So I read about private police and private courts in For a New Liberty... if everything in an anarchist society is run by private property rights, and someone's property is infringed on, the protection they hire privately will deal with it. But how? What could they do to the person? Surely they couldn't just go around killing people for small crimes. Would they be taken into custody under the order of the person who hired them and take them back to their headquarters to be held until that person could contact his/her own police force? Wouldn't that cause battles among police? Also, how would the person be tried. Who would try that person and where? Who would make the laws and who would enforce them and hear cases in court? I am confused as to some aspects about this.
how closely did you read For a New Liberty ?
A lot of your questions sound like you are asking someone on the board to centrally plan the production of defence and justice services...is that a fair criticism ?
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
I am only 16 years old so I got as much as I could understand out of that chapter. I am not trying to criticize, I really just want to know how and where criminals would be held, how the person being arrested would be kept from contacting his/her own private police and causing a battle, where they would be tried, who would try them, and what laws would their trial be based upon ( who would make the laws and how would people agree upon them).
Hi C Master,
all your questions are legitimate concerns (imo) and I'm sure someone here will provide adequate entrepreneurial answers to them, i.e. describe how something might plausibly work in a free society.
However; try to take a small step back. Try to look at it this way. Suppose the government monopolized the shoe industry - I know the courts aren't as important as shoes, but stay with me for a second - and some crazy libertarian argued for a private shoe market. Could you estimate what questions you would ask? Probably something like: how can we guarantee quality? How can we guarantee enough shoes for the right peope? How can we guarantee diversity? How can we guarantee *anything*?
The truth is; you can't. Their are no guarantees in life.
The point I'm making is this: the question is not: can we describe 'how' it 'would' happen? Well: we can't. We can only describe wether or not their are certain arguments that make it plausible. We can't 'proof' it as certain as we can proof that 1 + 1 = 2. But we can try and make it plausible.
So my take on making it plausible is this: if there is a general adversion for high costs and violence, do we think it's plausible that people can find solutions to these problems? Or do you think that people - just because there is no state - will start attacking each other necessarily?
I'm not saying that this isn't a possibility. It's possible that people start attacking each other as soon as the state collapses. But it might also be true that they find ways of solving their problems - just as we have complicated markets in shoes, cars, etc. And if the majority of the people have a general feeling that they dislike violence, respect others people liberty, etc. then it can't that hard to come up with solutions to a whole array of problems, right?
Remember: security and legal certainty are both 'goods' that people value. (One could say that they are foundational to a whole lot of other goods.) So wouldn't it be weird that we would say 'oh, but people can't find solutions to solve these problems!')
So in order to answer your question: imagine that you live in a free society as described by Rothbard. How would you imagine that people will find solutions to problems like these? People have found solutions to really difficult problems in the past, in overcoming really hard incentive problems and so on. So it wouldn't be that hard to find solutions to those problems, won't it?
I'll give you one suggestion. Would it be a generally 'good idea' to start battling with another 'police agency' when they have someone in custody that 'belongs' to your protective agency? Or would it be a good idea for everyone to find peaceful solutions to sort this out? (This doesn't mean that peaceful solutions will be found. But there is certainly an incentive and there is certainly some possible solution to it.)
I hope this helps you. Not that it gives you a lot of answers, but I hope it helps you thinking about this sort of stuff.
The state is not the enemy. The idea of the state is.