Author Topic: Challenging a stateless society = Questions to libertarianism  (Read 3068 times)

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Tuck Fheman

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Coercion is very simple to understand for those who understand the difference between positive rights and negative rights.

No one has a right to force you to associate or do business with anyone; therefore, everyone has a right to decline to trade with someone.   Hence shunning is not coercion, but its impact still produces many of the desired changes in behavior.

Rule #1 - Don't violate your laws to enforce your laws.

If you must steal to prevent theft then I question your motives.
If you must kill so you can steal so you can use prison as a deterrent to prevent murder then what have you gained?

Thus the goal is to enforce the laws without violating the laws.


Offline carpet ride

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Coercion is very simple to understand for those who understand the difference between positive rights and negative rights.

No one has a right to force you to associate or do business with anyone; therefore, everyone has a right to decline to trade with someone.   Hence shunning is not coercion, but its impact still produces many of the desired changes in behavior.

Rule #1 - Don't violate your laws to enforce your laws.

If you must steal to prevent theft then I question your motives.
If you must kill so you can steal so you can use prison as a deterrent to prevent murder then what have you gained?

Thus the goal is to enforce the laws without violating the laws.
Disclosure: the Bts and libertarian philosophy have become my way of
life. 

However, one difficult case I can think f that challenges the free market is collusion.  Let's say ten people collude by agreeing that one of them will steal a million dollars while knowingly sacrificing his reputation, but the group agrees to continue to do business with the stealer.  The collusion is not public knowledge. The stealer can continue to do trade because of his nine secret business partners. 

Must those who continue to do business with the stealer be shunned by everyone else? Are we better or worse  off by assuming that collusion and secrecy is part of the system? 


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« Last Edit: November 22, 2014, 03:32:51 am by gonz »
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Offline onceuponatime

Eleutherophobia is the fear of being free.

Some people, apparently, still have a fear of being free (they fear not having violent owners).  It's a fear I've never understood... but whenever you mention to them how much better a free market would be than the statist crapitalism we have today they like to say, "Show me one example of a truly free market that works!"

OK... the internet!

https://www.dollarvigilante.com/blog/2014/11/21/the-internet-is-a-perfect-example-of-how-a-free-market-would.html

p.s. Jeff Berwick] is a good candidate to be an early adopter and popularizer of BitShares if anyone has a connection with him. He has written many articles on Bitcoin in his newsletters.

Offline bitmarket

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Scroll down to he suggested playlists.  I think you will find many of your answers in those videos.   If you have any requests, just ask and I can make mroe videos.  My channel needs a little love actually.  I spend too much time on bitShares.    :D

https://www.youtube.com/successcouncil
Host of BitShares.TV and Author of BitShares 101

Xeldal

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In common law, the judge, or magistrate doesn't make any decisions. He is a servant to the court and is only there to maintain record and protocol he has no actual power.

Here is a very simple case for common law.
http://1215.org/lawnotes/lawnotes/common-law.htm

What is a court?
http://1215.org/lawnotes/lawnotes/court.htm

there is an enormous amount of information, including many hours of lecture on the site http://1215.org

Its a stone age site. might have been programmed in 1215, but well worth digging through.

Lecures on Sovereignty:
http://1215.org/lawnotes/lawnotes/lectures/sovereignty/index.html

Offline santaclause102

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Most of these questions I feel can be answered with common law.  Common law does not require a state, a judge has little to no power other than a basic secretary.  You are the court.  Every court in the United States was founded as a Court of Record (Common law court), however none today even realize it.  http://1215.org

How does society come to a consensus on the details of property rights?
by a jury of their peers.  If no one objects, its your.  If someone does object they will need to make their case. 

Is shunning a bad actor from civilized society really an effective alternative to prison?
The incentives are certainly there, to embrace a free society, rather than rail against it.  Most crimes today are non-violent, and most of those have no victim, where the plaintiff is actually the state, not a person.  A return to common law solves much of what we might be calling crime. 

People will always need to protect themselves.  A free society would in large part take care of themselves, but to whatever degree necessary would hire and pay a professional, highly skill people to do this for them.

Free society is incredibly resourceful and extremely efficient.  A group of outcasts would have a very tough time trying to leach from this group and would find it much easier and much more rewarding to simply embrace that society.  There's much less cause to steal from your neighbor when your government is not stealing from everyone, and your free to make a living as you see fit.

