Sunday, April 10, 2011

How To Avoid the State?

My reply to the original comment exceeded Blogger's limits. Luckily, I have a blog.

I get some short details out of the way first, and then try to answer Devin's question about what a phase-I anarcho-formalist trial would look like.

"But it is possible to have multiple security forces in a territory who neither hold a monopoly"
Telephone carriers hold a monopoly over telephonics in a territory - defined by who's paying them. Multiple security agencies would have monopolies, their jurisdiction would just not have a traditional shape, over space or time.

I should note that simply saying 'multiple, competing' may not be the best description of what anarcho-formalism would stabilize to. For example there may be one army sponsoring several police forces - perhaps the market solution to armies is basically the status quo. My point is that we can't know without trying it, but I have good reasons to think it would be better.

"and keeps its promises, then any sort of system becomes workable."
I hope that the lawful ideology keeps them non-corrupt and causes them to keep their promises. As before, needs testing.

The legal framework I'm thinking of fully answers the nuclear question. If it's your land, then you can. Unless it affects someone else's land, then you need their agreement.

If they follow the legal framework, there's no valid disputes. Though this gets a bit complicated, I'll go into it below.

"That organization will be - by definition - the state."
A jarring logical leap. If England and the US have a dispute, who settles it? Does that mean neither are states, and there's some meta-state?

But yes, I agree a sovereign is a sovereign. Allodial ownership is unavoidable.

"I would be interested in hearing what phase 1 trial would look like"
Trying to be brief...the first part is to figure out who actually controls what - so MM style formalizing and share-issuing.

The caveat is that certain things cannot be self-consistently owned, namely coercive 'rights.' Taxation without legal recourse if services aren't provided. Taxation without a voluntary contract.

Perhaps this is best illustrated by market-style solutions to imprisonment and seizure of evidence.

Let's return to the nuclear plant. It's build despite neighbouring title holders.
These title holders can use the legal principle to show that the plant affects their property without their consent - coercion. They're justified in defending themselves. In a state of nature, they can at this point do whatever they like to the offender, including imprisonment. If you don't respect the principle, you cannot justify being protected by it.

So I'd suggest they agree beforehand to a dispute resolution process. (Which in turn the accused can cite them for not following.) Perhaps the punishment is imprisonment. Perhaps not.

The key is that with clear property rights, every potential dispute has a clear solution. With such formal rights, and if the principle is widely understood, then it becomes impossible to create a dispute without everyone knowing you've done wrong.

(Indeed property rights are defined by the reverse. If ownership/control/rights can't be precisely defined, it isn't owned.)

Sure, things can still go off the rails. The nuclear plant could be surrounded by tanks all shouting, "Bring it!" But the actor cannot justify it in any way but might==right. "I'm allowed to build it because I have more tanks than you." As states don't do this, I strongly suspect it would be self-defeating in practical terms.

Next, seizure of evidence. If from the accused, there's no issue; just seize it. But innocents cannot have their property taken without consent. If the court system has problems with simply buying it, then for the court to agree to resolve your disputes, you in turn agree to hand over evidence at a reasonable price.

In short, such a system may look indistinguishable from our current one, aside from replacing voting booths with voluntary contracts. Perhaps even mayors would subscribe to police firms, not individuals.

Or perhaps the fact you're supposed to be able to unsubscribe to police protection would lead to chaos, misery, and death. Let's try it and see!

One problem is that during the formalization process, homeowners may refuse to sign taxation/dispute contracts, but it is hard to get around the fact they don't own the land under their home. However, "Sign or be exiled" looks an awful lot like duress, which common law rightly holds to void contracts. Yet, if the landowner can't exile, then they're not really the owner. (Ultimately it isn't surprising that coercive systems lead to inconsistent property 'rights.')

Also, I don't see a problem with selling yourself into slavery, you just can't sell your kids into slavery. Similarly, you can't sign your kids up for taxation.

9 comments:

  1. Let's return to the nuclear plant. It's build despite neighbouring title holders.
    These title holders can use the legal principle to show that the plant affects their property without their consent - coercion. They're justified in defending themselves. In a state of nature, they can at this point do whatever they like to the offender, including imprisonment. If you don't respect the principle, you cannot justify being protected by it. So I'd suggest they agree beforehand to a dispute resolution process. (Which in turn the accused can cite them for not following.) Perhaps the punishment is imprisonment. Perhaps not.


    So to summarize - we have a problem. People want to do stuff with their property (build a power plant) that negatively impacts a very large number of neighbors.

