I would recommend reading “For A New Liberty”, by Rothbard:
Two problems I have with government monopolies:
Who/How are you going to pay for it?
Monopolies are extremely inefficient, competition in the market can take care of it even better (in all 3 cases you mentioned).
And a third problem: 3. Why stop at those three examples, why are you making the arbitrary line there? Why not government roads? why not government schools? why not government healthcare? Why not government fire departments?
Who’s property is being damaged?
My girlfriend dumped me, and posted about it on the Facebook for all the world to see!!! Now I am so shamed, I should be able to sue her?
Or, she said to the world some hidden fetish of mine… what enormous shame she has caused me, and ruined my reputation. Now I can sue her?
Stephan Kinsella has written much on the subject, here is one such article:
Walter Block already answered all your questions quite well in “Defending The Undefendable”, why not just read what was already written on the subject?
A woman was raped. Her property was damaged. Now the criminal will go free because he threatens to put her name in the papers if she decides to sue. What rational reason do women have to complain if they know they’ll be traumatized almost to the same extent by exposing all the intimate details before crowds of millions?
There are a million different things a person can dream up about how someone else needs to step in and protect someone from something. However, if you start making exceptions for special cases you end up where we are today, with a billion special cases that have a net result of socialism.
In my opinion governments need to hardline and accept that some bad things will slip through but it’s better than creating a billion new laws that prevent people from doing anything. You could just as easily ban the use of cars because they are potentially dangerous weapons. The only way to truely protect everyone from everything is to kill everyone off (or at least put everyone into a vegetative state)…
Whether rape is a crime is not what is under question. Who’s property is damaged if I publish a name of a rape victim? If you think the victim’s property is being damaged, what is the name of this property she supposedly owns?
And how exactly would a “criminal go free because he threatens to put her name in the papers?” This just doesn’t make any sense.
As a side note, have you started reading Defending The Undefendable yet?
In other words, you support free exchange (otherwise known as “free markets”) in all areas except for protection, settling disputes, and anything that interferes with the strength and efficiency of the former… oh wait, that last category could entail everything else, depending on how you define “interfere”, “strength”, and/or “efficiency”. So you don’t support free exchange in any area, really.
Why must “the libertarian state” have a “democratic assembly”?
The United States (as I presume you’re talking about) is already close to a police state, and you want police and punishment to be even stronger? How in the world is that libertarian? Besides, do you think skyrocketing “crime rates” (real or perceived) may have something to do with the proliferation of laws on the books?
Except that most laws today don’t deal with disrespecting the “live and let live” principle. Most laws are against mala prohibita, not mala in se. Case in point: “structuring” of bank deposits. Another case in point: “honest services fraud”. Yet another case in point: “racketeering”.
At this point, I can’t consider you to be a fellow libertarian. You don’t seem to recognize the difference between aggression and non-aggression. You continually conflate aggression with all violence. Is this conflation deliberate? That is, are you indeed trolling here?
Hey, while you’re at it, why don’t you limit free speech when it causes lèse majesté? After all, that could be construed as constituting interference with the operation of the police, the army, the courts, and/or the government/state as a whole.
You want to know what the most peaceful society would be? One where everyone is imprisoned for life. So I’m sorry, but I’ll choose freedom over peace any day. I strongly suggest you do the same.
Thanks for that link. It looks like that dastardly Kinsella has once again provoked me to look at things in a different way. Really, someone should put a stop to his antics.
While his thesis of fraud as theft (originally from Rothbard) makes perfect sense, it would seem to require an explicit transfer of title - a contract. So my concern is whether there are any situations where exchanges occur without being made explicit. My initial answer is yes. One example is cash transactions - often there’s no explicit contract preceding such an exchange. It could be said that an implicit contract exists in such exchanges, but I think that would take us back to square one.
Because I don’t seem able to debate Dr. Block in this thread. In other words, reading a book doesn’t provide me with a dialogue.
In my own property I can say and write what ever I want. In others property, I can say and write only what they want.
That’s about the rights. But if I on my own property start to tell people that I’m going to kill my neighbor, this “death threat” makes my insurance company most likely to want me to tell what the hell i’m about right now. My neighbor and others would probably be very provoced, so whole death threat-thing would lead to huge amount of negative things, even maybe to repeal from the society. And I’m quite sure that in An-Cap society people trust more to people who belong to the reliable law system. Example If you want to buy some property from a town and start to live there, that’s only possible if you accept town’s legal code where is stated that people can’t build bombs in their houses etc.
Well read the book, very fun to read. It convinced me that blackmail should be legal. Still it didn’t convince me that defamation should always be legal, though I agree it should be prosecuted less than today.
As I said I do not have typically libertarian views when it comes to dealing with crime. I agree with you that many crimes in America shouldn’t be crimes. For example the war on drugs should stop. However murders and robberies are still a huge problem, and to deal with that, you need for example to be able to detain suspects, and not let them walk free, escape the country, or kill witnesses. So, yes, even though a man was not found guilty, but is only a suspect, I would support detaining him. Otherwise the whole system will break.
However murders and robberies are still a huge problem, and to deal with that, you need for example to be able to detain suspects, and not let them walk free, escape the country, or kill witnesses. So, yes, even though a man was not found guilty, but is only a suspect, I would support detaining him. Otherwise the whole system will break.
You are basing this on the current legal system which is incredibly slow. A private legal system is likely to swiftly resolve issues. In a private legal system the time between “suspect” and “murderer” will likely be too short for the suspect to react to it and it is also less likely the suspect will even know they are a suspect until it is too late.
Also, a PDA could detain a suspect as long as they are prepared to pay reparations for such detention. In the current legal system if someone is incorrectly detained there is no reparation made for their detention.
I am more a fan of reparations than nonaggression. I am okay with the use of force as long as full reparations are made by the aggressor to the aggressed. That is, I am OK with someone punching me in the stomach as long as they are willing to pay out my $100,000 assault insurance. That being said, I would still likely try to resist the assault but on a macro scale I am more a fan of this then trying to assume no one will be aggressive.
I could say you “hurt” my daughter by looking at her. Should I take you to private court on it?
In reference to blackmail, I don’t think you would take it lightly if I came on to your property and blackmailed you. I’m sure I’d be asked to leave immediately. But, you cannot legitimately excercise force against me if I tell my friends you are a rape victim (for example).
I know you said earlier that you don’t have libertarian views on dealing with crime. That wasn’t my point. Rather, my point was to criticize the views you do have.
With that said, I am glad to see you supporting an end to the so-called “War on Drugs”. Until the so-called “War on Terror”, the “War on Drugs” was apparently the biggest factor in the militarization of police. More generally, I’m glad you agree that many crimes in the U.S. shouldn’t be crimes.
I do understand your concern about “letting suspects go free”. The funny thing is, the trial used to be the (primary) investigation of a crime. However, because courts are monopolized by the government, the number of courts has not stayed proportional to the population. As a result, more and more of a criminal investigation is being done outside of the courts. Think about it: what is questioning interrogating a suspect but a trial procedure happening before trial? If there were more courts, as I think there would be in a free-market society, I don’t think there would have to be so much pre-trial investigation.
That’s why there should be laws specifying which actions should be considered illegal and which should not. Looking at someone’s daughter should be legal, defamation in some rare cases should be illegal, publishing the name of a rape victim should be illegal in my opinion.
Even if all interrogation is done inside the court room, how can you make sure murder suspects stay put and don’t escape the country for instance? You will have to use force against them.
