Copernicus,

This is a great topic.  I'm glad you brought it up.  I've been an anarchist for over 20 years but I've done little research and haven't given any detailed thought to how a stateless society will enforce the law.  The reason for this is simple.  I don't think and have never thought that a stateless society will ever be achieved in my lifetime.  So I have focused my time and energies to persuading people on the morality and benefits of liberty without getting into discussions on how a fully libertarian society would work.

I have gotten into discussions on other libertarian boards concerning this topic, though.  From what I gather from some other libertarians, ostracism seems to be their answer  to some of the situations you brought up.  For me, and I think for you, this is insufficient.  Do we really want murderers, rapists, etc. not to be locked up somewhere?  But if the aforementioned criminals won't abide by a private court decision then force will have to be applied to lock them up.  For some of the voluntaryists I've debated, this is impermissible.  To them, each person can determine what's right and what's wrong.  Grabbing a murderer and locking them up is kidnapping.

LS,

Thanks for your frank and reflective contribution to the discussion. You were certainly correct in anticipating that I’d share your ambivalence about ostracism. Though I neglected to address the topic in my original post, I have thought about it. In a thinly populated world of isolated and largely autarkic city states, ostracism had the potential for quite serious consequences – psychologically and physically. Though, I understand that there’s scholarly dispute on the matter, at least one credible explanation for Socrates’ refusal of the last minute reprieve of an ostracism solution was that he thought it would be worse than the hemlock’s quick conclusion. However, today, in a densely populated, highly integrated world of cultural fluidity and increasingly globalized identities, I’m not only dubious about ostracism’s impact, but what in practice it would even mean. In that light, neither its punitive, nor its deterrent, effects offers much potential.

To echo the first post in this thread, the creation of a Nozickian-anarchist world of charter communities, however voluntary, would likely make ostracism a more meaningful response, but it would only do so by the introduction of a cure worse than the disease. It took centuries to breakdown the autarkic medieval world and establish increasingly free, open markets. Why would we roll back those accomplishments?

The biggest problem with ostracism, though, is that it only begs the question. The conundrum of a libertarian theory of enforcement doesn’t disappear. Making someone leave a community they don’t want to leave is no less coercive than putting them in prison and it requires as much force. And keeping them out – no less than keeping them in – requires a long term commitment to the exercise of that force and coercion. I’m assuming here, of course, that those you’ve spoken to who advocated ostracism did not mean merely ignoring, or socially cutting off in practice, those bad faith actors. That to me would be absurd: so then the more people they hurt, the more property they damage, the more we’d ignore them? I wouldn’t see that approach as a serious contribution.

At the end of the day, if we can’t answer this question, we can’t possibly expect the unconverted to take us seriously. If I read your post correctly, I gather that you’d agree with me on this, LS. If so, in the words of Victor Laszlo, “welcome to the fight” – but we sure have our work cut out for us.

Copernicus

Imagine a stateless society.

Hypothetical.

Smith kills Jones.  Jones' insurance/defense company brings "charges" against Smith.  Either Jones paid premiums that would allow the company to defend him even if he were dead or a member of Jones' family brings the action.  Smith doesn't subscribe to any defense service.  What's more, he admits to killing Jones but doesn't think it is wrong.  He sets his own rules and for him no majority can tell him what's right or wrong.  He refuses to go to court/adjudication.

What is one response to this situation? Ostracize him.  Don't do business with him.  Don't talk to him.  However, apprehending him is off limits.  That would be aggression.  Who are we to say what's right and wrong?

Smith moves many miles away.  Changes his name to Johnson.  And gets away with murder.

End hypothetical.

I realize that there are many potential holes in my hypothetical and that alternate solutions can be given.  That's good.  I would like to hear them.  But I do have a fundamental question. Is is ever permissible to use violence against someone in a non-defensive situation?  That is, if a person committed a violent act but days later is walking peacefully on his own property, can he or she be captured?

Do you guys believe that we can have clearly marked land and land property rights without the govt or a central authority to keep a record of all the land ownership records? Because to me it sounds like with this imagination you can't even imagine how land without a centralized authority would be managed. I mean seriously guys you are too restricted by the central authority imagination. 

By that what I mean is if a guy commits a rape and he is sent to prison for 7 years in statist society then ANY possible solution you are looking for in a stateless society you are expecting that if the person who raped someone was not punished for 7 years in prison then there is injustice.

Since its difficult to imagine how this would be enforced you guys are relying on ostrecization, but the fact is ostrecization is actually a very unique circumstances situation, you are over applying it.

