Gadarene, I think you were asking me to define “force” and “fraud”. I don’t see the need. I’m not proposing to change the existing definitions of such things as theft, murder, fraud, etc. The US has a lot of laws. When I am put in charge (when IS America going to realize that I should be in charge!?), I’ll retain some of these laws, I’ll modify some of them, and I’ll repeal some of them. I’ll probably pass some new laws, too. We already have laws against force and fraud. I’ll leave them in place. Why do I need to define anything?
Since LNY has no jurisdiction over Bob, it has no authority to protect his children any more than the United States would have the authority to protect Bob’s children if he lived in Paraguay.
The people who purchased the pictures Bob peddled are a different matter, however. The property that they possess is fraudulently produced and obtained, since the children did not give (and could not possibly give) consent that they be taken and distributed. It is not a matter that consent was required from LNY, but from the self-governing children (again, impossible). It is no different from the principle that robbing an old lady in LLA (Libertaria of Los Angeles) has not made you the new owner of her goods. You’re just a thief.
If you are a citizen of LNY, then you may expect your fellow citizens to be peaceful and honest. Traffickers in fraud and possessors of bootleg goods seized by coercion are not honest. You may bring charges of coercion against those who possess and traffick Bob’s pictures. And if you won’t, I will.
Thanks for recognizing my inundation! 
For that alone, I’m happy to respond.
The deontic assertion is that people ought to be free to pursue their own happiness in their own way, not that that are in actuality free to do so. Deontics applies here because the assertion is phrased deontically.
Naturally, no one is dealing with that assertion. But still, there it is, right there in the OP.
You can eat your cheeseburgers all you want, but when you’re sick, don’t expect me to pay your doctor bill. But you cannot pollute my property even in the short term. That would be vandalism, and is no different than if you slung sewage onto my house.
With respect to the aggregation of actions, it is the contention of libertarianism that people may be forced to be peaceful and honest, but beyond that their actions should be whatever makes them happy.
People often complain that I speak about this abstract entity called Libertaria, and yet they speak of one called society. Society is not a rights bearing entity. It does not breathe. It was not born with a life, a mind, and a body. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t bleed. It doesn’t sweat, or yearn, or desire happiness.
Just because a thing is anthropomorphised does not mean that it is human.
[Side note: Lib, could you address my post to Neurotik on page 2? The one I made at 7:19 EST yesterday evening? Thanks.]
About competing arbitrators, I said:
Lib responded:
Whoa there, sparky. First, show me where I predict anything like civilization as we know it ending. No need to take your opponents’ arguments into straw-man land.
Second, the differing judicial systems of sovereign nations do not implicate each other in this way for one simple reason: territory. The Libertaria you propose, as you’ve mentioned many times, is unlike traditional city-states in part because the multifarious contractual schemes you envision arising out of the new context do not adhere to territorial boundaries. Kind of like the non-territorial federalism of–is it Switzerland? The Netherlands? So I could be governed by one contractual entity; my next-door neighbor could be governed by another; his neighbor governed by yet another; and the neighbor after that governed by the one by which I’m governed. There’s no neat territorial division between the governments. That’s why there’s such an escalation of complexity.
My fact pattern (questions underlined, Lib’s response in bold:
X kills Y in the apartment of landlord Z. X claims self-defense. X contracts with Arbitration R Us, Y’s decedents contract with Quis Iudicabit, and Z’s real property is governed under Z’s contract with 2 4 6 8 Arbitrate.
- In what court is the action for murder against X brought?
In whichever court was holding the consent of the victim, Y, which you have not specified.
Oh, wow. A bunch of things here. First, if jurisdiction depends on whose rights have been violated, then by calling Y the victim you’re already assuming a whole bunch of facts that actually need to be determined. Say Y’s arbitration system, as a matter of law, only considers self-defense claims where the actual incident is videotaped by a third party; otherwise, the arbitrators assume no self-defense occurred (cause it might be a tough thing to show–especially without juries, about which more below). By sending this dispute to Y’s court, you’ve already assured the outcome–no matter how clear it is, if you look at the facts, that X only responded to Y’s initiation of force.
Second, we can assume that Y’s decedents contract with Y’s arbitrator in their capacity as Y’s decedents. Which raises another question: If Y is killed and has no provision that action may be brought by his decedents–or possesses no decedents–will Y’s contracting government pursue the action itself? That is, is there a distinction between criminal and civil violations of the non-coercion principle?
