Topic: Enforcement in a Voluntaryist Society? (Read 2960 times)

Obviously there should be some social conventions about what constitutes a contract, when is a contract agreed upon etc. You can't make an illiterate person sign a piece of paper and expect that it constitutes a binding contract. The moment he can prove that he is actually illiterate the contract is invalid.

Enforcement is a loaded issue. I am personnally always against it, because while it solves certain class of unresolvable problems, it introduces more problems than it solves.

I was in Turkey during the Gezi park protests:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/occupy-taksim-222723

there are still people protesting and dying in Turkey actually. They demonstrate against police violence, which the police deems illegal and uses more violence to disperse them. There is no entity which can stop them, because the government protect their police, people turn against the government and the police protects the government by acting as a political tool that can use violence.  Of course Turkey is a broken country where the judicial system is also under government control. But this basic mechanism is there also in a functioning western democracy.

So, why would anyone want to sponsor an army of thugs (i.e. the turkish police in this case) just so that they can coerce some foul play when it happens? Personally even though I would be totally pissed of being screwed over by another individual, I have much less problem with that then giving infinite power to a group of thugs, so that they will protect me when it is to their interest, but coerce me if they don't like what I say.

Personally, I feel like I can protect myself from individuals (especially calling out for help from my social networks and convincing people that I am right etc. i.e. using my reputation to apply social pressure) but I can't protect myself from the state. For me the fact that there is an infinitely powerful entity which functions based on arbitrary principles that I don't agree with is a much bigger threat to my existence compared to the little service it provides.

So I think you shouldn't look for a perfect solution. Anything better than what we have today is already a step in the right direction. Some of these problems can be (not solved but) reduced  with careful engineering of technical aspects of the contract framework. So i think reputation is "good enough for government work".

The problem is, the moment a person is born, they supposedly enter into this social contract.  Back when I was born, the best thing I could do is scream and try to figure out how to use my eyes, let alone consider a contract I would be bound to so long as I lived among those people.  By the time you figure out how to reliably walk and hold a simple conversation with your parents, you're already 4 or 5 years into this contract.

I think people don't care about reputation because they don't have to. Because they are living in a society where it is their reputation "to the state" (criminal record etc.) which matters. If there was a quantitative way of keeping track of your reputation (like the credit report in the U.S. but decentralized) and everyone interacted with you based on that reputation. You would be much more careful not to ruin it.

But that doesn't really answer your question.

Your children issue is infinitely complex. I think it is ageism to say the child can't decide. There are children which are very smart, and there are adults which are very stupid. On the other hand, it is obvious that a normal child shouldn't be able to make a binding contract with an adult.

Hell even animals should enter that discussion. There is a gorilla that can speak ASL and is claimed to have an IQ between 70-95. She should be able to decide for herself on certain things.

Enforcement in a Voluntaryist Society? Non issue.

Sorry I can't find the exact place in the vid, but he clearly describes several scenarios :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXNRzI64L9Q "Jacob Spiney, The State Is Not Great: How Government Poisons Everything"

...Also just found some new footage of Robert Higgs (Mises inst). Start at 2:44 to avoid intro :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RILDjo4EXV8 "The State Is Too Dangerous to Tolerate | Robert Higgs"

Government is, by definition, not voluntary. So really Voluntaryist society necessitates the absence of a central government.

The trouble with the idea of NAP is that private property only exists because of the willingness to say, "I don't give a fuck if you think this is yours. I think it's mine, and I have more guns on my side to back me up than you do." That's why I can be confident that I effectively own the property my house sits on - the US government has a lot of guns and recognizes my claim. American Indians of many stripes may completely disagree, and by any equitable standpoint, they're probably right, but force trumps everything else in the physical world. (Not in bitcoin though!)

Glad I could help

Great info/reply.

On your first point: this requires the assumption that people generally want what's best for themselves, which does not include support for those who do not have their best intentions in mind.  If a firm can operate as a haven for criminals, this would imply other firms are accepting this firm as legitimate, which would go against what its own customers would want; their only existence is for protection against crime, and thus, if all firms accepted this criminal-haven firm, then people leave these firms en masse and some start their own firms; however, this is an unlikely scenario, as nobody operates a business to lose money.  What's more likely to happen, so long as people with bad intent do not encompass the majority of a society, is the firm which protects the minority of criminals cannot draw enough cash to overpower the firms which protect the majority of good-natured people.  So, the criminals which use the corrupt firm lose in the end anyway, give up the firm since it's not protecting them, subject themselves to the firms the good-natured majority is using (or don't pay for any firm at all, which may be worse), and thus, the firms which protect criminal behavior fail.  This is all under the assumption most people are good-natured; in a society of criminals, the opposite happens.  Fortunately, at least as much as I can tell, most of us never intend to live a life of crime.  It's similar to a democracy, in a way, except there's no central law-creation entity which is above that law, but several law-creation entities subject to each other's law and at the mercy of its clients.

On your second point: this all depends on the particular society in question.  If people generally want guns, they'll get them.  If people generally don't want guns, they'll not get them.  If you're the type of person who does not like weaponry, you should not be subject to have one; however, to uphold your right to choose on this matter, it is imperative that the person who does want weaponry also be allowed to have his, and not be subject to a ban.  In any case, even in America, most homes do not have guns (although the homes that do will, on average, have a lot of them.)  Being a Texan, where I assume the rednecks are, I can say it's pretty much like anywhere else in the west; the vast majority of people are unarmed while in public, and if anyone is carrying concealed handguns, I've never seen one pulled personally.

Excelent videos, I've asked for more details about how this sort of thing would actually work before.

