I believe what Eugene is mostly concerned about is not that the wealthy have it “better off”, but that they can use their wealth to corrupt the justice system to act in a very unjust way (i.e. in favor of the rich over the poor/middle-class regardless of the validity of their case.) As an example: I may be very good at the game Parcheesi, but it would be very unjust for me to be able to alter the rules in my favor. If courts are supposed to enforce contracts, but they have a great deal of incentive to do otherwise when they are bribed, why would they make the correct decision?
I believe what Eugene is mostly concerned about is not that the wealthy have it “better off”, but that they can use their wealth to corrupt the justice system to act in a very unjust way (i.e. in favor of the rich over the poor/middle-class regardless of the validity of their case.) As an example: I may be very good at the game Parcheesi, but it would be very unjust for me to be able to alter the rules in my favor. If courts are supposed to enforce contracts, but they have a great deal of incentive to do otherwise when they are bribed, why would they make the correct decision?
You think this isnt a problem with the state?
The problem is the “wealth” depend on the satisfaction of the “less wealthy”. Unable to satisfy consumers means people will abandon that particular court. If a court does not appease the mases they will be unable to compete. Services of this type do not get powerful by servicing a few rich men, instead they get powerful by servicing middle to low income masses.
They fear the consequences of biased decisions, knowing that their business depends on their reputation.
This is an argument against a monopoly legal system. If we believe this narrative Eugene keeps bringing up of the big bad businessman or rich guy (when the worst in history IMO have been politicians) then the last thing you want is a monopoly legal system if we really feel the wealthy will corrupt law to their own ends.
Competition helps level the playing field where there is unequal power distribution.
But I’m not talking about a specific rich person bribing a specific judge. This can happen in every system. I am talking about a sytematic perference of wealthier clients. As David Friedman said a very likely bargaining process will occur between protective companies, in which, as he admits himself, the rich people will have more bargaining power.
Let’s say a protective company A has a million middle class clients who pay a fee of 100$ a year. Now protective company B has 1000 clients who are owners of oil companies, these clients pay 100,000$ a year. Now company A and company B have the same revenues. Whenever a customer of company A and company B have a conflict, these companies will have to reach a compromise. Both companies will have an equal bargaining power.
Now let’s say a conflict was that a particular oil magnate wanted to expand his factory, but the house of the customer of company A was in the way. Now, through the bargaining process, a resolutiuon that is pretty likely to be reached, is that the owner of the house will have to leave his house, but will be compensated by the oil magnate.
Now this example clearly shows that the libertarian principle of non aggression doesn’t hold, since the house owner did not voluntarily leave his house, he was forced to do so because company B had a disproportinate fire power. They didn’t physically use this fire power, but they threatened to use it if their share in the bargaining process would not be 50%
This doesn’t make economic sense. Why do company A and B have ‘equal bargaining power’ in a particular dispute just because they have equal revenues overall? Do you think either company is in a position to burn through all of its revenue for the sake of a single client’s preferences and damn the consequences? These companies’ primary concern is for what gets them clients in the first place - their reputation for providing effective solutions to their clients’ legal problems. Effective legal solutions are those which are most broadly respected as valid and binding.
You also have to consider that oil companies would probably pay more for legal dispute insurance than middle-class individuals, because oil companies pose a much greater risk to their insurer in this regard than the average middle-class individual does.
You still haven’t addressed the obvious question: if a court is known to all and sundry to produce nonsense prejudicial judgements in favour of whoever pays them the most, then why on Earth would anyone bother spending money on these judgements in the first place? Why not spend that money on a mercenary band to serve your wishes, whatever they may be? It’s a lot more quantifiable than an expensive piece of paper that no one respects. The only reason someone approaches any court voluntarily is because they want to be seen as someone who isn’t fraudulent or violent in getting their own way. If the court itself is broadly seen to be fraudulent and violent, there is no reason to use it.
This makes no legal sense. Legal arbitrators don’t just ‘compromise’ willy-nilly between whatever party A wants and whatever party B wants, without regard for whether the parties actually have valid legal rights of a real or personal nature to claim the things that they want. If they did that, there would be no legal certainty in the universe whatsoever, and no laws at all.
