Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ucbvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!zehntel!dual!ucbvax!faustus 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