Seems we tend to manage with just about anything these days.
We manage with toilets that don’t flush.
We manage with bed bugs.
We manage with food poisoning.
We manage with state run education.
We manage with licensing and other restrictions.
We manage with groping at airport security points.
We manage with housing depreciation cause by government intervention.
The list is endless, isn’t it?
My current line of reasoning is like this:
A street vendor who sells you rotten food, a construction worker who builds a shaky roof, or a barber who through negligence causes you to contract a disease, should all be liable in court. Why should they be liable? Because a person expects a certain basic level of service from another person or business. If I asked my friend to babysit my child and he watched T.V instead, and as a result the child was harmed, that friend should be found guilty by the court. Why? Because the implicit agreement between me and him was that he keeps my child safe. The same is true for any kind of service or implicit contract between individuals. There are certain basic expectations that the failure to meet them, even without an explicit contract, can lead to criminal or civil liability.
But can we leave everything to courts? I’m not sure we can, or that it is desirable to do so. Judges are not elected officials, but the city council or the parliament are. As a society we should not leave the governance to non elected public workers. Therefore I would expect the legislative bodies mentioned above to pass laws forbidding certain actions. For example:
These laws will never forbid anything, because I believe that in a Libertarian society if two individuals agree on certain terms their agreement should always be respected. However these laws are used to outline certain implicit expectations of one individual from another. When these laws are made public it becomes easier to match expectations between individuals, and it makes the courts more effective.
Now this of course doesn’t mean that negligence cannot be claimed if no laws were violated. Not everything could be though off beforehand. However laws will help in many cases, especially those cases that constantly repeat themselves.
Some people will call such laws regulations, and it seems that many Libertarians can’t stand the word “regulation”. I don’t think this should be the case. Regulation or not, I don’t see how a society can function without specific and detailed laws at all.
[quote=“Eugene”]
Judges are not elected officials […]{/quote]
In some places they are. Anyway, are you saying that they wouldn’t or couldn’t be elected in an libertarian society ?
Can we leave it to politicians?
Why not?
What’s considered secure?
Why do you capitalize the “L”?
Are you saying that there wouldn’t be laws, rules, or regulations in a libertarian society?
What “society” are you talking about? Why does there have to be a legislature at all? Why do judges have to be “public workers”, elected or not?
WARNING: Rotten food for sale.
Barber on one side of street… “WARNING: Enter my barbershop if you are not diseased.”
Barber on the other side of street… “WARNING: Enter my barbershop if you have AIDS”