What about murderers?

[gotlucky]

@Hefty

You can’t ignore the contract because that changes the ethics of the situation and the use of violence to enforce the contracts is justified. There is no ethical substance in this truth that they either agree or disagree. By asserting that it brings us nowhere, unless you claim something stronger than that. What you ARE trying to show is that disagreement will lead to one of them dieing and then you claim that’s the only thing that stops violence. Who cares about violence, the only thing we care about is which actions are ethically justified and which aren’t.

No. The ethics are irrelevant. If there is a dispute, there is either peaceful resolution or violent resolution. There is no third option. I am not saying that one party will necessarily die. It is clear to me that you have not read either What Law Is or A Praxeological Account of Law. I suggest you read these.

@Hefty

You said, “The only reason a murderer would agree to mediation is to avoid death” [or loss of property I assume], but even that’s not true. He might want to ruin the reputation of the other party by saying they were the initial aggressor, or he may use the mediation process to gain wealth or influence or various other reasons. He might even agree to a process falsely believing he was innocent. This tells us nothing about what methodology we should use to figure out whether we can justly use coercion.

Again, I think reading the above linked posts would be of great help to you. But I will explain. The only reason anyone agrees to mediation is because they prefer peaceful resolution to violent conflict. If a murderer agrees to mediation, it is because he prefers to settle the dispute without any further violence. A murderer does not agree to mediation in order to accuse the other party. The other party already believes the murderer is guilty, hence the dispute. If the murderer accuses the other party of being the initial aggressor, why would they believe that? They were there! They know they weren’t the aggressor!

In regards to him proclaiming his innocence: that does not refute my statement. If a man is falsely accused of murder, and he agrees to mediation…it is because he prefers peaceful resolution to violent resolution. Please read the posts I linked to.

@Hefty

I agree that the threat of punishment is the only thing that stops malicious actions of parties that disagree. That’s another trivial fact that leads us nowhere, because it says nothing about which actions are justified and when punishment is justified, what principles we must adhere to for the punishment to be justified and when can we coerce someone. We don’t need law then, we don’t need ethics, either, or to worry about what legal principles should be followed, because, according to Clayton, the market will take care of that. Kind of like letting the market take care of epistemology. So Clayton will be ok if the market gets rid of “beyond a reasonable doubt” and adopts “preponderance of evidence” as a maxim, how is that possible? If he thinks it won’t then that’s what we are discussing here, whether it has merits and is innevitable or not.

Firstly, I would like to direct you to this post here that I wrote in another thread. Secondly, you are referring to law as if it is only statutory law. I am going to quite from one of my posts earlier in this thread:

@gotlucky

Just as language is what arises from humans trying to communicate with each other, law is what arises from humans trying to settle disputes nonviolently. If you and I have a dispute, there are only two ways it can be settled, through mutual settlement or by violence. Common law and customary law are what arise from a decentralized system of law. There need not be any binding arbitration for either of these to produce law. Statutory law is what arises when there is a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in any given area.

I suggest you read a little on wikipedia about statutory law, common law, and customary law. They actually exist. I will direct you to a post by Clayton earlier in the thread here.

@Hefty

In any case what if anything are you implying by saying “either both parties agree to the solution or they don’t”?

I’m not really sure how else to break this down. Either the parties agree to a peaceful solution or they don’t. Either it is raining or it isn’t.