so Merry posts bond... (thought experment)

In terms of morality, I tend to agree with you. However, anyone can sue anyone else and the arbitrator decides. To say that neither Merry nor the current arbitrator would be sued on it implies a remarkable unanimous view among members of a particular AnCap society.

Absolutely no unanimity is needed. The members of society don't get a vote. In law we express your "anybody can sue anybody" concept as "You can sue the Bishop of Boston for bastardry."  So what? Do you think you have a snowballs chance in hell of actually pulling it off?

As I was asking your buddy, what is your cause of action? What theory of justice would give you standing? What idiot of an arbitrator would take such a case and what defendant would agree to such an arbitrator? And what Belter would honor such a judgment?

You might as well assume warlocks and elves did it as what you are  seriously (I guess) positing.

Try a rather different example. You are in your ship heading directly toward Ceres at rather high relative velocity, and you throw out some junk you don't need. Later you decelerate and dock. Your fast-moving junk damages a docked ship and some machinery on the surface of Ceres etc. It's clear where it came from. Does anybody have a case against you? I would say yes. You are endangering people and their property. They have a right to expect you not to drop junk on them, when there was a reasonable chance it would hurt somebody. On the other hand, suppose you were in an orbit where you had no reason to think it would hurt anybody and 15 years later it did. In that case I'd say your liability is much less.

Why? That's silly. Damage is damage and if it arose out of your negligence, elapsed time has nothing to do with it, nor does your intent. Negligence is negligence. I am not going to address your increasingly bizarre hypotheticals.  In every case, they have been asked and answered.

In a world where anybody has the legal right to be an arbitrator, there could still be people who get a reputation for being good, to the point that they can charge professional prices and perhaps specialize in doing arbitration for a living. They will pay attention to each other, because they will see a lot of each other etc. They might easily have an unofficial club that only successful arbitrators get invited to join.

Oh, you're just talking about reputation capital. Asked and answered.

My father was a dentist. He did very good work and kept his prices relatively low, and he built a thriving practice. Once he organized a meeting of all the dentists in a seven-county area, not through the ADA but just a social meeting. They discussed fixing prices and made some progress, but he said there was one dentist he needed to have there who just didn't show up. The man like him had a great reputation and kept his prices low, and they really wanted him to participate.

Thus defeating your own "guild" concern. Perfect!

This sort of

I don't like that spelling. "Judgement" is an acceptable secondary spelling and the more it gets used the closer it will come to being declared the preferred spelling.

Which it is not now. Live in darkness. 

In terms of morality, I tend to agree with you. However, anyone can sue anyone else and the arbitrator decides. To say that neither Merry nor the current arbitrator would be sued on it implies a remarkable unanimous view among members of a particular AnCap society.

As I was asking your buddy, what is your cause of action? What theory of justice would give you standing? What idiot of an arbitrator would take such a case and what defendant would agree to such an arbitrator? And what Belter would honor such a judgment?

So, imagine this. You have what you think is a serious issue against another person. But he thinks you're wrong so he doesn't need to take it to arbitration. So he doesn't need to. If some arbitrator agrees to handle the case, the other guy doesn't need to accept that arbitrator -- in fact any arbitrator who agrees to handle the case is automatically disqualified for agreeing to take it.

It looks to me like you need a grand consensus about law to get that result. Otherwise what keeps somebody who's popular from pulling that if you (who are not so popular) try to sue him for something that is really important? "That silly Sandy Sandfort, what a ridiculous idea for a lawsuit! He has no basis for suing over something so stupid! No arbitrator would take it and if one did that would prove he was a bad arbitrator that I should not accept. Let's have another round, boys." And you can tell your story and he tells his story, and his story gets believed, and there is no arbitration to even try to find out who's lying.

Well, but what happens if you try to find an arbitrator who will take the case and you can't find one? I guess that's a clue. "Stop right there. You're saying that jamesD did that? I don't believe it. You'd never get a jury to believe it. You'd better just forget the whole thing." If you can't find an arbitrator then that's an important clue. If you find one then of course the other guy won't want to use the guy you picked, so your guy and his guy agree on somebody -- somebody who probably hasn't heard any of the details yet, and so there's reasonable doubt what he'll decide.