    Now we don't want a system where someone is completely free to belch pollution over their neighbhors. But we don't want a system where every time someone does something that might affect the neighbhors (opening a noisy bar, building an addition that might block sunlight, opening a factory, building a power plant, etc, etc) the neighbors need to band together in a posse to arrest the person trying to improve their land. That's extremely messy, would lead to very unpredictable law enforcement, and would be a pain in the butt for everyone involved.

    So what's needed is a dispute resolution process. Since everyone in a small area like a city, people are always doing things that affect each other, everyone must be party to this dispute resolution, or else the whole thing breaks down.

    So the structure that I think comes closest to what you're proposing, but would actually work without being a complete mess, would be basically a monarchist/dispute resolution only government run as a timocracy (government by the property owners).

    So you would have a court system, with judges nominated by a jury of a few property owners and approved by a vote of all property owners. Offenses of one person against another person would be tried by a jury of citizens. Offenses, or claimed offenses, of a property owner against other property owners would be tried by a jury of property owners. Anyone can make an arrest, but the arrester must possess a warrant from a grand jury. Citizens could hire security guards to protect their property, but can not imprison someone overnight or punish someone unless they have approval from a court.

    The property owners might need to elect some sort of executive committee to oversee areas of common ownership like roads.

    The territory has no standing army, defense is via an armed militia.

    Does this sound close to your ideal system? Or is it too close to "government"?

    I think this kind of system could work quite well. I'm basically describing the U.S. circa 1800 (minus the elected legislatures). That system worked pretty well, and would have worked even better without the legislatures and popularly elected executive. I would not however describe it as anarchy, and I don't think I would call it stateless. I would call it an ultra-minarchist state.

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  2. Arg, I finally got around to writing a long comment, but it appears to have been swallowed by blogger.

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  3. I bet it looked like this:

    In the email notification, the formatting is even preserved.

    "Let's return to the nuclear plant. It's build despite neighbouring title holders.
    These title holders can use the legal principle to show that the plant affects their property without their consent - coercion. They're justified in defending themselves. In a state of nature, they can at this point do whatever they like to the offender, including imprisonment. If you don't respect the principle, you cannot justify being protected by it. So I'd suggest they agree beforehand to a dispute resolution process. (Which in turn the accused can cite them for not following.) Perhaps the punishment is imprisonment. Perhaps not.

    So to summarize - we have a problem. People want to do stuff with their property (build a power plant) that negatively impacts a very large number of neighbors.

    Now we don't want a system where someone is completely free to belch pollution over their neighbhors. But we don't want a system where every time someone does something that might affect the neighbhors (opening a noisy bar, building an addition that might block sunlight, opening a factory, building a power plant, etc, etc) the neighbors need to band together in a posse to arrest the person trying to improve their land. That's extremely messy, would lead to very unpredictable law enforcement, and would be a pain in the butt for everyone involved.

    So what's needed is a dispute resolution process. Since everyone in a small area like a city, people are always doing things that affect each other, everyone must be party to this dispute resolution, or else the whole thing breaks down.

    So the structure that I think comes closest to what you're proposing, but would actually work without being a complete mess, would be basically a monarchist/dispute resolution only government run as a timocracy (government by the property owners).

    So you would have a court system, with judges nominated by a jury of a few property owners and approved by a vote of all property owners. Offenses of one person against another person would be tried by a jury of citizens. Offenses, or claimed offenses, of a property owner against other property owners would be tried by a jury of property owners. Anyone can make an arrest, but the arrester must possess a warrant from a grand jury. Citizens could hire security guards to protect their property, but can not imprison someone overnight or punish someone unless they have approval from a court.

    The property owners might need to elect some sort of executive committee to oversee areas of common ownership like roads.

    The territory has no standing army, defense is via an armed militia.

    Does this sound close to your ideal system? Or is it too close to "government"?

    I think this kind of system could work quite well. I'm basically describing the U.S. circa 1800 (minus the elected legislatures). That system worked pretty well, and would have worked even better without the legislatures and popularly elected executive. I would not however describe it as anarchy, and I don't think I would call it stateless. I would call it an ultra-minarchist state."

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  4. "everyone must be party to this dispute resolution, or else the whole thing breaks down."

    Sort of. Maybe. Let's try it and see, yes?

    Everyone must be party to a dispute resolution mechanism. Without a police contract, it's 'shoot the bastard.' This is why I think police subscriptions would appear almost immediately.

    I saw a great post about the origin of moot courts and common law, which I can no longer find. But originally the point of judges was to avoid wars between barons - accepting an adverse judgment was still better than fighting it out, so it was accepted. The point was merely to resolve disputes predictably and impartially - enforcement is actually a corruption of this system.

