Someone asked me a question over the weekend:
What if, under the anarchist system of protection insurance, all insurances find a particular person uninsurable? I.e., he is too high liability for the companies, because, for example, he lives in too dangerous a neighborhood (e.g., a Black person living in a White supremacist neighborhood). And the premium required to pay for his protection is too high for him to afford, while no charity organization in town is willing to pick up the bill.
My answer was: first, in the case when all these things pile up, the person has to move to a safer neighborhood or live with a reality of no protection. That sucks, and his rights to live in peace should not be violated, but such is the reality. Also, what's the alternative? Forcing all the citizens of the town to pay for his insurance or, worse yet, accept some sort of monopoly of a protection agency that will cover him too?
Second, under the government, the situation may not be any better. When Blacks moved in to many communities in Brooklyn, NY or Roxbury, MA, many Jews had a choice whether to move or continue living there despite the increasing crime rates. Most moved to Boroughpark, NY or Brookline, MA, but some communities stayed. They made a decision to live in a place of greater crime, and there is a lot of crime (lots of assaults, robberies, rapes, etc.). So, a) it was their decision to stay, and they must pay the price in terms of reality of things, b) though they are supposedly protected by state police, it's almost as if they were not.
I was wondering if anyone has anything to add to my answer. (The other part of the question was: what if he is too rich and too prone to being robbed? My answer was that he has to pay more for protection.)
FlyingAxe: What if, under the anarchist system of protection insurance, all insurances find a particular person uninsurable? I.e., he is too high liability for the companies, because, for example, he lives in too dangerous a neighborhood (e.g., a Black person living in a White supremacist neighborhood). And the premium required to pay for his protection is too high for him to afford, while no charity organization in town is willing to pick up the bill.
Let me pose a slightly different question:
A man lives in an area prone to dangerous forest fires. Naturally, the insurance is incredibly high, too high for him to afford paying. Think about the questions you were asked but with this scenario instead. Why would it be okay for this man to force other people to pay for his reckless decisions?
The whole essence of the question is that under anarchy, some citizens will remain unprotected because they are too poor and/or because they live in unfavorable conditions. That is why, the argument goes, a minirchist system is better: it will not leave any citizens unprotected in principle. (That, by the way, also includes children, old people, and the homeless, whose protection scheme under anarchy is also not entirely clear to me.)
It will not be able to protect everyone. Even so, do we really want to subsidize risky behavior? Look at the quote in my tag. Is that really what we want? To fill the world with reckless people? At the expense of those who don't take unnecessary risks?
Helloween: When there is competition of retaliatory force, there will be wars waged. And peace will be established only when one has conqured everyone else, at least within some jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) such that it makes sense to operate a justice system within it. A justice system which does not command a monpoly on retaliatory force, is pretty useless. It would just be an opinon, and what if the convicted disagrees and refers to the opinon of a different court? Basically, justice requires the use of violence and there cannot exist a market for violence, since a market is voluntary human action. Therefor justice must ultimately be produced in a non market fashion. And it takes enough of us individuals (within some jurisdiction) to understand, promote and enforce libertarian rights in order for those rights to be upheld. I don't see any shortcuts in the shape of allowing everyones "competition" with their non-libertarian laws.
When there is competition of retaliatory force, there will be wars waged. And peace will be established only when one has conqured everyone else, at least within some jurisdiction (territorial or otherwise) such that it makes sense to operate a justice system within it. A justice system which does not command a monpoly on retaliatory force, is pretty useless. It would just be an opinon, and what if the convicted disagrees and refers to the opinon of a different court?
Basically, justice requires the use of violence and there cannot exist a market for violence, since a market is voluntary human action. Therefor justice must ultimately be produced in a non market fashion. And it takes enough of us individuals (within some jurisdiction) to understand, promote and enforce libertarian rights in order for those rights to be upheld. I don't see any shortcuts in the shape of allowing everyones "competition" with their non-libertarian laws.
