Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Here I believe Noah Smith is incomplete when he claims:

Everyone is born with an endowment of Asskickery. The state monopoly on the use of force is simply a government redistribution of Asskickery. Libertarians, of course, should realize this.

The state monopoly on the use of force is not just a redistribution of the endowment of Asskickery. It is also a revelation of who has how much of it. When the amount of Asskickery with which individuals are endowed is hidden, the requirements of the Coase Theorem are not met, and so bargaining costs keep the economy from attaining a Pareto optimum.

For example, in twelfth-century Ireland, the distribution of Asskickery among Richard "Strongbow" de Clare, Diarmait Mac Murchada, and Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair was uncertain. Richard and Diarmait could reduce their bargaining costs to zero by aligning their interests via the marriage of Diarmait's daughter Aoife to Richard (shown below). But there remained the bargaining costs between Richard and Diarmait on the one hand and Ruaidrí on the other (also shown below), which were very large and very dissipative indeed. Not a Pareto-optimal outcome in the least:

Curiously enough, if you websurf to the National Gallery of Ireland, its website focus on only a small portion of "The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife":

Must-Read: Noah Smith: Cosma Shalizi Argues That Adam Smith Is Not a Real Economist Edition: "Everyone is born with an endowment of Asskickery...

...The state monopoly on the use of force is simply a government redistribution of Asskickery. Libertarians, of course, should realize this.