How does society come to a consensus on decisions related to justice?
common law, a jury of peers.

Can you expand on "common law"? I understand common law as there is no one written law but the law consists of the historical decisions of all the judges.

Quote
How does society come to a consensus on the details of property rights?
by a jury of their peers.  If no one objects, its your.  If someone does object they will need to make their case.
Make the case to who? Who decides? There, as I see it, are only two possibilities: Either there is the possibility to agree on a judge before hand (see below) or there is a judge put in place by the majority (= state judges).


As for the law: Since there is no state (no majority decision) there is also no law that applies to all and is enforced onto all. But there has to be some ground for a judge to judge by. Example: I walk on the street and someone spits me in the face or calls my wife a .... I then hit him in the fact where from he gets blind on one eye (has not been my intention (I say)). We both have a security and justice company (let's call them sjc). His sjc goes to my sjc and wants monetary compensation for his injury from me. My sjc refuses and they both take it to a judge. What is the basis to decide on for the judge or does he just decide based on his personal gut feeling? Now the crucial question: How do I know whether I have the right to hit him if he offends me like this?

This presenter here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2WhnOHCpKs makes the case that a dispute would have to be carried to an arbitrator / judge. He implies that the judge would decide not based on any ONE specific law but on his personal judgement which in return is based on his value system and his expertise (he reads a lot of books about how a good law should look like). The question I would have here is (he references it at the end but doesn't address it): In a private case (e.g. me and my employer are the conflict parties) this is easy - two two parties could agree on a judge before hand. But in the above case which involves two strangers: How does my sjc and his sjc agree on a judge. Both would want to pick one that is more victim or violator friendly. All those sjc would probably have to agree on judges beforehand for all their clients' cases?
« Last Edit: November 22, 2014, 12:48:19 am by delulo »

Xeldal

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Thanks for starting this topic delulo. You bring up great questions. I have many more questions I would like to add to the discussion. I will start with the following:

  • How does society come to a consensus on the details of property rights?
    • Who gets to decide whether a piece of land is owned by one individual or another? Or a portable good that may be in someone's possession? How are more subtle intrusions of property rights handled such as a carcinogenic smoke emitted from the property of one individual that naturally diffuses into the air inside of the home of some other individual? What about greenhouse gas emissions? What if someone is pumping water from an underground reservoir accessible from their property that is also accessible from neighboring properties? Can there be any limitations on how much they are allowed to pump or do we just let them do the short-sighted economically rational thing and pump as much of the free water as fast as possible before their neighbors take it from them and then sell it for profit? What about long-term harm of over-fishing? What about other resources like mines? Does someone who claimed a piece of land that years later turns out to be the best source of a certain element that is necessary for a physical product that is highly in demand by consumers get to have a monopoly over the supply of that element? What if the product isn't just a simple consumer good but is medical equipment that can save people's lives? Is there ever an appropriate time for society to take back ownership of that mine for the greater good of reducing the price of that element from monopolistically high levels down closer its cost of extraction? What about interfering with the free market to prevent other cases of natural monopolies that can hurt competition? What about electromagnetic spectrum? Can there be any regulations on the frequency and power of the electromagnetic radiation that are allowed to be emitted from one property out to other properties? Can there be different restrictions based on what each individual/entity has a "license" for?
  • Is shunning a bad actor from civilized society really an effective alternative to prison?
    • Does it significantly reduce the harmful actions by the bad actor? If some group of individuals are supporting the bad actor and refusing to follow the community ostracization, does the bad actor not have the same ability to cause harm in the society? If a group of bad actors go set up a minimal society in the outskirts of the population center since they are shunned from civilized society, will they not be in a position to routinely raid the civilized population center for resources? Does the society just accept that risk and build defense mechanisms against such threats? Are they allowed to delegate that protection responsibility to others specialized at the task such as a military?
    • Is shunning really a more humane/ethical alternative to prison? Shunning someone from all of civilized society is nearly equivalent to a death sentence for most people. How will they survive in the wilderness? Will they not starve, get desperate, and resort to desperate actions that they would have otherwise never considered had they not been put between a rock and a hard place? What is the due process society should follow before resorting to such a harsh punishment as complete ostracization from civilized society?
  • How does society come to a consensus on decisions related to justice?
    • What is procedure through which society can come to a verdict on the innocence/guilt of a defendant? I assume the defendant can choose not to show up in court to give a testimony because there is no threat of punishment by jail. Does the rest of society continue to make a judgement on his guilt even without him there to defend himself? What is the threshold of confidence necessary to rule someone as guilty? Is it okay to let 10,000 guilty people go free as long as 1 innocent person is not unjustly shunned from society? What does this mean for the level of violence, crime, and other undesirable behavior that will exist in a society because of a choice of this threshold? Who even gets to decide on the verdict?
    • How are these decisions enforced? If there is a lesser punishment I suppose society can use the threat of ostracization to get the person to self-enforce the punishment. But what if the punishment to be enforced in ostracization? Does society simply need to stop trading with the individual but otherwise cannot force them out of the city? What are people allowed to do if the person steps on their property? Is the initiation of violence against someone who is ostracized only permissible if it is a life threatening situation? What about other violation of property rights such as stealing things from one's home or just sleeping in one's home? Does someone who threatens the property rights violator to leave the house at gunpoint justified to kill him if he does not comply, or will he to be shunned from society if he kills the intruder? Can the rightful actions of defending one's life and property rights be delegated to third parties such as police officers?
    • What happens when the consensus decision changes? What if someone doesn't like the new consensus rules on how society determines whether someone is guilty (with a punishment of being shunned) or innocent? What if they think it has become a little bit too biased towards erring on the guilty side than the innocent side? What can that person do other than try to change people's minds? If he is the defendant of the case, can he ask that he be judged based on the previous standards and not the new ones? If he doesn't like the new changes is he forced to uproot his family and leave to another place that has more favorable rules? What if all civilized societies on the planet have the same unfavorable consensus rules?