The only entity that is ever allowed to expropriate property is the state, because its claim of sovereignty over it is said to outweigh even the owner’s natural right in it. The owner’s natural right, or at least his enjoyment thereof, is often held to be contingent upon the state’s sovereignty. Anarchist philosophies reject that notion, which must mean that the owner’s natural right in his property is supreme above all others, inasmuch as he hasn’t lawfully ceded or encumbered it.
Look James. I wish that was the case and anarchy could succeed in this regard. Unfortunately I’m not sure. I’m not making this up. You can read what Friedman wrote on this in " The Machinery of Freedom". He admits that the rich are likely to have laws biased in their favor.
Now you are saying that people will abandon a biased court. Well they they might. But when the majority of the military power, which is really what matters, is subsidized by the wealthy and the rich, it is quite likely that this military power won’t recognize rulings of unbiased courts, but will actually enforce the rulings of the slightly biased courts. It does make sense. If the rich pays 1000$ to private police, and the poor pays 10$, then in a conflict between these two, what client will the police firm cater more to? Now the poor can of course leave that particular police force, and hire another police force. But even that police force will have rich customers.
Really you can’t escape from this. The rich will have more military power. Look at what happened in Egypt. Those who are in charge now are those with most military power. Now we can assume people in the western world will respect individual rights a lot more, so even the rich, despite their disproportinate police power, will try not to use blatant aggression. First of all because most of them will see such use of their power as unethical, second of all because they will be afraid that if they will be too blatant, violence might errupt. Yet there are ways to have slightly biased laws in your favor without irritating the entire population, so I am pretty much sure some laws will be indeed biased.
Right, but I don’t think you understand the preference for private law. Then it becomes an arbitration process. There isn’t only one judge.
Apparently you didn’t watch the video I posted in the other thread either. It is a little maddening that I take time to give you good answers and you don’t avail yourself of them.
You’re entirely missing the point. In our monopoly legal system, the systematic preference for wealthier clients has enormous power. In anarchy, it has much less power. What you want is for money not to play a part in the provision of a service, and the issue is, you think of the law like its the word of God or the sounds angels make. It’s not. Law is just a technology, provided in the form of a service where there is competition.
Again, if you had watched the video I posted in the other thread …
Justice is making people whole for the violations of rights they have suffered. Someone who creates damages is going to suffer a poor reputation (look at Hitler) but if he has the means to make the injured party whole, this is not a bad thing. On the contrary, I would rather be aggressed against by a rich man than a poor man.
How do you overcome this?
You have a bias too. Your idea of neutrality in law is a bias. I’ll ask again, how do you intend to solve an unsolvable problem? There are no angels acting as men we can appoint to be our kings or judges. How do you remove man’s bias for profit from an enterprise which demands human intervention?
You’re asking to completely reverse the nature of man to accomodate what YOU think is “fair”.
I did watch the video, but the presentation style was very irritating, and I didn’t really understand his point.
Now, libertarians believe in the principle of non aggression. So while I don’t believe this principle is god given, I do hold it sacred, and this is not something that should be changed through the market process, this is a natural right if you will. So if for instance all the wealthy and rich people are fascists, they still shouldn’t be able to impose this system of justice on myself through their disproportinate wealth in the market.
How do I overcome this? You could have a supreme court that can override every decision that goes against the non aggression principle for example.
I’m not following your logical chain.
Have we established that people will tend to seek legal judgements which are perceived to be valid and fair in terms of the natural law as it is broadly understood in a given context? Because otherwise they might as well not seek the judgement at all, and go straight to hiring mercs who will do whatever they want?
Surely, then, if such a judgement is produced in their favour, they will contract with an enforcement service to enforce it? It follows, logically, that they will want the enforcement service to be effective at enforcing the judgement, but not to exceed their authority in terms of it, as this would bring the same infamy upon the client’s name as they sought to avoid by securing a judgement in the first place?
At what point did the men with the guns start telling people which arbitration services to use? Surely it must have been the point at which a state was established.
