What about murderers?

Economics Political Theory
41

“If you have time to point out each of these points that you take offense to, why not just use that time instead to read some of the recommended material?”
I have done so because I don’t like it when someone claims something like “you’re inconsistent” “you’re ridiculous” and ends the discussion without justifying that. So I take the time so that I am not that person that doesn’t answer people’s points and provide reasons for everything. You also asked me about this and I felt because you took time to response, I would also do so. Is that reason good enough? Those were examples of the false assumptions, you do not need to make excuses for them. Also I don’t disagree with anything that Clayton has written or those links I have been supplied with. Those are separate issue from the one I am discussing.

I’ll address some of your points that I think have the most substance.

  1. In no way was it a justified assumption, because we haven’t agreed to assume that and I gave you reason to reject it. You can’t just proclaim truth.

  2. You still can’t understand that your trueism “they agree or they don’t agree” doesn’t get you anything. The question isn’t whether someone can make them abide by a decision, but whether it is ethical or justified for someone to enforce a decision.

  3. You are not suing twice, there is a case [A sues B] and [B sues A]. This happens today when people sue each other over unpaid debts/property damage/etc where the events are intertwined in such a way that the decision on one of them affects the decision on the other things. Currently preponderance of evidence is used in those cases, as Rothbard pointed out. My simple question for this is in my comments to my example.

  4. “I could make an assumption about pigs flying, but what good is that”. It isn’t any good because I would say that it is impossible. However, both you and Clayton have agreed with me that my assumptions are possible. And even if pigs could fly, that doesn’t change ethics, you can ask me about that and I would give an answer consistent with all other things.

  5. And I agree that it can be customary, but that is irrelevant to anything that concerns this particular discussion. There is a difference between proving something exists and proving that everything is a certain way.

  6. I didn’t just skip them, I actually thought about them, but they were unconvincing and I saw irrelevant bits that sounded a little like sloganeering. I may be judging wrongly.

  7. “The problem you are having is assuming that people will agree to this particular process.” Both of you admitted it was possible. Are you saying it is ridiculous to assume two people will never agree to be bound by a decision of a third party? My siblings and I have sometimes agreed to be bound by my parents’ decisions. There you go.

  8. The fascination is that if I am correct it pokes serious holes in Rothbard’s reasoning and it wasn’t answered in his article. How do you not understand how hypotheticals like this are really important to legal thinking?!

  9. You don’t know if I am a private judge. If I was would my statements be true? Why would the truth of my statements depend on my profession or the current state of the world in any way?! I’m sure you are very intelligent, but you’re blinded by something and I don’t understand why you are resorting to irrelevant points just to contradict me.

42

  • In the OP, you asked what standards of evidence should be for certain types of legal disputes

  • I argued that the standards of evidence are whatever the parties agree that they should be, and that this is how common law works

  • You replied that you weren’t talking about common law but about the situation where you have defense agencies with pre-existing contractual arrangements, and so on

  • I responded that these contractual arrangements still depend on the underlying customary law.

What happens if one of the defense agencies breaches its contract with the other? Is “war” really the only recourse? Of course not but since the very contract governing the terms of dispute resolutions between them is what has been breached, it is of no use in resolving the dispute. Hence, they will have to go “out in the market” and resolve the dispute at common law, that is, law in the absence of a pre-existing agreement.

  • You’ve gone all over the map and have not addressed this fundamental issue.

The root of the disagreement between myself and Rothbard is that he views law as something that can be deduced from first principles (a priori). Hoppe has continued the Rothbardian approach and placed it on a foundation of Argumentation Ethics (basically, self-ownership).

I do not believe that the law can be deduced from first principles - law must be discovered a posteriori. The discovery process is inherently experimental. The possibility of a network of “automatic” contracts arising between defense agencies does not change this fact. It’s just one way of imaginging the particular contractual arrangements that might arise within a private law society. The character of law would remain, at root, a posteriori.

  • Given my disagreement with Rothbard over the issue of whether the discovery of law is a priori or a posteriori in nature, there is no point in arguing about whether gotlucky or myself has “really” understood your ideas about defense agency contracts, and so on. We’re not in a position to talk about the consequences of a private law society that would emerge from law discovered through a priori methods when we disagree over the point of whether the discovery of law is, in fact, a priori.

