On thugs: they depend on the cops to protect them from the angry mob, directly but also indirectly via victim disarmament. It’s a fundamental thermodynamics-derived law that prey always massively outnumber predators. Organised, thinking prey can always outgun and destroy predators, that’s why hom sap is top of the food tree. Without cops, gangsters would be wiped out by the justified anger of the good and ordinary people.

Not if tort claims are treated as transferable property. Someone is assaulted and robbed. He is entitled to £10,000 compensation. It’s reckoned that there is a 50% chance of catching and convicting the criminal. He sells his claim to a law firm for up to £5000, who litigate instead. He gets justice even though he’s poor.

“We have only to look to the system of private “protection agencies” using “goons” very similar to the ones described in Chapter 29 that was tried in Chicago in the 1930′s.”

I’m not an expert on this, but didn’t Al Capone’s success depend, in part, on his ability to bribe the Chicago police? It doesn’t strike me as being terribly informative about how things would work under anarcho-capitalism.

“People seldom behave logically and rationally where crime is concerned.”

Really? That must be why I never lock my car and leave my front door open when I leave the house.

We have only to look to the system of private “protection agencies” using “goons” very similar to the ones described in Chapter 29 that was tried in Chicago in the 1930′s. It didn’t have a name but we could call it Caponism—after Al Capone, it’s biggest advocate and not uncoincidentally, it’s biggest beneficiary.

Chapter 29 also suggests that the private administration of justice would all be done logically and rationally, with an interest in cutting costs once anarcho-capitalist institutions were well established, protection agencies would anticipate such difficulties and arrange contracts in advance, before specific conflicts occurred, specifying the arbitrator who would settle them.

History suggests otherwise. People seldom behave logically and rationally where crime is concerned. With no law to protect the rights of the accused, what is to prevent an accused criminal from being strung up by a lynch mob?

“Anarcho capitalism” is an oxymoron. Capitalism can only flourish in a political system that is based on the rule of law. After reading “The Machinery of Freedom” I am only more conviced of this.

-Kian

Ironically this also means I’m “more democratic than the democrats” – I recognise that it’s impossible to abolish a government that the people want to keep. They’d just re-form it. So, I focus on changing minds.

By contrast when custom and common sense set the law, all laws are sane and nobody is favored. This is because the law has to persuade all concerned that obeying a non-binding settlement is preferable to lynch-law or blood-feud.

A thief who steals an apple and is caught would be stupid to shoot it out with the store security guards, he doesn’t want to risk death for something so trivial, so he accepts the preferable course in which the store hires a judge who sets a fine. The thief can’t be forced by police to pay up, so the fine has to be small enough he doesn’t prefer to run or fight. The store can’t be forced to accept a biased judgement in the thief’s favor, so the fine has to be large enough the store feels justice was done.

This mechanism has historical precedent, it’s the system used in old viking iceland, a system which lasted 300 years before it was corrupted back into monarchy.

So, have you read _The Machinery of Freedom_ then? It gives some interesting arguments – not merely claims – that your assertion is false.

In particular chapter 29 is probably most relevant here.

So a privately contracted police force still requires a democratic government to determine the laws they must follow. Anything else would be mob rule.

Customary law probably approaches closer to “objective” than anything a politicized parliament can make – it must be seen to be just by all parties in order not to be rejected and ignored, and that is pretty much the *definition* of objective law.

By contrast politics and political law is less about “what will they accept and trust?” and more about “what’s the worst we can get away with, and not be thrown out in favor of the other lot?”.