Fascinating

I am fascinated with two time periods.

First is the golden age of piracy.  Where despite being murderous cut throats, pirates managed to establish trade and rules about how they would deal with each other.

Truly it was a libertarian culture.

And it demonstrated the main weakness of the libertarian utopia.  War is the killer app of The State.  On an individual basis a pirate ship could out fight any navy ship, ton for ton.  But navies bring more than combat skill to the fight, larger ships that could absorb more damage, more ships and coordination.

The second is places of the Old West like Deadwood.  Places where there was no government, yet there was law of sorts.  A claim was sacrosanct.  Trade was regularized.  Oh there was crime, but there was also punishment.

I am taken by how humanity will create a society without need of official guidelines to do so.