provided in our society were not needed,…

Inoltre:

… the short term nature of the organization meant that there was not a very long time for groups to organize to use coercion…

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Il Far West ci offre un esempio di come dall’anarchia possano sorgere forme di convivenza ordinata ma soprattutto con leggi private variegate e più in linea  con i gusti dei governati.

Dall’anarchia, quindi, non sortisce necessariamente caos ma anche ordine, e poiché non tutti gli ordini sono uguali, quello selezionato su base anarchica dovrebbe essere qualitativamente migliore. Il motivo è semplice: sorgendo dal basso è più in linea con le preferenze degli uomini.

Domanda: non sarà questa (recente) radice anarchica ad aver reso l’america il paese più potente del pianeta?