With no taxes, what about firestations and garbage service?

[Hawker]

...snip...

Exactly!  So if you have multiple competing courts to begin with, after a few conflicts where the one with the ability to enforce its decisions wins, it will end up being a monopoly.  The head of its enforcement agency will be an effective dictator.

The generally accepted law will be a monopoly. If there's a court that's a monopoly, and it starts being inconsistent with its decisions in order to manipulate outcomes for its own benefit, people won't trust it and won't use it. Two people having a dispute can easily go to their elder to help them decide the issue in front of a jury of their neighbors, based onestablished law they already trust. There's really no barrier to entry when it comes to setting up a court, besides trust, and that's already established in local communities.

Yeah, that. Monopolies exist when barriers to entry are high. Completely forgot about that. Courts dfon't have those.

If you have created a situation where one private company owns the courts and the police, anyone who tries to set up against them has to face the likelihood of being killed in a legal dispute.

Being killed is a fairly high barrier to entry, don't you agree?

Considering most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other, I don't see why bloodshed would be involved. How would they prevent the two parties from going to their own arbitrator/judge, or even be aware of a dispute in the first place?

You are avoiding the point.  Of course people who have no need for the court won't use it.  Why would they? But people who do have disputes that require litigation will end up with a monopoly provider and that provider will become an unelected government. 

[Rassah]

...snip...

Exactly!  So if you have multiple competing courts to begin with, after a few conflicts where the one with the ability to enforce its decisions wins, it will end up being a monopoly.  The head of its enforcement agency will be an effective dictator.

The generally accepted law will be a monopoly. If there's a court that's a monopoly, and it starts being inconsistent with its decisions in order to manipulate outcomes for its own benefit, people won't trust it and won't use it. Two people having a dispute can easily go to their elder to help them decide the issue in front of a jury of their neighbors, based onestablished law they already trust. There's really no barrier to entry when it comes to setting up a court, besides trust, and that's already established in local communities.

Yeah, that. Monopolies exist when barriers to entry are high. Completely forgot about that. Courts dfon't have those.

If you have created a situation where one private company owns the courts and the police, anyone who tries to set up against them has to face the likelihood of being killed in a legal dispute.

Being killed is a fairly high barrier to entry, don't you agree?

Considering most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other, I don't see why bloodshed would be involved. How would they prevent the two parties from going to their own arbitrator/judge, or even be aware of a dispute in the first place?

You are avoiding the point.  Of course people who have no need for the court won't use it.  Why would they? But people who do have disputes that require litigation will end up with a monopoly provider and that provider will become an unelected government. 

Where did you get "people who have no need for the court" from  "most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other" ? What do you think people use courts for???

[Hawker]

...snip...

Considering most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other, I don't see why bloodshed would be involved. How would they prevent the two parties from going to their own arbitrator/judge, or even be aware of a dispute in the first place?

You are avoiding the point.  Of course people who have no need for the court won't use it.  Why would they? But people who do have disputes that require litigation will end up with a monopoly provider and that provider will become an unelected government. 

Where did you get "people who have no need for the court" from  "most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other" ? What do you think people use courts for???

From "arbitrator/judge, or even be aware of a dispute in the first place?" - that sounds like a dispute that can be resolved without litigation doesn't it?

[Rassah]

...snip...

Considering most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other, I don't see why bloodshed would be involved. How would they prevent the two parties from going to their own arbitrator/judge, or even be aware of a dispute in the first place?

You are avoiding the point.  Of course people who have no need for the court won't use it.  Why would they? But people who do have disputes that require litigation will end up with a monopoly provider and that provider will become an unelected government.  

Where did you get "people who have no need for the court" from  "most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other" ? What do you think people use courts for???

From "arbitrator/judge, or even be aware of a dispute in the first place?" - that sounds like a dispute that can be resolved without litigation doesn't it?

Arbitrator or judge being involved is litigation. If you are reffering to breaking laws, without a central government there wouldn't be any laws to break, and protection of property by private security would be a separate issue

[Hawker]

...snip...

Arbitrator or judge being involved is litigation. If you are reffering to breaking laws, without a central government there wouldn't be any laws to break, and protection of property by private security would be a separate issue

Arbitration means no litigation.

Property, domestic violence, divorce, child care, contract, probate, the list of things that laws need to address is long.  My point is that if there is a free market in courts with each court able to make its own rules, there will end up being only 1 court as the rest get eliminated dispute by dispute.  And when that one is left,it will have all the powers of a government.

[MoonShadow]

...snip...

Arbitrator or judge being involved is litigation. If you are reffering to breaking laws, without a central government there wouldn't be any laws to break, and protection of property by private security would be a separate issue

Arbitration means no litigation.

Property, domestic violence, divorce, child care, contract, probate, the list of things that laws need to address is long.  My point is that if there is a free market in courts with each court able to make its own rules, there will end up being only 1 court as the rest get eliminated dispute by dispute.  And when that one is left,it will have all the powers of a government.