    However, not everyone has to have the same adjudication any more than everyone has to have the same cell phone carrier.

    In both cases, they just need to be able to talk among themselves amicably. Which may indeed be impossible - it's never really been tried.

    "So you would have a court system, with judges nominated by a jury of a few property owners and approved by a vote of all property owners."

    I would have judges appointed by the CEO. The CEO's decisions would be approved by their customers in cold, hard cash.

    The judge would then rule predictably and impartially, because they want to keep their job.

    That very predictability makes going to the judge a waste of time, so most disputes would be resolved before they even really came up.

    There would be no jury. The CEO could write whatever rules they want. Approved in cold, hard cash. Come to think, the customers ARE the jury - if they don't approve of the rulings, they unsubscribe.

    Anyone can make an arrest, but you have to pay restitution if you did so wrongly.

    Or, you know, whatever the market comes up with.

    Szabo also brings up the problem of jurisdiction shopping. You go to the court that will rule against whoever you've got the grudge against.

    That's not the natural mode for the market, though. If you want life insurance, your beneficiary doesn't go to a court and ask for favourable judgment leading to payout.

    If you want protection, you need to pay in advance.

    The subscribed police force would rule on offences to their subscribers. (In return for the subscribers not shooting people at random.) So, before doing business with someone, you'd ask which force they subscribed to, and get a rough idea of what's considered illegal.

    This also better follows moral lines. You'd be sub-contracting self defence. You don't have to sub-contract self-defence, just if you want a court to care.

    Well, again, probably. Never been tried - so let's try it and see, yes?

    "Citizens could hire security guards to protect their property, but can not imprison someone overnight or punish someone unless they have approval from a court."

    Quite possible. I'd leave that up to the CEO.

    "The territory has no standing army, defense is via an armed militia."

    Whatever in fact works for sovereign security. There's serious problems in testing this, though. If you go too low, you get conquered and you don't get to try again.

    A loose confederation of city-states is militarily weaker than a dictatorship of city-states.

    So either nuclear weapons, or else strong confederations are necessary.

    I wouldn't normally start messing with this until phase III trials, but given that nobody has invaded Somalia, it might be safe to try it now.

    On the other hand, if it is safe, then you're not getting a proper stress test.

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  8. Richard, you will argue with some minimal respectfulness if you expect me to not delete your comments at whim.

    Or: bye yourself.

    I subscribe to the broken window theory of law enforcement, and I will not allow vandalism of my comment section.

    Especially now as I've informed you of the condition. The only question is whether you're capable of following such strictures.

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  9. Richard Kulisz said:

    "Have you at all examined the thought that so-called property rights attach to OBJECTS and not to human beings?

    That property rights are the rights OF OBJECTS of having human owners? This is the reason why you see absolutely nothing wrong with slavery. Because under slavery, a human being is not a person with rights, but is an OBJECT owned by an owner."


    The rest of Richard's comment was self-defeating, and ugly. Therefore, I removed it.

    Richard is of course welcome to post such things on his own blog. I will not delete links to them. I will now reply to the non-contentless portion.


    Now that you've pointed it out, I have. It turns out to be false, so I stopped. Property rights are about conflicts between people.

    Slavery is the natural extension of being able to sell some of your labour. Why not all of it?

    Having now thought about this as well, I discovered something pretty amazing.

    Slavery is a safety net of last resort. Debts should not pass to dependents, so that's out. Healthcare and education for the poor is normally adequately covered by charity.

    BUT not always. If your local charity is broken, there may not be time to fix it before it's too late. But you can always sell yourself into slavery, buy a heart, and save your child.

    If slavery is illegal, your child dies.

    Slavery. It saves lives.

    No matter how poor you are to start with, if slavery is legal, you have enough capital to sell to fund pretty much anything you could possibly need.

    I must repeat and emphasize that a healthy society should never require this sacrifice. But removing the option isn't better. No society will ever be perfectly, permanently healthy.

    Moreover, if the 'enslaved' entered in the contract willingly, under no duress, then it isn't really slavery. Though I'd prefer to try it before passing judgment, I suspect such 'slaves' wouldn't be nearly as unhappy as actual slaves.

    When you picked the cotton, it would remind you of your child. Who lived. Who lived because nobody stopped you from selling your ultimate possession.

    I say collectivists are murderers. Things like this are why. The gulags are just a bonus, really.

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New failcomment system also fails to publish my comments, it's not limited to yours. Keep trying, it will usually work, eventually.
Blogger deliberately trying to kill itself, I expect.
Captchas should be off. If it gives you one anyway, it's against my explicit instructions.