Lets take LysanderSpooner's hypothetical example, a guy rapes a girl(I am using rape instead of murder here), then refuses to acknowledge it or come for his trial and then moves away, not only there are like many many pages worth of possible scenarios which would have happened until this point, EVEN if this thing did happen to this point, and the guy has ran away from the reach of your society, isn't that awesome? Isn't that what you really wanted at the first place, in this case instead of removing him for 7 years, he himself has voluntarily removed himself for life.

The problem is the phrase LysanderSpooner used 'And gets away with murder', is so statist in its core that I can't even describe it. What it really means is, 'getting away from the state after committing the murder'.

I am sorry but if you have statist expectations of justice then anarchist justice will always disappoint you, that is if you are able to even comprehend it.

I wouldn't characterize the phrase "getting away with ______" as statist.  I believe that some crimes are worthy of incarceration.  Just because a statist believes in incarceration and I believe in incarceration, it does not follow that I am a statist.  That's a fallacy.

In our hypothetical, I don't think it is a solution if the aggressor just moves away.  It may be nice for the future security of the community that he moved away from but it does not, in my mind, address the lack of justice for the egregious crime that he committed.  This isn't petit theft we're talking about.

In the situation above involving a murderer, I suppose the community must demand reparations paid if that is what the private judiciary decided was the proper result. The methods employed would probably vary from a complete denial of credit or even business with the murderer to the even thornier situation of isolating the same property from the nearby lands with physical walls or something else probably as ineffective as securing the borders is. Also I had no intention in treading into the strange scenario of buying up the property around an individual to effectively trap them on their land. But I suppose if that is also aggression than a trespass over the property would be in self preservation or self defense. Obviously playing in the land of hyphotheticals requires much more time than I care to use this afternoon.

Stephan Molyneux had a very interesting segment on freedomain radio at one point that addressed insurance as a means of enforcement. Basically if I understood it correctly people would obtain personal liability insurance for whatever business they conducted as without government you could not have limited liability so all activities would have the potential to damage another or be damaged yourself. So without addressing the endless litigiousness of this theoretical, I will continue in that any murderer would be found uninsurable by all but the most strange and risk hungry insurance companies. This in turn creates the negative incentive against crimes as the goal in this supposed free society is to have the best insurance because you have been proven an honest and consistent individual. So just as in ebay or elsewhere where vendors receive ratings from consumers or where private certifications such as Underwriters Laboratories limit credibility in a certain industry, there would be grades and reputation value to be earned and lost by a person's actions. Is this all just social ostracism?

Thats my painful wall of text attempt at different negative incentives to murder other than imprisonment. Please pick it apart so I can get more coherent over time. In summary its a struggle to deal logically with murder or rape, as they are crimes of passion or mental illness, unless I am missing something and there is a profit in murder.

 So, renegade_division, let me get this straight. Following your gloss on LS’s hypothetical: the murder/rapist commits his crime against the life, liberty or property of someone, then, simply leaves, without any consequences, reparation, punishment, even apology? That sounds to me pretty much like the definition of getting away with murder. It’s odd to me that you seem to place so little significance on the victim of the rape/murder. To my mind, the right to not be interfered with is not uncompromising. In a libertarian world you only have the right not to be interfered with along as you don’t interfere with others. Once you break that covenant and rape, murder or attack someone’s physical property you have forfeited the right not to be free from interference. Which, LS, is my answer to your question about the perpetrator being apprehended walking down the street days later. I don’t care how many days later it is. If you’ve violated someone else’s right to life, liberty or property, and do not willingly engage in a consensual judicial process and adhere to its ruling, then you’ve forfeited your rights to such security of person and property. What I don’t endorse, though, is vigilantism and lynch mobs. That’s why I originally raised this issue: looking for a theory of enforcement (and deterrent) which would be consistent with libertarian values. 

Oh, and renegade, this holier than thou, condescending “true” libertarianism really isn’t helpful. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that you couldn’t be put down with just as much ad hominem aplomb. We are though trying to have a civilized discussion.

