Punishment: Drop City and the Utopian Communes

Abstract

Using stories from the utopian non-punishment hippie communes of the late 1960s, the essay challenges today’s anti-punishment movement by demonstrating that the benefits of cooperative action are available only with the adoption of a system for punishing violations of core rules. Rather than being an evil system anathema to right-thinking people, punishment is the lynchpin of the cooperative action that has created human success.

This is Chapter 3 from the general audience book Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers: Lessons from Life Outside the Law (Potomac Books 2015). Included is a table of contents for the book and a summary of the line of argument of all of its chapters. (Chapter 4 of the book is also available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2416484.)

Keywords: Criminal law, punishment, sentencing, law enforcement & corrections, cooperation, social cohesion, anarchy, antipunishment, utopia, Drop City, Black Bear Ranch, Tolstoy Farm, system for punishing violations of core rules, evolutionary benefit