Most of these questions I feel can be answered with common law.  Common law does not require a state, a judge has little to no power other than a basic secretary.  You are the court.  Every court in the United States was founded as a Court of Record (Common law court), however none today even realize it.  http://1215.org

How does society come to a consensus on the details of property rights?
by a jury of their peers.  If no one objects, its your.  If someone does object they will need to make their case. 

Is shunning a bad actor from civilized society really an effective alternative to prison?
The incentives are certainly there, to embrace a free society, rather than rail against it.  Most crimes today are non-violent, and most of those have no victim, where the plaintiff is actually the state, not a person.  A return to common law solves much of what we might be calling crime. 

People will always need to protect themselves.  A free society would in large part take care of themselves, but to whatever degree necessary would hire and pay a professional, highly skill people to do this for them.

Free society is incredibly resourceful and extremely efficient.  A group of outcasts would have a very tough time trying to leach from this group and would find it much easier and much more rewarding to simply embrace that society.  There's much less cause to steal from your neighbor when your government is not stealing from everyone, and your free to make a living as you see fit.

How does society come to a consensus on decisions related to justice?
common law, a jury of peers.

Offline santaclause102

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Good points there.

Quote
1) If the original owner is unknown or there is no prior owner then it is up to majority acceptance which defaults to "who ever uses it first".


Majority acceptance is only possible by majority vote which is a (democratic) state of some sort.
"Uses" is very vague and assumes people would only claim what they need for now: Say I and 100 other migrants come to the US of the 18h century. I (and possible all the others) then claim to "use" some land. Assuming that it is my goal to extract the most profit out of this land rush opportunity I will try to "control" as much land as I can. So my argument is that land is claimed and defended by private force until the majority (some form of state) accepts that it is yours.

Quote
3) Environmental problems are handled the same way as vandalism.  Property owners file a public complaint and if found to be valid (details left out here) results in the vast majority of individuals and businesses actively shunning and denying access/service to the individual who is guilty of vandalism until they make restitution.

That would require every land and every resource to be private property. Rivers for example, coming back here to point (1), have historically never been "first used" only by one person or one company so there is no ethical and no practical ground for establishing private ownership of it other than when a state is selling it. But that is possible and practicable. A problem here could be the short term profit orientation: Shareholders of the river property might allow a certain (possibly too high) introduction of chemicals by local factories into the river (against a fee for doing so) which would not be a problem in the short term (which is the time frame for profit extraction) but would be a problem in the long term.