In other words, I can’t help you answer the question in your OP because I disagree with one of your premises. This is not because I’m thick-headed or stubborn, it’s because I don’t see the use in reasoning about the consequences of axioms when I disagree with one or more of them.

Clayton -

43

Ok, thanks for the last comment. Just to let you know, I read your other stuff and watched the videos you sent me. I have some major disagreements with you, but I’ll leave those for another venue and spell out the one that is relevant here. I understand where you’re coming from and why you are saying we are in no position to say anything. This however contradicts almost everything you have written.

  • You claim evolution must come up with property rights.
  • You talk about intellectual rights not being proper property rights.
  • You told me that “perponderance of evidence” is a bad principle

How are you all of a sudden in a position to say what is and what isn’t a property right and talk about crossing property boundaries and all these other things, or even argue that they have to exist? Won’t this get resolved by itself in the market through evolution and market processes? Saying that would be silly and you have implicitly conceded that we have to apply reason at some point to the whole process. It is not just trial and error. This is the erroneous empiricist approach, and Hoppe is right that it doesn’t make any sense. Nor is it the way any human actually thinks. You’re right that a-priorism doesn’t make sense neither, but you have to understand that the way these things should and do get resolved is with a mixture of both of them. I may expand on this in another post, hopefully you’ll share some comments.

What Rothbard argues is absolutely logical and in line with reason. You find certain axioms that are based on broad empirical observations, which are universally accepted among a group of people, and then you apply logic to deduce what follows from them. For example, “all people should be equal under the law” is something very simple that you can deduce much from. That way you cannot have stupid inconsistencies in law. A market may have inconsistencies. A market may evolve to make intellectual property legitimized in law, because it arguably has a positive effect. A market like evolution is quick and dirty and we need not get to the optimal right away or ever and like you said it would be ridiculous for us to argue what the market will do in the end, except to point out the ethics and incentives involved.

What keeps a society free is the culture of the people. If everyone is a socialist they will keep pushing for socialism, again and again. With your methodology they may look at the evidence and always conclude “capitalist” law caused all their problems, as the majority of the world does today. Unless you have some logic and a-priorism you can never deal with law or economics. That’s my naive take on this.

44

I am by no means an empiricist - but I think that the view that the normative content of law can be discovered through a priori methods is incorrect for the same reason that I think that the proper price of oranges in downtown Galveston, TX cannot be discovered through a priori methods. We can say a lot of things about law in terms of its relationship to human action on a purely a priori basis. But what we can’t say on a purely a priori basis are things that are value-laden and carry normative force.

For the normative content of law, we have to turn to the real world and see what obtains - we can look at history, we can look at culture, we can look at comparative law and culture, we can look at the evolution of man, and so on. All of these empirical sciences can contribute to helping us discover the normative content of law. “You should not murder” is true because murder is not acceptable human behavior in any society. There is a significant body of culturally universal norms. But even more vast are the culturally-relative norms. So, we have to realize that there is a bit of both - absolute norms (by “absolute”, I mean “hardwired” into the human brain and, thus, culturally universal) and relative norms (norms that vary from culture to culture, place to place, time to time).

Clayton -

45

So are you saying that the following quote is false?

It actually does get us something, much like how the action axiom gets us something. That humans act may seem like a trivial truth, except that it forms the basis for praxeology. The fact that both parties either agree to resolve a dispute nonviolently or they resolve it violently actually helps us understand the basis of law: Most people do not want to settle disputes violently, especially because it can result it death. People have incentives to resolve disputes peacefully. The question is not whether it is ethical to enforce a decision. The question is will people agree to a solution.

Clayton already addressed this:

If the events intertwine in complicated ways, it does not matter. The parties have a dispute, and they wish to settle. They do not need separate lawsuits over the same dispute. However, they could have two different lawsuits if they are about different events. We have a dispute over a car accident and a dispute over a broken house window. Separate, unrelated events - two different lawsuits. If there were a scenario where we have a car accident and I sue you for damages to my car and you sue me for damages to your car…that is a result of monopoly law. In private law, the car accident is the dispute.