Not necessarily all the powers of a government, as this was not the case for British common law, which was developed as case law over generations without much interaction or support from the British crown.  However, I do see your point.  You assume that any consolidation of judicial (or perhaps otherwise) power will eventually become indistingishable from a deliberate government structure, so we might as well keep the devil we know, right?  This is a rational point, but not necessarily a correct one.  The ongoing consolidation of such powers assumes that the public does nothing to contradict it, for which we have a real example of a society that actively avoids majority concentrations of power despite the very real advantages to consolidation of power.  Namely the Bitcoin pools, which are not permitted to exceed (or even dramaticly approach) a 50% total network hashrate.  Users don't attack the pools to prevent it (well, most don't) they either switch pools or drop into solo mining to prevent individual pools from hitting that mark.

[Hawker]

...snip...

Arbitrator or judge being involved is litigation. If you are reffering to breaking laws, without a central government there wouldn't be any laws to break, and protection of property by private security would be a separate issue

Arbitration means no litigation.

Property, domestic violence, divorce, child care, contract, probate, the list of things that laws need to address is long.  My point is that if there is a free market in courts with each court able to make its own rules, there will end up being only 1 court as the rest get eliminated dispute by dispute.  And when that one is left,it will have all the powers of a government.

Not necessarily all the powers of a government, as this was not the case for British common law, which was developed as case law over generations without much interaction or support from the British crown.  ...snip...

Actually the common law only existed in the Royal courts.  The Crown/State was and remains actively involved.

Bitcoin pools can co-exist.  Competing systems of law cannot - one will end up being the supreme law.

[MoonShadow]

...snip...

Arbitrator or judge being involved is litigation. If you are reffering to breaking laws, without a central government there wouldn't be any laws to break, and protection of property by private security would be a separate issue

Arbitration means no litigation.

Property, domestic violence, divorce, child care, contract, probate, the list of things that laws need to address is long.  My point is that if there is a free market in courts with each court able to make its own rules, there will end up being only 1 court as the rest get eliminated dispute by dispute.  And when that one is left,it will have all the powers of a government.

Not necessarily all the powers of a government, as this was not the case for British common law, which was developed as case law over generations without much interaction or support from the British crown.  ...snip...

Actually the common law only existed in the Royal courts.  The Crown/State was and remains actively involved.

Bitcoin pools can co-exist.  Competing systems of law cannot - one will end up being the supreme law.

Actually, your history is bullshit.  British common law was not developed by the crown nor the courts established by the crown.  The crown didn't give it any credence at all up almost until the Magna Carta, which itself was law developed against the will of the crown.  And there is plenty of existing examples of competing systems of law that coexist.  One such example is the International Business Court, which had (has?) zero government backing.

[Hawker]

...snip...

Actually, your history is bullshit.  British common law was not developed by the crown nor the courts established by the crown.  The crown didn't give it any credence at all up almost until the Magna Carta, which itself was law developed against the will of the crown.  ...snip...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Medieval_English_common_law

Feel free to point to the period in history where the common law was not the king's law. 

[MoonShadow]

...snip...

Actually, your history is bullshit.  British common law was not developed by the crown nor the courts established by the crown.  The crown didn't give it any credence at all up almost until the Magna Carta, which itself was law developed against the will of the crown.  ...snip...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Medieval_English_common_law

Feel free to point to the period in history where the common law was not the king's law. 

Well, wikipedia isn't the end all, but it's right there in the section that you linked to, in the preamble...

"The term "common law" originally derives from the reign of Henry II of England, in the 1150s and 1160s. The "common law" was the law that emerged as "common" throughout the realm (as distinct from the various legal codes that preceded it, such as Mercian law, the Danelaw and the law of Wessex)[29] as the king's judges followed each other's decisions to create a unified common law throughout England. The doctrine of precedent developed during the 12th and 13th centuries,[30] as the collective judicial decisions that were based in tradition, custom and precedent.[31]

And there is this...

"In 1154, Henry II became the first Plantagenet king. Among many achievements, Henry institutionalized common law by creating a unified system of law "common" to the country through incorporating and elevating local custom to the national, ending local control and peculiarities,"

Granted Henry II gets much credit for acting as a unifying force, but Common law was derived from local customary laws that developed independently of the crown, due mostly to a vacuum of judges in the preceding couple centuries.  At most, however, he established the intent to unify the law, he didn't do it.  There were judges that existed before Henry II, that had no backing whatever from the crown.  It is from these local judges that common law received it's base.

I've not the time nor inclination to educate you, so if you really would like to enlighten yourself, I suggest you start with Whatever Happened to Justice by Rich Maybury and The Path of the Law

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

[Hawker]

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

[Rassah]

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

The second quoted section says you're wrong. Also, USA follows common law, and we don't have kings or royals (well, except me, but my title is meaningless here)

[MoonShadow]

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

You have a real problem with observational evidence, don't you?  Are you a defense lawyer?

