We have always experienced 'authority,' even in tiny groups — universeness

Is that really true? I can't imagine any authority imposed on prehistoric homo sapiens other than satisfying basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. — Shawn

The only authority to which stone-age hunter gatherers had to submit was the authority of their familial group (or possibly a competing group). Ethnological studies of the few contemporary hunter gatherer groups reveals some level of control by elders, for instance.

How effective was this control? Probably it had limited effectiveness, just given our species' predilections. Surveys of skull injuries among catalogued archeological remains show that there was a fairly high incidence of blunt force trauma. That is, injuries from stone axes rather than accidents.

Stone-age people were sparsely scattered. Density presents additional behavioral and policing problems which didn't arise until the Agricultural Revolution and city building--last 12,000 years, +/-. The bigger and more complex the urban environment, the more some sort of state control was needed to maintain minimum levels of order.

The modern world (say, last 600 years) features large and diverse populations operating under various systems of "proper conduct". Maintaining peace, order, and production requires police control.

I hope libertarians are not using Stone Age models to define what will work now. There are various flavors of libertarianism -- like left-wing anarcho-syndicalism. They all tend to be at least somewhat utopian.So here's a free society; everyone knows his place and what her role is. Everyone somehow knows and follows the minimal set of unwritten rules.

Utopias might have a snowball's chance in a cool hell, but take a modern metropolitan area where 20 to 50 million people live, and things will fall apart very fast.

Large populations (millions) do not have the intellectual, emotional, or physical wherewithal to control themselves. That's why we have, and need, states with police power.