Unless there isn't much doubt, in which case your arbitrator really ought to try to talk you out of it. "I can see your point but I doubt many others can. You just don't quite fit into the society yet and you don't understand how things work here. You can't sue JamesD. He literally gets away with murder. Be happy you're still alive and just walk away."

Try a rather different example. You are in your ship heading directly toward Ceres at rather high relative velocity, and you throw out some junk you don't need. Later you decelerate and dock. Your fast-moving junk damages a docked ship and some machinery on the surface of Ceres etc. It's clear where it came from. Does anybody have a case against you? I would say yes. You are endangering people and their property. They have a right to expect you not to drop junk on them, when there was a reasonable chance it would hurt somebody. On the other hand, suppose you were in an orbit where you had no reason to think it would hurt anybody and 15 years later it did. In that case I'd say your liability is much less.

Why? That's silly. Damage is damage and if it arose out of your negligence, elapsed time has nothing to do with it, nor does your intent. Negligence is negligence.

So if the debris that B&E's mass driver shot out in more-or-less random directions while they were rescuing themselves hits somebody in 15 years, then they're liable? I don't think you have thought this out.

I am not going to address your increasingly bizarre hypotheticals.  In every case, they have been asked and answered.

I don't see that they've been asked and answered, and you have no obligation to answer.

My argument from morality (not law) is that I should treat other people as both individuals who have moral responsibility for their own actions, and as unguided missiles. When people are heading for some stupid clusterfrack and there's something reasonably simple I can do to help them avoid it, then I should do so. Unless I personally benefit from the clusterfrack, or it looks safer for me to mind my own business.

Harris was responsible for ordering someone else to commit murder, and Young was responsible for carrying it out. You don't say that Harris was not responsible just because Young was also responsible and should have disobeyed.

If I have reason to think that somebody will make a bad moral choice, or they are not really capable of making the choice, and I carelessly send them off to do it at random, am I less negligent than if they were big rocks that I negligently launched at high-v? Especially when I am their arbitrator?

I don't suggest that I be held legally responsible for that, except in particularly clear-cut cases. But is it a bad moral stand?

My father was a dentist. He did very good work and kept his prices relatively low, and he built a thriving practice. Once he organized a meeting of all the dentists in a seven-county area, not through the ADA but just a social meeting. They discussed fixing prices and made some progress, but he said there was one dentist he needed to have there who just didn't show up. The man like him had a great reputation and kept his prices low, and they really wanted him to participate.

Thus defeating your own "guild" concern. Perfect!

Why defeating? They did collectively raise their prices. He raised his less. They'd have preferred it to be unanimous among the good dentists, but he was only one man and he was already working as hard as he wanted to.

So, imagine this. You have what you think is a serious issue against another person. But he thinks you're wrong so he doesn't need to take it to arbitration.

Sure I can imagine that, but I can also imagine fire-breathing dragons. That doesn't prove anything. Why is it always assumptions and presumptions with you J Thomas? In a society where arbitration is common, what is your justification in assuming someone is going to blow it off? And if they do, so what? Is your next assumption that the first guy will blow away the other guy? In the real world, what usually happens is... nothing. The next most likely consequence is that the first guy will talk trash about the second guy. Oh, boo hoo!

I will say it again, the assumptions and fire-breathing-dragon scenarios the anti-freedom contingent on the forum keep spinning, get old very fast. This is what happens when people consciously or sub-consciously assume their conclusions when they make their arguments. Flex a neuron or two and try to image how it could work and why all the silly scenarios are... silly.

Okay, just one more before I hit the sack. I don't know why I let myself get sucked into these asinine, ill-thought out scenarios.

So if the debris that B&E's mass driver shot out in more-or-less random directions while they were rescuing themselves hits somebody in 15 years, then they're liable? I don't think you have thought this out.

