The Production of Law, Security, and Arbitration in the Free Market

That was a fun read. In this scenario, how do I start a protection agency when others are already competing? They'll kick my ass and shut me down. Do I need to hire myself protection until I can grow large enough to protect myself? In other words, how do we deal with anti-competitive behavior?

This stuff often feels like electric buggywhips for horseless automobiles, or early-80s thinkpieces on virtual reality that seriously proposed "online shopping", when it came, would consist of slipping on vr goggles and literally walking through a virtual mall.

The entire article is a mix of mildly-interesting speculation with lots of bizarre shortcomings of imagination (bizarre in the context of such other flights of fancy; keep in mind this is a guy imaginative enough to come up with the seasteading notion, so he's not lacking in visionary skills).

A quick idiocy is the capital-punishment example:

Consider, as a particular example, the issue of capital punishment. Some people might feel that the risk to themselves of being convicted, correctly or incorrectly, and executed for a capital crime outweighed any possible advantages of capital punishment. They would prefer, where possible, to patronize protection agencies that patronized courts that did not give capital punishment. Other citizens might feel that they would be safer from potential murderers if it was known that anyone who murdered them would end up in the electric chair. They might consider that safety more important than the risk of ending up in the electric chair themselves or of being responsible for the death of an innocent accused of murder. They would, if possible, patronize agencies that patronized courts that did give capital punishment.

If one position or the other is almost universal, it may pay all protection agencies to use courts of the one sort or the other. If some people feel one way and some the other, and if their feelings are strong enough to affect their choice of protection agencies, it pays some agencies to adopt a policy of guaranteeing, whenever possible, to use courts that do not recognize capital punishment. They can then attract anti-capital-punishment customers. Other agencies do the opposite.

There's many bugs in the logic here. The biggest one is that there's such an obvious tension between the theory that you can opt out of capital punishment risk by smart choice of defense agencies and the theory that you can opt for a better deterrent factor by smart choice of defense agencies (eg: those that supply capital punishment) that it's surprising someone could even write the two paragraphs above.

If you don't see it immediately, it works like this:

Firstly is the notion that you can have a greater deterrent to would-be murderers by patronizing a defense agency that patronizes a court that hands out decisions that include the option of capital punishment.

So some dude murders me; what is supposed to happen in this world is something like:

- despite being dead, my contract with the defense agency specifies that they are to pursue vengeance against whoever murdered me

- my defense agency investigates and discovers my killer is Killem Abdul Murder-ar

- (following the example of Tannahelp) rather than just hire a sniper to satisfy the contract in an efficient fashion, my defense agency instead calls up Murder-ar's defense agency and we set a court date

- my defense agency presents the case ; we get a pronouncement of the death penalty

- my defense agency then tracks Murder-ar down and shoots him, satisfying its contract

...and knowledge of this hypothetical sequence of events is enough to deter would-be murderers b/c it illustrates the grave consequences to them that would follow from murdering me.

Secondly is the notion that I can opt out of capital punishment by patronizing a defense agency that doesn't patronize a court that hands out capital punishment.

So I accidentally kill some dude b/c I drive my forklift in an irresponsible fashion, but his aggrieved widow believes my actions to be murder and has her defense agency pursue matters. What is supposed to happen is something like:

- the widow's agency calls my agency and is like "we want to kill frig to satisfy the murder-vengeance clause in our defense contract"

- my agency is like "we're a defense agency so of course we're not going to say 'fine with us'"; a court date is arranged

- because my agency is one that doesn't patronize courts that hand out death penalties I can sleep soundly at night because I know that whatever punishment the court metes out for my manslaughter at least it won't be capital punishment

Thought of in isolation these both seem cool -- oh wow I can scare away potential murders with the threat of capital punishment or I can avoid the threat of capital punishment if I so choose! Freedom rocks!

But there's such an obvious tension between the two possibilities:

- deterring people from killing you via exposing them to capital punishment risk depends upon being able to expose them to capital punishment risk even against their own wishes

- being able to expose people to capital punishment risk against their own wishes directly works against your ability to voluntarily opt out of capital punishment risk

...including them back-to-back with no explanation of how the tension reconciles is (or should be) embarrassing.

There's a lot in the linked essay that's similar (which is impressive in its own right given how short it is).

I wish it was better thought-out than it is; it reads like a "blub" political philosopher explaining why X is a better blub than Y.

Not very well argued, but it's a plausible summary of a potential outcome.

This is quite possibly the stupidest, most non-sensical article about "reforming" the legal system that I've ever read. And I've read some really stupid stuff.

The guy spends half the article saying why arbitration doesn't work...and then proposes a system based on arbitration as the solution to our woes.