How does any justice system work, consistent with the non-aggression principle? It seems to me that, in the minority of crimes where government police forces actually find the perpetrator, they only did so with property violations and aggressive uses of force that could not be justified until after the fact, and that, therefore, any wrong paths they started down would have involved fully unjustified violations of the non-aggression principle. Further, the possibility remains where, even if there is a conviction, it could be wrongful.
This also goes for cases of theft and restitution. Establishing the true ownership of property, particularly small pieces that are not registered with some agency, beyond current possession and control might be impossible within the bounds of NAP. Even in the case of a registered piece of property, there is no way to establish for sure that, if one party claims an unwritten contract or gift occured, legitimately transferring the property, such a transfer did not take place.
So, without violating NAP, how does any justice occur beyond the very personal and immediate justice of a man with a gun defending himself and his stuff?
Suppose someone breaks into your house and steals your stuff. When you get home and discover the crime, you call the police. In the present, your only option is to call 911. In a free market, you'd have a choice of police agencies to call.
Further, police protection and insurance would be bundled together. When you purchase police protection, your are also purchasing insurance for your property. Your police protectors would be obligated to restore your property, even if they don't catch the criminal. In the present, if you call the police and they can't solve the crime, that's too bad for you.
There are *TWO* types of legitimate law. There's contract law and criminal/common law. If someone breaks into your house and takes your property, that's covered by common law, even if you don't have an explicit contract with the criminal.
The difference is that, in a free market, you'd have a choice of police vendors.
Suppose the criminal purchased police protection from a dishonest agency that protected them from their crime. In that case, that police protection agency would lose most of its customers and it would be shut down by its honest competitors. If there was a genuine dispute, a trusted third party would resolve it.
Dishonest behavior by police is only "profitable", when you can force your "customers" to pay via taxes. With true free market competition, the police would behave honestly, or they would lose their customers. In the present, police sometimes/frequently behave dishonestly because they can get away with it. Even if you're unsatisfied with government police, you have no choice but to pay their salaries via taxes.
I have my own blog at FSK's Guide to Reality. Let me know if you like it.
I don't see how your post really addressed my point. How do you investigate a crime in any but the most cursory way without violating the non-aggression principle? Let's say I just burgled your house. I sitting on the sidewalk in my full burgling gear near your house, lockpicks and all, with a box about the size of a valuable artifact that, strangely enough, is missing. You have every reason to think I am the burglar, but you cannot prove it. If I refuse to open the box for you, and you open the box anyway, that is an act of aggression against me. You have no proof I am a burglar. I might be innocent, a locksmith who dresses in black with a box of chocolates for my gal, and I would have every right to violently resist you. Hell, my fingerprints could be all over your house and that proves nothing but trespass, and it proves trespass only to you, for you can't prove that you did not invite me in. You could have video of me, which could be forged.
In other words, in order to have effective third-party justice at all, you need to set a point, a sort of evidentiary threshold, at which you are willing to violate the NAP.
Suppose the police had your fingerints on record, and they matched the fingerprints in my house. Suppose I had videocameras installed in my house, and it was obviously you.
Now what? *YOU* violated the non-aggression principle when you invaded my house. Now, I'm *NOT* violating the non-aggression principle when I demand my stuff back or demand restitution. I don't have to do it myself; police will do it for me on my behalf. Free market competition guarantees that the police will treat everyone with respect.
Suppose now you're just a suspect. There's just a 10% chance that you're the criminal. The police have fingerprints in my house, but they don't have yours. The police politely ask for your fingerprints. If there's no match, you're acquitted and the police reimburse you for time wasted. If there's a match, now there's a 90%+ chance that you're the criminal and the police are justified demanding restitution.
Suppose you refuse to give fingerprints. Who have you hired as your police protection agency? They would point out that, as terms of your contract, you are obligated to give fingerprints if asked. Who would sell police protection and insurance to someone who refused to give their fingerprints, when given a reasonable request?
You're confusing "initiating violence" with "self-defense". Violence is acceptable when used in self-defense. I don't have to catch you red-handed in-the-act for it to be justified.
In most jurisdictions right now, the police don't have the right to force you to open your box anyway. You have to agree to open it. This is what usually happens when the police are investigating people who aren't aware of their rights. They open the front door and let the cops in, they agree to talk without a lawyer, etc.
