Government vs. Governance: Libertarianism and Private Communities

Libertarians tend to oppose hierarchical authority and advocate the privatization of public goods. However, not all collective action problems can be solved so easily; collective problems may require collective solutions. Fortunately, the essence of the market process is not the atomic individual, but consent. Libertarians should endorse hierarchical, bureaucratic solutions as long as membership is voluntary. I provide a general theory of the proprietary community as a solution to collective action problems. Such a community embodies consent, jurisdictional competition, and residual claimancy (incentive alignment), mitigating collective action problems in a hierarchical and consensual-but nevertheless market-based-manner.