Third, and a follow-up: So action is brought in Y’s court because Y’s rights have been abridged by the murder. May Y’s decedents simultaneously bring an action in their court for wrongful death? Have their rights been violated as well, since through the (apparent) initiation of force they have been damaged by the loss of a close friend or relative?
- X is injured in the fight with Y, and asks for arbitration to recover from Y’s estate the cost of his damaged bridgework. In what court is that action brought?
Arbitration R Us
Now d’you see why I’m calling your system complex? Two claims arising out of the same transaction or occurrence (Civ Pro flashbacks), and they’re being brought in two different courts under two different bodies of law. And when Z is brought in, that’s a third court. All of the administrative paperwork is duplicated (or triplicated, or worse), all the manhours–hell, all the costs! In a “fee-for” system like Libertaria this is especially problematic. You still have to stump for the initial costs of defending a suit, right? Tell me again how this doesn’t place a greater burden on the poor than our system today? Remember Gideon v. Wainwright?
One of the wonderful things about our present judicial system is how claims and counterclaims have become increasingly streamlined and consolidated. All claims arising from one transaction or occurrence will be brought in one action–or at most two, if there are civil and criminal claims. Your explosion of different arbitrators would blow this to smithereens. So impractical it makes my head hurt thinking about it.
I disagree. We’ve got laws that go into greater specificity than “initiation of force or fraud” when determining when someone is not peaceful or honest. We’ve got a single federal system under which claims are governed, with volumes of attendant caselaw speaking to almost every legal contingency. We’ve got, in most cases, the guarantee of a jury trial whereby the facts needed to determine peacefulness and honesty can be agreed upon.
My answer is that I don’t know enough about North Korean law to answer. In that hypothetical, the citizenships of X and Y are completely irrelevant, since the murder takes place in North Korea; to the extent that it matters that they are foreign nationals, then the case may be governed by international law, about which I also know too little. The difference, as I stated above, is that today’s laws are territorially based.
And by the way, don’t think for a second that international law itself–cases where you really do have to choose between competing national forums–isn’t a sticky, blurry mess. It is. And I’d rather not mirror it in my local judiciary, if it’s all the same to you.
My question:
Lib:
Um… Are arbitrators responsible for finding the facts, then?
Hazel: I wasn’t asking you to define “force” or “fraud.” I was asking whether in your scheme–as in Lib’s–only instances of force and fraud are proscribed. Because there’s a lot of nasty stuff out there–I named some–that can easily be characterized as neither force nor fraud.
Is insider trading illegal in your framework?
Is cruelty to animals?
Is designing a defective product (whether through negligence or not)?
Is knowingly creating attractive nuisances on your property?
If yes to any of these, is it because they can be characterized as force or fraud, or because they’re something outside of force or fraud which should nevertheless be prohibited?
You don’t pick arbiters like you do tomatoes. You’ve consented to arbitration in general. When I say that so-and-so’s arbiter hears this or that, it is merely in keeping with the context of how the question is framed. People are positing tiny little Libertaria’s with populations of 5. But my Libertaria is a large country (lots of people like it!) and I get whatever arbiter has my docket.
But with respect to your tweak, yes, you may charge the grannies with coercion if you believe that you have been falsely charged. That would be a fraud.
Lib:
I’d never accuse you of evasion, Lib. I’d say it much nicer than that.
In response to your response: But…the squatter hasn’t initiated force. At all. Not even through threats. How are you justified in shooting him?
Or is the force he’s initiating the weight of his ass on your land?
Lib:
You can take this as my response to your dismissal of society-at-large as a concern, as well.
I’m a factory owner. I’m looking to expand my operations, and need to hire one hundred new employees. Half the people who apply for the jobs were never educated; they can’t read or write at a sufficient level to be useful. The other half who apply for the jobs were never vaccinated. They’re too weak to work.
I don’t have an acceptable pool of prospective employees. I can’t expand in the way that I’d like to.
It is in everyone’s interests that as many people as possible are educated, informed, healthy, civic-minded, and prosperous so that they may be good employees, consumers, citizens, and neighbors.
All pollution, Lib? Not even the nanny-state of Authoritaria takes that position. You realize that by prohibiting pollution, you’ve just crippled Libertaria’s industry, right?
Put another way: how do you define what is an acceptable level of pollution?
I think we have one.
Lib:
Why? A threat is not an injury.
That’s extortion. I’m talking a gibbering loon looking wildly about saying “I’ll kill you I’ll kill all of you dirty motherfuckers I’ll kill you.”