NUMBER 0615, your post brought some thoughts to mind: your second paragraph, on insurance, is something that Hoppe advocates quite vigorously. I thought I’d addressed it above, but I see that I didn’t really. My concern with this is much the same as my concern with a private judiciary. It works well as long as we have good faith actors. As I once heard Pete Boehke say, humans are just as prone to trade, truck and barter as they are to rape, pillage and plunder. It just depends on the circumstances. Of course the goal of a libertarian “society” is to best create the incentives to promote the former instead of the latter. I understand that that goal animates the spirit of your post and I appreciate the approach. However, no set of incentives can be perfect. And those who take advantage of a situation out of greed or hate, in my libertarian world, cannot simply be allowed to go on their merry way. (See above about forfeiting rights of non-interference or non-aggression.) And, even more pointedly, are we really so naive as to think that in our libertarian world that magically there’ll no longer be sociopaths or psychopaths? That’s just a little Panglossian for my taste. If we acknowledge that such people exist, then don’t the other members of the libertarian society have the right to not have to be continually subjected to their assaults?

Of course, one can simply fall back on an individual self-defence argument. If I understand correctly, this seems to be GG’s position. To me, though, this is just saying that the sociopath is fended off until he finds a person weak enough to become his victim. Is that what a libertarian society comes down to: the weak are abandoned to whoever chooses to pray upon them? If that’s what a libertarian society is, I want no part of it.

B.C.'ing you

Copernicus

Copernicus,

Now that I have been thinking about this issue (thanks to you), I think I have a solution that should satisfy even that particular group of libertarians that believes all aggression is wrong.  Going back to my hypothetical.  Smith kills Jones.  Smith doesn't consent to any judicial process brought by anybody.  In that case, the holier than thou libertarians will say that the only sanctions against Smith that are legitimate are social, i.e. ostracism.  Their argument that making his life a living hell is punishment enough.  "Putting him in a cage" (one of their favorite phrases) is illegitimate.  Here's a possible response.  A group of people grab Smith and put him in a prison of some sorts.  The holier than thou's will cry foul.  But they have no recourse against the group other than ostracism.  If 99% of the community favors the group, then the ostracism won't "work".  In effect, you have market justice.  The market is just people.  I realize that this is a little lynch mobbish and I probably wouldn't support it.  But the non-aggression principle libertarians (and I am one) would have nothing to do about it without violating their own principles.  They could write, talk and agitate but they really couldn't break him out of a private prison.  That would be trespassing.

Bottom line.  I think that in a stateless society, an equilibrium would be reached where certain people would be dealt with one way and others another way.  Which I guess could be defined as a State.  Back to square one.

I haven't read all of what has been posted here, but you may be interested in an article I read once, about a dispute between a Scandanavian ship builder and a Libyan shipping company.  The shipping company stipulated that no part of the ship was to manufactured in Israel, as that would be a violation of Libyan law.  The ship builder built the ship, and, low and behold, the ship builder included some tiny electronic part built in Israel.  This was brought to some arbitration group, and a drama ensued.  I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but here is the link to the article:

It is located on page 457 (page 469 of the PDF [it starts at the bottom of the page) and is entitled “"Stateless, Not Lawless”: Voluntaryism and Arbitration
by Carl Watner"
(from No. 84, February 1997)

From the book "I Must Speak Out: The Best of the Voluntaryist" by Carl Watner

Here is the link to the PDF

Be seeing you,

FURB

I think the 2 underlying questions that need to be addressed in regards to any Lib. Enforcement Theory are as follows:  What is justice, and how could you get justice if you cannot use force?

Say someone decides to build a ton of bombs, and at random start bombing people in his neighborhood.  If you say force cannot be used to stop him from bombing, then you just have to pray that he runs out of bombs.  In reality, the community would most likely come together and eliminate the problem by locking him up.  Now, most of these community members would have not been directly targeted, but they knew there was a chance he would bomb them.  Now theres 2 ways to approach this:  A: Community decides to detain him so he can't bomb anyone else, or B: Community detains him to get justice for the previous bombings.  Each case has different moral implications, and I'd have to say case B is the more moral choice.  Case A is a whole other barrel of fish involving premptiveness.

Here's another hypothetical.  What about a person who lives in a community and decides to make weapons which by their very nature cannot be used purely defensively?  Would  the "community" be justified in confiscating such weapons?  Would that violate the NAP?

Hi everyone, I'm new to the board so I thought I would jump in on the most difficult topic I know of.  Justice was the big stopping point for me in accepting complete freedom for a long time, and I had to do a lot of studying and soul searching to come up with what I decided my answer was.  Here's what I came up with, maybe it will help...

In a nutshell, the key point for me was understanding the difference between retaliation and restitution.  Our current penal system is based on retaliation (the state "makes them suffer" in order to deter future acts).  In a free market system, I think the basis would instead be restitution for the victim. On this basis, I think that incarceration is acceptable, but in a form very different from what we have today (I'll explain).

