The previous chapters considered self-governance among persons who earned at least part of their living, and thus spent at least part of their time, in peaceful, productive economic activities. Privateersmen were only part-time plunderers. When their countries weren't at war, most of them worked in merchant shipping. Even the Anglo-Scottish border reivers, who, as we saw several chapters ago, had a penchant for raiding one another, spent at least part of their time producing something to steal. And not every borderer engaged in reiving. Here I consider a different and, in at least one important sense, more difficult problem situation for anarchy – one in which society consists exclusively of “bad apples”: persons who choose to earn a living solely by theft, murder, and violating other important social rules.

Bad apples may be “bad” because they lack the internal constraints, the cooperation-enhancing “moral compasses” most other people have that prevent them from taking advantage of every opportunity for privately profitable but socially destructive behavior. All persons are tempted to behave opportunistically when material costs and benefits make doing so profitable. But within some bounds, at least, most persons are also guided by nonmaterial, “internal” costs and benefits that depress the ultimate payoff of, for example, stealing from others and increase the ultimate payoff of be-having honestly toward them. Moral compasses increase the likelihood of cooperative behavior even where uncooperative behavior has no chance of being detected, and thus no chance of being punished, by others. Feelings of guilt or, on the other side, self-respect, for example, can produce some degree of cooperation whether other governance mechanisms exist or not. Bad apples may also be “bad” because they're excessively impatient. Criminal punishments sufficient to deter more patient persons from seeking a living by breaking social rules, or to deter persons “naturally” more inclined to behave cooperatively along the previously discussed lines from doing so, may be insufficient to deter persons with exceptionally high discount rates from seeking to earn a living this way.