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I suppose a sharper way to ask this is:
Can a low-trust society transition into a high trust society simply by deregulating markets to allow for open and free economic activity?
One of Doug Casey’s pet projects is pitching market reforms to 3rd world dictators.
I suppose a low trust market economy would have lots of personal protection goods and services, including self-custody solutions, with elaborate no-trust exchange systems.
Right, and the transition from low trust to high trust society doesn't have to be unsupported by security products and services. That's what makes this an interesting question.
(my position is you still probably need some minimal government provision of basic security and dispute resolution; I don't buy into the idea that markets can provide that entirely on a private basis)
Do you think the typical examples, like frontier settlers or pre-state Ireland, don’t translate to modern settings for some reason?
The real question is compared to what. There will be some degree of security and dispute resolution, so what you must mean is that people would prefer the cost of government services to the cost of private.
Did frontier settlers use market-based security and dispute resolution mechanisms? I'm not familiar with the history. I would've assumed that they still appointed leaders and used some sort of non-market-based enforcement of rules
Did frontier settlers use market-based security and dispute resolution mechanisms?
In the sense that they didn't have access to state services and had to figure things out amongst themselves. I don't know much about the extent of any commercial services.
I suspect the meaning of that question will get tricky as we dig into what it means for the market to supply something like that.
For example, markets have preconditions that must exist in the culture or they won’t persist anyway. So, do we include those cultural conditions in the question?