http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA216447 Markets, Distribution, and Exchange After Societal Cataclysm (PDF: 10.4Mb)
Pg 79 - Sec 7.1 Worst Case: Life without Civil Society
In this scenario more than any other, the loss of institutional continuity and customary patterns of social organization combine with extreme competition for resources to make the survival of practical pre-attack values and expectations of consistent human behavior highly unlikely. This is in accordance with our argument about the vulnerability of so-called core values in chapter one.
Given the loss of vital resources, there will be a number of binding time constraints within which actions must be taken, or population survival cannot be assured.
The loss of institutions is assumed to include the collapse of currency and the banking system. With no records of debt and property ownership, possession is likely to become the principal determinant of ownership. Pre-attack contracts, therefore, would be likely to fall into abeyance. The absence of law-enforcement infrastructure to uphold even rights of possession would exacerbate both the insecurity of property ownership and the risks of attempting to trade, already increased by the collapse of insurance and producer/consumer legislation. Monitoring, dispute settlement and enforcement would rest with individual traders or fall upon individuals and groups with the physical power to coerce.
Private property owned by anonymous shareholders, e.g., corporate property or unclaimed lands, is likely to be a prime candidate for redistribution.
Units of law-enforcement agencies and military regiments may act as independent economic units, collecting their own taxes on the movement of goods and appropriating services. Their strength relies partly on their possession of firearms.
Gang leadership is likely to be a major outlet for entrepreneurship of a certain sort. Other kinds of enterprise would be opened up by the removal of pre-disaster institutions and interregional markets, alongside a wholly changed demand/supply environment. … Citizens wishing to protect themselves from predatory gangs and who are unwilling to accept the patronage of social bandits may well choose the collective self-help option of organizing their own defense. The vigilante solution to the problem of maintaining civil order where the formal legal institutions are weak has been a ubiquitous feature of American history.
In summation, subsistence, prestige, and peasant-market exchange structures, all heavily influenced by intimate and criminal associational exchange, are likely to displace almost, if not all, formal market activities in the event that the worst case is realized.
Where currency is in limited supply or has limited credibility, but labor services are available, transaction costs will be lower if a trader can swap labor for goods directly. (umm … Sorry, the brothel's full)