You are forgetting that justice-providing organizations will compete for clientele on the market. So, everything will depend on what sort of people inhabit the society: those that like civil wars or those that like tranquility. I think the second kind will tend to favor security organizations that settle their differences in a peaceful way, through voluntary arbitration, not through going to a war with each other.
Your argument ("better to have one emperor than seven kings fighting with each other") works only when you don't have a free market. I.e., when being a client of a particular king is imposed on someone by the king. (The same goes for mafia organizations.)
When you have freedom to choose between different security organizations, the ball is in the public's court, and I think people in general prefer tranquility over chaos and war.
gotlucky: While I agree that Orthodox Jews can use a private system of law, it is binding because of fear of excommunication (which is a pretty good reason). If any of them decided they didn't like the decision, excommunication is the only means of enforcing it in the current system, as to enforce it with violence would invoke the wrath of the state.
While I agree that Orthodox Jews can use a private system of law, it is binding because of fear of excommunication (which is a pretty good reason). If any of them decided they didn't like the decision, excommunication is the only means of enforcing it in the current system, as to enforce it with violence would invoke the wrath of the state.
That's true, except I heard of cases when a Beis Din would hire bouncers... (I think it was only done in the cases when a husband refused to grant his wife a divorce, effectively making her unable to re-marry.)
But this issue concerns law enforcement, not legal process itself. That's what I said before: I agree with Robert Murphy that it's useful to separate thinking about how law discovery would work vs. how law enforcement would work.
There have been historically systems of private law enforcement (e.g., Iceland).
Any system you propose will depend on some degree of people agreeing to work together. There is no way around it. That is why the question is more about the mechanism of law discovery and enforcement and less about the content of law. The content will depend on the people under all systems of society. No tyrant will be able to maintain certain law for a long time if the people don't support him. The question becomes: under which system will the voice of the people be better expressed in the law-making agencies' decisions.
I say that for the same reason we favor democracy over monarchy, we should favor anarchy over democracy. And for the same reason vox populi is heard better in, say, shoe production, it will be heard better in legislature.
FlyingAxe: But this issue concerns law enforcement, not legal process itself. That's what I said before: I agree with Robert Murphy that it's useful to separate thinking about how law discovery would work vs. how law enforcement would work.
Law discovery and law enforcement are different, but they are more intertwined than you think. If a court has no means of enforcing it's ruling, then it is up to the parties involved in the dispute to abide by the decision voluntarily. In the case of private Jewish courts in America (or anywhere), they can only function so long as the parties involved adhere to the decisions. The main incentive in this particular case is the fear of excommunication.
If one of the parties involved decided he did not want to adhere to the ruling, there is no way the private Jewish court can actually enforce it. If the court were to enforce it with violence, then the court would be playing with fire as the state would swoop in and grind the court down.
I would like to see more private courts in America, just as there have been competitors to the USPS. The problem is that without a means of enforcing rulings of the private courts, it is unlikely that there will be a widespread use of these courts, unlike the widespread use of FedEx and UPS and others.
I agree with much of the rest of your post, with the exception of democracy being necessarily better than monarchy. Many democracies around the world are getting more tyrannical every day, though there are many monarchies (or any government with one leader) that are much worse. However, comparing democracy in the West with the monarchies in the West, it is not clear that democracy has actually led to a less tyrannical system overall.
This is a good example of state-sponsored judicial system not only failing to protect natural rights but also failing to abide by its own law: http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/25/20-years-for-standing-her-ground-against
Question is: do you guys think under private law the situation would be different? The article says that the woman was found guilty by the jury, but that's a little misleading. In most cases, the jury simply verifies the facts, and as there is little doubt that the woman actually did fire her gun, the jury had no choice but to say "guilty". Things would be different if the jury members knew about the concept of nullification by jury or were willing to apply it.
FlyingAxe: Things would be different if the jury members knew about the concept of nullification by jury or were willing to apply it.
Things would be different if the jury members knew about the concept of nullification by jury or were willing to apply it.
This is the key. I'm sure that if more people were aware of nullification, then many more people would not be convicted for their "crimes".
It is unlikely that this woman would be found guilty under private law, but there are no guarantees.