If that is what people want than the market will provide a means? Whats the issue?
Why do you naively assume that this is the only way it would work? In fact why are you speculating on this matter at all?
No because theres a conveniently located yelp sticker on his hotdog stand. TBH Eugene I kind of feel like your just going out of your way to find a fault.
No need for pomp. You can just state that he will be held liable. If afterwards you can prove that you said that in his presence, that would be proof enough.
You never ask to see a restaurant’s acceditation. What they would do is put up a sign saying, “Accredited by the […] Agency. 99% Grade.” Something like that, just like they have now. Except the accreditation companies would actually be held liable for what they say. And if the hot dog vender is lying about being accredited to the agency to sell hot dogs, then he can be sued for fraud.
I am trying to find a fault in order to convince myself that no regulations is a viable solution, also in order to be able to argue for Libertarianism when I debate others.
In any case I think I was convinced, for now at least.
Thank you guys.
Instead of trying to find fault in the notion that “no regulations” are a viable solution, perhaps it might be a better approach to analyze why the regulations are necessary, period. What does a regulation tell someone that he/she shouldn’t already know (or be asking)? Moreover, ask what the purpose of the regulation is in the first place? More often than not, it’s to protect the consumer, so the next logical step is why can’t the consumer protect him/her self, and what kind of incentives are you creating when the consequences of one’s actions are borne by others?
There are a million ways one can poke holes at the rationale to regulations. If someone wants to disprove libertarianism, I’d put the burdon of proof on them to explain why their alternative solutions are preferable. The responses are generally frought with mis-information, erroneous assumptions, and if you’re lucky, the “people just can’t protect themselves” approach.
Okay, I guess I am still not convinced. I think when people pay for some service they expect at least a basic quality from that service. For example if I go to dinner at my friend’s house, I expect him to not feed me with poisoned food (I am not talking about malice here, only about criminal negligence). The same is true for a construction company. I would expect a basic quality from a construction company, and that is that my house won’t topple in the first week after it was built.
If you think that in the first example my friend should be found guilty in the court, then I think you should agree that in the second example the construction company should be found guilty.
What do you think?
Yes, AIDS from a barber is criminal negligence.
Not necessarily. There is always a chance to contract AIDS, even when the tools are 100% sterilized. Nothing is 100%, never. So the question is not whether someone contracted AIDS at a barber shop, but whether the barber made some particular X arrangements to avoid the contraction.
However for fairness, the barber should know what kind of sterilization is expected from him. But that’s already a kind of regulation.
I think you’re misconstruing the idea that a Libertarian society is essentially chaotic. There will still be law and order, there will still be juridical safeguards. A market economy cannot exist without them. Ultimately, it’s your responsibility to spend your money wisely and make smart decisions, but if you can prove that harm / damage resulted from someone else’s actions, you should have options for legal recourse.
If that happened, he already fucked up something big time.
How are you defining “regulations”? The way I define it, having no regulations is not a viable solution. For example, the very institution of private property is itself a form of regulation. Otherwise, I’d be able to get away with taking your stuff (for example). Make sense?
I don’t think you have to (try to) argue against any and all regulations. What libertarians argue against is investing any person or group with arbitrary authority over everyone else. The absence of such a person or group doesn’t mean that no regulations would exist. Rather, as I’ve said before, they’d emerge from various court/arbitrator decisions.
Have you looked into customary/common law at all? It might help you to understand some of the things we’re talking about.
Of course, you’re right. People don’t expect to be poisoned from the food they eat. Nor do they expect a house they had built to collapse on them after a week. This is known as the “reasonable-person standard” in legal theory.
However, the fact that people have certain expectations against harm doesn’t mean that criminal negligence has occurred when those expectations are violated. There’s something called a boundary problem regarding liability. Namely, the problem is determining where liability should and should not exist, or determining the boundary between liability and non-liability. Customary or “common” law is the result of such determinations, and we can expect courts in libertarian societies to continue such.
I think Ebay is representative of a Libertarian society. There are thousands of vendors doing business daily on the site with minimal government regulation. They must follow Ebay’s rules.When you buy something you rate the vendor on quality of merchandise and speed of arrival. Vendor’s with a low approval rating do not command as high a price for the same products as their competition. I know this for a fact. I have sold many items on the site. When I first started, my auctions closed for less than my competitors. After I developed a track record and a 100% satisfactory rating the same items commanded a considerably better price.
This method could easily be adopted to other services. You go to McDonald’s order a meal and pay for it with your debit card. After being prompted for your pin the next prompt is for a rating. Next time you go to McDonald’s the sign says 20 billion served and 97.4% approval rating. So you can decide if you want a hamburger with a 2.6% chance of being poisoned.
just a word of warning to you guys; this guy has been posting on Ron Paul Forums, asking similar (sometimes carbon copy duplicates) questions endlessly–while it’s not 100% confirmed, it really seems he’s just around to troll and nothing more.
I’m not sure I agree with the idea that the customer would have no legal recourse. I dont think there is any agreement between the barber and customer about assuming risk (that is the role of insurance). The only implicit agreement made is that I will give you money and you shave my whiskers off. If in the process he infects me with a diseses… or maybe he sneezes and slits my throat… he has still damaged me and is liable. It is irrelevent whether he intended to or not.
The barbers insurance would protect him in these situations… if the barber dosent have insurance then your insurance would (if you paid for them to assume this type of risk) protect you… if neither of you have insurance then all you could get out of him is whatever an arbitor awards you… If he has nothing with which to pay the damages then your shit out of luck.
Also it is very likely that the insurance companies would either require or give premium discounts if the barber were to be a member of some sort of barbers association that internally regulated its members.
But you see all the different levels here of protection for the consumer here. They are all voluntary and I would argue more effective.
Weird
Sorry for the double post. Please see law post here: https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/business-regulations-can-we-manage-without-them/16542
Oh, duh, just forbid things if you don’t want them to happen. That’s bound to work! Why didn’t we think of it?
Why should it be more likely that sausage makers enjoy killing their customers than that they’d pay an inspector to get around the inspections? What does your proposed regulation even mean? Does it mean “don’t intentionally poison people” or “don’t accidentally poison people” or what?