https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/18/book-review-the-machinery-of-freedom/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/18/book-review-the-machin... There's a long quot

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/18/book-review-the-machinery-of-freedom/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/18/book-review-the-machin... There's a long quote down a ways (starting: "How, without government, could we settle the disputes that are now settled in courts of law?") that does a pretty good job of giving you the gist. The very TL;DR, and I don't think an unfair one (read Friedman's own, quoted story of how his system might work, if you don't believe me) for anyone who's familiar with cyberpunk fiction is that it's basically just unironically advocating the corporate-security-is-the-only-security future that those settings often feature. Given the timing, it seems probable to me that Friedman and others' writings on this topic inspired those elements of that genre, in fact. In Friedman's version of the story, this looks like a lot more freedom than we have now[0]. In the cyberpunk version, it looks a lot like feudalism. [0] I don't really see that, personally, in his and similar writing, which looks like it replaces de jure restrictions with a pile of stress, anxiety, and risk, which don't really feel like more freedom in any practical sense, to me, but it's supposed to be there, so let's just grant for the sake of argument that he's successfully painting a picture of a more-free system, as that's what he intends.