OK, this is too far gone for anything useful to be said. You’re working off of several problematic premises, primarily concerning how law and adjudication work. We would need to get down to basics before anything could be accomplished.
Please elaborate.
I’m still not sure which side is right in this debate but I’m inclined to go with Eugene.
The free market cannot provide justice (law/property rights) because it is justice (law/property rights) that determine(s) whether a market is free in the first place. As LS stated in another thread, there can’t be a free market without property rights. But isn’t it the very same justice/law that delineates/creates these property rights? How could the fundamental ingredient (justice/law/property rights) upon which the very existence of the free market is conditioned, be also produced/created by that free market? I think this logical circularity excludes the law (justice/property rights) from the set of exchangeable services in the free market. The market cannot provide/create them as it is them that first must provide/create the free market instead.
Only a critical mass of coherent subjective preferences supporting property rights (law/justice) within a set of human agents can create and sustain a free market. Not the other way around.
Z.
A supreme court is a monopoly. In order to create a supreme court, you have to violate people’s right to choose. You can’t claim you are creating a more just solution when your solution starts with injustice. Please Eugene, this is a basic contradiction.
No I don’t. In the market, there will be justice for rich and poor. In a monopoly, there is only justice for the rich. What you’ve been trying to do is to push positivism. You think the poor have positive rights. You think they are entitled to justice, but justice is a service and someone has to provide it at a cost. It is not free.
Likewise, you’re adopting a paternal approach to the poor. You’re not allowing them to choose their own justice individually, you are lumping them in one big class and giving them one choice. A supreme court system or nothing. In a market for law, poor people can create their own systems, choose their own providers and even provide law for themselves!
This is incorrect. You’re conflating ideas again. Check your premises and/or read some source material please.
So who do you expect to provide you justice when you complain that your property rights are being infringed by an Organized Parasitic Human Actor (OPHA), i.e. the state? Wouldn’t that be exactly how the poor guy feels about the “non-affordable” justice dolled out to him by what he must perceive to be yet another OPHA (the rich guy with the justice that he can so easily afford)?
Seems like “the state” (or OPHA) is in the eye of the beholder. There can be no free market when justice can be bought or not afforded.
Z.
Law evolves through what we could call the common law process. The common law process, to put it briefly and extremely unsatisfactorily, involves adjudicators settling disputes, relying on precedent as a guide and so as to adhere to the rule of law (the parties to a dispute having acted in accordance to what they believe to be lawful); Benson provides a great summary here. Adjudicators sell their services in the free market.
It is misleading, then, to say that “justice is formed in the free market.” It is tempting to say it, because of the involvement of private adjudicators and the similarity between the market process and the “common law process,” but a lot of information is lost when the process is reduced to such a simple declaration. Adjudicators sell their services in the market, and buyers value their services insofar as the adjudicators adhere to the common law process.
The rich, being rich, can afford better lawyers, more easily pay damages when guilty of a tort, write contracts that are more in their favor, etc. They cannot steer the entire legal code to favor them, given the checks and balances in both the market and common law processes. The costs of violating the law are largely internalized, power is dispersed such that other courts and enforcement agencies can refuse to honor the unsatisfactory ruling of a biased court, etc. That a rich factory owner could pay off his neighbors so as to pollute their air, does not mean polluting air is legal.
EDIT: Consider the analogue of the scientific method (process). The scientific process, like the market and common law processes, is a highly decentralized order with checks and balances: scientists propose hypotheses, provide data, etc., and their work is checked by fellow scientists. The more scientists and reputable journals that find a hypothesis or theory valid, the more highly regarded is the hypothesis/theory. The more it is considered to be accurate. The market, however, determines which scientists are best rewarded, what research will be funded, which discoveries and insights will be applied to practical use, etc. We would not say, however, that the market determines the scientific merit of theories. Rather, the scientific process informs the “market” as to which scientists and projects should be funded, which scientific insights can be relied upon for practical use, etc.
You are comparing a monopoly to a large group of competing agencies.
In my example the poor person did not choose to leave his house for compensation. It was not a voluntary transaction at all. It was the superior firepower of the rich that forced him to do it.
