More on “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”

I have finally fin­ished the book. It is enjoy­able right to the very end, although I still think the final vic­tory of the rebel­lious Loonies was por­trayed as a bit too easy, despite loses they suf­fered. Lunar soci­ety turned out to be not just “slightly anar­chis­tic” as I have claimed before but rather lib­er­tar­ian to the full mean­ing of this term, with no offi­cial state-like depart­ments or min­istries, full free­dom of mar­riage schemes gov­erned only by mutual con­sent and com­pletely pri­va­tized court system.

Well, to be strict, there is no court sys­tem on the Moon at all accord­ing to the story. Everyone can become the arbiter in a case if con­flicted par­ties ask this per­son to serve as one and agree to pay the price. If no arbiter is cho­sen, the honor sys­tem kicks in and the dis­pute is solved in a more tra­di­tional and bloody way. Sounds dras­tic but it works well for Loonies. This lot is tough and due to quite extreme envi­ron­ment in which they leave, they learned how to get along with one another and set­tle dis­putes with­out vio­lence. In most cases at least.

Anyway, a rec­om­mended read.