Fine. I could make an assumption that tomorrow, everyone will burn all their cold, hard cash. It is technically possible, unlike pigs flying. It’s still not going to happen.

Clayton addresses this in one of his most recent posts.

Care to share what was unconvincing? What did you find to be sloganeering?

Okay. So some people tomorrow will burn all their cold, hard cash. That still doesn’t mean everyone, a majority, or even a plurality of people will burn their cold, hard cash tomorrow. There you go.

Well, I don’t consider Rothbard to be flawless. And as far as hypotheticals, I don’t believe your assumptions are accurate. I’m sure hypotheticals are very important to legal thinking, but they need good assumptions.

Really? This is how you want to play it? If you were a private judge who enforced his rulings with violence, as soon as the state got wind of it, you would be thrown in prison. Period. At best, you could be a private mediator, but considering your disdain for private mediation, I seriously doubt that you are.

You claimed we were all entrepreneurs in this area. Specifically, you said:

I know that I am not a professional mediator. Clayton isn’t either. That leaves you. And you are most definitely not one either. This is not contradiction for the sake of contradiction. As Clayton pointed out previously:

Just because we know that a decentralized system would produce better results than a centralized system does not mean we necessarily know what the specific results might be. None of us here are testing our ideas on law in the marketplace. It is not contradiction for the sake of contradiction.

46

Yes! This quote is a very nice literary illustration of what Clayton thinks, but I don’t buy it. As Clayton just explained:

@Clayton: “For the normative content of law, we have to turn to the real world and see what obtains - we can look at history, we can look at culture, we can look at comparative law and culture, we can look at the evolution of man, and so on.”

If you look at how humans make decisions in all possible settings, in a lab, in the market, in government, etc. They “weight” evidence for a claim and against a claim. There is even evidence that they do this only on a binary basis. That is what evolution has given us and according to Clayton we must adhere to this in ethics. What happens is that once a person assessed how likely A and notA are, he has to take into account the losses associated with making a mistake. I really don’t care how aweful it is, and neither should Clayton, because he doesn’t believe in normative apriori statements. So he really has no basis to claim what it is a bad principle if he has to look at the “real world” and evolution.

Nope. What you said was [A xor not A]. Everybody knows that and it is just a fragment of logic. This is nowhere near the praxeological truth that humans act. “Humans act” is a circumstancial necessity that is assumed to always be the case, it is the nature of humans. If a human did not act we would have trouble saying he is a human. This is exactly what Rothbard meant by having axioms based on simple evident facts and logic. Also you have failed to show what it leads to.

Can you tell the difference between the following three scenarios:

  1. A agrees with B because B is a nice guy, and A would rather have a friend.
  2. A agrees with B because B is holding a gun to A’s head, and A would rather live than preserve ownership over his property. But otherwise A would disagree with B.
  3. A disagrees with B

What you have been trying to do is a classic bate and switch, where you are trying to get me to equate 1 and 2. This is what I mean by ethics matters. Because in some cases 1 and 2 are ethically equivalent to libertarians (and I dare say everyone except pacifists). And in other cases 1 and 2 are not equivalent and we would like to not have any cases of 2.

I haven’t read the rest of your reply, I’ll do so perhaps later.

47

No, this is not how humans make decisions - Mises gives a very detailed treatment of how we make decisions in the opening chapters of Human Action. Humans choose from among the means available to them that course of action which they believe will satisfy their most valued end. They don’t weigh what is true or try to find a preponderance of evidence. They simply do what they want to do the most. This is true by definition, it’s like saying that a bachelor is an umarried man. To decide (act) is to apply the means at your disposal to bring about your highest preference.

Knowledge is not an acting process. That is, there is no one whose sole end is “to know”, at least, there is no human being whose sole end is to know. We can imagine a supernatural scientist who does not need to eat and values nothing other than knowledge - this being would act like what you are describing… weighing evidence, choosing hypotheses and in every way acting in the service of truth and knowledge. But knowing is not the end of human beings; satisfaction (pleasure, absence of pain or want) is the end which every human being has.