Sure I have. (a) It's not negligence. (b) It comes under the common law concept of "necessity" (though in that case, damages might be due, if the damage was a realistic and foreseeable proximate cause of the damage.) It wouldn't be, though, so no cause of action.

So, imagine this. You have what you think is a serious issue against another person. But he thinks you're wrong so he doesn't need to take it to arbitration.

Sure I can imagine that, but I can also imagine fire-breathing dragons. That doesn't prove anything. Why is it always assumptions and presumptions with you J Thomas?

Because we're discussing an imaginary assumed society. You say "It has to work this one way because that's what will happen." I say "What keeps it from happening this other way?" You say "Don't think about that, it has to happen my way." I have more fun thinking about it and looking for ways it could fail and ways to prevent and also alleviate those failures. I get the impression you don't enjoy the same things. That's OK, I enjoy watching what you do.

In a society where arbitration is common, what is your justification in assuming someone is going to blow it off?

Because you said that they would.

Absolutely no unanimity is needed. .... What idiot of an arbitrator would take such a case and what defendant would agree to such an arbitrator? And what Belter would honor such a judgment?

If people are unanimous about what's valid law, then if you make a frivolous lawsuit they all laugh at you. "What Belter would honor such a judgment?" If people don't all have all the law thought out ahead of time, then what keeps people from blowing it off when you have a legitimate lawsuit?

And if they do, so what? Is your next assumption that the first guy will blow away the other guy? In the real world, what usually happens is... nothing.

Yes, the other guy owes you, but he refuses to discuss it and rather than kill him or something you just write it off.

The next most likely consequence is that the first guy will talk trash about the second guy. Oh, boo hoo!

Yes, there was an earlier claim that people would accept arbitration and accept the arbitrator's ruling because their reputation would suffer otherwise. But if they don't? Oh, boo hoo. I can imagine it either way. I can imagine it both ways. If somebody sues you, you need to accept arbitration (and we hope win) because your reputation is important to you and to your business. If you sue them, they don't need to arbitrate because they don't care if you talk trash about them.

Okay, just one more before I hit the sack. I don't know why I let myself get sucked into these asinine, ill-thought out scenarios.

So if the debris that B&E's mass driver shot out in more-or-less random directions while they were rescuing themselves hits somebody in 15 years, then they're liable? I don't think you have thought this out.

Sure I have. (a) It's not negligence. (b) It comes under the common law concept of "necessity" (though in that case, damages might be due, if the damage was a realistic and foreseeable proximate cause of the damage.) It wouldn't be, though, so no cause of action.

Damage is damage and if it arose out of your negligence, elapsed time has nothing to do with it, nor does your intent. Negligence is negligence.

So, if you send a load of fast heavy stuff at Ceres and damage stuff, that's negligence and you owe. You should have known better. If you send the same load in some random direction and there's no reason to suppose somebody will be there, it isn't negligence even if somebody does get hurt from your action. Right? If it looks like a 1% chance somebody will get hurt and somebody does get hurt, you owe. If it looks like one chance in a million and somebody gets hurt, you don't?

And of course there are lots of rocks traveling in random directions and fast relative velocities anyway. What's a few more?

So, imagine this. You have what you think is a serious issue against another person. But he thinks you're wrong so he doesn't need to take it to arbitration. So he doesn't need to. If some arbitrator agrees to handle the case, the other guy doesn't need to accept that arbitrator -- in fact any arbitrator who agrees to handle the case is automatically disqualified for agreeing to take it.

Then I damage his reputation over the issue.  If his reputation gets bad enough - for example I get judgment against him from a respected arbitrator, and he blows it off, then if I use violence against him, my prospects of getting away with it are much better.

So, imagine this. You have what you think is a serious issue against another person. But he thinks you're wrong so he doesn't need to take it to arbitration. So he doesn't need to. If some arbitrator agrees to handle the case, the other guy doesn't need to accept that arbitrator -- in fact any arbitrator who agrees to handle the case is automatically disqualified for agreeing to take it.

Then I damage his reputation over the issue.  If his reputation gets bad enough - for example I get judgment against him from a respected arbitrator, and he blows it off, then if I use violence against him, my prospects of getting away with it are much better.

