I'm curious if this last sentence from the article is true:

  > It turns out that a currency can thrive even when 
  > no one is making laws for it.

Were the laws were so weak or hard to enforce at one time that, effectively, there were no laws? Can we look at currencies from that period of time to give us a sense of how bitcoin will work?

(Another poster pointed out that the spec is making the rules, and not a government, so it may be wrong to compare bitcoin with an un/poorly regulated currency.)