It is easy to see the consequences of this fact in legal disputes or even verbal arguments between a married couple, siblings or co-workers. Such disputes are filled with lies, distortions, false accusations, pretense of innocence, special pleading and blatantly fallacious reasoning. Disputants are not interested in the truth, they’re interested in getting their way. This is a simple consequence of the fact that we are not disinterested supernatural beings whose solve value is truth and right knowledge. We are acting beings, each seeking our own satisfaction, whether at the expense of others or not.

Clayton -

48

I don’t accept arguments by authority from a person that believes ethics can be justified by looking at evolution. I assume you have to be above that type of a-priori argument. By my description of decision making is in line with Mises, even though you don’t realize it. “Humans choose from among the means available to them that course of action which they believe will satisfy their most valued end”. The key is “they believe”. They arrive at their beliefs through weighing of evidence. Like I said and this is in line with the subjective view, they only consider binary decisions. I never said this was in the persuit of knowledge, but when humans do pursue knowledge, knowledge may be “their most valued end”. Even if it isn’t knowledge is a proxy for further action. Who are you to say that food is more important than getting to the truth?

Then you are making the silly error of looking at knowledge and food as classes of goods, rather than units. Obviously if someone has food, they might trade some of it for knowledge.

Yes, but someone that wants to discern who is guilty will be interested in the truth. Can nobody get satisfaction from justice? I know I do. What’s your issue?

49

For the sake of record gotlucky has mistated the statement “humans act”. The correct one is “humans acts purposefully”, which is far richer in content and can actually be used to deduce things and differentiate humans. So if anyone feels a need to dispute my argument, notice that what I said is a fortiori to this.

50

What do you consider to be false? That "preponderance of evidence…implies that evidence is like some kind of massive substance which can be weighed on two sides of a scale"? Or that it is a horrible principle? From its wikipedia page:

So I would say that it does imply that scale. So are you saying that preponderance of evidence is a horrible principle is false? Is it a good principle? If it is so good, why don’t we use it in criminal court?

Okay. Let’s suppose, arguendo, that people weigh evidence for whether or not something is more than 50% likely in everyday life? So what? Why should we take such a weak standard and apply that to criminal trials? What exactly are you taking issue with in Clayton’s statement?

Yes. I said they will will agree or not agree. But this is important. If two parties cannot solve a dispute peacefully, it will necessarily lead to violence. There is no other option. That is their incentive to settle it peacefully. Even wild animals do this. Wolves challenge each other to become the alpha male. This challenge does not always result in an actual violent confrontation. It often results in posturing and one wolf backing down. The one that didn’t is the obvious winner. What is so hard to understand about this?

Look, it doesn’t matter why they agree. The point is that they do or do not. Have you ever heard of a criminal backing down when surrounded by police officers? Have you ever heard of a criminal not backing down and shooting it out to the death (or escape!)? Both happen. The criminal can either agree to be arrested or not agree. I’m not talking about whether it is moral for him to agree or not. I’m saying he can either do one or the other. Most people choose to agree. In a private law society, there is no monopoly police force. There are disputes, and people can either agree to solve it peacefully or not. When people choose to resolve it peacefully, the resulting solutions over time end up becoming custom, which results in law.

There is no bait and switch here, at least not by me. First of all, you are not accurately portraying my argument. Second of all, if you had actually read Clayton’s work, number 2 would have read more like: A and B have a dispute, both are unarmed and about equal in size and weight, they decide to try to work things out peacefully instead of fighting. But instead, you just used a new transgression as an example. Perhaps you might prefer representing my argument accurately next time.

I look forward to your response when you get the chance.

51

For the sake of the record Hefty has misunderstood what human action is. From Further Implications of Human Action from Man, Economy, and State by Murray Rothbard:

52

I would argue that this is the fundamental flaw of the entire corpus of Western law: the weighing of the opinions (valuation) of people who are not party to the dispute; third-parties with a conceited (and false) belief that they have a greater interest in a just outcome to the dispute than the disputants themselves.

In my view, disputes arise as a conflict between the chosen means (which, in turn, are chosen on the basis of the valuation or preference of the individuals involved in the dispute) of two individuals. From this, we can easily see the two possible extremes of any dispute: the dispute being resolved solely to the satisfaction of one or the other party. This is the universe of discourse of the dispute - John the Thief wants to keep the stolen property and not pay restitution and Bob the Merchant wants John the Thief to pay 100 times the value of the stolen property as restitution. Somewhere in between these two extremes is the right answer.

