&gt;Now correct me if I&#x27;m wrong, but it seems you&#x27;re suggesting that &quot;externalities&quot; are better handled by rulers<p>No, they&#x27;re suggesting that externalities are not handled well by entities that, by definition, have no incentive to care about them.<p>But as it happens, yes I tend to think co-ordination problems are solved more effectively by a co-ordinator, rather than decentralised actors.<p>You can call them &quot;rulers&quot; if you like, but then you&#x27;d be ignoring the concept of democracy.<p>&gt;you&#x27;d support voluntary co-operation<p>Except you don&#x27;t support &quot;voluntary&quot; anything, because you&#x27;re talking about property rights. You know, a system where people are forced to follow particular rules about resource allocation, regardless of whether they agreed to follow them.<p>As long as there is scarcity, there will inevitably be coercion in the distribution of resources. You can argue that a system of pure property rights minimises it, but please don&#x27;t pretend that it magically avoids it.