The Allure of Anarchy

Life seems pretty good in future space anarchy, where the richest man in the universe wants nothing more than to beat Green Revolution guru and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug at saving lives, and people address one another as “Sov,” short for sovereign individual. In the first arc of the adventure web comic Escape From Terra, a quasi-IRS agent is sent to the planet Ceres so he can bring its people into line, mandating that they share their natural resources with their home planet, the dully authoritarian Earth.

But once the agent sees the well-armed, economically unrestrained world he is sent to regulate, he switches allegiance from nanny state to no state. Peace is the order of the day; the occasional bad actions and violence mostly come from outsiders. Zero government leaves plenty of room for starting a business, exploring space, and occasionally using science to suss out supposed ghost sightings on Mars. —Lucy Steigerwald