"Every civilization depends on the quality of individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-they cannot work and their civilization collapses." -Frank Herbert, from Children of Dune
In the present, insisting on a lawyer or refusing to let the cops in is dangerous. You can assert your rights, but the cops can make up a frivolous excuse and arrest/detain you. In theory, you can refuse a search. In practice, it's not so obvious.
fsk:Suppose the police had your fingerints on record, and they matched the fingerprints in my house. Suppose I had videocameras installed in my house, and it was obviously you. Now what? *YOU* violated the non-aggression principle when you invaded my house. Now, I'm *NOT* violating the non-aggression principle when I demand my stuff back or demand restitution. I don't have to do it myself; police will do it for me on my behalf. Free market competition guarantees that the police will treat everyone with respect.
What if I was wearing a mask? You could have no way to be certain it was me, even if we posit a hypothetical world where forgery was impossible.
fsk:Suppose now you're just a suspect. There's just a 10% chance that you're the criminal. The police have fingerprints in my house, but they don't have yours. The police politely ask for your fingerprints. If there's no match, you're acquitted and the police reimburse you for time wasted. If there's a match, now there's a 90%+ chance that you're the criminal and the police are justified demanding restitution. Suppose you refuse to give fingerprints. Who have you hired as your police protection agency? They would point out that, as terms of your contract, you are obligated to give fingerprints if asked. Who would sell police protection and insurance to someone who refused to give their fingerprints, when given a reasonable request?
What if my protection agency did not have such a clause? What if I had no protection agency?
fsk:You're confusing "initiating violence" with "self-defense". Violence is acceptable when used in self-defense. I don't have to catch you red-handed in-the-act for it to be justified.
No, I'm not. You just haven't yet grasped the difficulties inherent in the question.
You're missing the point of free market justice.
If you don't have police protection pruchased in advance, you probably wouldn't be allowed in my neighborhood or city.
However, purchasing police protection in advance isn't mandatory. Suppose you are investigated and found not guilty. In that case, you are reimbursed for your time wasted. If you are guilty, you owe investigation costs plus punitive damages.
The key point you're missing is that the police are required to compensate suspects for time wasted, IF THEY'RE NOT PROVEN GUILTY. You can investigate a crime, without violating the non-aggression principle.
You're assuming a world inhabited by idiots. If you have positive evidence that someone may have committed a crime, then you're justified investigating them.
fsk:If you don't have police protection pruchased in advance, you probably wouldn't be allowed in my neighborhood or city.
I already wasn't allowed in your house, and look at all the good that did you. OK, I'm sitting visibly outside the gate of your little neighborhood.
fsk:The key point you're missing is that the police are required to compensate suspects for time wasted, IF THEY'RE NOT PROVEN GUILTY. You can investigate a crime, without violating the non-aggression principle.
Being compensated after the fact does not mean that an NAP violation has not occured. If that were the case, one could rape and pay the victim the going rate for a whore and be regarded as not having violated the NAP. The NAP is a prior restraint. Crimes are not undone by compensation.
fsk:You're assuming a world inhabited by idiots. If you have positive evidence that someone may have committed a crime, then you're justified investigating them.
Again, only to the degree you can without aggressing against them.
JCFolsom:In other words, in order to have effective third-party justice at all, you need to set a point, a sort of evidentiary threshold, at which you are willing to violate the NAP.
This is a very good question...how do you investigate crimes without violating the NAP?
I think what you would have is a police agency (either federal or private, depending on your leanings) that does as much investigation as it can without violating the NAP. This would include checking the crime scene for evidence and comparing that evidence against publicly available materials that they obtain without violating the NAP (checking your garbage at the dump, checking public records, etc). Once the police agency builds a case against a suspect, and they reach a point where they are confident in their assessment, they then violate the NAP by arresting the suspect.
If the suspect is proven innocent, the police agency would have committed a crime against the suspect and must be punished as they would for any NAP violation...including restitution. If the suspect is indeed guilty then the agency would NOT have violated the NAP, because they were acting in self-defense against a prior NAP violation.
I think this falls under the same idea as stopping the drunk person from walking into traffic. If I see someone who is clearly drunk and not in control of their facilties walking onto a busy highway, I can choose to violate the NAP and restrain them. It may end up that the person did not know what they were doing, and thank me for saving them. It may end up that the person knew full well what they were doing and wanted to kill themselves, in which case I would be punished. I had to choose based on the evidence and make a judgement call.
Jonas, this is indeed, in my estimation, the situation we face. Alas, this fact:
Jonas:If the suspect is proven innocent, the police agency would have committed a crime against the suspect and must be punished as they would for any NAP violation...including restitution. If the suspect is indeed guilty then the agency would NOT have violated the NAP, because they were acting in self-defense against a prior NAP violation.
