#they were willing to put concrete pricing mechanisms down on paper and do the math to show they had the desired properties

[bayesic-bitch]

That's true but that's not to say that violent coercion is the only possible external incentive to get things done. I'm no fan of anarcho-capitalists, but one long-standing project they have that I respect a lot is formally sketching out what incentive/market structures you would need to replace the functions of the state, such as their whole thing with a competitive market for judicial systems. I'm not going to get into the conclusions they come to with this (I think they're pretty bad). But I think this kind of work is valuable, and the sign of a political ideology really putting its money where it's mouth is and trying to create a concrete, positive vision that could be enacted. The reason that actually-existing-anarchists don't do this are more social than fundamental imo. Anarchism and this approach to econ/politics simply attract very different kinds of people

I don't like or trust states and it would be nice to find other mechanisms to perform the useful functions that the state performs. This is obviously a hard problem but it's pre-emptive to say it's impossible.