You get judgement from a respected arbitrator he has not agreed to?

My suggestion is that any time you have a complaint, you find somebody -- your mother or whoever -- who would rule in your favor if the facts you claim are true. The custom should be that the other guy takes it seriously even if he doesn't know anything about what you think he's done to you. He picks a second he trusts, and the seconds agree on somebody to do the arbitration.

Then if the actual arbitrator decides you have wasted everybody's time, he assigns penalties you must pay your victim for your baseless complaint, and he has you pay everybody you have inconvenienced.

If the consensus is that some people -- your defendant and his crony arbitrators -- get to decide you have a frivolous case and they don't need to respond at all, and all you can do about it is complain in public, that leaves a lot of room for problems.

Particularly if the other guy owns a newspaper and you don't.

You get judgement from a respected arbitrator he has not agreed to?

Between respectable people, they would almost always wind up with an agreed arbitrator - but the average no good scum small time crook who breaks into your house is not going to agree to anything, and is going to be dealt with in a more expeditious manner.

If the consensus is that some people -- your defendant and his crony arbitrators -- get to decide you have a frivolous case and they don't need to respond at all, and all you can do about it is complain in public, that leaves a lot of room for problems.

Particularly if the other guy owns a newspaper and you don't.

Dude I'm really sorry that we left you in the past, but right now, Newspapers are dying, the Blogosphere revolution thanks to the internet have made information discussion almost priceless 

Newspapers and TV network can't set the agenda anymore and if the case is really such an instance of Croniesm you will be sure to have a Gazillion legal bloguers clashing over it and publicity that you could never imagine ... don't forget that nothing prevent in principle to have something like the ACLU to exist

I'm with the Guzman brothers - and I think they reflect the spirit of anarchy well - if they are "made whole", then the problem is finished. Merry did the Guzmans a favor, since they will be recompensed immediately, instead of in dribs and drabs as the three criminals work off the debt.

As for "keeping criminals off the streets", it is my suspicion that Merry is responsible for any acts of mayhem by the three criminals. In any case, public safety is likely to be more abundant in an anarchy, where everyone is likely to be armed, than in London, where it is illegal for people to carry even a steak knife in public without "proper authorization."

"Jurisdiction" is meaningless in an anarchy; there are no arbitrary physical boundaries.

Presumably there are bounty hunters, protection agencies, and arbitration agencies on the moon, Mars, and so forth. With tanglenet, it should be easy to exchange information and manage a cooperative effort to locate fugitives.

If prisoner #1 works off not only his own debt, but the debt of prisoner #2 and #3, I'd consider hiring him. I'd hire anyone who had managed to pay off his own debt - but I'd count my silverware.

Stuffing people into prisons is not very productive. The victims are not recompensed for their injury. Prisons are essentially schools of criminal behavior; criminals swap notes and learn how to avoid capture and how to more effectively criminalize others. Better they should learn in the school of hard knocks how to make an honest living, like the rest of us. The more they goof off, the longer it takes to work off their debt. The harder they work, the sooner they are free of the debt.

I'm with the Guzman brothers - and I think they reflect the spirit of anarchy well - if they are "made whole", then the problem is finished. Merry did the Guzmans a favor, since they will be recompensed immediately, instead of in dribs and drabs as the three criminals work off the debt.

Yes. B&E's problems are done when they get their damages and put it in their past.

As for "keeping criminals off the streets", it is my suspicion that Merry is responsible for any acts of mayhem by the three criminals.

I can see it the other way round. Say they hurt somebody. The woman they hurt then sues Merry. "If it wasn't for you, they would be locked up on a pig farm and they couldn't hurt me."

Merry's advocate asks questions. "Why is it you sued Merry and not the actual perps? Why did you not sue the arbitrator who agreed to let them run around loose? Why only Merry?"

"Because out of all of them, Merry is the only one who has the money. The perps only have debts. The advocate is just barely breaking even and he might even get away with it."

