From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Fri Sep 29 2000 - 12:20:19 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> "Michael S. Lorrey" wrote:
>
> >
> > No, it doesn't. You and I don't have the same auto insurance or health care
> > policies, do we? Yet we still get along fine, and nobody is sending other
> > people's kids to their deaths over car insurance, are they? The only common
> > agreement by individuals in society is for each individual to respect and honor
> > the contracts they agree to with other individuals, and to not initiate force
> > against others. You and I don't have to want to exercise the same rights, so
> > long as those rights either don't conflict, or don't conflict without just
> > compensation. If I carry a firearm, and you don't, you are externalizing your
> > security risk onto me to include you in the security umbrella that the implied
> > threat my being armed provides (and the presence of a weapon does not constitute
> > use of force, BTW). Such a scenario can be easily mitigated by a system of
> > bounties or rewards in those instances when I do in fact take concrete actions
> > to provide you with protection.
> >
>
> So, to take a classic case, what happens when your security/law
> enforcement body decides to haul me away on some charge that makes since
> to your law making agency but my law making agency and security/law
> enforcement utterly disagrees? Who decides the issue? Do they fight it
> out? What next level body and set of rules do they appeal to?
Lets say your policy with your PPL states 'no death penalty for murder'. Mine
mandates it for murder. Every PPL contract mandates no initiation of force. You
kill me. My PPL arrests you, and because you breached your 'no initiation of
force' clause in your contract, your PPL is not obligated to prevent your
execution, although they are obligated to determine if you actually initiated
force against me unprovoked, or were defending yourself against my initiation,
or whether your actions were the result of accident or negligence. They thus
provide your defense in arbitration with prosecutors from my PPL. Arbitrators
would be independent of both parties. Prosecution would pay for the trial,
subject to recovery from the convicted if a conviction results.
Private law is nothing new. 99% of legal action between the USPS and the postal
unions are in fact done on a private basis with arbitrators already. According
to my postal union friends, it costs about 1/4 as much as going the public court
route, they do have a body of precedent of past arbitration to work from (I
designed a judgement search database for one of the regional union arbitration
reps), and so long as the union does its job to take care of its members, the
system works quite well.
>
> > >
> > > I do not see how multiplying the number of private law providers and
> > > enforcers actually makes life and cooperative, predicatable activity
> > > more likely. On the surface it seems to add extra levels of
> > > complication. Problems that did have on central body of law and
> > > arbitrators now have N such bodies. These bodies act similarly to small
> > > States in this respect. So domestic conflicts are escalated into
> > > international (er, inter-syndicate?) ones.
> >
> > Socialists do not see how multiplying the number of private product
> > manufacturers and distributors actually makes life better, more cooperative and
> > more efficient for all, which is why they simply DO NOT GET capitalism.
> > Predictability is irrelevant, unless you are a fascist control freak. Adding
> > complexity to systems (like markets) makes them more robust. Having n bodies of
> > law ensures that if any one fails to serve adequately, the market for private
> > law will resolve the issue bloodlessly, allowing consumers to obtain their law
> > from bodies of law which do provide adequate levels of justice.
>
> Arguing from analogy does nothing to address the point raised.
> Predictability of a reasonable degree is quite relevant if you want a
> generally sane and peaceful society where conflicts do not become armed
> conflicts too often. Calling names is even weaker than using
> inapplicable analogies.
Well, tell me this: Why do you think centralized control is so godawful
important? It should be pretty emminently accepted by now that centralizing
control of anything tends to cause more abuse and violation of trust than
decentralization. My analogy holds, because there is little difference between
socialized law, socialized medicine, socialized employment, or socialized
anything. You ought to be smart enough to see that.
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