LIMITED LIABILITY IN A MARKET ANARCHY

Doesn't a whole lot of government law actually deal with people who have done something stupid?

No.

Did I phrase that wrong? Did you object to "deal with" instead of "involve"?

That people who get in trouble for breaking government legislation tend to be stupid no more means that government law addresses stupidity than that people who get in trouble as a result of the law of gravity tend to be stupid means that the law of gravity addresses stupidity.

Well, my point is that a whole lot of people do a whole lot of stupid things.

And then when I ask about AnCap arbitration dealing with the aftermath of stupid choices, you and others say that in AnCap people won't do stupid things so it won't be an issue.

I am frankly not convinced.

People will most probably still do some stupid things that result in arbitration.

And then when I ask about AnCap arbitration dealing with the aftermath of stupid choices, you and others say that in AnCap people won't do stupid things so it won't be an issue.

Meanwhile, we have this limited liability thing. A butcher might want limited liability because he's afraid that a frivolous or outright fraudulent lawsuit might cost him everything he owns. Sandy Sandfort says this is worthwhile and doable.

Sam wants high or unlimited liability on his butcher because he might poison Sam and Sam doesn't want that to be cheap for him. Sam is directly opposed to Sandy on this.

I say, most people will not pay a whole lot of attention to this issue most of the time.

What's the chance that a business gets frivolously sued and the arbitrator awards damages that are far too high? Not very likely, right? The arbitrator has to go along, and he won't.

What's the chance your butcher actually poisons you? Pretty low.

If more than a tiny fraction of cranks like Sam care about the amount of money they can sue their butcher for when the butcher poisons them, that butcher is already in trouble. When his customers are worried about how safe his beef is, a whole lot of them are just not going to buy rather than think about how much money they can sue him for. They assume the product is safe or they don't buy it. Whether the liability is the purchase price, or $50, or $500, or $5000 is off the radar.

Meanwhile, businessmen are not going to assume that all their customers are good people. Some small fraction of customers will try to rip them off for everything they can get. Ward off a fraction of the bad ones by putting up a sign? That's a good investment.

And if something does happen? And a business owner actually appears to the arbitrator like he should owe more than his stated liability? Is that going to stop the arbitrator from assigning more damages? No.

Unless the arbitrator is scared of doing the right thing. If doing the right thing means he's never going to do business in this town again.... If influential citizens can do that to arbitrators, when the arbitrators do the right thing and not some wrong thing, then what good are arbitrators?

And then when I ask about AnCap arbitration dealing with the aftermath of stupid choices, you and others say that in AnCap people won't do stupid things so it won't be an issue.

Very few people are as stupid as the people in your hypotheticals, and any that are will not have any money or power, or they will not have money or power for very long, so will be incapable of causing substantial problems for anyone else.  

They won't cause problems for arbitration because they will not have a lawyer, not a protection agency coming to their defense.  They might well get mistreated by the system, by any system - for much the same reasons as they are apt to get mistreated by the law of gravity.  I suppose that really stupid people are apt to get thumped by Walmart security.  Should the same thing happen in anarcho capitalism, will not be very surprised.

Meanwhile, we have this limited liability thing. A butcher might want limited liability because he's afraid that a frivolous or outright fraudulent lawsuit might cost him everything he owns. Sandy Sandfort says this is worthwhile and doable.

Sam wants high or unlimited liability on his butcher because he might poison Sam and Sam doesn't want that to be cheap for him. Sam is directly opposed to Sandy on this.

I don't want unlimited liability for the butcher.  I don't want him to liable if I eat too much and get fat.  I don't want him to be liable if I have an accident in his parking area, or fall over in his shop.  I don't want him to be sued a trillion dollars because an “expert witness” detects evil magic in his meat, or his ancestry, or the paint that he used to paint his shop or the racial imbalance in his staff. I do want him to be liable if I get food poisoning due to dirty meat.

Thus a sign disclaiming liability for cleanliness related issues would alarm me.  A sign disclaiming liability for everything other than cleanliness related issues and the meat being accurately labelled would not alarm me.