Gevlon pessimistically concludes that a Libertarian “society” is impossible, generalizing from his experience with PuGs. I disagree. I think the flaw in his argument is that he equates a PuG to a Libertarian society:
In the game such “society” would be the PuG-ing community. People who know that the other is also skilled band together for a common goal, and than dissolve. I’ve tried it and failed. My “goblin raiding” experiment gave a shining explanation why did I have to fail. With a Sarth+3 guild, both the more-or-less challenging Maly25 and the completely farm Naxx25 was completely different from any PuG or “social guild” experience.
- People were online on time
- They were prepared, had consumables, soul shards, ammunition, were repaired
- When wipe happened they run in fast
- Everyone listened to the raid leader
- No one made loot drama
- No one ever “DC”-ed (some DC-ed, but came back ASAP)
A Libertarian society does not a priori preclude organized social bodies, such as guilds. Otherwise organized business would be anathema to Libertarian thinkers. What Libertarians disapprove of is the forceful denial of moral rights, such as property. In fact, a society which forcefully ruled out free association with others, either in an organized or unorganized fashion, would hardly be libertarian. I believe they’d call that some sort of authoritarian anarchy (ignore the odd oxymoron there).
Instead, Libertarians promote a system of free association with mutual respect for individual rights. They think that exchange of goods and services is the best medium for human development, and that the facilitation of such exchange is a great moral triumph (thus Ayn Rand’s assertion that “the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader.” (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged)). In an organized business, people exchange their labor for wealth according to a contract. The assumption here is that the two parties are maximizing their personal well-being by exchanging something they see as a lesser good for a greater good. Since their perspectives on the valuation of the goods differ, the exchange ideally enriches both of them (a non-zero sum state change).
In the case of a raiding guild, the guild offers its members access and loot in exchange for meeting obligations, such as acquiring supplies, arriving on time, etc. If people value other things too highly to feel sufficiently wooed by those incentives, they don’t raid. And if they are not raiding, if they are engaging in experiences which do not regularly demand competence, what incentive do they have to be competent? Specifically, if they value the game for the fun it provides, have fun doing what they are doing, and this does not require competence, then why should they pursue competence? Increased competence seems to exhibit diminishing returns. For instance, if we measure competence by one’s tendency not to die, perhaps, how much more work do you have to invest to become competent enough to die less? Initially, your work pays off in spades: your competence level grows such that dying becomes rarer and rarer. But as the number of situations you find yourself in such that dying is a possibility at a given competence level declines, the gain for increasing your competence also declines.
This is a classic case of diminishing returns. You can see it by examining a standard learning curve: 
Now, the reason the utility declines is that the cost of improved performance is time. The time spent increases performance less and less, meaning the cost for performance gained increases as performance level does. Eventually, people will decide that it costs more to learn than it’s worth. Where that point is depends on the incentive structure they’re looking at.
The point of all this is to show that the incompetence of PuGs is not a problem for Libertarianism, but rather an outgrowth of more general economic principles.
If Libertarianism requires that competence be equally distributed among all people, then Libertarianism would be in trouble. It does not. It does require that competence exist, and then asserts that, when it does, if agents are then allowed to freely pursue their own initiatives, competence will be available through market means to anyone.
Now, PuGs would be an issue if it were shown that, for any incentive stucture most people would still fail to achieve reasonable competence, and that this generally holds in all possible areas, such that most people are simply incapable of being productive economic agents…well, that would be a problem for a human libertarian society.
Libertarianism does not require that competence is equally divided among the people. It however requires that everyone (practically) is competent enough to support his own basic needs (food, home, medicine). In WoW it is true since people have 0 needs. You can live forever in WoW without ever eating or paying any bill.
However in real life there is a limit of resources that you MUST produce for survival. What my PuG experience shown me is that many people are incapable for that (M&S).
In a Libertarian society these M&S would starve or freeze to death or would die in common illnesses due to unability to buy medicine. Or not. Most probably they would not accept this death and would initiate force to gain the resources they need.
In a Leftist society, the working people are taxed and from this money the M&S is supported with basic needs.
In a Right-conservative society there are rigid rules that criminalize typical M&S behavior, forcing most to act like normal people (work, don’t steal, don’t vandalize), imprisoning the rest. The “no drug” law is typical example. Taking drugs hurts nobody else so it’s OK according to Libertarianism.
Wouldn’t, in a Libertarian society, the question be whether people could provide something which others find valuable? If they could, then to survive, the value of what they can provide would need to be high enough to support survival. Wouldn’t menial labor be within the capabilities of most people? Wouldn’t an entrepreneur be better suited paying someone else to do menial labor while they did something more complex? Thus the menial gains wages used to pay for food, and the entrepreneur gains the freedom of time to take care of more complicated investments and productions.
That is, all endeavors take time. If I am an entrepreneur on an endeavor, certain aspects might be handled by people not me. If the final value of the endeavor is high enough, then I might be better served paying someone to finish it quicker than it would if I had to do it alone. Who do we pay for any given job? All I require is someone who is capable of accomplishing the task…no more. If it is menial labor, than surely most anyone can do it…so I can afford to hire at low cost someone whose skills do not reach beyond that.
Thus jobs are available in a growing economy to anyone willing to take the lowest wage.
Isn’t that the basic argument for a free-market system, leaving aside Libertarian societies?
There are several problems with menial labor.
At first machines are capable of doing it, faster and more accurate than people. While one could employ 100 men with shovels to do a bulldozer’s job, I doubt that 1% of the gasoline+driver_pay+amortization would be enough salary for them.
Secondly, menial labors near a person (like cleaning my house or tending my garden) need some manners. While a primitive, filthy M&S could theoretically do these job, I would rather do them myself than suffer this person in my home, where he could even steal or plan a later robbery.
Third: the M&S also have (or want to have) the feeling of self-respect, therefore reject menial labor, even if he has no other legal opportunity.
Fourth: lot of M&S, mostly because of harmful habits (drugs, alcohol, fighting), are not healthy enough to do hard menial jobs.
While I completely agree with the goodness of the free market, the market ideas only work for people who are on the market, having something to sell. If a company goes bankrupt, that company simply disappears from the market. However if a person goes bankrupt, he does not disappear, but remains here with further needs for resources for survival.
Unfortunatly for this to work the libertarians have to be ethical. Which means that pay per production really has to happen. Its not the stupid that cause this problem its those that think that they are entitled to resources that cause the problem.
And by this its not just the poor, but also the rich that do not produce. If most executives suddenly went Galt, how long would it be before the larger corporations simply cut them off from a paycheck and made a ton of profit by doing so. Most corporations would be fine with out the moochers on top.