Proportionality & Restitution

[ClaytonB]

@Zavoi

I ask you the same question I asked Jeremiah Dyke: suppose that you’re a judge or jury and two people with no prior relationship ask you to resolve a dispute between them. On what basis do you make a decision?

The problem is the model of courts as “decision-makers” to begin with. In the absence of a State, courts are not entities that impose decisions, they are arbitrators who assist disputants in finding non-violent resolution to their disputes.

The reason why this is a concern is because the idea of a “marketplace of human interactions” is so vague that it can be applied to any society, unless we begin with the premise that the marketplace is “free” according to some a priori standard. You claim that such a market is presently absent – why do you say that this is case? After all, any court will recognize that the State’s use of violence against you to make you pay taxes is “legitimate” and “justifiable.”

Corrupt courts are not - in themselves - the problem. It is the alliance between corrupt courts and criminals (princes and their minions), usually sanctified by corrupt priests and dishonest scholars, that combines to give birth to the territorial monopoly of law and security called “the State.” LvMI, FFF, FEE and other economic-liberty groups focus on the dishonest scholarship. LRC exposes the criminals. That’s well and good but I think there needs to be a direct focus on the corrupt courts (as well as the corrupt priests/theologians), as well. You could say the Harris-Dawkins-Dennet “Reason” crowd are taking the fight to the corrupts priests, though I think they are doing a really lousy job of it (science is not the answer to bad religion… good religion is). But the one group that skates by through all of this are the lawyers and judges and the blatant law-monopoly called the “bar”. I am not aware of any anti-state organizations that focus on the law-monopoly itself. That is my area of interest.

But if we try to excuse this by saying “Oh, that’s just because the legal market isn’t free,” then that immediately begs the question: what is “free”?

Absence of free entry to the arbitration market. We don’t need a pre-existing legal system to be able to define monopolization. If you employ leg-breakers to intimidate your business competitors and drive them out of business, you are a monopolist. That definition holds regardless of the legal system.

Also, any theory about the emergence of a legal order has to be squared with the fact that the State (i.e., monopoly on violence) did not always exist but exists now. Therefore, we know that the absence of a monopoly on violence is not sufficient to prevent the emergence of a monopoly on violence.

I do not pretend to be giving conditions for prevention of the emergence of a State. That will probably not be possible until a sufficient number of people (especially natural elites) come to the view that the State is an unmitigated evil whose emergence must be circumspectly prevented. Hoppe expresses this idea when he says (paraphrase) that a natural order society would likely have to physically remove proponents of homosexuality, communism, democracy, etc. from the community. He argues that employees of a State would be classified in the same category - for purposes of aggression insurance - as any other criminal. Living next door to an employee of a State would drive up your premiums and those who live near the borders of State-controlled territories would have to pay much higher aggression-insurance premiums.

But we’re a long ways from such a society, so not much point in talking about it, yet.

Clayton -