Michael, I understand your point. You are saying that those courts that will be considered reputable will be better at providing justice that is in tune with the internal sense of justice people have. I wish that was true. Unfortunately it is likely that people in anarcho-capitalism will change their internal sense of justice, from a purely libertarian sense of justice, to something akin to liberty student sense of justice which says that the poor are not entitled to justice, and that justice is just another market good which people have to earn with their labor first. My fear is that the anarcho-capitalism institutions will encourage this view, since they will allow the rich quite easily to be buy more justice for themselves. After such transformation will occur, society will no longer be libertarian, and that’s not what most of us want.
Eugene, justice is not a right. If you believe it is, then you have to violate the rights of someone else to make them pay for or provide it. Justice services are not free. Thus, you advocate creating an injustice, in order to create justice.
You refuse to address this contradiction in your premise. Why?
I don’t expect anyone to provide justice for me. I have to provide it for myself.
But I’m not in favor of taxation, I do not suggest that the rich will be forced to pay for the poor. I am advocating a supreme court that will run on donations, but will be the final authority on resolution of conflicts. It will have no troops, and no way to enforce its decisions, but it will have the supreme moral authority, and will be a last resort safeguard for libertarian rule. It will be just another way of saying to the rich “if you won’t stop your aggression or threats of aggression against us, we return to democracy and the welfare state, so don’t tempt us! Now let that poor man have his house, this is not a legitimate law, this is not in line with the principle of non aggression!”
Competing for what? The poor guy’s “business”?
Personally, if I was running a private court/enforcement outfit I would bend over backwards to attract as much rich clientelle as possible. As a matter of fact, I would make it my task to advertise my intent overtly through the decisions of my judges and the actions of my goons:
“A poor guy runs over a rich guy’s priceless poodle? He can’t pay $200k restitution? How does a judgment of lifelong slavery as restitution for you precious Lulu sound for you, sir? And look at all the precedents (prior such judgments) from most other successful (profitable) competing outfits! We must be on the right track on this one.”
As for the current monopoly… Do you find anything un-just about your predicament (an OPHA violating your property rights)? Where is the market where you can buy yourself some justice? Or perhaps it’s there but you can’t see it (participate in it) cause you can’t afford it? Perhaps everything looks like an unjust monopoly to the poor sob thumbing his nose into the window from the outside looking in.
As I said, the “state” (OPHA) is in the eye of the beholder. The free market cannot provide something (justice) without which it cannot even exist in the first place. The baby cannot provide its own mother.
In my long time on this forum, I have yet to see anyone address this blatanly obvious logical contradiction
Z.
Presumably, you could also pay someone else to provide it for you, no?
Z.
Hey Eugene, guess who is going to be making the donations. 
I don’t think you understand libertarianism very well. In libertarianism, there is no supreme moral authority or concept of “rule”. Those are statist concepts, as is a judicial monopoly.
Z, I am a pretty patient guy, but are you going to get around to a point? I am sorta tired of you trying to use my personal preferences to win an argument or to score a point in debate.
To answer this last question, I could pay someone else, or I could not. But either way, I would be responsible for the provision of justice, whether directly or by agent/proxy.
A few problems:
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Why would you need a monopoly “final arbiter”?
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Donations, what if I don’t want to pay because I do not think this “supreme court” is legitimate?
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What if I don’t think this is legitimate, why do they still have a final say in my court case?
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What incentives does the supreme court have to hold up YOUR VERSION of the interpetation of the law? Right now the Supreme Court has all the incentive to rule in the favor of the government itself, and to expand its powers.
It’s not a contradiction because it is a non sequitur. We already dealt with your misunderstanding about what a market is in the other thread. At the risk of losing my patience, these posts you keep making are the sort that statists make when they first arrive here, not when they have been here a long time, with access to hundreds of discussions, and arguably the largest media library for these concepts in the history of man.
Seriously dude, pick up a book or something. At least understand the arguments and positions before you start criticizing them. You’re a bright guy, but you’re definitely not meeting the standard of debate around here when you post this stuff.
LS, didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers. Nor am I here to “win” or score any points. I thought the current “heat” level in the discourse was close to what we’ve been accustomed to before.
Perhaps everyone’s already doing exactly that, producing the (OPHA) outcome you see out the window right now.
Z.
z1235, have you read “The Not So Wild Wild West” yet?