5 ms·

Any chance you could summarize the argument?

by notJim 5y ago

dsr_ 5y ago
Briefly, he argues for private courts and police companies which would prefer to settle things with money rather than force, because force is so expensive. It requires a utopia to work as described. Libertarians love it.
- deathanatos 5y ago
  How would that even work? Like, why would I find a private court's ruling binding over me, and if there was some way to force that ruling to become binding … that's what we call "the government".
  - handrous 5y ago
    The plan seems to hinge on people and companies caring very much about reputational harm. I'll... leave judging the soundness of that plan as an exercise for the reader.
    - dsr_ 5y ago
      It may have seemed more reasonable in 1973 than it would in, say, 2019.
    - wyager 5y ago
      It has approximately nothing to do with reputational harm. The plausible end result of violating the law is either that you have to accept the result of arbitration or you end up getting shot - essentially the same as today, except you have a lot more flexibility in picking arbitration rules.
      - handrous 5y ago
        The Machinery of Freedom's system doesn't rely on firms' and individuals' strong wish to avoid reputational harm? Because that exact mechanism is mentioned repeatedly as the enforcement mechanism of arbitration, absent government. It may not be the only factor cited, but it's a lot of it.
        wyager 5y ago
        No, the chief proposed enforcement mechanism for violating arbitration agreements is that if you do, no one is going to stop people from shooting you and taking your stuff. I.e. you become an outlaw.
        handrous 5y ago
        Well, the book's text is available online. I suppose anyone can go figure out for themselves whether reputation (beyond just the extreme form of "people kill you because you're so unpopular") is a significant part of what it supposes would keep people and businesses in line, absent government.
        wyager 5y ago
        It has nothing to do with people killing you because you’re unpopular; it’s to do with the fact that if you seriously violate arbitration agreements it becomes too expensive to buy protection.
        handrous 5y ago
        > no one is going to stop people from shooting you and taking your stuff. I.e. you become an outlaw. [edit, also:] > The plausible end result of violating the law is either that you have to accept the result of arbitration or you end up getting shot
        krapp 5y ago
        That seems like the monopoly on violence with... more actual violence.
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    Contracts! You would contract with a particular for-profit legislative system the same way you contract with an insurance company and a police company and a war-defense company. The insurance company would have contracts with investigative companies and retributive force companies. When you get into a dispute with your neighbor over whether they are allowed to build a wall that might cross on to your property, you contact your court company and your insurance company. The court company sends someone to talk to your neighbor and get details of their jurisprudence subscription. If they subscribe to the same courts, excellent! They have jurisdiction and can decide whether this is a minor violation of the contract (see rules on respecting property lines) or a major violation. Violations can be punished by corrective action or fines equivalent to the costs of such. If the neighbor uses a different court system, perhaps they have a treaty-contract with your court system. In that case the treaty-contract will supply the rules. Oh, but maybe there isn't a treaty-contract. The court companies might take this opportunity to negotiate one. Or, they might notify their insurance companies that they have a conflict. Maybe their insurance companies have a mutual non-aggression contract, in which case they might force the court companies to negotiate a treaty-contract or lose insurance coverage. See? Utopia!
  - wyager 5y ago
    Read the book. The cost of defecting from an arbitration agreement would be very high (i.e. you would be at serious physical risk). You're arguing against a strawman you made up.
- notJim 5y ago
  I don't think it required a utopia, he's simply describing warlordism, which was the way of the world for thousands of years before the liberal revolutions. Why we would want to go back to that is a mystery to me, however.
handrous 5y ago
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/18/book-review-the-machinery-of-freedom/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/18/book-review-the-machin... There's a long quote down a ways (starting: "How, without government, could we settle the disputes that are now settled in courts of law?") that does a pretty good job of giving you the gist. The very TL;DR, and I don't think an unfair one (read Friedman's own, quoted story of how his system might work, if you don't believe me) for anyone who's familiar with cyberpunk fiction is that it's basically just unironically advocating the corporate-security-is-the-only-security future that those settings often feature. Given the timing, it seems probable to me that Friedman and others' writings on this topic inspired those elements of that genre, in fact. In Friedman's version of the story, this looks like a lot more freedom than we have now[0]. In the cyberpunk version, it looks a lot like feudalism. [0] I don't really see that, personally, in his and similar writing, which looks like it replaces de jure restrictions with a pile of stress, anxiety, and risk, which don't really feel like more freedom in any practical sense, to me, but it's supposed to be there, so let's just grant for the sake of argument that he's successfully painting a picture of a more-free system, as that's what he intends.
- notJim 5y ago
  Okay, this is at least honest. Yes, we could certainly effectively return to a form of feudalism/warlordism. I don't think it's a very good idea though. These authors comment on the idea that war being expensive would be a barrier, and surely it would be some kind of barrier. On the other hand, during the late medieval and early modern eras there were numerous wars that easily cost the entire revenue of the "state" for the year or sometimes multiple years. These wars were privately financed and involved the use of mercenaries. To me, this doesn't sound so different from the world proposed by libertarians like this, and I much prefer our world.
wyager 5y ago
There are various private court/police structures that end up being socially efficient. You pick a police/court company and they have contracts with other police/court companies that specify how arbitration happens. It doesn't rely on any sort of goodwill or miraculous happenstance. The end result is not that much different from what we have today except you should get more for your money and you have some more flexibility in picking which rules you're subject to. The space of admissible rulesets is determined by the cost of negotiating contracts between your court system and the other court systems you might have to interact with.

