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From: faustus@ucbvax.UUCP (Wayne Christopher)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Libertarian position on certain 'laws'
Message-ID: <1585@ucbvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Aug-84 18:42:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.1585
Posted: Mon Aug 13 18:42:53 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Aug-84 01:43:54 EDT
References: <471@ccieng2.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. Berkeley
Lines: 28

Much of the argument in favor of less government and more
personal freedom people have been giving makes sense, but
"private courts"?  This is something I can't understand. Say I
have some gripe against you and decide to sue you.  Who gets to
decide which court we will go to?  Say you have been burning
tires in your front yard, and it just happens that the judge who
sits in the court of your choice also burns tires in his spare
time. Hardly fair, I would say, but I have no more power to
force you to to a different court than you have to force me to
go to this one.  Now, with government-run courts, this problem
doesn't occur...  Or say that I win a decision against you, but
you decide that you want to continue burning tires anyway. So I
call the police and tell them that you aren't obeying the court.
What are they supposed to do, enforce the decisions of every
private court that decides to call itself that? Or maybe the
police force should be private also, or perhaps every private
court should have its own police force to enforce its
decisions. I think it's obvious where this leads. 

I think that the problem with most Libertarian thinking is that
it assumes that without government, people will be resonably
civilized and cooperative.  This is absurd -- without a big
powerful government keeping order, within a few months everybody
would be at each other's throats and it wouldn't be long before
society would degenerate into a bunch of armed feudal states...

	Wayne