I keep hearing about these fabulous “systematic dynamic forces”, non-monoply legal systems and powers. Is there anything stronger than armchair handwaving and assumptions that this “free market” (sounds more like a free-for-all to me) will somehow magically incentivise these “forces” not to get seriously out of hand and into an utter societal chaos? Without a transparent and UNIFORM (yes, monopoly) legal system how does one even establish that someone has been wronged or trampled on? The plethora of competing “free market” legal systems would regularly yield a plethora of “just” judgments resulting in a plethora of conflicting enforcements. Is this the “free-market” we’re talking about? What then? Might is right? The law of the jungle? Hasn’t mankind been there already, before it started walking on two feet? If that’s in any way optimal, why did we even bother devolving(?) from there? And finally, how come, in the thousands of years of recorded history no society has even come close to converging to this optimal societal Nirvana, not even by chance – so I can’t even study one to point out any shortcomings. Mankind has repeatedly converged to a whole spectrum of societies with uniform legal codes and “monopoly” governments (some totalitarian, some more free) so you can have a field day dissecting them. Lucky you, tough luck for me, right?
I think establishing a real anarchy would be the quickest way of converting all anarchists. (Although, how does one really “establish” lack of any establishment?) They’d be begging for the ‘good old days’ of law and order and “monopoly” legal systems that allowed them to play their anarchy games from their armchairs in peace. Without going into details, I say this because I (and my family and friends) have personally been exposed to crumbling legal systems and disapearance of law and order (Yes, I’ was not born in the States). Believe me, that’s not a “free market” any decent human being would want to be competing in.
there’s nothing magic about it. its economics. people are always coming on here and saying they believe in laissez-faire, and it turns out they know little about how it works, and don’t much believe in it after all. shame.
i don’t understand your armchair theoretic question. what is untransparent about a poly-centric legal order?. in a mono-centric legal order, establishing whether someone has been wronged doesnt happen automatically, claims are investigated, and judges make rulings. do you think in a polycentric legal order claims can’t be investigated and judges could not make rulings?
at the moment you are arguing from ignorance. you could read up about polycentric legal orders maybe…
the plethora of competing ‘free market’ information technology businesses regularly yield a plethora of devices that cannot communicate with each other. everyone has phones and computers but they are all individual and none of them can interface with each other. in the clothes industry, shoe makers are free to market anykind of shoe they please, as a result i can’t find a shoe to fit my feet for the life of me…
if its a good idea we would have done it already fallacy.
What does this have to do with the price of gasoline or with minarchy? I guess, the correct answer would be: “They should establish an anarchy”? Is that what you would have “supported” as a solution to their predicament? Where were you when they needed you? [:)]
Because we can’t speak of markets (free or otherwise) in law. You don’t BUY law (well, unless we start talking about bribing judges, so whever pays more gets more “law” on their side), as much as you don’t OWN law, hence you can’t TRADE law. Thus, without the ability to OWN and TRADE X, one cannot speak of any MARKETS (free or otherwise) for X. Laws are THE rules (uniform and transparent for anyone to see) according to which agents in society play the game of life. These rules may or may not support free markets, ownership or free exchange of property. They are the rules that define the nature and structure of society. They, unlike pork bellies or IBM shares, are the foundations for free markets – not subjects to them.
Once you have established a society with laws, you need to have a court system to arbitrate any disputes between agents according to these laws, and a system of enforcement of these laws and judgments. So how can we speak of OWNING or TRADING this enforcement (force, power) in a free market environment? If am found guilty by a court of law that I have come to your house and stolen your gold, can I then go ahead and (in a free market fashion) “buy” myself some defense from the impending enforcement? Or how about I just “buy” the powers of enforcement themselves (bribery) so they don’t proceed with the court order? Is this what you are talking about?
To conclude, in a civilized society, laws and their enforcement are NOT commodities. They can not be traded, thus there’s no need for markets in them (free or otherwise).
I don’t see how global governance and planetary justice follows from the above.
Erm, they’re services provided much like healthcare is… so yes, there is a “need” for them, and yes, they can exist, and no, there’s no need for a monopoly over them.
Law is not a need, or a luxury item that you can freely decide to buy more of or refuse to buy at all. Law is a neccessity for any group of agents larger than ONE. If you’re all by yourself in a country, then by all means, you’re free to buy as much or as little law as you want. The moment there’s two of us there there HAS to be law (a set of rules) under which we will behave and act (one of the hallmarks of civilization, btw). None of us can decide to BUY or TRADE more or less of it. There definitely cannot be TWO sets of laws (I’ll have mine, you’ll have yours and we can also happily trade them amongs ourselves in an efficient “free-market” fashion. “Want some of my law today? I feel like I got just too much of it lately”)., as they will be no better than NO law at all. Extrapolate now from two to any number of agents.
Btw, who would you consider to have the “monopoly” of the single law in our 2 person country, and explain how a “poly-centric” legal system (two sets of laws) could possibly be better than a single one in regulating our interactions.