That is, until you enter third-party interests (such as the State or disembodied “concerned citizens” such as yourself) - all of a sudden, the two-dimensional universe of discourse of the dispute is no longer a tradeoff between the values (ends) of one and the other individual. Rather, the third-party has values entirely of his own. He may, through conceit, imagine that his ends correspond with the true ends of one or both individuals (i.e. justice, punishment, correction and character development, etc.) but this is not only conceited, it is false in the case of the State. The fact that the disputants must be compelled to accept the State’s resolution to their dispute is proof that they did not believe that the resolution that they could expect the State would impose would be the resolution that they would want.

This fact can be difficult to see because the State’s courts generally operate in a manner of de facto partiality - the “victim” is whoever the State has chosen to play the role of the good guy and the State’s prosecutor and judge will generally resolve the dispute entirely in favor of the victim. Since the victim is “the good guy”, spectators feel that “justice has been done” and that the victim would of course have wanted to retain the State’s court as his adjudicator if he did have a choice. This is analogous to the way in which the beneficiaries of price controls would of course voluntarily opt to have the market controlled by the State if they did have a choice. It is a form of redistribution of wealth.

A feature of Somali law (Xeer) is that no one but a victim or a family relative of the victim may bring a legal dispute against someone else. You can’t have “prosecutors” in Somali law. I would argue that the Somalis are light-years ahead of Western law on this point. Who is not allowed to contribute to a decision is just as important as who is allowed. This is the very basis of private property, in fact. All others but the owner are excluded from making a decision regarding the disposition of the owned property. Western law effectively makes legal disputes “public property” and the quality of the legal decisions that come out of our courts is reflective of this.

Clayton -

53

Just because the don’t need it doesn’t mean they won’t have it. Currently they have obviously done these counter-suits voluntarily, so I assume that even in the absence of the state they would still do it voluntarily. Next point for me: you are not an entrepreneur so you have no credibility predicting what is and isn’t required. Third: If you have 2 counter-suits at the same time, it saves court time and saves both parties money on legal fees, since the judge has to load all the data at the same time. If you still think there can never be judges, just you wait, I’m going to tear apart this phoney baloney with the mediators!

It’s like arguing with a statist or minarchist, “you can never have a stateless society so stop talking about it”. Don’t make me dig up all the dodgy assumptions you’ve answered in the past. The money burning assumption you’re talking about leads to has no ethical consequences, no moral consequences, and I’d gladly answer any question that involves it. Want to try one?

This is really childish of you. I just proved to you that it happens. A plurality of people will also not murder tomorrow. “A plurality” is not what we are concerned with or what the legal discussions need to be based on. I can’t go on, I’m dying here.

That wasn’t my point. My point was it shouldn’t matter. This is like hitler with his “jewish science” and “german science”. Does it matter who I am or that the government has outlawed a profession, that I can’t speculate or reason or what I say has to be disregarded.

By the way, isn’t everyone a private mediator? I though you subscribed to the 3 man island scenario. I don’t see you saying “there can never be an island with three men on it”. Just because you aren’t doing something doesn’t mean you’re no good at it or are not in a position to reason about it.

This is the exact problem with both you and Clayton. You are contradicting yourselves all the time. Here is the essence of some of your statements

  • You cannot know what legal principles will be used.
  • You claim perponderance of evidence is a bad principle.
  • You claim property rights are a good principle and intellectual property is a bad principle.
  • You just told me counter-suits would not be required and nobody would want them
  • You cannot predict the structure of the law market.
  • You claim you know with certainty that there won’t be any judges, only mediators.
  • You claim all law will be customary
  • You said assumptions need to be plausible to be worthy of your wisdom
  • You refered me to videos where it was assumed three men were stranded on an island. And you have no problem with basing your whole theory on observations obtained from the 3-man scenario.

I guess you don’t see any contradiction there, or are you just smart enough to know what the market will produce, and what assumptions are plausible for discussion but others aren’t?