Few people would object to the use of force in self defense (myself included).  However, if you examine the actual situation, the basis for this acceptance is actually shakier than the basis for incarceration after a crime has been committed.  In a self defense situation, you must act preemptively or you will be ineffective.  This means you must estimate the danger to yourself and respond appropriately before that threat comes to fruition.  Your response may be too great or too small, and it is likely that the ground truth of the situation is unknowable.  That doesn't mean that you can't act in defense of yourself.  In the situation where the crime has already been committed, all of the facts are known.  You know exactly what the damage was, who did it, and to whom it was done.  This means that any response you might make has a far greater chance of being just.  Restitution is just self defense, with the benefit of precise knowledge of the crime.

Assuming that the market provides just decisions on restitution settlements, I see the use of incarceration as a means to ensure that the perpetrator of the crime actually pays the sum.  It at first sounds like debtor's prison, but let me describe the market I think could develop in prisons.

For the sake of simplicity, let's say that all restitution settlements are eventually reduced to some amount of money.  The act of committing a crime against another individual incurs a debt to that individual equal to the fair restitution settlement.  The individual has the right to demand repayment on the same grounds that he had the right to defend himself at the time of the original act -- by not repaying, you are continuing to aggress against him. 

After the settlement is reached, if the criminal is believed to have a high risk of escaping and avoiding the repayment, the terms of the settlement may include the criminal being monitored or detained (at his own expense) by any facility deemed secure enough to mitigate the escape risk.  These "prisons" would be in competition with each other for the business of the prisoners, because the prisoner would select the prison into which he would be placed (subject to the security requirements).  There is no reason to believe that the facilities would be centers for torture, oppression, or other things people commonly associate with state prisons because any prison with that reputation would never have clients.  More likely, they would be businesses that offer salaries for various skills, with the added constraint that the "employee" can't leave the premises until the debt is repaid.  Their payment would come in the form of garnishing the wages of their "employees" to cover their expenses.  More skilled prisoners would likely be able to afford nicer accomodations based on the value of their work, and as they gain experience the prisoners would likely keep an eye out for better paying positions either in the same facility or other competing facilities.  In essence, it would work just like a job market.  A nice side benefit of this setup is that there's a good chance that the criminal will emerge from the system with a new skill that can be applied to help him make a living without resorting back to crime.  He may also just decide to stay in the prison system if it's nice enough, and it wouldn't be a drain on anyone involved.

The prisoner might still refuse to work.  I think this is probably a pathological corner case, but it's plausible so it would need to be handled.  One way to handle it might be for the facility to pass off the non-working prisoner to another, cheaper facility that has lower requirements, or to attempt to negotiate with the prisoner to reach some kind of agreement about the working conditions.  The point isn't to punish, but to ensure the payment is made.  I suppose in the extreme case, there could be a prisoner who refuses to work to pay off the restitution amount, vows to commit future crimes, and spits in the face of the justice system in general.  In this case, I don't know what might happen, but I would think that it would probably be some combination of ostracism and/or actual state-style prison administered by one of the prison facilities above (they keep the criminal out of society to engender "good will" from the community, perhaps).  If this were the case, the prison would be incentivized to try to get the prisoner to actually work in order to cover their expenses, and torture is still unlikely because of the image problems it brings.  I don't think this would be common at all, but it is a case that deserves the thought of better minds than mine.

In this way, you ensure that the victim is repayed, you avoid the moral trap of retribution, and in the case of violent criminals, you are able to prevent them from committing further acts of violence.  It wouldn't be a perfect system, but then I don't think a perfec systemt exists.  I do, however, think this system would be vastly superior to the statist system.

Hi all. I've been crazy busy with work these last couple weeks. I'm actually in Thailand, so don't cry for me. But it has prevented me from responding to the further contributions to this thread. I certainly intend to though and very much thank everyone for their thoughtful ideas. There's much to mull over here and I look forward to carrying on the discussion and digging a bit more into some of these suggestions.

Thanks again. Talk soon.

B.C.ing U

Copernicus

Following your gloss on LS’s hypothetical: the murder/rapist commits his crime against the life, liberty or property of someone, then, simply leaves, without any consequences, reparation, punishment, even apology?

Well dude first of all, if someone commits a crime against someone and has left, essentially poses the same anamoly as in a statist society when a criminal commits a crime and leaves the state and goes to another one which does not have an extradition treaty.