...seems to me as rendering such services prohibitively expensive, especially for petty thefts and the like. It would be a tremendous risk to the investigating agency to make an arrest. They would face charges, possibly of assault and/or battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment; serious crimes with serious consequences, if they cannot establish guilt. Given that they cannot violate NAP prior to this risk, I would guess that the agencies would be liable in the large majority of cases.
JCFolsom:seems to me as rendering such services prohibitively expensive
Which is why I don't believe private police agencies will ever work.
Not only is there the liability issue, but you would have multiple agencies all using different standards to determine when a NAP violation is allowable. You will have some agencies that have incredibly high standards, in the hope of keeping false NAP violations to an absolute minimum. Those agencies will have very low rates of crime solving, since they will only pursue those cases where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming, but their rates will be lower since they will have fewer liability claims. Other agencies will be just the opposite.
You need a simple, common set of standards that everyone can understand.
Then there is the element of marketing and competition between all these supposed private police forces. One reason that our current justice system is so broken is the ambition of DA's, defense lawyers, etc. who want to rack up as many courtroom victories as possible, regardless of whether their victory is justice or injustice. I think all these police agencies will want to say "over 99% success rate in our investigations!" Thats all well and good if 99% of their suspects were guilty
stillbjorn:Then there is the element of marketing and competition between all these supposed private police forces. One reason that our current justice system is so broken is the ambition of DA's, defense lawyers, etc. who want to rack up as many courtroom victories as possible, regardless of whether their victory is justice or injustice. I think all these police agencies will want to say "over 99% success rate in our investigations!" Thats all well and good if 99% of their suspects were guilty
You're saying, in other words, that they could well be worse than what we have today. Do I have that right?
stillbjorn:Then there is the element of marketing and competition between all these supposed private police forces.
That was my point above. You will have some police forces that will advertise as "99% success rate", simply because they refuse to take any case where there isn't overwhelming evidence of guilt and a non-NAP-violating arrest will be likely. The fee for such a place might be low, but you will not get their services for anything except the most obvious of crimes.
You will have other police forces who advertise "all cases accepted" or "no case to big or small". These will be extremely expensive, because they might cause NAP violations in a large percentage of their arrests after which they are fined or punished significantly and must pass that cost along to their customers. The prices they might have to set would make them too expensive for anything except a major crime.
JCFolsom:So, without violating NAP, how does any justice occur beyond the very personal and immediate justice of a man with a gun defending himself and his stuff?
You're demanding perfection in the application of the NAP. Principles are morally absolute, concrete actions never are. The difference in private enforcement is two-fold. First, anyone who has agreed to insurance/police representation (whatever form it takes) would likely agree to some level of cooperation with investigations as part of the package. You may, for instance, be required to give your fingerprints if a private judge decides there is enough cause (and you can be pretty sure the retention and use of those fingerprints will be severely limited by the terms of your contract).
The second is that responsibility for any violations, either of the NAP, or of contractual rights/obligations, is individual. I mean "individual" loosely, in that the agency may be the responsible entity, but not necessarily. In any case, there's no "blame the system", or "it's what the voters decided" to fall back on in evading responsibility. Since participation is voluntary, agency that abuse it will lose customers.
The standard is not perfection, it is best effort. Not the lame "best effort" or "due diligence" we have now where a certain pre-determined threshold is enough to assure not being held responsible , but a standard of responsibility for every violation, enforced by everything from the right of defense of the victim to the court of public opinion and market forces, that means it is not economical to risk violating the NAP in the course of investigation or enforcement unless the cost of being wrong is worth the risk. Those who repeatedly underestimate that risk, either through malice, negligence or incompetence, will slowly be weeded out of the market - or out of the gene pool entirely.
The state won't go away once enough people want the state to go away, the state will effectively disappear once enough people no longer care that much whether it stays or goes. We don't need a revolution, we need millions of them.
histhasthai:You're demanding perfection in the application of the NAP.
No, I am demanding that, if you claim a principle as the core of your social system, that actions you know will frequently violate that principle by their very nature not be build into that system.
histhasthai:Principles are morally absolute, concrete actions never are. The difference in private enforcement is two-fold. First, anyone who has agreed to insurance/police representation (whatever form it takes) would likely agree to some level of cooperation with investigations as part of the package. You may, for instance, be required to give your fingerprints if a private judge decides there is enough cause (and you can be pretty sure the retention and use of those fingerprints will be severely limited by the terms of your contract).
