Isn't it problematic if there is an incentive for prosecuting people who do not have "insurance"?

Even in state world, People who live in a land that does not have any system of justice or defense are subject to the advances of outside forces. Sadly its true and the only thing they have to rely on is world-wide human rights advocacy groups.

It's not really any different than right now. People who live outside societal legal conventions are taking/are born into a big risk. See: Somali Pirates.

We've already been through our explanation of why big firms will not be able to threaten smaller firms. Wars bankrupt countries. Waging war on your competitors will quickly bankrupt you and make all the other firms pissed at your and refuse to co-operate with you. That business model will not be viable.

The firms that do work together will be the one's that survive.


If his firm is not actually legitimate and does not cooperate with other firms, it will not be a security firm like the others. It will be an illegal protection racket and will not be apart of the legal system as nobody will co-operate with them. These people will treated as outlaws like the Somali Pirates and will be dealt with as such. So if Bob the criminal is apprehended, their illegitimate "firm" will have no ground to argue for a legitimate hearing since they don't co-operate with anybody else and Bob will be at the mercy of the arresting security agency.

The only thing a firm like that can do is attempt to forcibly protect their clients with military action, but when any one of their clients attempts to enter society, they can be killed at will with no legal repercussions just like the Somali Pirates.

I don't understand how justice in AC society is really any different than justice under the state, except that laws are enforced by whoever has the most economic power rather than the majority.

For example, let's say I am in AC land, and I believe that homosexual behavior is a moral crime that should be punished by death. So I hire a "private security firm" to go out and kill all gay people. Now let's assume that people controlling 90% of the wealth agree with me, and they all join security firms to kill gay people. What is the gay peoples' defense here?

And just generally, how is there not the same danger that AC society will become a tyranny of the "economic majority", enforcing the morality of those who control the most resources, as there is in a democratic society becoming a tyranny of the numerical majority?

According to its clients, Acquittals R Us is perfectly legitimate.

An "illegal protection racket" according to what due process in whose court?

Without being convicted of anything in a court of law? Are mere allegations (e.g. in the press) sufficient for this treatment?

Bob the alleged criminal.

So "cooperation" is mandatory. What equitable, transparent and appealable means are used to determine whether a sufficient state of "cooperativeness" has been achieved by a given security firm?

Frontier justice FTL.

Well, that doesn't seem to make much sense as in if all these people got together now to prosecute homosexuals they also have no defense. No one was looking out for black people during slavery, certainly not the state, right?

I'm not saying that the state is less coercive, just that anarchy is equally coercive.
It seems to rely on the assumption that everyone in the society buys into the morality of property rights.
But if everyone buys into the morality of sharia law, the Taliban isn't coercive either.

While my posts in this thread show that I'm not convinced about AC, I think their answer would be that while in a statist society the 49% have zero legal recourse to stand up to the 51%, in an AC society they would be able to have their own security companies to protect what they feel are their rights. Second, the scale of the problem would be much smaller: in a statist society the 49% would be essentially funding their own persecution via taxes, whereas in AC land the 51% would only be able to afford what they themselves are willing to pay for. Finally, since security would not be lumped in with social security and roads and all the other stuff government pays for, people would be less willing to enforce their beliefs on other people if they had to pay the true cost every month. Lot easier to be for the drug war when you don't have the option of getting 50 bucks back a month if you choose not to fund it.

What do you mean by this, it's pretty clearly not true..?

What legal avenues do drug users have to stand up for their rights? The majority has decided that they don't care for drug use and will send people with guns after you if you break that law, and then they'll send more guys with guns after you if you stand up to the first group of guys. You can take it to a court saying that everything you're doing is purely voluntary in nature, but good luck with that legal argument. Replace drug use with any voluntary transaction that is currently illegal and it still plays out pretty much the same.

As I've said, it doesn't matter what its clients think. The fact that no other security firms will work with Acquittals R Us makes it useless to protect their clients.

Well, you point out my poor choice of wording, but I meant only illegal in that they refuse to do what the other security firms do, which is to work together to negotiate getting cases into fair and legitimate courts. If they refuse to do that, they will be outsiders and nobody will co-operate with them when they attempt to negotiate for fair trial for their clients since they won't co-operate.

Not being a member of any legitimate legal society (as the Somali Pirates are most certainly not) is certainly a forfeiting of your rights. You can hope that the people who catch you will give you due process, but best of luck with that.



Fair enough



The only co-operation required is that they willingly negotiate to use legitimate private court systems. That's really not so hard. If firms are able to reach agreements on which fair courts to use, they co-operate.

As I said above, if you don't belong to legitimate legal organizations, you've forfeited your rights. All you've got to do is join one of the many available security firms. Really not too hard.

This is no different from now.

Under the state and under AC, people are vulnerable to coercion.

Under the state, at least everyone has an equal defense against coercion: their vote.

But under AC, people are only able to defend against coercion to the extent that they can afford to hire a private defense association.

