/liberty/ - Liberty

I figured one solution would be for Bob, Josh and John to gather together and confront Barney for compensation, but Barney can simply tell them to fuck off and use force to remove them from his property which would mean it would come down to force. If it would come down to force Barney would still be at an advantage to invade on the rights of these men as he has more capital to invest in private mercs or security, allowing him to disregard the rights of these men.

>>63727

Walter Block wrote a great essay on externalities, it's printed in The Myth of National Defense. Rothbard also talked about it in For a New Liberty in the context of pollution.

The solution they offered, or the one thats relevant in the context of immissions, is to see property as infringed upon when the immissions weren't present at the time when the property was first acquired. In your example, the homeowners could demand that Barney stop his railway line. As that would be extremely painful for him, he will pay them beforehand for the right to emit noise onto their property or he will build better sound insulation on his track.

>>63728

Don't have time to answer that now, but I guess later I can write a larger post to lay down how courts would work in Ancapistan.

>>63729

>Don't have time to answer that now, but I guess later I can write a larger post to lay down how courts would work in Ancapistan.

Provided they take this to ancap court which was also private, couldn't anyone with a higher amount of capital, like Barney, just buy that court and others up? Alternatively, if they were already bought up by a monopoly which would also decide to provide a service similar to that of a police force wouldn't you just have the state all over again?

>>63804

Verdict-for-hire is not a good business model for a court. Imagine if you did it openly: You hire a court, it sends the verdict to the other party and enforces it. Obviously, such a verdict would not be seen as legally binding by anyone. It would be a pure formality. You could just as well ignore getting the verdict and rob the other party directly. However, if you did that, no one would like to do business with you anymore, you'd run at risk of being retaliated against (in a world where everyone can own an anti-aircraft cannon if he wants to), you'd waste time on the enforcement itself and people would form defense organizations to oppose you. It's extremely unlikely that a business plan like that would succeed. Similar plans have been executed, but even they have never been that bold and they have always relied on the state, because the state gives them moral legitimacy and allows them to externalize the costs of aggression.

The problem, then, would be corrupt courts that will work in your favor. Yet what prevents that now? Judges are often paid like shit if you take their long training into account. In fact, they're paid a flat fee no matter how large the case and often no matter much work they actually do. I know these people, they will try all kinds of tricks to finish up a case even if they don't admit it, which they wouldn't do if they were paid fairly. Yet I've never caught one of them acting on a bribe, despite these economic incentives. That's because they have an ethos that forbids them to be bribed. I admit that even though I don't like judges. Some of them are fucking sharks and proud of it, but they're not bribable. (I'm more concerned that some government districts have the court caught in the middle of ten ministries and the parliament. How's that for impartiality?)

If the same ethos were present, judges in Ancapistan would actually me more reliable, because they would be more flexible when it comes to payment. In a case worth two million dollars, they would demand upfront that they be paid a hundred thousand or so, so there would be less room for bribery. The reason why that ethos would be present, besides ideological factors, is the selection of the market. A corrupt court doesn't effectively render the services of arbitration and of giving justice. Any party that wants either of these things, which also include multibillion dollar corporations, would select a court that they know cannot be bribed. Even the ones that would rather want to bribe the court would still prefer an honest one unless they were sure their attempt at bribery would be successful, because they don't want to be at the mercy of a corrupt court when the other party is just as corrupt as them. Whether they can ultimately outbid that other corrupt party or not, the whole affair would just be more costly. They would only want to bribe the court when they know the other party cannot do so, but what court would risk that if it could potentially ruin any relationship with the far more numerous clients that want justice and arbitration? At worst, the court will be declared rogue and we're back to verdicts being issues as a formality before you rob someone, which, as I said, is not a good business model.