Let’s say a person left no will and died. He left a son and a wife. Now the son goes to reputable court A which is known for ruling in such cases in favor of the heir, while the wife goes to a reputable court B which is known for ruling in inheritance cases in favor of the wife. So we have two reputable courts each producing a completely different solution. What can be done now?
A court will have to justify its jurisdiction in any matter. It would probably be based on where the deceased was domiciled in matters of succession, as well as the nature of the marriage that had been entered into.
A workable system of legal courts can’t possibly have court judgements in contempt of each other. Just like a system of banks, phone providers or internet service providers are compelled by market forces to allow transfers, calls or connections to ‘competing’ networks, even if they are priced higher than connections within the same network. Legal systems with overlapping jurisdiction and competance would have to provide for the same sort of arrangement in order for any of them to prosper at what they do. How respected will a renegade, activist system of courts be within the broader legal community and its clients? If jurisdiction is already lawfully founded in a particular court, it is not lawful for another court to attempt to found jurisdiction simultaneously, while the matter is still being heard.
This is not to say that ‘competing’ legal arbitration services can’t have concurrent jurisdiction in the abstract, but once jurisdiction has actually been founded in a particular case, it cannot possibly be legitimate for another court to found jurisdiction unless it is the founding of jurisdiction itself that is disputed, in which case this would have to form its own discrete legal action and judgement whereupon would have to be justified in terms of rational, equitable common law principles to the arbitration service’s clients and to the voluntary oversight bodies which would most likely exist in these instances, the arbitration of legal disputes necessitating a hierarchical structure of checks and balances in order to be effective at applying rational and effective common law.
Eugene, please create only one thread for all of these hypothetical situations you are inquiring about. It’s a real mess when you create multiple threads (and don’t reply to the responses) each day.
I think you misunderstand the nature of arbitration. For arbitration to occur, both parties must agree to use the same arbiter(s) and be bound by his/their decisions, whatever they may be. If both court A and court B are reputable, each will ask the party who appears where the other party is. Each party must answer that the other party decided to go to another court. Then each court will refuse to hear the case, as both parties are not present. At that point, either the wife and son “duke it out” (which is very costly) or they find some way to reach a mutual agreement. Court A and/or court B may even offer to help with the settlement.
Okay, I’ll try to use one thread.
I understand there is need for cooperate both between courts and security firms, because they will do anything to refrain from violence. I have another question:
Today 1% of the richest people in the United States own about 1/3 of the money in the country. Now I assume that in anarchy courts and protection firms would receive 1/3 of their income from this 1%. Now it does seem likely that the courts and protection firms will try to appease the rich more than the poor. Therefore you could expect that in a conflict between a poor and a rich person the court would more likely favor the rich, and the police firm will have more motivation to persecute the rich rather than the poor. Do you see a problem with this?
At least in the version of Anarcho-capitalism that I have described, the parties don’t “go to” a court. Each is a customer of a rights enforcement agency, and the two agencies (assuming they are not both customers of the same one) have an agreement on what court disputes among their customers will go to. Thus the legal rules you are under have been chosen–by the private court, by the rights enforcement agency that agrees to use that court, and by your choice to patronize that agency–in advance of the dispute.
This doesn’t make sense. Even if we held constant that the top 1% held 1/3 of the wealth post-state (seems unlikely) how does it follow that 1/3 of the income of PDA’s and courts would be from that 1%?
Wal-Mart is one of the largest corporations in the US and they certainly don’t try to appease the rich. That top 1% has probably never set foot in a Wal-Mart. Not every car company tries to pander to the rich either, Kia doesn’t try to out-compete BMW by creating a comparable product but rather a cheaper product aimed at a new demographic. There is a huge profit to be made in providing goods and services to the lower eschalons of society and there is no reason to believe that a market in defense and arbitration would be any different.
As a profit seeking entity, any given court would try to embody the traits that consumers look for in a good court*, just as any given car company would try to embody the traits that consumers look for in a good car. Courts that gather a reputation as biased will suffer losses just like car companies who produce a lot of lemons might. Police firms that run around “persecuting” the rich will not do well. Who will be funding such antics?
*Things like justice, fairness, right prices, compassion, customer service and so on.
Now I assume that in anarchy courts and protection firms would receive 1/3 of their income from this 1%.
I believe this is a faulty assumption. Do the rich eat 1/3 of the food in the country, or live in 1/3 of all the housing in this country? I would imagine like most most industries the court/arbitration industry would be driven primarially by the middle class.
Even if this was the case wouldnt those courts who favor one segment of society at the expense of another loose credibility and then loose all of their business? Would the 1% use arbitors that make biased decisons? After all they would have disputes with other people in the 1% wouldnt they?
Okay, let’s say the top 1% own 99% of wealth. They then pay huge amounts of money to private security firms. They can basically enslave the entire population this way. The courts will be biased, the police will be completely biased. None of these companies will care one bit about the poor, when 99% of their income comes from the 1% rich. Just as the rich today can use the power of government to subdue the poor, so will the rich in anarchy use their massive resources to use the private police to basically enslave the population.
Now the scenario above is definitely highly exaggerated, but it does show what can happen with law when some people can “vote” for law with more votes (dollars) than others.
