Cooperation and coercion: I don't understand

Economics Political Theory
1

This isn’t meant to be a How would ancap handle this", I really don’t understand how the system would work. All interaction between people can be divided into the categories of cooperative and coercive. A market is completely cooperative, but it allows you to hire someone else to perform coercive acts. For example, I could hire an assassination company on the market.

Now, if we assume all coercive action is wrong, then why aren’t PDAs and arbitration companies excluded? Obviously, if two people agree to allow the actions of a PDA or arbiter, it is cooperative, but if the person does not agree to the services, isn’t it wrong to compel him to use them? It would seem that ancap is simply more efficient, not more ethical, than the state.

2

I often think about this conundrum myself, great post.

3

Does it?

Could you?

4

How do the benefits of this action outweigh the costs?

5

Hiring someone to hurt people isn’t ethical by libertarian standards.

re: compelling someone to use a specific arbiter (in the absence of action by the defendant, such as hiring his own firm) - no it’s not wrong, because if it were wrong, then you wouldn’t be able to try anyone. The defendant should be free to hire his own justice firm, which no doubt will have procedures in place and agreements with the other justice firm, to deal with the event of a conflict between a client and a client of a different firm.

6

I didn’t say hiring someone to hurt someone was ethical, just that it could, in theory, be done. After all, we have assassins now. I could go to the mob and have someone “whacked”. The costs might be high, but if I value that person’s death enough I would pay it. There is a market for hiring people to act coercively.

7

(Emphasis mine.)

If I choose to use no arbiter, then it is okay to drag me to court?

8

A variety of systems could be produced. The person could be tried in absentia. Or the justice system may reach out and try to get some kind of statement.

For violent crime, the person would likely be detained right away.

It’s also likely that each justice system would basically have built-in “public defender” type of service because people generally don’t want other people to go unrepresented. Of course, this could also just be a charity issue, where people pay so that poor people can have “justice service” or equivalent that will act on their behalf.

The market can produce a variety of outcomes - it’s tough to say how it would end up. But it will react to consumer demand and human action. Unlike the monopoly-produced service.

9

But it’s not. Consider the nature of what you’re doing when you defend yourself via force from an attacker.

10

Let’s consider three situations.

A) My neighbor buys a new car. I see it and steal it. My neighbor realizes it is missing, and then sees it on my property. He calls his PDA, and there is a trial.

B) My neighbor buys a new car. That night, someone else steals it. The next day, I (not realizing that my neighbor had even bought a car) buy the same car. I didn’t know it was stolen, or I wouldn’t have bought it. Nevertheless, my neighbor sees his stolen car on my property, and calls his PDA. There is a trial.

C) My neighbor buys a new car. That night someone else steals it. The next day, I buy a new car, not a stolen one, but that happens to be the same make, model, color, etc. as his. My neighbor sees what appears to be his car on my property, and calls his PDA. There is a trial.

Now, in all three situations, the appearance is the same. My neighbor bought a car, and now it seems to be on my property. However, in cases B and C I am innocent, while in case A I am not. Because situation A could be true, the justice service must investigate. However, If the arbitration service my neighbor uses sees a defendant as innocent until proven guilty they cannot enter my property - this would be initiation of aggression. If, instead, they assume me guilty until proven innocent, then they may use retaliatory aggression to investigate or even arrest me. In situation C, I can likely prove my innocence, but in B I cannot. it would simply be my word that I didn’t steal the car. Further, if they find me innocent, I can then bring charges against them for initiation of aggression.

So wouldn’t any justice service have to a) find me guilty unless I could prove myself innocent, and b) then have a financial incentive for making sure I didn’t prove my innocence?

Also, given the fact that people get upset when courts render unpopular verdicts, wouldn’t an arbitration service have to make sure their verdicts were popular to keep their customers happy, regardless of true justice?

Yes, in some cases it is clear that retaliatory force is justified, but not in every case.

