Only read your first post, so sorry if any of this has already been said and responded to.

The problem with anarchy is essentially the game theory issue of collusion. Collusion only works when all sides keep their share of the bargain. If 4 companies control a market and agree to keep their prices high, then that is the best long term solution for them [disregarding a ton of intricacies about which is a better company, etc.]. If one company gets greedy and says "I will lower the price on my products so that everybody buys from me" then the other companies will have to react by lowering theirs even more which will keep driving the cost down.

In a society it is a similar concept. If you start with anarchy, a state of nature with no rules or organizations, it simply cannot be sustained and would collapse much faster than collusion in a business environment. This is because this state of nature is NOT the best solution for most people, so what would happen is the weak would get together in numbers and form groups that would create and enforce rules to protect them from being exploited by the strong. This is basically how we got into our current situation, we started in a state of nature with no rules, but then when the weak realized it sucked for them, they got together and broke away from the system which in turn brought the entire system [or lack thereof] down.


On a further point, I also think you are giving way too much credit to the rationality of most people's decision making process. People do not constantly evaluate their decisions in light of their consequences. How many people do you know with horrible attitudes that just constantly bitch about how things cannot go right, but yet never change what they do. Most people are like this to some extent. People do not litter because they do not want the river to be clean, they litter because they are lazy or just dont care. Motives cannot be deduced by just looking at results, because most people do not evaluate their actions by their results and the results that do come about are often unintended.