Any chance you could summarize the argument?

by notJim 5y ago

Any chance you could summarize the argument?

dsr_ 5y ago

Briefly, he argues for private courts and police companies which would prefer to settle things with money rather than force, because force is so expensive. It requires a utopia to work as described. Libertarians love it.

deathanatos 5y ago
How would that even work? Like, why would I find a private court's ruling binding over me, and if there was some way to force that ruling to become binding … that's what we call "the government".
- handrous 5y ago
  The plan seems to hinge on people and companies caring very much about reputational harm. I'll... leave judging the soundness of that plan as an exercise for the reader.
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    It may have seemed more reasonable in 1973 than it would in, say, 2019.
  - wyager 5y ago
    It has approximately nothing to do with reputational harm. The plausible end result of violating the law is either that you have to accept the result of arbitration or you end up getting shot - essentially the same as today, except you have a lot more flexibility in picking arbitration rules.
    - handrous 5y ago
      The Machinery of Freedom's system doesn't rely on firms' and individuals' strong wish to avoid reputational harm? Because that exact mechanism is mentioned repeatedly as the enforcement mechanism of arbitration, absent government. It may not be the only factor cited, but it's a lot of it.
      - wyager 5y ago
        No, the chief proposed enforcement mechanism for violating arbitration agreements is that if you do, no one is going to stop people from shooting you and taking your stuff. I.e. you become an outlaw.
        handrous 5y ago
        Well, the book's text is available online. I suppose anyone can go figure out for themselves whether reputation (beyond just the extreme form of "people kill you because you're so unpopular") is a significant part of what it supposes would keep people and businesses in line, absent government.
        wyager 5y ago
        It has nothing to do with people killing you because you’re unpopular; it’s to do with the fact that if you seriously violate arbitration agreements it becomes too expensive to buy protection.
        handrous 5y ago
        > no one is going to stop people from shooting you and taking your stuff. I.e. you become an outlaw. [edit, also:] > The plausible end result of violating the law is either that you have to accept the result of arbitration or you end up getting shot
        krapp 5y ago
        That seems like the monopoly on violence with... more actual violence.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  Contracts! You would contract with a particular for-profit legislative system the same way you contract with an insurance company and a police company and a war-defense company. The insurance company would have contracts with investigative companies and retributive force companies. When you get into a dispute with your neighbor over whether they are allowed to build a wall that might cross on to your property, you contact your court company and your insurance company. The court company sends someone to talk to your neighbor and get details of their jurisprudence subscription. If they subscribe to the same courts, excellent! They have jurisdiction and can decide whether this is a minor violation of the contract (see rules on respecting property lines) or a major violation. Violations can be punished by corrective action or fines equivalent to the costs of such. If the neighbor uses a different court system, perhaps they have a treaty-contract with your court system. In that case the treaty-contract will supply the rules. Oh, but maybe there isn't a treaty-contract. The court companies might take this opportunity to negotiate one. Or, they might notify their insurance companies that they have a conflict. Maybe their insurance companies have a mutual non-aggression contract, in which case they might force the court companies to negotiate a treaty-contract or lose insurance coverage. See? Utopia!
- wyager 5y ago
  Read the book. The cost of defecting from an arbitration agreement would be very high (i.e. you would be at serious physical risk). You're arguing against a strawman you made up.
notJim 5y ago
I don't think it required a utopia, he's simply describing warlordism, which was the way of the world for thousands of years before the liberal revolutions. Why we would want to go back to that is a mystery to me, however.

handrous 5y ago

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/18/book-review-the-machinery-of-freedom/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/18/book-review-the-machin... There's a long quote down a ways (starting: "How, without government, could we settle the disputes that are now settled in courts of law?") that does a pretty good job of giving you the gist. The very TL;DR, and I don't think an unfair one (read Friedman's own, quoted story of how his system might work, if you don't believe me) for anyone who's familiar with cyberpunk fiction is that it's basically just unironically advocating the corporate-security-is-the-only-security future that those settings often feature. Given the timing, it seems probable to me that Friedman and others' writings on this topic inspired those elements of that genre, in fact. In Friedman's version of the story, this looks like a lot more freedom than we have now[0]. In the cyberpunk version, it looks a lot like feudalism. [0] I don't really see that, personally, in his and similar writing, which looks like it replaces de jure restrictions with a pile of stress, anxiety, and risk, which don't really feel like more freedom in any practical sense, to me, but it's supposed to be there, so let's just grant for the sake of argument that he's successfully painting a picture of a more-free system, as that's what he intends.

notJim 5y ago
Okay, this is at least honest. Yes, we could certainly effectively return to a form of feudalism/warlordism. I don't think it's a very good idea though. These authors comment on the idea that war being expensive would be a barrier, and surely it would be some kind of barrier. On the other hand, during the late medieval and early modern eras there were numerous wars that easily cost the entire revenue of the "state" for the year or sometimes multiple years. These wars were privately financed and involved the use of mercenaries. To me, this doesn't sound so different from the world proposed by libertarians like this, and I much prefer our world.

wyager 5y ago

There are various private court/police structures that end up being socially efficient. You pick a police/court company and they have contracts with other police/court companies that specify how arbitration happens. It doesn't rely on any sort of goodwill or miraculous happenstance. The end result is not that much different from what we have today except you should get more for your money and you have some more flexibility in picking which rules you're subject to. The space of admissible rulesets is determined by the cost of negotiating contracts between your court system and the other court systems you might have to interact with.