54

I am compelled to ask you how exactly your last comments answered my question. Are you telling me people value justice because of the state? If so how is that relevant how people come by their preferences. I see a pattern in your comments, you tend to dismiss anything that flies in the face of your theory on the basis that it is simply a fragment of statism, and if we didn’t have a state we needn’t think about that.

In any case you cannot possibly claim to know what drives people or their preferences. This can never be observed. So you have to accept that people can value truth and justice for their own sake. I expect now gotlucky will step in to equate this assumption with pigs flying.

Can you state the claim here explicitly so we know what we are disputing?

55

I wasn’t responding to the question “can nobody get satisfaction from justice?”, I was responding to your statement that you do. My point is: who cares? It’s irrelevant to any dispute to which you are not a party that you value justice.

*shrug - that’s not what I think but I’ll take it as feedback because I don’t want to create that impression. The current state of affairs (statism) matters and possible future states of affairs (varying degrees of statism, minarchism, anarchism, etc.) all deserve discussion.

Note that the theory of law I present in A Praxeological Account of Law is not a “wishlist” for a future “free society” - it’s a description of law as it is (and how it arose), irrespective of statism.

No, it can be observed whenever peopel choose (revealed preference). But you are correct that we cannot observe the “internal world” of another person. But that fact makes my point.

Well, of course they can. It’s just irrelevant to any real disputes since your values have no standing in the dispute unless you’re a party to the dispute. And we can praxeologically predict that the parties to the dispute will each sacrifice truth and justice for an advantage in the dispute. Hence, truth and justice are not - a priori - relevant to disputes. Their relevance arises as a result of the existence of social norms, legal customs, and so on, that make it in the disputants’ interests to care about truth and justice.

Well, our disagreements are all still just a consequence of the fact that we disagree over whether the normative content of the law can be discovered through a priori means or not. But the point of my last post in a sentence is: the inclusion of the preferences of third-parties in resolutions of disputes only discoordinates the process of dispute-resolution.

A real-world illustration that might help you understand what I mean by this is the case of the wife who is hit by her husband and then doesn’t call the police because she believes that the consequences to her husband will be disproportionate to his crime. Does that mean she’s OK with him hitting her? Of course not. But because the State unilaterally imposes its own terms of resolution to domestic violence disputes, she doesn’t have an option to seek a punishment that she believes is propotional. She either has to accept the State’s disproportionate punishment of her husband or settle for no punishment at all. The perverse effects of many such “tough on crime” laws on the interests of victims are myriad.

Clayton -

56

What is the reason that they file these counter-suits now? It is because of the structure of the current system. I believe that in a private law society, the structure would be fundamentally different. Given that difference, I do not believe that there would necessarily be counter-suits, for reasons previously stated.

That does not follow logically. We have previously stated that an economist cannot predict what the price of oranges should be. We have not stated that the economist cannot predict that the free market will produce the proper price of oranges. Likewise, you I cannot predict what the appropriate resolution should be for any given dispute. But I can predict that without state interference, both parties would require higher standards than a preponderance of evidence. In other words, in civil cases now, a preponderance of evidence is all that is needed for most cases. Do you think OJ Simpson would have required a higher standard than that in his civil trial? I don’t believe that he was satisfied with the outcome of his civil trial. Another example, currently, the police are not held accountable for many of their crimes (false arrest and false imprisonment of innocent people). If there were strict, unlimited liability, the amount of people who are falsely arrested would go down. It’s logical. The state only requires preponderance of evidence for civil trials, but requires higher standards in criminal trials…do you think without the state that people’s standards would go up or down?

I see. You misunderstand what I am saying. I am not saying that the claims would not be dealt with. I am saying that they would be dealt with at the same time. In other words, if we are in a car accident, and we both claim the other is a fault, we would not need to have two ongoing lawsuits, as the actual accident itself is the dispute. Both claims are settled through one dispute. I already stated this, but I see that you misunderstood me.

Well, the burden of proof is on you at this point. You have made a claim that disputes would be settled by judges, and the participating parties would willing agree to this process. I countered that just because you can cite one case where it has happened, that it does not necessarily follow that a private law society will adopt this process. You have to provide the case for why it should happen. I don’t need to provide another counter-example, as you have yet to respond to this one and then make the case for your own argument.

