Okay, so I’m going to try and start this one over, from the top. Red sox is one of the more reasonable guys we have around here, and if I’m getting this much pushback from HIM, I’m certainly not convincing anyone else.
I think the key when thinking about private law is the concept of “reputation.” I’m pointing this out now, in the beginning, in the hopes that you’ll keep it in mind throughout everything else I have to say. People like Dr. Murphy and Murray Rothbard and Walter Block usually mention it, but it’s usually buried in the body somewhere rather than stated in the very beginning. I just want you to keep this one notion in your head: In a voluntarist/AnCap society, your reputation would be everything. Given the lack of a state to force people to transact with others, and to provide very extreme reputation-tracking services (think of say, the sex offender registry), the importance of keeping a good reputation would be critical, as businesses would refuse to transact with those who have especially negative reputations (or would only transact with them under much less favorable terms to the individual). Consider it like your credit score. A private law company would keep track of exactly what each individual has done, and would assign them a score based on their past behaviors.
What this allows is for community standards to be upheld, but the communities in question would be based on voluntary association, not random coincidence of where you happen to have been born, where you happen to live, etc. The easiest way to see the DIRECT benefits of this and a way in which it WOULD substantially differ from the current statist paradigm is to consider our current “victimless crimes,” such a drug use, prostitution, gambling, etc. Let’s just say for the sake of argument, that when it comes to the use of marijuana, the population is evenly split. Half the people in your local community absolutely loathe marijuana users to the point where they would refuse to do business with anyone known to be a marijuana user. The other half just plain don’t care one way or the other. Whether or not someone uses marijuana is of no interest to them.
So, on this one particular block, we have four residents, Joe, Steve, Dave, and Tom. Joe regularly smokes marijuana. Steve is greatly opposed to marijuana, and believes that something must be done in order to stop Joe from smoking it. So Steve walks over to Dave, who happens to operate a private law company that specializes in drug use (Note: Whether such a company could even be economically viable would depend on the amount of people in the local community who cared about drug use at all. Most likely, such a business model would not be profitable in say, San Francisco). Steve tells Dave, “Joe is smoking marijuana. You need to do something about it.” So Dave calls up Joe and says “Hey Joe, I want you to know that you’ve been accused of smoking marijuana, what do you have to say about that?” At this point, Joe has a choice. He can freely admit that he does, in fact, smoke marijuana. Assuming this “confession” was not coerced, that would probably be enough basis for Dave to then report Joe’s marijuana use to Joe’s reputation tracking company. Or perhaps Dave publishes his own “known drug users” registry free for any and all to view. Joe could also dispute the charges, at which point Dave would be responsible for conducting something resembling a trial, in which both parties made their case, and Dave arrived at a verdict. Either Joe would be exonerated of the charges, or he would be added to the drug user registry.
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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg
http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/