But I cannot be required to obtain such a contract, and if I intend to be a burgular, I might well not. How then do you compel me?
histhasthai:The standard is not perfection, it is best effort. Not the lame "best effort" or "due diligence" we have now where a certain pre-determined threshold is enough to assure not being held responsible , but a standard of responsibility for every violation, enforced by everything from the right of defense of the victim to the court of public opinion and market forces, that means it is not economical to risk violating the NAP in the course of investigation or enforcement unless the cost of being wrong is worth the risk. Those who repeatedly underestimate that risk, either through malice, negligence or incompetence, will slowly be weeded out of the market - or out of the gene pool entirely.
Oh, I dunno. I think it quite likely that, given the popularity of such things as three strikes laws, capital punishment (even with an acknowledged level of error in the system), and our rape room style prisons, that people have a taste for the draconian when it comes to thieves and the like. People who want restitution from and punishment for those who commit crimes against them will favor a company that seems to have a higher success rate. Such a system would, it seems to me, especially target those without their own agencies (essentially forcing people to have one for fear of being railroaded), and indeed, to gravitate towards larger and more powerful ones.
I have not quite formulated this fully, but I believe this issue may in fact lead to a fatal flaw in the idea of anarchy altogether, or at least the reassurances some put out that we will be able to still have police order, albeit "private", in a truly anarchist society. With this and with some other things, I have begun to see signs that many in the anarchist community advocate solutions to problems which are free market in name and governmental in fact.
J and J,
I understand your questions completely. The answer lies in the right to own private property.
I had the same dillema about polycentric law a while ago and then it all clicked. You must understand that when YOU are standing on the side-walk with a mask and burglary gear etc. etc. outside of my house, you are still standing on somebody else's property. By stepping on that other person's property, you have consented to their terms and conditions which would most likely include compliance with his legal system.
Now, compare to statism:
One problem with most states is that "public" property is unsupervised and nobody cares about it. Therefore, when a crime is committed ANYWHERE, there will always be a "public" space in which a criminal can hide or at least facilitate his escape.
In the example of the OP, the property owner of the sidewalk would be accused by me of harboring a criminal. The property owner has every incentive to clear his name and capture you because those are the terms of stepping on his property -- you either agreed to his terms or you tresspassed.
On the other hand, my neighbor could possibly not care about this and tell me to stuff it. He does not have a positive obligation to me. However, he is taking the risk that I go to war against him over this matter. That would be a stupid risk -- why would he take that risk? Well......
I am just going to stop right there. Other members of the forum can explain further about how easements work and yadda yadda yadda for now, I think I addressed the OP sufficiently. In a nutshell, any crime occurs on private property of which the owner must be held accountable.
JCFolsom:I believe this issue may in fact lead to a fatal flaw in the idea of anarchy altogether, or at least the reassurances some put out that we will be able to still have police order, albeit "private", in a truly anarchist society.
The latter, more likely. As you went to great lengths to point out some weeks ago, there is no anarchist "system", there is only what will be, and we don't know what it will look like. We can only make educated guesses and try to anticipate problems and solutions. Anarchy doesn't propose anything other than freedom. If you think there's a flaw in anarchy, you think there is a flaw in freedom. Since we've already identified numerous fatal flaws in every system that abridges freedom, that would mean that there's a flaw in nature itself, that there is no way for human beings to live together in anything other than states of more or less oppression, violence, and conflict. Even if i thought that was true, I'd prefer an anarchist hell over a statist one.
JCFolsom:With this and with some other things, I have begun to see signs that many in the anarchist community advocate solutions to problems which are free market in name and governmental in fact.
It's common for anarchists to want to reject anything that in any way, shape or form looks like government, while at the same time claiming that the real need for governance would still be met. But any time people have rules by which they live, there will be some ways in which the order that emerges resembles government. That's because government as we know it is not just some completely arbitrary regime imposed on people without any relation to reality - even though many, many of the pieces of it are. It is what it is in part because it serves a need. I believe that many things that arise in anarchy would look a lot like government, but so long as participation is voluntary, it is self-governance, not monopoly aggressive government.
There is no system which could ever prevent all violations of the NAP. The distinguishing factor is whether individual responsibility still attaches to it, or whether the system divorces individual actions from responsibility. Any anarchist institution that becomes the latter becomes government in fact.
Charles Anthony:I am just going to stop right there. Other members of the forum can explain further about how easements work and yadda yadda yadda for now, I think I addressed the OP sufficiently. In a nutshell, any crime occurs on private property of which the owner must be held accountable.
That is an awesome post. Thanks a lot. Cleared up a few things for me.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
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