Another example would be the bitcoin debate on this forum. Some people claim that bitcoin is money. Others claim that it is like the tulip mania. Basically, there are some people out there who will value tulips, but this in no way means that enough people will value it to become money. I believe it’s the same thing here. Just because there are some people who may agree to judges to decide a verdict and then enforce the decision through violence, I see no reason as to why an entire private law society would form around this. Please provide an actual argument.

So what? Some people buy bitcoins. Tomorrow the US dollar will still be the currency of America. What’s your point?

Look. You do not know what the proper price of oranges is. You do not know what the proper price of a barrel of oil is. You do not know the proper price of a plane ticket from New York to Vienna. You do not know what the proper resolution to any given dispute is. Speculate away. You still won’t know the answer.

No. Not everyone is a private mediator. I don’t believe anyone has brought a dispute to me to help them resolve. Perhaps you have been so lucky at some point in your life as to have helped resolve a dispute. There is nothing wrong with simplifying problems to get at the heart of the matter. Those assumptions are useful. All sorts of disciplines do it. Economics and physics are two that come to mind. Your assumptions do not simpifly the question at hand. Apples and oranges.

Clayton has pointed out that some of these principles are a result of state interference. So, we can know that if they are a result of the state, and then you take away the state, that certain principles will not be used.

Yes. I believe it is highly unlikely that both parties in any given dispute would willingly settle for such a low standard. Perhaps one party would, but the there to be a solution, both parties would have to. And for it to be a useable principle, it would have to be widespread, which I find to be highly unlikely.

Given that IP is a product of the state, I find it highly unlikely that it would exist in a private law society.

Why would it be required? Two people have a dispute, so they go to court. They discuss the dispute and hopefully resolve it. Why complicate the process with counter-suits?

I don’t remember making that claim.

I did not make that claim. I have repeatedly stated that while it is certainly possible, it is highly unlikely that it will be widespread. And you have yet to prove that it would be. Why are you misrepresenting my argument?

As opposed to statutory law, yes. What else would it be?

Unless your assumptions are meant to help simplify and clarify the issue at hand, I see no reason to enterain dubious assumptions.

Well, I didn’t, but I assume this point is meant for Clayton. Again, I have no problem with making assumptions that simplify and clarify the issue.

Hopefully the above responses clarified things for you.

57

I think what I wrote about OJ Simpson could be explained better. There were two trials, a criminal and a civil, with two different requirements for evidence of guilt. He was innocent in one but guitly in another. Only something like this could happen in a statist structure.

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The third party involved in the dispute as the “arbitrator” can value justice and we are discussing what means that person uses to arrive at a decision. You said my understanding of how people make decisions is wrong because the don’t make them based on valueing truth.

This was your defense of your refutation that people “weigh” evidence. You defended it on the grounds that people don’t seek truth as an end. That was a weak defense, but now you admit that they do.

I demand that you admit that people weigh evidence because they consider alternative choices in a world of uncertainty. For example, when you hand over your money over a counter there is uncertainty that you will get the item, you have to weight the evidence for and against that you will lose your money. You also take into account the possible losses from an incorrect prediction in both ways. That is the decision process that I described before, please accept it, it is in perfect sync with praxeology and the subjective view of austrian economics.

They do not have to do decide this in just seeking truth, but that will be true in particular, since you admitted truth can be an end like any other good.

59

This is what I mean here by counter-suit. If A sues B involving a statement X, a counter-suit is when B sues A involving the statement notX (there may be other related statements). Like I said it is more efficient to consider the evidence in a common case. People today don’t have to do this, they can wait their trial and then launch the counter-suit separately. But they don’t do this. In these kinds of trials perponderance of evidence is used. People still agree to them, which gives you some evidence that they have no problem with going to a judge and accusing the accuser. It can feel very nice to do that, because in defense-only cases you can only provide evidence in your defense and it saves you money. People go into these things expecting the judge to rule in their favour so they are more than willing to accept perponderance of evidence. Sometimes they just don’t know legal principles and think they are in the right.

I’m pretty certain these will exist in a free society.

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And what is their alternative?