Autolykos, sorry for my delayed response. Part of the reason for it was that your last response made me think you were not making the same error (or at least, omission) as Rothbard. So by critiquing Rothbard’s basic law code idea, I thought I may be strawmanning you so I let it go. But your post here convinced me that you are definitely more of a Rothbardian on this issue, whereas I am more of a Friedmanite, so I thought it was worth revisiting this thread.
First off, I don’t really understand how you are using the term “legislation” in your post. Could you give me your definition please?
As opposed to what? What is going to safeguard the NAP so that it is not “up for grabs”?
Friedman makes no statement about the nature of man when discussing law. He’s just analysing things as they are, without making the unwarranted Rothbardian assumption that laws - at least the basic principles of law - are known, fixed and agreed upon by all reasonable people. If that’s all you mean by Hobbesian struggle, then I’d say the real world is indeed Hobbesian, because that Rothbardian assumption is unwarranted.
But to me Hobbesian struggle implies the view that “most people are bad”, which is the opposite of what both of us (and probably Friedman) have already agree upon: that most people are “good”. It is because we hold this non-Hobbesian view of human nature that we (Friedman and I) are quite optimistic about the kinds of laws that will produced in anarchy: that is, we expect largely libertarian law codes. They are (will be) highly demanded because they resonate with most people’s senses of morality, and the logical aspect of libertarianism is appealing, as you pointed out. They also tend to be cheaper to supply, which gives us another reason to expect libertarian law codes.
This is essentially what I was discussing earlier in this thread with Clayton. He sees very clearly that the ultimate bargaining power is how likely you are to win a martial contest. While this is true, I think the bargaining power that is more relevant in an established anarchy is “monetary bargaining power.” This also explains how we can expect the most successful producers of law to be the court agencies that best satisfy consumer demand. In Clayton’s world where “martial bargaining power” is key, we would expect the most successful producers of law to be simply the court agencies with the biggest armies, which seems wrong or incomplete to me.
Clayton, our conversation got a bit lost in this thread. I don’t think you responded to my latest post to you though.