“… On Some Dark and Lonely Nights, You Can Still Hear the Howling of the Libertarians”

Cracked on the Kowloon Walled City:

Then, in 1948, the British went to clear the area, but failed so spectacularly that everybody, both English and Chinese alike, issued an official decree of "Screw that place." They agreed to let Kowloon be, but cut it off from all government services, which in communist China was pretty much everything: police, water, electricity, road maintenance, postal services and so on.

They basically Thunderdomed a whole city, and then just walked away.

And to everybody's mutual surprise, Kowloon absolutely thrived on the anarchy.

A counterexample to the theory that civilization requires government.