They explore the possibilities. The woman can sue the perps and put them on the pig farm. They pay her and Merry both back, in the proportion of their debts to each. Also a little to the owner of the bar where they have signed a contract to continue performing 1980's rock music. Since their income will be down considerably, it will take them a long time to pay off. Or she can let them continue at the bar, getting her money back much quicker if they don't get into more trouble. Or she can see whether Merry will pay her off immediately and it will no longer be her problem.

Presumably there are bounty hunters, protection agencies, and arbitration agencies on the moon, Mars, and so forth. With tanglenet, it should be easy to exchange information and manage a cooperative effort to locate fugitives.

So, say you are going about your business as a traveling merchant, and suddenly a bounty hunter shows up to cart you across half the belt for a crime you have never heard about. Somebody claims you did something serious and you are a fugitive, and they had arbitration without you to present their case. After an unacceptable time and hardship, you arrive back at the site and demand an arbitration where you are present. You get the facts and conclusively prove that you are innocent. Who do you sue? The plaintiff who had no real case? The arbitrator who decided you were guilty without even calling you up over tanglenet and hearing your side? And the bounty hunter who accepted the dubious quest? Anybody else?

With tanglenet, is it such a hardship to arbitrate when you aren't physically present? Call you up, explain the situation, get your side of it. You tell your local advocate everything you can for him to track down witnesses etc. If it looks necessary and acceptable, the arbitration can wait until you can  get there. You aren't a fugitive until you have been informed about the problem and you have had a chance to reply, and you don't do so.

If prisoner #1 works off not only his own debt, but the debt of prisoner #2 and #3, I'd consider hiring him. I'd hire anyone who had managed to pay off his own debt - but I'd count my silverware.

Yes. When there is a labor shortage, you might have work that you can't find anybody more credible to do. And if it's stuff that doesn't get done unless he does it, you may not be taking that much risk.

Still, you are choosing to trust him. If you can't trust him at all then it's more work to supervise him than it could possibly be worth.

I'm not clear how the pig farm makes a profit with untrusted labor. It might be even harder when the ham-gourds get common.

Stuffing people into prisons is not very productive. The victims are not recompensed for their injury. Prisons are essentially schools of criminal behavior; criminals swap notes and learn how to avoid capture and how to more effectively criminalize others.

Agreed. When there is a labor surplus, a fraction of the population will not be employed. They're likely to knock around and get in trouble. It would be good to find innovative ways to reduce the labor surplus, but that takes innovation which is not guaranteed. Or we could kill them when they first get in serious trouble, since there's no place for them. But that is barbaric. Putting them in prison is a bad compromise -- they're out of the way, mostly causing trouble for each other. They haven't been killed. If they're needed for something they could be released. In that situation I don't see a better compromise than this bad one -- except to innovate in ways that create jobs.

I can see it the other way round. Say they hurt somebody. The woman they hurt then sues Merry. "If it wasn't for you, they would be locked up on a pig farm and they couldn't hurt me."

In law, we refer to this as the "but for" theory of liability. Without some show of causality, much less proximate cause, it always fails. No conscientious arbitrator would agree to hear such a frivolous case without something more substantial in the claim.

Merry's advocate asks questions. "Why is it you sued Merry and not the actual perps? Why did you not sue the arbitrator who agreed to let them run around loose? Why only Merry?"

"Because out of all of them, Merry is the only one who has the money. The perps only have debts. The advocate is just barely breaking even and he might even get away with it."

Yeah, but money does not = liability. First, there must be a showing of culpability on Merry's part. Good luck. BTW, the doctrine you are describing is referred to as "deep pockets" and I always find it cynical and manipulative.

So, say you are going about your business as a traveling merchant, and suddenly a bounty hunter shows up to cart you across half the belt for a crime you have never heard about.

No, let's not say that. First show me some good reason to believe it is likely to happen. In any case, you are smart enough to figure out who gets sued and who wins in such an unlikely event. FYI, an arbitration cannot happen unless both parties agree to it, so your already flawed scenario is further damaged by your assumptions. You are going to have to think more clearly than that.