On video 2 of the series. What happens when a firm is hired because it has a bad reputation, not everyone is nice ans such a firm could make a lot of profit protecting criminals.

Also, how to prevent this decending into being everyone owns a gun american redneck like.

It would seem the NAP itself is in violation of this ideal; you must still be able to enforce your right to self-defense, to say the least, which would be (I assume) involuntary to the person who initiated force; if we think of it this way, it is impossible for any society to be voluntary at all times; voluntaryism, at that point, is what you would want to strive for, knowing you could never get to it, such is the case with the concept of perfection, or matters of truth; there will never be absolute perfection, nor truth, but that doesn't mean one should give up and settle with imperfection and lies.  Likewise, I don't believe it is ever possible to have an absolute authoritarian society, as there will always be the few who still, with all pressure against them, dissent, nor can we be absolutely imperfect, or believe in no truth whatsoever.

If someone agrees that they're fine with force being used against them if they live with that group of people, then we can argue this is how a purely voluntaryist society would function; however, I don't believe this is going to be a philosophy shared by everyone, nor do I believe people are really going to be kicked out of any given society after having been rooted there until their teenage+ years if they do not accept that social contract once they're old enough to understand, which would also result in the entire family having to leave, and then where would they go?--to the next contractual voluntaryist society?  This just isn't ideal.  Children cannot sign a social contract; they're born into it, which is involuntary, nor can the parent sign that contract for the child, as this assumes the parent owns that person.  So, social contracts are out the window.

That's as best as I can reason it; myrkul, if he was still around, could probably figure something out in favor of voluntaryism.

We cannot argue in favor of a completely voluntary society, since we acknowledge human error and crime, and how these two things will always be present, unless humans evolve into something which isn't human anymore.  At best, I could say, a voluntary society is one in which, so long as you do not violate anyone's right to freedom, your right to freedom will remain; once you do violate that right, however, you no longer have a right to freedom, and are then fair game for whatever punishment everyone else would subject themselves to if in the same position, whether it's a fine, prison, tar & feather etc., until your punishment for violating such a right is complete.  The key difference here is who decides your punishment: you and your peers, or the proxy.

Well, duh. I completely agree with you, though. I don't buy that retaliatory force can ever by considered non-aggressive when it's initiation of new force. The only possible exception I think I'd accept is in cases of imminent danger, and the person's defending themselves.

Jail is nothing more than kidnapping and detainment. We use euphemisms when we think it's justified, though - keeps us from thinking about it too much.

The best argument I heard from a NAPer is that if a punishment is outlined under contract law, it isn't aggression. For residency, or even visiting in the country, everyone must sign the contract, stating they accept, say, execution for chewing gum on a sidewalk. New laws would have to be grandfathered in, affecting only children born after the law goes into effect. Children may be handled by a legal guardian signing for them, taking responsibility for any crimes the child commits, until the child is old enough to sign for himself.

Now, this does not necessarily imply centralization. There could be many laws/contracts for people to sign, maybe based on various factions. For example, say there is a Christian Fundamentalist faction, and their members run bus lines, restaurants, and beauty salons. A Christian Fundamentalist owner of a restaurant may not serve customers who do not agree to forever follow a set of laws set by the Christian Fundamentalist faction, which would have its own police/military to carry out enforcement. So you may be able to exist in this kind of pluralist society where so long as you don't want to eat at, say, Chick-Fil-A, you don't need to abide by the Christian Fundamentalist laws - but you may still be able to visit Taco Bell, which requires customers to be subservient only to Stoner Law. A standardized EM/IR/BT/whatever card may come up which can be scanned to determine which law sets a person agreed to abide to, which determines which services they can use (or where they can live, etc), and which liberties they have sacrificed.

Whoa, time out kids. I'm not a noob. I didn't ask about law without central government. I asked about law in a Voluntaryist society.
From wikipedia:

"Voluntaryism (or sometimes erroneously voluntarism), is a libertarian philosophy which holds that all forms of human association should be voluntary.[1] The principle most frequently used to support voluntaryism is the non-aggression principle (NAP)."

Very different indeed from simply lacking centralized government.

David Friedman, a leading anarcho-capitalst thinker, envisions a complex market of law with decentralized, BUT PHYSICAL AND FORCEFUL, enforcement. This violates the NAP.

The only argument I have heard without using force is the pure reputation-based argument. However this argument sucks because many people don't care about their reputation.

So I ask again. Furthermore no one answered whether or not psychological manipulation counts as aggression, coercion, force, etc. Nor did anyone address the child problem.

I think it's time to admit that even decentralized societies would use force.

The finer points of what will be tolerated will be determined by the market. Supply and demand for protection.

There are no absolute rules, as with the state, but an ever changing marketplace of social custom based on aggregates of peoples values.

"Should" spitting on someones lawn be punishable? Depends how much people hate people spitting on their law and what their willing to pay to stop it. It also depends on how much people like spitting on peoples lawns and how much their willing to pay for that privilege. The market will clear and an appropriate level of enforcement will emerge.

This may scare you, but what should scare you is the arbitrary and indiscriminate club of state law.

So, in short, we don't know what the rules the market will eventually settle on. We just know they will be sane and based on societies values.

This three part series should give you some idea of how law would work without a central government.

Can you do it? How?
Also, let's clarify the concept of coercion: I think we all agree that use of force is coercion, but is jail? What about psychological stuff?
On the note of psychological manipulation may = coercion, what about children entering into contracts?
Does the parent decide contracts for the child in a voluntaryist society? What defines a child? Who makes these rules?
When a contract is broken, is the negative mechanism of reputation sufficient? Evidence here, for either side, would be great.