Of course some “laws” will always be biased in favour of the rich. Tort is biased in favour of the rich. If someone breaks my leg and I demand fiduciary compensation for my losses, the richer man may well be able to assume this liability more easily. Life itself is biased towards the rich. That’s the whole point of becoming rich. This is not the same as saying that foundational legal principles, like property rights, will not be respected in court, and that judges will simply take dictation from the richer party’s counsel and reproduce it as their judgement.
His point was explaining how common law courts would function without a legal monopoly. It was ENTIRELY this discussion.
Can you give me $100 to compensate me for my time so I can go over the video sequence and transcribe it all for you? You see, the reason I pointed you to the video, is that while I would like to help you figure this stuff out, I simply do not have the time to rewrite everything which has already been written or recorded.
Then you don’t need courts. Let mother nature or God arbitrate these issues, since these rights come from nature, man is not required to resolve them.
I believe they shouldn’t but they most certainly can. That’s reality Eugene. It isn’t fair. We can’t have Utopia.
James. Please explain to me what then David Friedman meant when he referred to the bargaining process. I quote him:
Now why does bargaining work? Because each side is afraid that if no agreement will be reached, violence will occur. So the incentives to reach an agreement are enormous. However a weaker enforcement agency will be more afraid of violence because they are most likely to lose. So if we have two such agencies. One agency has 1000 poor customers, and the other agency has 1000 rich customers, the second agency will have A LOT more military power than the first agency. So obviously the first agency will have less bargaining power, as it will fear escalation to violence far more. So according to Friedman the rich are likely to get an upper hand in this.
Eugene, every single person in this thread agrees that rich people have an “upper hand.” There is no benefit to repeating this. Start explaining what can be done to reduce the influence of the rich. How would a supreme court - another layer of adjudication atop the private courts, and monopolized at that - do any good? Why can’t the rich just bribe this court or make sure that rich-friendly judges are appointed to it?
Everything is comparative. The rich may have an “upper hand.” But can they wield even more influence in any other system, or is a competitive court system best at mitigating biased decisions and approximating equality before the law?
The rich will have a hard time bribing the supreme court, if the supreme court judges make 1 million dollar a year. I don’t believe bribes will be common. I also propose elections to the supreme court once a year in order to increase accountability. The difference between the supreme court and a regular court in anarcho-capitalism is that every individual will have exactly 1 vote in the election of the judges, while in a regular anarcho-capitalist court, every individual will have different number of votes depending on his income, which is a problem, because income should be completely irrelevant to justice.
Eugene, the problem with democracy is that everyone who did not vote for the judge (basically mob rule, a popularity contest for law) will not have a right to choose their own judge.
How can you call denying people freedom to choose a form of justice?
Because the alternative might be worse. The alternative can very well be “rich rule”. A supreme court can balance the disproportinate influence of the rich on the process of creating and enforcing the law.
But you deny the poor people to choose a form of justice. Their influence on choosing the form of justice will be next to nothing, as they will either not have the money to pay the court (and will therefore depend on charity, which means their vote is already void), or they will pay the court a lot less than the middle and upper class, and therefore will also have a relatively insignificant influence.
Read this article by Bob Murphy called “The Possibility of Private Law”:
And as a side note, I would recommend reading this article called “The Indefensibility of Political Representation”:
There would be no charities to take up the cause?
And who would feed the poor people? OBVIOUSLY everyone in the middle and upper class can buy all the food of good quality and quantity, while poor people have no money for such things (or get the little garbage scraps left over)… who would be stupid enough to give them food, how will you make money?
In anarchy, justice is formed in the free market. Yet some players in the free market (those with more money) have more influence, therefore they will also have more influence in the formation of justice. I don’t think this is right.
Let’s say 1% of the population is so poor that they can’t even pay the courts. So they are infact not players at all in the formation of justice. Surely charity will take care of them. But the poor will still not be real players in the formation of justice. It is the donors who will call the shots, decide about the court, and so forth. But even these donors will have very insignificant influence as billionaires for example.
Now I don’t mind that rich people have more influence in what kind of housing is produced by the market. But I do care when the rich have more influence in the formation of justice.