[baddox]

> You can use private litigation (sue someone for poisoning you) but that is wholly impractical.

I'll never understand how people can suppose that a government solution, which consists of a massive nation-wide bureaucracy as well as an immense violent army of what I endearingly call "the conflict resolvers" (law enforcement, courts, etc.) funded mostly by compulsory financial levies on working residents, is by any definition or stretch of the imagination "more efficient" than private litigation.

[jpdoctor]

> I'll never understand how people can suppose that a government solution,... is by any definition or stretch of the imagination "more efficient" than private litigation.

You mean private litigation which employs gov't judges to adjudicate and the gov't police to enforce? If so, you have a confusing definition of private.

The only private litigation I'm aware of is the mob, which has a self-contained judgement and enforcement arm. I would agree with you: They're damn efficient.

[baddox]

> You mean private litigation which employs gov't judges to adjudicate and the gov't police to enforce?

No, I mean private litigation and conflict mediation that is private. There is a lot of that already.

[rayiner]

And it blows because the conflict mediators side with the people who have the deepest pockets and can offer repeat business.

[baddox]

I'd be curious to hear your notion of how government works.

[kolinko]

How would that work?

[baddox]

The same way any private industry works. People or organizations offer services, and individuals choose which services to pay for.

[kolinko]

So, I'd pay a private company to arbitrage between me and the company which caused my lead poisoning?

And what happens when the private company doesn't agree with the arbitrage result?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> I'll never understand how

... And if, after looking at the example of lead, you still don't understand the role of regulation, it's likely that you never will.

[Camillo]

I wouldn't blame him, though. He might have breathed in a lot of lead as a child.

[vbuterin]

Private litigation ALSO has a nation-wide bureaucracy with an immense army of "conflict resolvers", and is often so inefficient that the litigation itself if often used by powerful corporations as a means of harassing their enemies. We need massive legal simplification, I agree, but that doesn't necessarily mean just moving to private litigation and being done with it.

[baddox]

Some private litigation firms will probably always be bloated and inefficient, but that's just great news to their competitors. It's no different than private retail stores: some are inefficient, but the more efficient ones tend to do better (or pressure the inefficient ones to improve).

[onetwothreefour]

Please direct me to these efficient lawyers. I think everyone in the world would like to become their customer.

It's pretty clear to me that you have never been involved with "private litigation".

[SideburnsOfDoom]

The beauty of libertarian ideas are that you don't have to have ever been involved in anything to understand them. In fact, it helps if you haven't. http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html

[sophacles]

Or more likely just result in the inefficient one (almost always an indicator of having more resources) buying the efficient one or simply undercutting them out of business, in order to maintain their status. It is cheaper to just get rid of the competition than to actually improve your own practices.

[baddox]

And how, pray tell, is a government solution (which is not only monopolistic, but uses violence rather than shady business tactics to maintain its monopoly) any better?

[sophacles]

How is me depriving you of your ability to live (you know, get food, etc) via economic harm any different in violence than a government depriving you of your ability to live (via guns)? Is it because slow painful deaths by starvation, caused by a guy with a grudge are what you want for the world? Is it because that threat isn't really different other than the totemic difference of the removal of the word govermment (aka your magic symbol for evil)?

[baddox]

You need to define "depriving you of your ability to live." If you mean stealing someone's food or annexing their farm land, then I'm absolutely against that. If you mean choosing to not give someone some of your food, or causing someone's business to fail because your competing business is more successful, or choosing to not employ the, because they are unqualified or underperforming, then I find no blame. I do not believe that I have a moral, legal, or societal obligation to provide for anyone or everyone, but more importantly, I do not believe that a society where people are forced to do so under threat of violence (i.e. every government in history) will have less poverty.

[clavalle]

'Private litigation' is my new favorite oxymoron.

Litigation cannot exist without your so-called 'conflict resolvers'.

[rayiner]

I love how lawyers suddenly become libertarian heroes in this particular debate.

[baddox]

That is false, and I don't understand why you think conflict resolution works better when it is violent and compulsory.

[sophacles]

How do I sue you if all you have to do is say "no thanks, not playing, fuck off"? Sure, some theoretical bs about how you're not playing the arbitration game may result in longer term loss of business etc, but isn't me hurting you (via badmouthing your business, causing others to refuse to enter agreement etc) for not compensating me via arbitration merely me enacting violence on you?