Alternatively, I’m talking about someone saying, “I’m going to kill the President.” May we arrest him before he tries, in Libertaria? What if he says, “I’m going to kill the President next Wednesday”? What if he says it while purchasing a rifle?
Why is an explicit threat of this sort a coercion? And if it is not, at what point does a plan to coerce become coercion?
Even if he’s not touching you with the knife? Even if he’s just waving it near you?
I know; mine was a different question, thanks.
**
Ok, now I’m confused. Per L. Neil Smith (who much of my exposure to the theory and practice of Libertaria comes from) arbiters are a private concern, not a government agency. In Smith’s books, he proposes private arbitration firms and both parties agree upon a mutually acceptable one. I think that’s unworkable. Are you suggesting government run arbitration?
If so, no problem. If not, I don’t see how the mechanics of the system work and I’d appreciate further elaboration.
Thanks!
Fenris
I asked:
Lib responded:
Due respect, but why does it matter? A man places an open bear trap on his lawn, a few feet from other people’s property. All his neighbors have small children and pets. An accident is foreseeable. Do the neighbors have to wait until a child is hurt or killed in the trap before taking action?
(And yeah, I’m perfectly willing to stipulate that the child in question would be trespassing of his own volition. So the owner of the bear trap could bring an action against the dead child’s parents for that. Which brings me back to a question no one’s answered yet: whither negligence and strict liability in Libertaria? Here, under the boot of statist tyranny, we have laws that deal with unusually dangerous things–like a bear trap. These laws hold the owner of the dangerous thing strictly liable for any harm that befalls others as a result of the thing, even if the owner took reasonable care. I’m assuming this wouldn’t be the case in Libertaria?)
I’m leaving the ocean stuff for someone else…the dialogue has become inane and fruitless for both sides, I think.
Gadarene wrote:
Would you be a dear and repost it for me, please? I’m like one-against-twenty here, and it is all I can do to keep up. I will surely have missed something even though I’m trying not to, and someone will scream that I evaded or avoided them. Thanks for your consideration and understanding.
No strawman, merely a rhetorical exaggeration. There is the audiatur et altera pars underlying most anitlibertarian arguments that the application of libertarianism will necessarily result in instability.
Yes, but that’s because I entertain and allow argumentum in extremus. It is remotely conceivable the libertarian cultures could evolve in that way, but I don’t believe they would. People will naturally assemble and gravitate together for common purposes, particularly if the market is free and noncoercive. An actual Libertaria will in all likelihood be comprised of contiguous land.
But I have been told before that, for libertarianism to be “practical”, it must work in the most extreme cases (although it is seldom allowed that such failure indicts a non-libertarian system).
Even then, though, the government does not claim ownership of your land or that of your fellow citizens. That’s not its business and frankly it is not set up to administer land stewardship. There’s no diplomacy. No immigration laws. That sort of thing.
Fascination. Your “simple fact pattern” is quickly morphing into the Gordian Knot from Hell. 
To govern means to protect. You said Y was killed. So Y’s government is the government that is concerned. It must use whatever means it promised to use, requiring whatever proof it promised to require, to do whatever it promised to do — which, if it is libertarian, we can assume was to retaliate against Y’s aggressor(s).
And for the record, it is you, not I, who assume the outcome, since it is you, not I, who amended the fact pattern in order to assure it. I can simply respond that Y was a fool to consent to be governed by such an anal government, and modify certain parts of the hypothetical myself. If you get to, I get to. 
An excellent question! No, there aren’t. Coercion and crime are synonyms.
They may bring charges of coercion if they believe that their rights (or property) have been damaged. But not otherwise.
You can’t measure justice by convenience, at least not ethically. But you’re mixing up the metaphors here. The cases are brought in separate governmental systems. There is no triplication because each action is different. And they aren’t very complicated. They are all charges of coercion.
What is practical depends on what you are practicing. If you are practicing streamlining for the sake of expedience, then you are rendering justice itself impractical. And when that has been accomplished, we may just as well throw in the collective towel.
But again, you’ve posited an argumentum ad extremus wherein you have pulled together the most exceptional circumstances possible with multiple overlapping jurisdictions, and even still the concept of who is beholden to whom about what is not hard to grasp.
But you don’t base your laws on peace on honesty. That’s why you have literally millions of them, and why a brand new attorney has spent a good chunk of his adult life just learning the most elementary aspects of them.
