From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Sat Dec 12 1998 - 23:20:22 MST
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Darin Sunley <umsunley@cc.umanitoba.ca> Wrote:
> I seem to have missed the introduction of this "PPA" concept. Could someone enlighten me?
- From an old post of mine.
Good laws are no different than anything else, if you want to maximize
something then make it a commodity and sell it on the free market. Nobody does
that for law very much, that's why there are far more good cars than good
laws. Privately Produced Law (PPL) in a world without government would have
Private Protection Agencies (PPA's) to back them up. Disputes among PPA's
would be settled by an independent arbitrator agreed to by both parties
BEFORE the disagreement happened. Something like that can exist today.
When companies sign complicated contracts they sometimes also agree on who
will arbitrate it if differences in interpretation happen. Nobody wants to
get caught up in the slow, expensive court system run by governments.
The arbitrator is paid by the case, and because he is picked by both sides,
it's in his interest to be as just as possible. If he favored one side over
another or made brutal or stupid decisions he would not be picked again and
would need to look for a new line of work. Unlike present day judges and
juries, justice would have a positive survival value for the arbitrator.
All parties would have a reason to avoid violence if possible. The disputing
parties would not want to turn their front yard into a war zone, and violence
is expensive. The successful protection agencies would be more interested in
making money than saving face. Most of the time this would work so I expect
the total level of violence to be less than in the nation state system we
have now, but I'm not such a utopian as to suggest it will drop to zero.
Even when force is not used the implicit threat is always there, another good
reason to be civilized.
Please note that I'm not talking about justice only for the rich. If a rich
man's PPA makes unreasonable demands (beatings, sidewalk justice, I insist on
my mother being the judge if I get into trouble) it's going to need one hell
of a lot of firepower to back it up. That kind of an army is expensive
because of the hardware needed and because of the very high wages it will
need to pay its employees for an extremely dangerous job. To pay for all this
they will need to charge their clients enormous fees severely limiting their
customer base and that means even higher charges. They could never get the
upper hand, because the common man's PPA would be able to outspend a PPA that
had outrageous demands and was just for the super rich. A yacht cost a lot
more than a car, yet the Ford motor Company is far richer than all the yacht
builders on the planet combined.
No system can guarantee justice to everybody all the time but you'd have the
greatest chance of finding it in Anarcho-capitalism. In a dictatorship one
man's whim can lead to hell on earth, I don't see how 40 million Germans
could have murdered 6 million Jews in a Anarcho-capitalistic world. Things
aren't much better in a Democracy, 51% can decide to kill the other 49% ,
nothing even close to that is possible in Anarchy, even theoretically.
In general, the desire not to be killed is much stronger than the desire to
kill a stranger, even a Jewish stranger. Jews would be willing to pay as
much as necessary, up to and including their entire net worth not to be
killed. I doubt if even the most rabid anti Semite would go much beyond 2%.
As a result the PPA protecting Jews would be much stronger than the one that
wants to kill them. In Anarchy, for things that are REALLY important to you
(like not getting killed) you have much more influence than just one man one vote.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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