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Question about Polycentric Law

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Wanderer Posted: Thu, Aug 13 2009 10:54 PM

Let me start by saying that I am an anarcho-capitalist and I completely believe that an anarcho-capitalistic society can function.  I am just curious of this one aspect: if different DRO believe in different laws, how will lawyers be trained?  Will each DRO need to have its own law school?

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Zavoi replied on Fri, Aug 14 2009 12:53 AM

Cam Nedland:
Will each DRO need to have its own law school?

Probably not. Within a given community, there is likely to be enough commonality of legal conventions that someone could just study the basics and then learn the particulars of an individual DRO.

When I say "conventions," I mean not the underlying ethical principles, but the essentially arbitrary rules that are valid only insofar as they are commonly accepted; such as the understanding that advertisements do not constitute offers, or the "mailbox rule" of contracts. Such conventions will naturally differ from one community to another, but not so much that each DRO needs its own law school.

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Cam Nedland:
I am just curious of this one aspect: if different DRO believe in different laws, how will lawyers be trained?  Will each DRO need to have its own law school?

I think you're still thinking within the state paradigm.  How will lawyers be trained?  How are insurance adjusters and actuaries trained?

I suspect free market conflict resolution will be a negotiation, not a public opera.

"When you're young you worry about people stealing your ideas, when you're old you worry that they won't." - David Friedman
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Cam Nedland:

Let me start by saying that I am an anarcho-capitalist and I completely believe that an anarcho-capitalistic society can function.  I am just curious of this one aspect: if different DRO believe in different laws, how will lawyers be trained?  Will each DRO need to have its own law school?

Open-Sourced & competitive schools & standards (aka, what you see on the internet currently). 

There is no definitive credentials one can get as a developer / web-designer / member of an open-source team aside from showing up with merit & contributing, but state-credentials certainly don't hurt when applying to certain companies and/or teams that hold such as important.

Emergence will eventually sort out how "useful" the current credentials are in providing one with the evidence of their own merit. 

This is already occurring a bit with the inflation bachelor's degrees have (largely) experienced (so much so that many people are opting for a combination of non-paid internships, associate arts degrees, & good old fashioned networking, instead of sinking away time, money, & debt into increasingly common BA's, of which, you can thank the next to useless liberal arts degree for, imo). 

Essentially, I would say we are largely ahead of the curve towards a shift in society to a different form (in this case, market-anarchist) when it comes to online, at least for now. 

However, this could change as cyberspace is increasingly tacked on with regulation & militarized (Cold War 2.0 with China and/or Russia via online anyone?). 

When the Military Industrial Complex starts to really butt it's ass (ba dum bum) into the internets, you can almost kiss this current "silent online Renaissance" goodbye, or at least take up a Browncoat & start hoping we can resist with own de-centralized infrastructure without too many people getting imprisoned for running Freenet Conferences & trading "illegal" copies of "intellectual property", etc. 

Or, more optimistically, we are just in the beta stages & the bugs of statism will eventually be worked out (i.e. eventually eliminated with each cultural, economical & social revision). 

So yea, tangents aside, DRO's will sort themselves out because we'll be doing the sorting, & nothing but coercion is going to remotely stop that.  I'm more worried about the possible civil war that may occur & if we can get even one state to secede, however. 

If secession movements can start to be successful, it will be far easier to establish longer lasting infrastructure for an an-cap / market-anarchist society, especially if on the smaller scale of individual sovereign territories, the positive results will be easier for the communities in areas to see, as less & less people pay attention to propaganda obscuring the opposition's success.

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Wanderer replied on Fri, Aug 14 2009 12:55 PM

Thanks everybody.  I was confused about that.

Smile

Periodically the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

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Most people get law backwards, it doesnt direct action, it is observation of the preferences of a group of people. In other words there is a law against murder because the people in the area don't believe in murder, not because the law says they cannot murder.

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