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Comment by JoelMcCracken | Hacker News Reader

These kinds of alternative justice systems always seem fascinating to me. I feel like a sociological study on "alternative forms of justice" could be very fruitful.

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There’s a book I really enjoyed called Narconomics.

It helps explain all aspects of the drug trade through the lens of business.

One of the most fascinating takeaways was how they handle “contract enforcement” in the absence of a legal system or courts (hint: Violence)

I recall an anecdote that Mexican cartels would hire Mexicans —- and not Dutch —- in order to serve as drug mules smuggling product into Amsterdam. Dutch mules would get caught less often, but Mexicans were much less likely to steal the drugs entirely. Because when you sign up to be a mule they take down the names and addresses of your entire family (nearby), and will kill them if you steal the product. Contract enforcement.

judgements from the usual court system are enforced by the police, who are authorized to use force - i.e. violence - in the event of non-compliance. this is not a unique feature of the drug trade.

While this is true, the quantity of the violence needed, and like, the legibility of the conditions under which violence is to be meted out, can be much better in the case of, like, laws and state, than,

well, perhaps if there was no state, there could be another mechanism which is comparable or better, but when contract enforcement in a particular area is excluded from state enforcement, while normal areas aren’t, I expect the violence used in that area to be worse.

I’d say the amount of violence is related to the amount of resources available in the economy where trust needs to be established. If you have a lot of resources, you can spend more on monitoring and surveillance, and afford more losses. When resources become scarce, you climb the control ladder faster and resort to physical violence because you can’t afford not to.

Interestingly, the trust is established by the use (and threat) of violence by the state. Not that it is a bad thing, it is worth it for the resulting order. The state "violence monopoly" is essential in a shared value system.

The thing that really opened my eyes to this now-obvious (to me) truth was reading the history of the Scottish clan system. A state is essentially (or at least begins with) organized crime with a monopoly on crime organization. Or put another way, an organized crime majority.

There's been some good research into the history of legal systems. See David Friedman's book Legal Systems Very Different From Ours [1]. There's a small section about prisoners. But a new chapter could definitely be written about cyber-criminals!

[1] http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...

+1 for this fascinating read. As soon as I read the GP's comment I wanted to link this.

Personal anecdote: quite a while ago I got thrown in jail in Thailand (80 people in a cell, a hole in the ground to shit in, one bowl of rice per day, sleep on the concrete floor kind of place).

My embassy was quite helpful in negotiating with the guards to get me in a "VIP" cell, which was a room within the cell run by some Iranians. They said if I paid them a certain sum, I'd be under their wing and they'd protect me.

Couple days later one of them woke me up and asked me to check if I had any cigarettes missing, which I did (not that I cared much). Someone had seen a Russian guy take some of my smokes while I was asleep and told the "boss". They went and beat the crap out of him.

The Iranians also had a line to the cleaning crew who would pass in front of the cell once a day. Every morning you could place an order for (almost) anything you wanted from the outside world. They'd take the payments, write it all down and pass it to the cleaning crew through the bars of the cell who would deliver it all the next day. So while most of our cell mates fought over bowls of rice, in the VIP room we had feasts of curries, fruit, soft drinks. It was like a banquet every day.

The main Iranian guy even had Russian girls come over but they couldn't enter the cells.

The day I got out one of them approached me and ever so gently and politely asked me "You are going home yes? Could I please have your towel?". He could have just taken it along with anything else I had but he stuck to the rules.

So yeah, these guys definitely had a legal system!

Fun little rabbit-hole for you to dive into: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law

The (consequentialist-)anarchist economist David Friedman (son of Milton) wrote a book about this very topic!

I hope you'll find it as interesting as I did!

Book: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...

Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOB2qxRO5vQ

[Ed. Seems I'm late, but I'll leave the comment up for the video link.]

You might enjoy "Legal Systems Very Different From Ours" by David Friedman.

Interestingly, Medieval Iceland had a polycentric legal system where you could sell the wrong done to you to someone who had more money to prosecute.

There's an interesting discussion/description in "The Machinery of Freedom", a book about anarchocapitalism.

It's freely available online - http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

That sounds similar to creditors selling the right to collect debt repayments to a debt collector, or patent holders selling their patents to a patent enforcement company or patent troll (usually the same).

Here in Belgium there's a platform on which you can sell invoices that have say a 90 day payment term to someone who'll give you say 95% of it, if you need that money immediately. They then get the full invoice after 90 days.

That's a very common form of trade finance worldwide, and is usually called "invoice discounting" or "receivables factoring" https://tradefinanceanalytics.com/what-is-factoring

For an overdue bill, the factor is called a debt collector. But it's roughly the same business.

There's collection agencies with no cure no pay (who add up their own fee upon the debt), and there's debt traders who buy a debt for a lower price and who then harass the person who (allegedly!) owes the money. Its a scoundrel market, IMO. Heartless, Ellisonish. County court bailiff (gerechtsdeurwaarder) is a government variant which has legal merit (unlike the other 2). Still, doesn't mean they are morally right (and those in debt have a harder time to defend themselves, legally), but at least it does have that legal merit. The problem is that, yes, often people who are in debt are in the wrong and should pay it, but there's all these corner cases and cases where the debt is incorrect, its an underlying dispute, it was started because of bad communication, etc (been there, done it).

I don't think that's what the parent comment is talking about. It's talking about selling non-defaulted invoices as, essentially, a form of secured financing for the vendor company. The invoices are highly likely to get paid in the ordinary course and usually the company selling them even continues to "service" them, ie, to liaise with the underlying customer and receive payment. It's a very different business to debt collection.

I had a small business once with a few large outstanding invoices. These were owed to us (small company) by a very large organisation. Our payment terms were 30 days and the invoices were now out to 120 days. We were hurting very badly, but had pretty much no leverage over the very large organisation to make them pay - we weren't the only game in town and they could just take their business elsewhere.

Anyway, we investigated factoring of the invoices and we certainly weren't offered 95%!! This was probably 10 years ago now, but I recall we would only received something like 70% of the total invoice value. I thought it was a real rort.

From the circumstances you were describing I'm surprised you were even offered 70%, as it sounds like there was a significant risk those invoices would not get paid. The 95% (or there abouts) is for invoices that will almost certainly be paid on time. Defaulting debts are often sold for cents on the dollar.

>legal system where you could sell the wrong done to you to someone who had more money to prosecute.

and now we just have contingency

> I feel like a sociological study on "alternative forms of justice" could be very fruitful.

Not sure why you assumed they don't exist already. There are apparently many. Google Scholar that shit.

Yeah, I should have phrased it differently. I'm sure these exist, but maybe sociology isn't the right discipline, and/or I assume I really don't have enough familiarity to find what I'm looking for.

I'll go try that tho!

Sociology, anthropology and economics are what you want I'm pretty sure.

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