That really was an excellent reply by vaduka.
liberty student, I remember you linking to something, not to long ago, a link to a text or video, of someone going into greater depth to explain that there is no such thing as a “citizen” or “nation”, for example. Would you please provide that link again? I’d make this request in a PM but your bio says, do not contact.
Law is the formalization of dispersed, informal rules within a given geographical area.
Rules act as a guide to individual human conduct, whereas law dictates the paramaters of action for all acting men who fall under its jurisdiction.
With respect to a given territorial monopoly on law, there is a body of law, and yes, there is no universal law.
The authority and jurisdiction to create, enforce, and adjudicate comes partly from having a power to coerce people and partly from having the willing or complicit acceptance by a large enough number of people in the territorial monopoly.
For example, in Taliban-ruled Pakistan, the tribal chiefs have a stockpile of guns and men loyal to them. They will punish those who dissent to their demands or those who rat them out to the Pakistani government. While people in these Taliban-ruled regions don’t have to be fearful of or obedient to a tiny minority of well armed chieftains, since they can buy the guns themselves from the Peshawar market, they are either ambiguous (because are torn between obeying or not obeying them), or they think that the leaders punish them for their own good.
Authority does not come of itself, but is merely there when there is acceptance by a follower, either out of fear or out of respect. The people in Taliban-ruled Pakistan do not respect or fear the Pakistani government, and hence the government has no authority in those regions. When there is dispute on jurisdiction by two aspiring territorial monopolists, there is usually violence, as happens in rural Pakistan between the government and civilians.
(By the way, I like how Mises.Org has members who have intentionally or unintentionally worked to raise my standards in debate.)
I think you see my point now. Law, and the “justice system” is simply a regime run by violence and arbitrary decisions.
As opposed to what?
Z.
There is a ton of info there, some of it good, some of it questionable. Do the research, let us know your conclusions.
The market of course. Please don’t hijack my thread. We’re discussing what law is, not what the market is not.
Whether converged to by tradition, custom, or otherwise, the law is the playground on which the market game can only be played. The law creates the market, not the other way around. For an exchange (voluntary or otherwise) to take place, property ownership (boundaries) must exist first. Clearly delineated ownership of A and B is prior to exchange of A for B. Without the former, the latter is merely taking. The law provides the former.
Or so I believe.
Z.
“Whether converged to by tradition, custom, or otherwise, the law is the playground on which the market game can only be played. The law creates the market, not the other way around. For an exchange (voluntary or otherwise) to take place, property ownership (boundaries) must exist first. Clearly delineated ownership of A and B is prior to exchange of A for B. Without the former, the latter is merely taking. The law provides the former.”
“Life, Liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” - Bastiat
If there were no laws to say that you are the owner of your body, would it be just for someone else to aggress against you or enslave you?
How does inserting such false analogies help your case, I have no idea.
Perhaps. If I ate from the sacred pear tree in front of the chief’s tent and the tribe’s tradition/custom/law proscribed such punishment for such transgression.
No, let’s say you’ve lived on the same 10 X 10 m plot for as far back as you can remember and never contacted any other human. On your 30th birthday a man comes and punches you in the face. Just or unjust or neither?
To return to your example, are you saying that whatever the law prescribes is just? Eat the pear and face death. Don’t pay taxes and face imprisonment. Possess marijuana and face imprisonment. So the law is by definition just? If so, whoever makes the law must also be acting justly, since law can only be just. The state is therefore always just, since it considers its actions as ever lawful.
Depends. Did I piss on the man’s grandfather’s grave located under my plot? Did his tradition/custom/law consider such my (repeated) action to be an abomination and a provocation?
Please see my edited post.
I see your point.
You said in the OP, “Until we can define those two things, its impossible to speak intelligently about whether legal systems work or can be optimized.” Did you intend to say that a regime run by violence and arbitrary decisions can not be optimized to benefit everybody better? That the debate on making the current legal system work better is itself faulty or based on a faulty premise?
Both. Instead of assuming that “the law” and “juidicial system” can create or act towards justice, we have to define what those terms mean. If justice is not possible for those terms, then it seems to me to be a false premise that they can be optimized.
It’s sort of like Public choice economics. It’s this bogus economic analysis of politics, which examines incentives for people who are in a system designed to distort incentives and disincentivize personal responsibility. All public choice can tell us is that government doesn’t behave like a market, and the way to make a government behave like a market is to make it a market and not a government.
Same thing with monopoly legal systems. Any analysis about whether US justice ever worked, has to answer the questions (1) how can we determine the efficiency of a violent monopoly and (2) how can such a system promote just outcomes.
The deeper we look into legal systems the uglier it gets.
“It’s sort of like Public choice economics. It’s this bogus economic analysis of politics, which examines incentives for people who are in a system designed to distort incentives and disincentivize personal responsibility. All public choice can tell us is that government doesn’t behave like a market, and the way to make a government behave like a market is to make it a market and not a government.”
I can’t believe a respected poster would post such trash.
Zachary, can you substantiate your claim that my post was trash? If not, aren’t you in fact the one posting trash?
You’re the one making unsabstantiated claims regarding an entire school of economic thought, and then without any reasoning you deem it a bogus school of thought because of what it does (or doesn’t, you weren’t very clear) teach us (according to your review of public choice literature).
What did I not substantiate?
You seem to be contradicting yourself here. You say I didn’t provide any reasoning, but then say I deemed it bogus for a reason.
Can you articulate precisely the issue with what I wrote? It would be more helpful than making knee jerk claims like calling my post trash without substantiating what was actually trash and why.