Environmental issues often are related to common pool resources: What if the resource can not be made private: For example the quality of air in a city. Everyone is using/enjoying/living by a not too polluted air (pollution through cars, factories etc.). The only way to keep the air quality good (enough) is to find a majority consensus about an acceptable degree of air pollution and then agree on measures to enforce it. Those measures have to be enforced also onto those that do not agree with the majority consensus. That is a state like structure: The state has the monopoly of force to enforce decisions (to not pollute the air) made by indirect majority vote (democratic state with delegation of decision making).
The air pollution example is far fetched in not densely populated areas (most of the US) but an issue in most parts of the world, especially in China - it should just serve as an example for commonly used goods which can not be made private. 

Another example is: A good can be made a private good in so far as it is possible to restrict its use (precondition for making it a private good which was not possible in the air example above) but it can not be made a private good in so far as its effects are global: Parts of the rainforest in South America are made private or at least there is no efficient state to prohibit the "initial use" of this land. People (local farmers as well as global companies) tend to do with the land what is most profitable for them which mostly is to burn it and grow foods on it or cut the woods and then grow food on it. In each case a common good is harmed motivated by the (natural) profit / survival interests in the forest. The common good is that the rain forest plays an essential role in global climate stability which is a resource (the stability/continuity of the climate not how warm/cold it is) everyone on this planet profits from and it is a common resource since it prevents floods everyone bad by harmed by that lives in the area (but does not profit from the rain forest like the farmers/companies do).

Now a Brazilian state doesn't help much here. Since it is a resource every human being is depended on and uses continuously there would need to be a global solution. For example: Giving every human being the same amount of not locally restricted resources (the same amount of greenhouse gases that each individual can consume; the same amount of pollutants to various ecosystems that are all common goods and can not be made private goods by definition) and put that on a blockchain and require individuals and companies to trade it. Downside: It would require measuring everyone's pollutants output...  :/
« Last Edit: November 22, 2014, 09:45:38 am by delulo »

Offline bytemaster

Coercion is very simple to understand for those who understand the difference between positive rights and negative rights.

No one has a right to force you to associate or do business with anyone; therefore, everyone has a right to decline to trade with someone.   Hence shunning is not coercion, but its impact still produces many of the desired changes in behavior.

Rule #1 - Don't violate your laws to enforce your laws.

If you must steal to prevent theft then I question your motives.
If you must kill so you can steal so you can use prison as a deterrent to prevent murder then what have you gained?

Thus the goal is to enforce the laws without violating the laws. 
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline arhag

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There are a lot of questions and I have a lot of answers but lets remember one key thing:  nothing changes over night because society cannot handle that.

The main reason for my questions is because it is my personal belief that this so-called "stateless society" will naturally evolve to resemble our current society that I am sure everyone will agree is not stateless. I believe this is just an emergent phenomena driven by our human psychology. My questions are merely a way of driving to that point and opening up the discussion. I am open to be proven wrong, but I haven't seen any convincing arguments so far. I do think there are many different permutations of how are society could be organized, which I still think would be inappropriate to call stateless, that are much better and more "free" than our current society. But I am very very skeptical of this seemingly utopian non-violent non-coercive "voluntary" society that many people on this forum seem to envision.

Also please define "voluntary" and "coercion". Am I being coerced to follow certain rules if I am not allowed to join a group in the case that I refuse to follow the group's rules? Does it become coercion if the group is the collection of all human beings on the planet other than myself as well as all of the land on the planet?
« Last Edit: November 21, 2014, 11:00:37 pm by arhag »

Offline bytemaster

There are a lot of questions and I have a lot of answers but lets remember one key thing:  nothing changes over night because society cannot handle that.

So you start with a voluntary community where those inside the community have more opportunities than those outside... then grow that community. 
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline arhag

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Thanks for starting this topic delulo. You bring up great questions. I have many more questions I would like to add to the discussion. I will start with the following:

  • How does society come to a consensus on the details of property rights?
    • Who gets to decide whether a piece of land is owned by one individual or another? Or a portable good that may be in someone's possession? How are more subtle intrusions of property rights handled such as a carcinogenic smoke emitted from the property of one individual that naturally diffuses into the air inside of the home of some other individual? What about greenhouse gas emissions? What if someone is pumping water from an underground reservoir accessible from their property that is also accessible from neighboring properties? Can there be any limitations on how much they are allowed to pump or do we just let them do the short-sighted economically rational thing and pump as much of the free water as fast as possible before their neighbors take it from them and then sell it for profit? What about long-term harm of over-fishing? What about other resources like mines? Does someone who claimed a piece of land that years later turns out to be the best source of a certain element that is necessary for a physical product that is highly in demand by consumers get to have a monopoly over the supply of that element? What if the product isn't just a simple consumer good but is medical equipment that can save people's lives? Is there ever an appropriate time for society to take back ownership of that mine for the greater good of reducing the price of that element from monopolistically high levels down closer its cost of extraction? What about interfering with the free market to prevent other cases of natural monopolies that can hurt competition? What about electromagnetic spectrum? Can there be any regulations on the frequency and power of the electromagnetic radiation that are allowed to be emitted from one property out to other properties? Can there be different restrictions based on what each individual/entity has a "license" for?
  • Is shunning a bad actor from civilized society really an effective alternative to prison?
    • Does it significantly reduce the harmful actions by the bad actor? If some group of individuals are supporting the bad actor and refusing to follow the community ostracization, does the bad actor not have the same ability to cause harm in the society? If a group of bad actors go set up a minimal society in the outskirts of the population center since they are shunned from civilized society, will they not be in a position to routinely raid the civilized population center for resources? Does the society just accept that risk and build defense mechanisms against such threats? Are they allowed to delegate that protection responsibility to others specialized at the task such as a military?
    • Is shunning really a more humane/ethical alternative to prison? Shunning someone from all of civilized society is nearly equivalent to a death sentence for most people. How will they survive in the wilderness? Will they not starve, get desperate, and resort to desperate actions that they would have otherwise never considered had they not been put between a rock and a hard place? What is the due process society should follow before resorting to such a harsh punishment as complete ostracization from civilized society?
  • How does society come to a consensus on decisions related to justice?
    • What is procedure through which society can come to a verdict on the innocence/guilt of a defendant? I assume the defendant can choose not to show up in court to give a testimony because there is no threat of punishment by jail. Does the rest of society continue to make a judgement on his guilt even without him there to defend himself? What is the threshold of confidence necessary to rule someone as guilty? Is it okay to let 10,000 guilty people go free as long as 1 innocent person is not unjustly shunned from society? What does this mean for the level of violence, crime, and other undesirable behavior that will exist in a society because of a choice of this threshold? Who even gets to decide on the verdict?
    • How are these decisions enforced? If there is a lesser punishment I suppose society can use the threat of ostracization to get the person to self-enforce the punishment. But what if the punishment to be enforced in ostracization? Does society simply need to stop trading with the individual but otherwise cannot force them out of the city? What are people allowed to do if the person steps on their property? Is the initiation of violence against someone who is ostracized only permissible if it is a life threatening situation? What about other violation of property rights such as stealing things from one's home or just sleeping in one's home? Does someone who threatens the property rights violator to leave the house at gunpoint justified to kill him if he does not comply, or will he to be shunned from society if he kills the intruder? Can the rightful actions of defending one's life and property rights be delegated to third parties such as police officers?
    • What happens when the consensus decision changes? What if someone doesn't like the new consensus rules on how society determines whether someone is guilty (with a punishment of being shunned) or innocent? What if they think it has become a little bit too biased towards erring on the guilty side than the innocent side? What can that person do other than try to change people's minds? If he is the defendant of the case, can he ask that he be judged based on the previous standards and not the new ones? If he doesn't like the new changes is he forced to uproot his family and leave to another place that has more favorable rules? What if all civilized societies on the planet have the same unfavorable consensus rules?
« Last Edit: November 21, 2014, 10:34:31 pm by arhag »

Offline donkeypong

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It depends on a strong, educated, informed, conscious, and responsive society holding everyone accountable. Personally, I don't see that society has all of those features right now. To me, Libertarianism is not a complete solution, but it has many attractive features.

Xeldal

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Offline bytemaster

Lets deal with the first issue:  establishing the initial owner.

1) If the original owner is unknown or there is no prior owner then it is up to majority acceptance which defaults to "who ever uses it first".   
2) Once the majority has identified a clear owner / title by establishing some kind of commonly accepted public record, the property rights are absolute.
3) Environmental problems are handled the same way as vandalism.  Property owners file a public complaint and if found to be valid (details left out here) results in the vast majority of individuals and businesses actively shunning and denying access/service to the individual who is guilty of vandalism until they make restitution. 

For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.