J Thomas, here are some clues you should hear if you ever intend to make a persuasive argument. (It could happen!) :

1. KISS1 (Keep It Simple, Sir)--Pick one issue and keep with it. Don't try to address a million issues in each post. If you have a million issues, please start a new thread for each one.

2. KISS2 (Keep It Short, Sir)--I rarely see someone who writes as many words as you, while saying so little. Essentially, the pith of every paragraph you write (sometimes several paragraphs) could be summed up completely in one short sentence. Why do you insist on torturing your readers with oral diarrhea? Focus, my man, focus.

3. KISS3 (Keep It Sensible, Sir)--Before you click "Post," ask yourself if you are making assumptions, what those assumptions are and are they realistic in the real world? Yes, just about anything can happen in the real world, but your scenarios are very, very unlikely to occur. And guess what? Errors and injustices happen in every system. So the real question is, "which system is likely to deliver the best justice, most of the time?" Remember, AnCap does not have to be perfect. It only has to be better than the alternatives.

I am fascinated that severally of you actually believe that Merry or the arbitrator could have any liability for what the defendants do. What is your theory of liability? What is your cause of action? Certainly, there is no proximate cause. Respondeat superior doesn't apply to the arbitrator nor to Merry. Negligence does not apply because there is no duty to protect others. If you kill somebody while you are hijacking their car, you are responsible for the consequences of your act; not your parents, teachers or minister; just you.

It's true that if the three defendants take unfair advantage of Merry's generosity, and, in addition to attempting to skip out, hurt someone else in the attempt, they can't claim that someone else, besides themselves, ought to carry part of the debt created by their actions.

But if everyone is responsible for their own actions, then I claim that the Guzman brothers' "Works for us" is irresponsible on their part - and the arbitrators acceptance of Merry's offer, and Merry's offer itself, are also irresponsible.

Just because the three miscreants are human individuals, responsible for their own actions, doesn't mean those actions aren't predictable. They're dangerous, and they are very likely to attempt to hurt people.

Therefore, in a non-AnCap society, where hardly anyone except criminals and state policemen and soldiers is armed, turning people like that loose would be a highly irresponsible act, and someone doing so ought to face punishment.

Since I assume the intent of the story is not to make the Guzman brothers look bad, but to make the AnCap setup on Ceres look good, what I expect is that Merry will end up with some liability to their former victims for her foolishness... but the miscreants, rather than posing a real danger to anyone, will instead come up against the ability of Cereans to defend themselves in a sudden and dramatic fashion that surprises them (and entertains us).

And my conclusion from this will be that this doesn't demonstrate that AnCap works, because even people who are allowed to carry guns aren't always lucky, and so my belief that an unacceptable risk was created, even though that risk didn't eventuate, will stay unshaken.

I can see it the other way round. Say they hurt somebody. The woman they hurt then sues Merry. "If it wasn't for you, they would be locked up on a pig farm and they couldn't hurt me."

In law, we refer to this as the "but for" theory of liability. Without some show of causality, much less proximate cause, it always fails.

You're talking government law now. AnCap law would be whatever got agreed to. I tend to agree with you about this case, but where do you draw the line? "Your chemical plant put noxious fumes into my air. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't have cancer." It looks like the same argument, and there's something bogus about it, but they shouldn't have the right to put noxious fumes into shared air or somebody else's private air.

"You incorrectly told Bob that I seduced his wife. If it wasn't for you he wouldn't have knocked out two of my teeth." It isn't something he should lie about, and also it isn't something Bob should believe from one liar, or respond in this particular way.

No conscientious arbitrator would agree to hear such a frivolous case without something more substantial in the claim.

This is the part I'm not clear on. Sam thinks he has a case against Bob. His counselor (his mother or whoever) agrees. Bob and his counselor naturally disagree. So Sam's counselor and Bob's counselor try to agree on an arbitrator, and each person they choose looks at the case ahead of time and decides before taking the case that Bob is innocent, so they refuse to take the case.

So Sam gets no chance to really make his case. Bob has no chance to clear his name. Perhaps the counselors keep looking until they find a nonconscientious arbitrator who will take the case, and who knows what he will do?