11

Okay, I have read the article in question (okay, I skimmed the bit about the history of common law) and noted two things (kind of related). First, he doesn’t bring up the situation of a defendant who chooses not to use any arbitration service. This would essentially be the same as me forming my own company, and simply declaring myself always innocent. Given that, I would also refuse arbitration with other arbitration companies. The second is arbitration companies that cater to favorites. He mentioned that these would be driven out by the market, because they wouldn’t be seen as serious by other companies.

So, we have these arbitration companies that cater to favorites (including my own representing me) that are seen as what? Outlaws? So if I am my own arbitration company, even if I’m innocent, I am ostracized? Isn’t this aggression too? “If you don’t cooperate with us, we’ll tell everyone you are a criminal and your life will be hell.”

Come to think, there was a third problem - he mentioned private detectives in the Jones vs. Brown issue, but never said how Brown was fingered. How do the PIs do detective work without aggressing against Brown?

12

It’s because objective ethical concepts are relevant in the context of territorial monopoly Statism, but they have no meaning in the absence of a territorial monopoly State. People only care to quabble about what is (universally, objectively, absolutely) right and wrong when someone is going to be dictating the rules that others will be bound by. To the extent that law is no longer territorial or monopolistic, the notion of absolute, universal, objective right and wrong loses its meaning, significance, and usefulness as a concept in general. Until people understand this, these questions will never stop.

As for whether ancap is more ethical that the State, subjectively it may well be - that depends on your subjective view - but I suppose most people here would say it is more ethical, because the amount a PDA can get away with coercion is much less than a monopoly State.

13

Yet this completely overlooks the fact that individuals, in order to act freely, must know the laws of the society that they live as a apart of, otherwise they will act in constant uncertainty as to what legal standards they will be held to. Law is by its very nature objective, and it is necessarily so in order to avoid hazardous scenarios of legal uncertainty.

14

What you write is true and yet another reason that market law is superior to state law.

15

Isn’t the spontaneous order created by the market based on people’s preferences, their relative value of certain things? Rothbard briefly mentioned this, that you could end up with a common law that is socialist, for example, but then said it would have to be libertarian. I’m not certain why. If nearly everyone agreed, for example, that it should be illegal to wear red on Thursdays, then any arbitration company or PDA that found them innocent would be censured by the market. Since legality is a function of public morality, then where morality is subjective it can become either more or less constraining. Worldwide anarchy is likely to create a fickle law on the global market.

Compare this to the state, which cannot truly have a monopoly on force as long as emigration is allowed. If laws are created that seem too restrictive, one can move to another location. It is what Rothbard described as International Anarchy, and one of the very things he was worried about is what prevents the likelihood that a “rogue state” will be bullied into line. That is, if a state doesn’t accept the verdicts of other states, and they wish to punish it as an outlaw, the destruction is likely to be greater and the war more costly. The tendency of governments to go to war isn’t an essential feature of government, but a consequence of the people in power being distant from the populace, and therefore unmindful of the costs.

16

I wrote out a long reply but my internet cut out during posting it. Oh well, should have saved it mid-way…

(a) As you have pointed out, the argument that you can only hire assassins in the free society is pure bunk, thus in order to use the ability to hire assassins as an argument against the free society, you would have to show that more assassin-hiring would go on in the free society, not just that it could happen.

(b) Even if you succeeded in making this argument, it would not be clear that this was a good argument against the free society, for it would commit us to the position that we must murder to prevent other or more murders, something most libertarians would not be willing to commit to.

17

Never mind; thinking further I realized that as a state grows in size (and therefore the potential costs of war are increasingly greater) the farther from the people the rulers must get in order to manage the large territory.

I wonder if there isn’t some “optimal size” to a state, beyond which it is too big for the rulers to relate to the people, below which it is too small to worry about the costs of war on sparse citizenry.

18

This wasn’t an argument against free markets. It was simply a use of an extreme example to show that in any market, you could buy coercion. I could have gone straight to PDAs, but then might have someone argue that PDAs weren’t coercive. The case of an assassin is clear cut, and universally considered wrong under libertarian laws, but the use of investigators, courts, etc. is not.

19

Argument by assertion is a bad way to argue.

20

But did he suppose it to be an argument?