Your system often couldn’t care less about peace and honesty, and I don’t mean that with any disrespect, it’s just that they are based on superior knowledge; i.e., I know what’s best for you better than you do. Therefore, you may not grow, sell, or smoke pot. You may not exchange a blow job for money. You may not hold a sweepstakes that is a gamble. Your rail straps must conform to my specifications whether they will fit your rails or not. The medicine you need must meet my approval even if it takes ten years and you die first. You must wear a seat belt because if you get hurt, I’ll make all the other people pay for it. And you may not marry your lover because you are both the same sex.
And on. And on. And on. And on… There are a bazillion prohibitions and regulations that have nothing to do with either peace of honesty.
And yet you do not blush at asking me to mirror mine!
Yes.
Well, I’m a bit suprised that you can’t spell some of these out yourself, knowing as I do that you have performed self-critical evaluation of your own notions of historical lessons. But be that as it may, I’ll give you one of the most glaring abuses; the company store concept. If you don’t want to research this nifty money-making idea, here’s the gist of it. A coal company would operate a general store on company land, ostensibly for the daily needs of the workers and their families. The company would, where permitted by law, pay miners in “scrip” instead of cash, redeemable only at the company store, where prices were sure to be higher than market. Where this practice was not legally permissible, they would distribute wage advances and store orders (effectively the same as scrip). Lest the miner think his family had a choice on where to shop, in most companies trading at the store was compulsory and store credit was pushed and deducted immediately from wages; families of workers who were injured or unable to work and who could no longer pay their running debt to the store could be evicted from the company homes which were the only housing available to mine workers (commuting in from outside of mine property was not feasible).
All of these terms were specified conditions of employment.
A government can regulate – I could’ve sworn you’ve spoken knowledgeably regarding OSHA and MSHA before, Lib, as well as the various forms of price and wage controls.
Surely you must be overwhelmed with the task of replying to all of us, Lib, so I’ll refrain from responding to this blithe fantasy until you’ve had a chance to figure out, from a 19th century immigrant coal miner’s perspective, how to secure investment capital and open a competing company, including the necessary item of procuring mining rights ownership “down the road” –probably currently owned by the same bastards from whom you’re attempting to reclaim your stolen property through collective bargaining (and who have already established that ownership through their ability to “occupy and defend it”). All the while your family is poaching game and eating grubs while living with the other mining families in tents and caves because you’re striking. You probably own no mule or wagon and have no prospects elsewhere. If you take your family on the road, you risk starvation and/or predation, and can only hope that you can beg or steal for provision on your journey to some hoped for dream of bare subsistence living –which of course you eventually realize is the condition you have while working for the coal company, so you end up crawling back to work along with most of your fellows, long before the company faces desparation.
I dare say there must’ve been. Although the company already operated an exclusive shit shoveling service in their town, so these entrepeneurs (those radical individuals I mentioned earlier in the thread) must’ve taken their shit-shovelling selves elsewhere.
Well, no. The government gets no income from those too poor/unpropertied/foolish/unaware to contract with it, and therefore does not provide its “protection” to them.
It looks like you’ve missed out on discussion about the most basic and essential elements of libertarianism. Rather than ask you to search them out, I’ll encapsulate them for you here. But I warn you that (especially if you are predisposed with nonlibertarian assumptions and presumptions) they might sound a bit strange out of context.
You are defined by your property. You are your life, your mind, your body, and all other property that you have acquired peacefully and honestly using your life, your mind, and your body. If you have created something with your mind, like a poem, for example, it is yours and is a part of you. If you have bought something with money earned by the toil and labor of your body or mind, then what you have bought is a part of your rights. If you have exchanged something that you own for something else, then you have redefined what you are.
In libertarianism, rights and property are synonyms, and rights accrue to property ownership.
Thus, a man who is squatting on your land is usurping your rights. He is claiming as his own that which you ethically possess and that to which you are ethically entitled. It is no different than if he were squatting on your head.
Lib:
Me:
Lib:
Me:
Huh? There are two characteristics of a public good: jointness of supply (everyone can use it simultaneously without interfering with each other’s enjoyment) and impossibility of exclusion (you can’t exclude anyone from having access to it once one person has access to it). Can you tell me how “compression” is at all responsive to the idea of air as a nonprofitable public good?
I’m going to break off again. No, not because I’m abandoning the debate, and not because I’m evading anything, and not because I fear I might see a question that will shake my “faith in libertarianism”. I’ve just been at this for 3-1/2 hours, and it’s still piling up. I want to see some other threads and spend some time with my wife. Later.