Cooperation between communities is also less straightforward than the anarchist picture supposes. For loyalty to your own community frequently goes along with a fairly intense distrust of others, and agreements may therefore collapse because we over here are not convinced that you over there are contributing your fair share to the project we are supposed to be working on together. And we may disagree about what fairness requires in the first place. Suppose we want to build a society-wide rail network in the absence of a central authority. What share of resources should each community contribute? Should it be so much per head, or should richer communities put in proportionally more? If my community is situated in a remote area that cost, or should that cost be shared equally by all communities? There are no easy answer to these questions, and no reason to think that it would be possible for many local communities to come to a voluntary agreement about them. The state, by contrast, can impose a solution: it can require each person or each community to contribute a certain amount, say through taxation.