[Hawker]

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

You have a real problem with observational evidence, don't you?  Are you a defense lawyer?

You have a problem reading.  The common law only existed in Royal courts.  The court it was created in was called the King's Bench. 

[Rassah]

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

You have a real problem with observational evidence, don't you?  Are you a defense lawyer?

You have a problem reading.  The common law only existed in Royal courts.  The court it was created in was called the King's Bench. 

ExistED or exist? It still exists...

[Hawker]

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

You have a real problem with observational evidence, don't you?  Are you a defense lawyer?

You have a problem reading.  The common law only existed in Royal courts.  The court it was created in was called the King's Bench. 

ExistED or exist? It still exists...

He is talking about medieval history as proof that law can exist without a state. 

[MoonShadow]

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

You have a real problem with observational evidence, don't you?  Are you a defense lawyer?

You have a problem reading.  The common law only existed in Royal courts.  The court it was created in was called the King's Bench. 

ExistED or exist? It still exists...

He is talking about medieval history as proof that law can exist without a state. 

No, I'm talking about how courts can exist without explicit state support, and can coexist with it.  Your incomplete knowledge of history notwithstanding, there are a couple dozen other examples of the same in human history.  The history of the tweleve tribes of Israel is another well documented case.  The history of the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy is another well documented case.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Government)  Neither of these actual historical examples consisted of a government (or even a definable state) as we would define one today.

(Iroquois political and diplomatic decisions are made on the local level, and are based on assessments of community consensus. A central government that develops policy and implements it for the people at large is not the Iroquois model of government.)

Yet both had semi-formal courts with judges, appointed by no one at all, unless you consider the Book of Judges to be authoritative in understanding and recording the will of God.  They came to exist, because people had real disputes, and in the absence of a formal resolution (and considering combat is not in the best interests of either party) would agree to seek out a third party trusted by both parties.  This is what is now known as arbitration and is a major part of what courts actually do for "society" or the "free market".  There is a natural human desire for "justice", and it can be seen in children not even old enough to talk.  If you feel that you have been wronged by your sibling, what do you do first?  Do you tell mommy, hit your sibling & take back your toy, or try to argue that you have been wronged?  Surely some will do each of these things, but both running to tell mommy and arguing with your sibling are examples that humans are born with an innate sense of property right, for if we were not then every dispute over a toy would invariablely lead to a fight.  It's this sense of, shall we call it "natural law", that leads a three year old to complain that the other kid took the toy out of his hands, as there is a natural expectation that everyone else should understand the basic law as well, even if they can't express it as such.  Neither courts, nor governments, make this stuff up.  At best, they discover it and encode it into their statutes.  But statutes that don't make sense to the common man are not laws, but simply the deliberate and discriminate use of force to favor one group of citizens over another.

[Rassah]

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

You have a real problem with observational evidence, don't you?  Are you a defense lawyer?

You have a problem reading.  The common law only existed in Royal courts.  The court it was created in was called the King's Bench. 

ExistED or exist? It still exists...

He is talking about medieval history as proof that law can exist without a state. 

I do believe I have mentioned the newly forming international law and arbitrage system, that is being created to shtat multinagiona corporations can settle disputes when the litigated actions did not take place in any specific country? Those laws and courts are existing outside of states and state laws, and are being created entirely voluntarily by businesses and corporations themselves. This is also why i've said before that trying to prove how a libertarian system is bad is pointless, since we are slowly moving to it on a global scale anyway, so might as well spend your time trying to figure out how it works and how to live with it.

[Hawker]

...snip...
I do believe I have mentioned the newly forming international law and arbitrage system, that is being created to shtat multinagiona corporations can settle disputes when the litigated actions did not take place in any specific country? Those laws and courts are existing outside of states and state laws, and are being created entirely voluntarily by businesses and corporations themselves. This is also why i've said before that trying to prove how a libertarian system is bad is pointless, since we are slowly moving to it on a global scale anyway, so might as well spend your time trying to figure out how it works and how to live with it.

From what I see, multinationals sue in normal courts.  Check out apple and samsung.

[Rassah]

...snip...
I do believe I have mentioned the newly forming international law and arbitrage system, that is being created to shtat multinagiona corporations can settle disputes when the litigated actions did not take place in any specific country? Those laws and courts are existing outside of states and state laws, and are being created entirely voluntarily by businesses and corporations themselves. This is also why i've said before that trying to prove how a libertarian system is bad is pointless, since we are slowly moving to it on a global scale anyway, so might as well spend your time trying to figure out how it works and how to live with it.

From what I see, multinationals sue in normal courts.  Check out apple and samsung.

They are suing in a court of the country that issued the pattent, since that is a dispute. Had the issue been defective hardware from Samsung, or Apple not honoring a contract to pay for Samsung's hardware, Apple would've wanted to settle this is US court, Samsumng in Korean court, and both would likely end up settling in international court.
I'm not making this international court thing up. It's a real issue that businesses are trying to solve.