Liberty is not the ultimate value

[gotlucky]

It looks like you have put a lot of thought into this idea of yours, but there are still certain aspects of it that are contradictory. In another thread, Autolykos pointed out that a court of last resort must necessarily use aggression to maintain its status as a court of last resort. Therefore, your autarkic governments are still states. And all states are aggressive.

@Anenome

Those are largely voluntary associations, where if you disagree with the ‘governing body’ your recourse is generally to leave the organization. In a sense, this autarchic state converts jurisdictions to that same mechanism.

See above. Also, the problem with a jurisdiction over any specific physical area (as opposed to perhaps jurisdiction over specific people or groups instead) is that it ends up being a “love it or leave it” argument. So long as the governing body maintains control over a geographic area, leaving the organization requires leaving the area.

@Anenome

Therefore what? They are jurisdictions because within their boundaries there is law, and law by its nature has a monopoly within its jurisdiction on what is legal.

This is not true. Law by its nature is not a monopoly. Laws are social norms that are enforced through violence. Statutory law is when the state issues decrees as to what these norms shall be. Case law is more decentralized, as judges build upon precedent to decide what these norms shall be. Customary law is the most decentralized, as instead of a group of individuals (such as the state or judges) deciding what is to be law, the customs and traditions of the community are what cause certain norms to become law.

Law is just a set of rules, only people or groups of people can have monopolies. However, there cannot be conflicting laws within the same area, as they are also norms. Perhaps that is what you meant.

@Anenome

Are you saying that a jurisdiction would prevent another jurisdiction from cropping up inside its boundaries? Because that’s precisely what can indeed happen within this autarchy, and the original jurisdiction cannot stop the formation of a new jurisdiction within its boundaries, precisely because the limits of each jurisdiction is made up of the property boundaries of those whom accept that jurisdiction. So, for a new jurisdiction to crop up within the old, all that’s required is for a one or more citizens to repudiate X existing jurisdiction and declare a new charter city-Y made up of the contiguous property boundaries of these founding member(s).

The problem with this idea is that there is still aggression. The governments controlling these jurisdictions necessarily are aggressive, otherwise they would not be in control of the particular geographic area defined as its jurisdiction.

This all has to do with the idea of a court of last resort. Either these governments have the final say or they do not. If they do not have the final say as to what goes on in their jurisdiction, then there is no reason to claim that there is a singular government in any given area.

@Anenome

Again, there’s a significant change in what a jurisdiction means, how it is established and how it maintained in this new idea of autarchy, and applying old concepts of immovable and eternal jurisdictions does not work.

I begin with the assumption that jurisdictional boundaries should serve people rather than the other way around, and that the government owns no territory or land at all. It’s jurisdiction is limited to those whom accept it and nothing more. And they can secede from it at will and join a new jurisdiction or even live in a jurisdiction-free zone.

I think you would greatly benefit from reading Clayton’s two articles, What Law Is and A Praxeological Account of Law.

@Anenome

I conceive of a poplitical structure of increasingly abstract principles governing the extension from city to nation. It would go something like this:

Nation → State → City

Regarding this quote and the rest of your post, your concept of an autarkic structure is still a state. It has courts of last resort, which are necessarily aggressive. So long as you have courts of last resort, your idea is minarchist in nature.