Under the state, the numerical majority can oppress the numerical minority.
But under AC, the economic majority can oppress the economic minority. And the economic majority (people controlling most of the wealth) will be much smaller than the numerical majority, so many more people are vulnerable to oppression under AC.

Okay, I didn't mean this exactly. You can have strong minority defense within a state or you can have 1% of the population dominating everyone. It just depends. There are probably plenty of instances where the majority is against something and nothing is done about it--and the opposite as well.

So security under the state is already highly inefficient, and yet we have no other choices?

If the only people that you can vote for want to coerce you, how is that defense against coercion? You can mathematically insignificantly attempt to slightly alter who coerces you, but that is hardly a good defense.

Under ACland there is no monopoly on violence so you can actually do something about people attempting to coerce you.

I suppose rich people get the same justice and personal security as poor people under the state.

The minority in power can also suppress the majority out of power.

First, under ACland, economically the gap between the richest and poorest will narrow. The richest are only able to keep their competitors down by using government regulations. Remove government implemented barriers to competition and there are way more competitors in each market distributing profits of the people at the top down. Also, ACists believe that an economy free of government intervention would do much much better so all people would be wealthier.

Second, one of the major philosophies that need to be adopted by the majority for ACland to work is non-violent voluntarism. If a large % of people don't believe in non-violence, ACland will not work. ACists admit this.

What if only 85 percent of security firms won't work with the defendant's firm (the other 15 percent being fellow exploiters of the market demand for security firms no one else will work with)? Are such firms allowed to operate?

What if the alleged bad guy's security firm (a subsidiary of Acquittals R Us), has negotiated cooperation agreements with 15 percent of security firms? Is this "legitimate" enough?

No, then you've just got a bunch of Somali Pirates working together outside the legal system. That's no different except there are a bunch of them.

What exactly are the characteristics of legality they lack that the mainstream security firms have? They seem equivalent to me.

But you still have a monopoly of violence here. If the strongest, or co-operative majority, agencies cannot be stopped. And, they can't. It doesn't make sense that they could. You can say that this society would be less oppressive, but the minority fringe agencies would be shut out of the system. The remainder isn't exactly a state but it's similar.

Using legitimate private courts as decided on by the market and co-operating with other firms that will negotiate to use those legitimate private courts. If there are a bunch of courts that are held in high esteem by society at large and your firm refuses to use all of them, you're no longer a legitimate firm.

What reason would you have for joining a fringe agency if they couldn't protect you? You wouldn't. You would only join agencies that could defend you. And because you can't have a monopoly without government coercion, you will have choices of defense. At least you will have choice in this society as opposed to with the state. And the more enlightened/peaceful a society is, the better off they will be, but this is no different from now except that it only takes 9 judges (actually only 5 :-( ) to make something illegal under the U.S. legal system, in ACland it won't work like that.

I agree it's not perfect, but it's much better than state justice IMO.

Sorry, I still don't understand what the cutoff is for determining the market has judged a court sufficiently popular to count as legitimate.

Can you clarify the mechanism at work here?

Again, how is the necessary threshold of "esteem" determined so that a defendant can be sure to choose a "legitimate" court?

Sure, you wouldn't. That's my point. A group of dominant agencies would emerge and effectively become monopolists since minority agencies cannot protect you. I think it's likely the system that emerges in this manner will be preferable and more adaptive than a state. I'm not disagreeing with you in principle, maybe some specifics or what some things mean.

It's not fair to say every state is the same though. Clearly some are better than others.

So a startup security agency doesn't stand a chance unless it plays ball with the big boys.

What reason would you have for joining a fringe political movement that has been labeled "terrorist" by the mainstream security agencies? You wouldn't.

I suppose I haven't really been explaining this well.

It's basically a market arrangement.

The firms that do the best, will be the firms that protect their clients the best at the cheapest rates. These firms will be those that cooperate with the most other firms. This is because the firms that co-operate don't have to spend massive amounts of money in armed conflict with other firms because they'll have the easiest time negotiating to get cases into a legitimate court.

ASIDE: Legitimate courts will be the courts that have a proven track record of fair verdicts. The only way you will be able to tell if a court is "fair" is that the only way you'll be able to keep getting both sides of a dispute to agree to use a particular judge is if both sides feel like they'll be getting a fair, deal with that judge. The judges that keep getting cases will be the fairest judges.

So for clients of firms that don't cooperate:

You won't be safe because if you are caught being alleged of a crime by another security agency, your only recourse would be to have your security agency attempt an armed rescue.

So we have 2 security agencies:

A.) One that can only help you by attempting armed rescues. This agency will cost massive amounts of money (countries have to inflate their money supplies just to pay for this kind of constant battle).
B.) One that simply negotiates with other firms to get cases into legitimate courts.

Which business model do you think will survive?

Basically, only the firms that co-operate with a the majority of other firms will survive because armed conflict between organized agencies is frighteningly expensive.

Conclusion:

Firms that only co-operate with 15% of other firms will not be a viable business model so these firms will fail.