The only reason you use an arbitration service/approach a court is because you want to be seen as having good faith and the interests of public justice at heart. That you don’t solve problems by forceful, fraudulent or otherwise unlawful means. All you are trying to save is your reputation, really. Especially if you’re rich and powerful enough to get your own way by force if you wanted to, If a judgement is produced which is clearly and unjustly prejudiced in your favour, you have not purchased anything worthwhile.
It’s not that there’ll never be a crook judge/arbitrator, but I’m inclined to think their employer would view them as bringing infamy upon the company’s name. It doesn’t matter if a thousand guys have got 1/4 of the wealth and a million guys have got 3/4 - if you’re clearly seen to be prejudiced against poor people in your application of the law, those million guys with 3/4 of the wealth aren’t going to use you. In fact, hardly anyone will use you no matter how rich they are, because one client will almost always have deeper pockets than the other.
It’s always valuable to consider the present situation. How fair are today’s courts, where judges are appointed by elected officials, virtually any kind of litigation is extremely costly and lengthy due to monopolised legal services, the incentive structure against corruption in the courts is dubious etc etc?
People will not use biased courts, as long as private police will enforce the decisions of the unbiased courts rather than the biased courts. But when (theoreticaly), 99% of the revenues of police firms comes from a small group of 100 people and only 1% from the other 300 million people, these police firms will definitely enforce rulings of the biased courts rather than the unbiased courts.
Fine.
Do you not see how this would change the scenario pretty quickly? Lets say I were in a room with nine other people (10 total) and each person had 11 chocolates except for myself who had 900. If I start bribing the guy next to me with chocolate, the concentration of chocolate wealth will shift. Likewise, the guy next to me might want to give some of his new found chocolate wealth to the hot girl across the room in exchange for a kiss. That 1% is going to look like 2% soon, and that money is going to spread as exchange occurs.
How long will this last? The wealthy don’t just snap their fingers to get that way. They either A) provide goods that are desirable on the market, or B) confiscate the wealth from others. If A is the case, the minute these people “enslave” the rest of the population they will suffer losses and the wealth will shift. If B is the case, then we aren’t talking about a free society and your criticism must be aimed at the State.
What this shows is that you are more interested in creating fantastic hypotheticals than learning about economics.
To quote David Friedman:
Through the bargaining process explained by Friedman, in which two protective agencies decide which court to use in conflicts arising between their respective customers, the rich definitely do get better laws than the poor. Since violence is rarely in the interest of the protective agencies, it is highly likely that they will use the bargaining process that Friedman described. Now I don’t see how laws that benefit the rich more than the poor are good for society in general.
I don’t think we can avoid a situation in which rich people can afford better lawyers, better debt collectors, better investigators etc. Obviously a court can only judge in terms of the case presented to it, but nevertheless the question of whether counsel are - or must be - of equal competance is entirely seperate to the question of equality before the law from the point of view of the court.
Don’t you think a free market would make legal services much cheaper than they currently are, allowing greater, albeit imperfect, access to more people?
I’m not talking about more expensive lawyers that the rich will have, though that’s of course is true, and in fact will be much more significant than today where public laywers are given free of charge to the poor. I am talking about the law itself being biased towards the rich, as resulting from the bargaining process described by Friedman. I think this is also inevitable.
Now it is true that competition will decrease costs and increase efficiency, but is it worth the unfairness of the private law system? I’m not sure. I want to see everyone equal in the eyes of the law, not a separate law for rich and a separate law for the poor. This is the situation in the current welfare state, I’m not sure I want to see this replicated in an anarcho-capitalist society.
THIS. I can also imagine a kind of “circuit court industry” as well, consisting of judges who just hear people’s cases - people who may not have a PDA or prefer to go outside their PDA to resolve a particular case - not unlike those Judge Judy shows on TV.
It’s a mistake to speak of “courts being known to rule in favor of ______” in a true free market in adjudication. It’s a bit like positing the existence of an insurance company who’s “known not to pay out on insurance claims” arising in a free market. It just doesn’t make sense.
Clayton -
What do you propose to remedy this?
As for the original question, remember that people don’t just go to court out of habit; there has to be a conflict. Did the mother gain control of the dead man’s bank account, and the son is taking her to Court A for his cut? If so, she must either appear in Court A, or risk that no one cares what Court A thinks if it rules against her in her absence (a low risk, as I doubt the biased Court A’s ruling would be respected in such a situation). Or is there a third party acting as executor of the estate, and it is up to him to dole out the wealth? In that case, I think he would have an opinion as to which court to use. This is all assuming that absolutely nothing was specified in some contract beforehand.
The lesson here, then, is to always write a will. Now You Know.
Let’s say a person left no will and died. He left a son and a wife. Now the son goes to reputable court A which is known for ruling in such cases in favor of the heir, while the wife goes to a reputable court B which is known for ruling in inheritance cases in favor of the wife. So we have two reputable courts each producing a completely different solution. What can be done now?
They would agree beforehand on which court would handle the case. Most likely they would agree to court C which has a reputation for being neutral and impartial in such matters…
They aren’t given free of charge. They are paid for by stealing from others.
Wealthy people can afford better lawyers and better insurance companies. A world where the productive don’t get better treatment is irrational. There would be no reason to accumulate wealth if it didn’t yield better outcomes.
What is unfair?
You want a Utopia.
This is something man is not capable of offering, regardless of the political system.