No, it isn’t. A necessity is whatever an economic agent deems it to be. And as for who has the “monopoly”, your government does and every other government by preventing its “citizens” from patronising a protection provider of their choice. Rather, I’d like for you to explain how monopolising a service’s provision means it’ll be better than a competitively provided one (that includes law), other than by steamrolling a One True Law TM upon all its citizens and unilaterally declaring when disputes are over. Final decider or some such gibberish.
I’m sorry, but why can’t the latter happen within the territory of a state? What recourse do you have from the state itself, if it decides to take everything you own?
And remember, you can’t just say, “That’s unlikely.”
Again, I don’t understand how the state solves this problem. Particularly because the state, being… the state, cannot know how best to distribute its own capital to provide you defense.
EDIT: I’m sorry, I haven’t followed along with the entire thread, so maybe the following point has already been brought up. But z is now criticizing polycentric law. What exactly do you think we have in the United States? A recent bit of good news involved the DOJ deciding not to prosecute medical marijuana users from states in which medical marijuana is legal. Until recently, DEA agents were arresting sick people that legally bought and used pot.
My God, how could the Feds jail people that are following the law of their state? I thought we only had one, consistent set of laws!
The law and its enforcement is the recourse. First, before I even move to it I can study the law in a state and study how the state has respected it in the past. If I like what I see, I move there and take my chances. With anarchy, personally, I wouldn’t even care how many and what kind of laws there are covering the same territory, as most conflicts will inevitably be decided by who’s got the bigger guns. The latter situation is much more volatile and unpredictable, and I would be reluctant to move my family and productive resources there.
The state should only be there to arbitrate and enforce the law (protecting me from internal trespasses over my property and freedom) and to defend me from external aggressors, for which I’m willing to pay taxes. An efficient and well run state would have embedded checks and balances that - short of preventing - would at least signal major changes in its legal system (or the states interpretations of it) that may be detrimental to my property or liberty. In anarchy, not so much. If my town had a great harvest and the town over wasn’t as lucky with theirs, a “cooperating group” from there could just change “their” law to allow stealing from our silos “just this one time”. The only recourse I would have is hiring Johny Knees and Freddy Knuckles in a hurry to save me from them. What Johny and Freddy may want from me next year in return for their favor is also another question that I’d rather not ponder. So much for “free market” law and “free market” enforcement/defense. Thanks, but no thanks.
is that a joke? the monopoly provider of the service is who you can have recourse to should the monopoly provider treat you unjustly .?
lol. whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?
you have to say why overwhelming force of a single armed gang ‘administering’ over an unarmed populace, would be more amenable to justice than any other arrangement. i don’t envy you your position.
what you can say about what the state sohuld do, and what you have hope it would do, an anarchist could say about his pda. so maybe its not where the argument would be decided?
more reasonable to think of the economic incentives present in the alternative arrangements to judge which ‘system’ is more likely to deliver the goods over time. will it be monopoly? where by definition; justice is decided by the biggest armed gang going, and we have made the gang the biggest gang. at time 1? or would it be where competing agencies vie to keep customers paying, outbid each other to provide better protection at lower cost than each other, and be accountable, and who are fully incentivised to broker agreements with each other as to how future disagreements will be solved in a civilized manner, rather than through brutality?. given the right push, the path dependancy of an anarchist arrangement that had properly got off the ground, has much better prospects than any minarchy that gets off the ground on the right foot.
over time, precisely the incentives that would keep anarchist pdas delivering quality service are junked in the minarchy, the incentives under a minarchy are to be unjust and brutal. there is no other game in town.
“In the Anarchic society of Tribal England, civil conflict was the norm among the Celts, Jutes, and other tribes. In a world of Private Property rights, why wouldn’t land owners engage in conflict to obtain more land?”
The Anglo-Saxons had kings, the Celts had kings and tribal chieftains, same with other tribes. Perhaps it’s was more decentralized than today, but I don’t think you could classify such structures as being truly anarchic.
What justice? Or who defines “justice” in a “free-market” “poly-centric” legal system. The “coordinated group” with a more thoughtful legal system or the one with the bigger guns? This is going to be fun, I agree.
your questions about justice: to address these i need to know where you are coming from. I have a theory of justice… do you? (hint :mine is libertarian)
on the other matter. picture 10 individuals on a street. they have guns. if any 1 of them were to ‘go rogue’, he would have 9 opponents. compare this to 9 unarmed individuals who gave all their weapons to the 10th person…
I would be willing to bet serious money that person’s propensity toward anarchy would end being inversely proportional to their ACTUAL exposure to anything resembling anarchy in their lives – or directly proportional to the amount of benefits they have enjoyed through their lives by a well functioning society (monopoly law and enforcement, included). One needs to lose, or be exposed to a notable risk of losing something, in order to start appreciating it and not take it for granted.
I wonder if any research (polling) has been done along these lines.
Why would you concern yourself about my theory of justice? It’d be a “free market” and we could each have and implement our own. Mine could be “kill everything that moves” for all you care. I say you stick with yours and I stick with mine and we let them slug it out in a proper “free market” fashion. Deal?