I recently read the following essay on Substack, and—as so much of Butler Shaffer‘s writing does—it resonated strongly with me, so I wanted to share it here. Many thanks to Bretigne Shaffer, first of all for so graciously sharing her father’s paper to begin with, but also for granting me permission to publish it. Please consider following/subscribing to Bretigne’s work at On The Banks, Fantastical Contraption, and It’s All Coming Down, and be sure to check out her books on Amazon.
I’ve also published this essay on my Substack EVOLVE: Toward Autarchy.
The Redistribution of Authority by Butler Shaffer is a paper presented to the Eris Society, Aspen, Colorado, August 15-18, 1990. NOTE: A quick investigation led me to believe that the “forthcoming book” that Butler references at the beginning of his essay is most likely Boundaries of Order: Private Property as a Social System, which is available for purchase at The Mises Institute and on Amazon.
You can download The Redistribution of Authority from our Free Ebook Library.