[baddox]

The simple answer is private insurance. More detailed answers can be found in all sorts of essays, books, and propositions regarding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law.

[sophacles]

So then the insurance company becomes the government. (Insurance companies will merge until there is a single one... if the history of companies is to be believed).

Or the insurance company also just says "No I don't like you, and since there is no actual way for you to enforce me paying you out, I just won't". Again, if the insurance company decides not to pay, they are enacting bad things on someone and not honoring an agreement. Fortunately since they have lots of free money and no expenses (other than those required to manipulate perception -- cheap payouts etc), they can just have their newspaper buddies out-shout anyone else and not actually be harmed by bad practices.

[baddox]

> So then the insurance company becomes the government.

Why? Retail stores don't become the government or merge into one. Neither do private security agencies. It's unlikely that any organization could "become the government" unless a vast portion of society accepts them as the sole legitimate purveyor of violence, which is precisely what I don't want to happen.

> Or the insurance company also just says "No I don't like you, and since there is no actual way for you to enforce me paying you out, I just won't".

Then what would you do? Personally, I would stop paying them (and probably switch to another insurance company), and I suspect a vast majority of their customers would do the same thing, and probably long before it got to the point where it "became the government."

The only ways for a private insurance company in a free society to remain dominant while consistently not honoring their agreements would be if society as a whole didn't care about the agreements being honored (which seems unlikely), if they gather enough power to physically oppress an entire region (which also seems unlikely these days, since very few governments are even able or willing to pull that off), or if they convince society that they should be allowed to have a monopoly on violence. That last one is a pretty good definition of "becoming a government," and it's certainly possible, but the whole argument I'm making is that society should not recognize any organization as having a monopoly on violence.

[clavalle]

What can private insurance do for me if I am killed?

What if I can't afford private insurance? What if I am not allowed private insurance?

Seems like decrying a 'monopoly of violence' and replacing it with a 'vibrant violence marketplace' is quite a few steps in the wrong direction.

[baddox]

> What can private insurance do for me if I am killed?

What can anything do for you if you are killed? I don't understand the relevance. You could still have private life insurance to provide for your family, but that's no different than today.

> What if I can't afford private insurance?

What if you can't afford the fees associated with litigation in the government court system? I never claimed that my suggestion would suddenly make everything fine for poor people. It's always going to be worse to have less wealth, just like it is in our current society.

> Seems like decrying a 'monopoly of violence' and replacing it with a 'vibrant violence marketplace' is quite a few steps in the wrong direction.

I don't understand how. Neither system is a utopia, but a competitive system motivated by profit would probably be cheaper (because customers like lower prices) and less violent (because violence is expensive and risky) than a government monopoly.

[clavalle]

Declaring it false does not make it so.

Violence is always a specter (a potential action) in any conflict between people. The question is; How do we minimize the role of violence in coming to resolutions to conflicts? I think the rules we've evolved to answer that question of the course of human history have done a decent job.

Do you have a different set of rules that you think would better optimize this minimization problem? I'd love to hear it.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> I'd love to hear it.

And sadly you are dealing with a Libertarian and you will.

[baddox]

Yes, because "Libertarians" (improperly capitalized) are the only people who express their ideas to other people. Good point.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> because libertarians are the only people who express their ideas to other people.

Express them like this? yeah. Well, libertarians and Jehovah's witnesses.

[baddox]

> Declaring it false does not make it so.

Of course not. It was already false, long before I declared it so.

> Violence is always a specter (a potential action) in any conflict between people. The question is; How do we minimize the role of violence in coming to resolutions to conflicts?

I agree completely.

> I think the rules we've evolved to answer that question of the course of human history have done a decent job.

I disagree completely.

[clavalle]

>Of course not. It was already false, long before I declared it so.

Show me how it is false. I am a very reasonable person who is prone to change his mind when presented with a solid argument. I am inviting you to make that argument.

[baddox]

How can I prove it, and why should the burden of proof be on me? The statement was that litigation cannot exist with government. I certainly think the burden of proof is on the personal claiming that something "cannot exist."

[bane]

You've obviously never been involved in private litigation before.