5 ms·

Many flavors of libertarian agree that in order for any court's decision to be binding, all parties to the dispute have to agree to grant it jurisdiction. This

Many flavors of libertarian agree that in order for any court's decision to be binding, all parties to the dispute have to agree to grant it jurisdiction. This, like most parts of Libertopia, is completely dependent on a robust reputation system. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to determine whether the proposed court is likely to be fair and impartial for your specific case. If you can't find a single judge that you can both agree on, you basically become Hatfields and McCoys, and then the rest of the county pulls their own guns, and decides which gang gets to be out in public on which days of the week. In a government court, jurisdiction is just assumed. In Libertopia courts, you can never skip that step. You also can't skip the part where the litigants post cash bonds to the court, to pay the judge and jury, and guarantee some of the judgment award. Filing suit as plaintiff in your own court seems like a slam-dunk until you realize that no defendant with an IQ higher than broccoli would ever be insane enough to grant you jurisdiction to hear your own case against them. And they definitely wouldn't pay you to do that.

jandrese 10y ago
My neighbor claims that my fence is over the property line, so he is taking me to court. Turns out there are no courts that I feel are acceptable for resolving this dispute. Having total freedom to do anything you want only works until other people exist.
- dmichulke 10y ago
  There is always karma. At some point you will have a hard time leaving your property and people will avoid entering yours. That's when you dearly pay for everything bad you did. And of course, there's also violence, just as today.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    Once you are depending on karmic justice to enforce your laws you no longer have laws.
    - dmichulke 10y ago
      You don't depend on it and it is illegal. Just like today. The original idea is to limit power. Now if you require an enforcer that is stronger than every entity in the system, the enforcer becomes part of the system. Then you need another enforcer that enforces stuff on the original one, ad infinitum. So you cannot ultimately enforce everything, not so today and not so in libertopia. There are still solutions / mitigation mechanisms to this, and I'll just sketch a few: - Embargos - fully legal, you just stop trading with the bad guy and revoke access to your property. The more people do it, the more expensive his life becomes. If the embargo is respected by enough people in the municipality, he'll lead an expensive, lone life with little to no access to food, health care, energy ... Note this is a current mechanism in international politics where there is no ultimate enforcer. - Karmic violence - fully illegal, yet it was practiced throughout history to deal with perceived injustices, starting with killing Cesar, the plots to kill Hitler until today's violence between gangs. Each instance represents a failure of the enforcement system, still it is very common. Note this is equivalent to war in international politics. - Coalitions: Groups of people embargoing or enacting karmic violence against a specified individual. Note this is again very common in international politics.
      - jandrese 10y ago
        So the solution is to form a government to punish the person who is acting badly.
vacri 10y ago
'Finding a court you both agree on' sounds like a system designed by someone with no experience in law.
- dmichulke 10y ago
  You designate them upfront. Just trade with someone else if you don't like that guy's court. There'd most probably be an app for that ;)
  - jandrese 10y ago
    But what if the app author doesn't agree with your court choices?
    - dmichulke 10y ago
      Then you use another app that you think is better or just develop one yourself.
  - vacri 10y ago
    Jandrese's original comment was about a disagreement with a neighbour, not a trade issue. Are you supposed to pick up and move if you don't like your neighbour's court? Most things that hit the courts are not trade issues, for that matter.
    - dmichulke 10y ago
      > Are you supposed to pick up and move if you don't like your neighbour's court No you aren't. Maybe you check this guy's reputation or you make a contract before you buy a property close to him. Good neighborhood contracts (I don't recall the name right now) are common international politics, see the original article. If the guy's a reasonable person, he'll want to resolve it as well. If he's a villain, you'll have supporters throughout your community because you won't be his first victim. Start your embargo if you want. > Most things that hit the courts are not trade issues, for that matter. They aren't today because municipality / state laws act like additional clauses to your contract even if they are not mentioned in the contract. But if you make this stuff explicit, many things become contract (not trade) issues. There's btw no reason not to have a property that has exactly the same laws as the US today and allow people to enter it unless they disrespect the laws. The current system can live within a libertarian land, but not the other way round. Libertarian land is the more general one.

jandrese 10y ago

My neighbor claims that my fence is over the property line, so he is taking me to court. Turns out there are no courts that I feel are acceptable for resolving this dispute. Having total freedom to do anything you want only works until other people exist.

dmichulke 10y ago
There is always karma. At some point you will have a hard time leaving your property and people will avoid entering yours. That's when you dearly pay for everything bad you did. And of course, there's also violence, just as today.
- jandrese 10y ago
  Once you are depending on karmic justice to enforce your laws you no longer have laws.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    You don't depend on it and it is illegal. Just like today. The original idea is to limit power. Now if you require an enforcer that is stronger than every entity in the system, the enforcer becomes part of the system. Then you need another enforcer that enforces stuff on the original one, ad infinitum. So you cannot ultimately enforce everything, not so today and not so in libertopia. There are still solutions / mitigation mechanisms to this, and I'll just sketch a few: - Embargos - fully legal, you just stop trading with the bad guy and revoke access to your property. The more people do it, the more expensive his life becomes. If the embargo is respected by enough people in the municipality, he'll lead an expensive, lone life with little to no access to food, health care, energy ... Note this is a current mechanism in international politics where there is no ultimate enforcer. - Karmic violence - fully illegal, yet it was practiced throughout history to deal with perceived injustices, starting with killing Cesar, the plots to kill Hitler until today's violence between gangs. Each instance represents a failure of the enforcement system, still it is very common. Note this is equivalent to war in international politics. - Coalitions: Groups of people embargoing or enacting karmic violence against a specified individual. Note this is again very common in international politics.
    - jandrese 10y ago
      So the solution is to form a government to punish the person who is acting badly.

vacri 10y ago

'Finding a court you both agree on' sounds like a system designed by someone with no experience in law.

dmichulke 10y ago
You designate them upfront. Just trade with someone else if you don't like that guy's court. There'd most probably be an app for that ;)
- jandrese 10y ago
  But what if the app author doesn't agree with your court choices?
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    Then you use another app that you think is better or just develop one yourself.
- vacri 10y ago
  Jandrese's original comment was about a disagreement with a neighbour, not a trade issue. Are you supposed to pick up and move if you don't like your neighbour's court? Most things that hit the courts are not trade issues, for that matter.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    > Are you supposed to pick up and move if you don't like your neighbour's court No you aren't. Maybe you check this guy's reputation or you make a contract before you buy a property close to him. Good neighborhood contracts (I don't recall the name right now) are common international politics, see the original article. If the guy's a reasonable person, he'll want to resolve it as well. If he's a villain, you'll have supporters throughout your community because you won't be his first victim. Start your embargo if you want. > Most things that hit the courts are not trade issues, for that matter. They aren't today because municipality / state laws act like additional clauses to your contract even if they are not mentioned in the contract. But if you make this stuff explicit, many things become contract (not trade) issues. There's btw no reason not to have a property that has exactly the same laws as the US today and allow people to enter it unless they disrespect the laws. The current system can live within a libertarian land, but not the other way round. Libertarian land is the more general one.