The point raised by the OP was, if someone in a free society does that isn't that what everybody would do. Essentially the concern is wouldn't EVERYBODY in this society commit a lot of crimes this way and get away with it? So I tried to answer his question, people who commit crimes and remove themselves from the property may have gotten away with a crime in statist society, and someday when they come back, they will be punished for this, but until then they are in a self-imposed exile.

What would you do if you caught them in a just society?

a) Make them give restitution to victim

b) and/or lock them up somewhere until they earn the money required as the restitution.

Except for the part that victim is made whole, in a free society the accused has voluntarily removed himself from the society. Getting away with murder literally implies that you do not have to sacrifice a whole lot. For example if we punish a rapist for 7 years in prison, and this guy rapes a girl and without waiting for the trial runs away to an island where he spends 7 year and then comes back to the society. Other than the fact that you would want to make him pay damages to the victim, would you really call it as getting away with a rape?

<blockquote>Once you break that covenant and rape, murder or attack someone’s physical property you have forfeited the right not to be free from interference.</blockquote>

So if you rape someone then you lose the right to your life if you refuse to go for a trial? Is that what you are suggesting? What if I just stole something, have I now lost the right to my life if I don't go for the trial or somehow evade arrests? What if I merely trespassed to another's property?

My answer is simple, if that happens, you cannot do anything about it, there is no more punishment for that individual other than what's proportional to his crime, that's the only consistent theory up there.

A murderer is a bit of a different situation, not because its a special case but because its that point where your point and my point merge. In a libertarian society you can try anyone without their prior consent, the only reason why you should get their consent because if you try them with consent your judgment becomes more powerful.

So you try a murderer who is evading trial, and if you find him guilty, you can go ahead and prosecute him with all force(which in case would be killing him),  its just that if in future it turns out that this guy was innocent and your trial was faulty then you have initiated aggression against that individual, now you must be punished for it.

Alright, I'm back. I know you all missed me. Though, it does look like this thread has run out of steam, but I didn't want it to wind down without some comments. As you'll see, though, I'm starting a couple others with what I find to be interesting problems in libertarian thought. I hope all those who contributed here will there too -- plus whomever else is interested.

On this thread, though, I've done quite a bit more reading since I started it. One thing I really liked was a reference I found by Walter Block to the principle of "non-aggression against non-aggressors." Exactly! It's amazing how often that latter part is not mentioned. This was of course the point I was making all along. The non-aggression principle only implies as long as someone doesn't aggress another. I found a nice little piece from John Sneed, in J of Lib Studies, "Order without Law:Where will Anarchists keep the Madmen" which I thought was pretty interesting on these issues. And, of course, on many occasions Rothbard makes clear his approval of imprisoning people who have committed crimes. Usually, though, he's focused on compelling them to provide restittuion. This is a problem I have with too much anarchist/libertarian thinking: the assumption that all injuries can be remedied through financial restitution. If someone murders my daughter, there's no amount of money that is going to make my injury whole.

Horror of horrors,  I do find myself speculating about the death penalty. Of course I've always opposed it as a matter of state. But if the consequence of private litigation, through private courts, I wonder. Whether I'm motivated by the blind rage of vengeance or a more altruistic desire of sparing other parents the same suffering, it seems to lead to the same end. Perhaps a court might be more inclined to sentence the death penalty if there were multiple accusors representing multiple victims, indicating a pattern of sociopathic or psychopathic behaviour. Anyway, I'm only toying with this, but frankly I don't see any other way to make restitution in such a case. There's no monetary value I would accept for my daughter's life.

More generally. Thanks for everyones thoughts. I won't try to comment on them all, but I did read them all and appreciate everyone's efforts. Just two quick points before I go.

LS: you clever dog, you. I loved that whole thing about creating conditons of a performative contradition on the part of those who might interfer with your pursuit of justice. That was great. As you acknowledge, maybe a little too clever, but I appreciated it.

Finally, renagade, thanks for your additional thoughts. And I espcially appreciated the considerably less condescending tone in the second post  As to substance, just as if someone stole my car, I would expect the protection agency I had hired to find it and bring it back (unlike the state's police, who have no incentive to do so), likewise if someone committed a crime of violent against me or a loved one who was a dependent or offsprint, and ran from a trial, I would expect my protection agency to chase that person down and bring them back to face trial. So, my answer to your question is yes, if you won't face your accusers in court you do indeed lose your life. At least to that extent.

You may well not consider that to be libertarian justice. Lucky for me you don't own the word. But, sincerely, thank you for taking the time to share you ideas. I know you have other things you could be doing with you time and I appreciate you sharing some of it with me in this discussion. And likewise to everyone who contributed.

B.C.'ing you