It looks to me like Sam ought to get a conscientious counselor who will tell him the truth. Not his mother. He should perhaps get a second opinion. If he goes with a counselor who pushes it, an ethical arbitrator he chooses ought to tell him he doesn't really have a case. A less ethical arbitrator might take the case and then make him pay for losing. But if he can afford it, there's nothing wrong with giving him his day at arbitration even though he will lose. If he won't learn short of that....

Merry's advocate asks questions. "Why is it you sued Merry and not the actual perps? Why did you not sue the arbitrator who agreed to let them run around loose? Why only Merry?"

"Because out of all of them, Merry is the only one who has the money. The perps only have debts. The advocate is just barely breaking even and he might even get away with it."

Yeah, but money does not = liability. First, there must be a showing of culpability on Merry's part. Good luck. BTW, the doctrine you are describing is referred to as "deep pockets" and I always find it cynical and manipulative.

Yes, I shortened it by making her naive enough to blurt that out.

So, say you are going about your business as a traveling merchant, and suddenly a bounty hunter shows up to cart you across half the belt for a crime you have never heard about.

No, let's not say that. First show me some good reason to believe it is likely to happen. In any case, you are smart enough to figure out who gets sued and who wins in such an unlikely event. FYI, an arbitration cannot happen unless both parties agree to it, so your already flawed scenario is further damaged by your assumptions.

Presumably there are bounty hunters, protection agencies, and arbitration agencies on the moon, Mars, and so forth. With tanglenet, it should be easy to exchange information and manage a cooperative effort to locate fugitives.

So, you're saying that if somebody accepts arbitration and then runs, it's OK to grab him. But if he runs instead of accept arbitration, it is not.

Errors and injustices happen in every system. So the real question is, "which system is likely to deliver the best justice, most of the time?" Remember, AnCap does not have to be perfect. It only has to be better than the alternatives.

Errors can happen in any system. I'm interested in how to arrange the customary ways to do things, to minimise errors and injustices. I like the idea that you never get judged unless you agree to arbitration. There's something fundamentally fair about that. You don't get railroaded into a kangaroo court. So how to arrange things when somebody refuses arbitration when he ought to? So far I've heard four choices:

1. You can write off your losses.
2. You can point out that he refused arbitration, which is something of an admission of guilt, and then publish insulting facts about him, which some people will probably believe.
3. You can arrange to steal stuff back from him until he's paid what he owes you.
4. You can kill him and in your defense point out that he refused arbitration.

JamesD said something I interpreted as getting a judgement from a respectable arbitrator the defendant had not agreed to. When I reread his statement I could easily see him just using that as an example of something that hurts the other guy's reputation -- if he *did* agree to arbitration by a respectable arbitrator, and then he blew off the judgement. He earlier had talked about people who would refuse arbitration and I put those two sentences together into a meaning he likely did not intend.

You're talking government law now. AnCap law would be whatever got agreed to.

Oh really? Where did you get that idea? This might help you get your head around this concept. Think of it as working like the English Common Law. Precedents builds up over time, but are always based on the ZAP. Over time, arbitrators distinguish edge cases as to the application of the ZAP in real issues in conflict. Those distinctions become a part of the organic body of "law" for want of a better term. To understand how the common law works, see:

  https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Common_law

I think you should be able to figure out which aspects of common law theory apply in the Belt (and elsewhere) and which aspects do not.

You're talking government law now. AnCap law would be whatever got agreed to.

Oh really? Where did you get that idea? This might help you get your head around this concept. Think of it as working like the English Common Law. Precedents builds up over time, but are always based on the ZAP.

That's where. The ZAP says you're doing aggression when you infringe on other people's rights. But what are their rights? The society will say about that, it isn't in the ZAP anywhere.

Where my rights end and yours begin is not in the ZAP. There are some boundaries that will be obvious to most people, and some that are clearly arbitrary social convention. They might evolve in ways that most people come to accept, but it is not particularly predictable which version you'll get.