Libertarian Utopia

Last night I dreamt I was in Libertarian Utopia again.

I was going to the local convenience store to get a newspaper. I opened the heavy steel gate we installed at the end of the driveway for protection and drove onto the toll road that goes by our neighborhood. As I approached the toll gate I saw Missy, the toll gate keeper and 15-year-old daughter of the man who owns the toll road. As usual, she carried an Uzi on a strap over her shoulder. I could see the bullet-hole-riddled burned-out carcasses of three cars nearby -- I guess those drivers didn't want to pay and Missy decided to enforce the toll the usual way. I also saw something new this time: despite the Uzi, Missy was wearing a stainless-steel chastity belt with a big lock on it. I had heard about roving bands of former Scouts turning into gang-rapists, but I didn't know they were in our area again. There's no law against it (there's no law against anything in Libertarian Utopia).

I gave Missy the token and headed on. As I drove off, I noticed that Missy went back into the booth and played with her dolls. She doesn't go to school and can't read -- her father figures she'll always have the income from the toll road and won't need to be educated. She'll eventually have babies with someone (there is no marriage here) and pass on the toll road to them.

Seeing I was getting low on tokens, I made a mental note to bring a chicken or two along with me the next time to barter for tokens at the marketplace. A cousin of Missy's runs a token-shop there -- he takes just about anything in trade for toll tokens and Missy's family eats it for dinner. There are no coins or paper money, so everything is done this way.

The road is not in good shape, so I was glad I was driving our SUV. The bridge over the creek had washed out a few months ago, but the toll road owner didn't want to fix it -- he saw nothing to gain from it. Everyone in the neighborhood had to use his road to get to and from their houses anyway. Missy's brothers and male cousins patrol the nearby land to keep people from going any other way in order to not pay the toll. They don't really "own" the land (there is no government to record ownership), but they patrol it regularly and have guns, so they might as well own it.

I got to the market and realized I hadn't brought anything small to barter for the paper, but it turned out not to matter. The paper had written a seething criticism of a local land-baron, and the baron's men had shot up the newspaper office and destroyed the presses. So much for "Freedom of the Press". The newspaper's security guards had been paid off well -- you could see them all driving around town in new cars. Even security is "free market" in Libertarian Utopia.

At this point in the dream I woke up in a sweat. I went outside and brought in the newspaper from the driveway -- on the front page was an article about pirates in Somalia. I thought, "I guess my libertarian friends would like it there -- they haven't had a functioning government in years."