In my continuing effort to hit some basic questions people often have about the stateless society that libertarian anarchists like me advocate, today we’ll look at crime control. How, many people wonder, can violent crime be handled when there’s no overall State to make and enforce laws against theft, assault, destruction of property, etc.? I was thinking about breaking this up into specific posts about law, courts, enforcement, punishment, etc. However, since they’re all so intimately tied together, I’ll just post here some writings from some leading market anarchists on the whole area of stateless crime control. Just to be clear, this is not a quick read–it’s a direct and fairly thorough “overview” compilation of resources for anyone who truly wants to know why I make the claim that the State is unnecessary.
Also, all of this should be read in light of my overall claim (and the claim of market anarchists as a whole) that the details of how a free society might self-organize in order to provide things that many people now think only the State can provide (thanks a bunch, public schools) is completely secondary to the primary assertion that a stateless society is the most just and most moral mode of societal organization. The spontaneous order (even if it sometimes appears disordered to some) of people interacting on a purely voluntary basis is always and everywhere more just than a society that places (or has placed upon it) a person or group of people with a monopoly on the legal use of force. Again, the State is unjust, and these intellectual exercises in hypothesizing how free people might handle the State’s current functions is utterly secondary to the moral imperative to abolish the State.
So, regarding stateless crime control, Murray Rothbard covers this in some detail in For a New Liberty (1978). The .pdf is here, and the relevant passage begins on page 218 of the book (which is page 227 of the .pdf): http://mises.org/rothbard/foranewlb.pdf
David Friedman has a chapter about it in The Machinery of Freedom:
How, without government, could we settle the disputes that are now settled in courts of law? How could we protect ourselves from criminals?
Consider first the easiest case, the resolution of disputes involving contracts between well-established firms. A large fraction of such disputes are now settled not by government courts but by private arbitration of the sort described in Chapter 18. The firms, when they draw up a contract, specify a procedure for arbitrating any dispute that may arise. Thus they avoid the expense and delay of the courts.
The arbitrator has no police force. His function is to render decisions, not to enforce them. Currently, arbitrated decisions are usually enforceable in the government courts, but that is a recent development; historically, enforcement came from a firm’s desire to maintain its reputation. After refusing to accept an arbitrator’s judgment, it is hard to persuade anyone else to sign a contract that specifies arbitration; no one wants to play a game of ‘heads you win, tails I lose’.
Arbitration arrangements are already widespread. As the courts continue to deteriorate, arbitration will continue to grow. But it only provides for the resolution of disputes over pre-existing contracts. Arbitration, by itself, provides no solution for the man whose car is dented by a careless driver, still less for the victim of theft; in both cases the plaintiff and defendant, having different interests and no prior agreement, are unlikely to find a mutually satisfactory arbitrator. Indeed, the defendant has no reason to accept any arbitration at all; he can only lose–which brings us to the problem of preventing coercion.
Protection from coercion is an economic good. It is presently sold in a variety of forms–Brinks guards, locks, burglar alarms. As the effectiveness of government police declines, these market substitutes for the police, like market substitutes for the courts, become more popular.
Suppose, then, that at some future time there are no government police, but instead private protection agencies. These agencies sell the service of protecting their clients against crime. Perhaps they also guarantee performance by insuring their clients against losses resulting from criminal acts.
How might such protection agencies protect? That would be an economic decision, depending on the’-costs and effectiveness of different alternatives. On the one extreme, they might limit themselves to passive defenses, installing elaborate locks and alarms. Or they might take no preventive action at all, but make great efforts to hunt down criminals guilty of crimes against their clients. They might maintain foot patrols or squad cars, like our present government police, or they might rely on electronic substitutes. In any case, they would be selling a service to their customers and would have a strong incentive to provide as high a quality of service as possible, at the lowest possible cost. It is reasonable to suppose that the quality of service would be higher and the cost lower than with the present governmental system.
Inevitably, conflicts would arise between one protective agency and another. How might they be resolved?
I come home one night and find my television set missing. I immediately call my protection agency, Tannahelp Inc., to report the theft. They send an agent. He checks the automatic camera which Tannahelp, as part of their service, installed in my living room and discovers a picture of one Joe Bock lugging the television set out the door. The Tannahelp agent contacts Joe, informs him that Tannahelp has reason to believe he is in possession of my television set, and suggests he return it, along with an extra ten dollars to pay for Tannahelp’s time and trouble in locating Joe. Joe replies that he has never seen my television set in his life and tells the Tannahelp agent to go to hell.
The agent points out that until Tannahelp is convinced there has been a mistake, he must proceed on the assumption that the television set is my property. Six Tannahelp employees, all large and energetic, will be at Joe’s door next morning to collect the set. Joe, in response, informs the agent that he also has a protection agency, Dawn Defense, and that his contract with them undoubtedly requires them to protect him if six goons try to break into his house and steal his television set.
The stage seems set for a nice little war between Tannahelp and Dawn Defense. It is precisely such a possibility that has led some libertarians who are not anarchists, most notably Ayn Rand, to reject the possibility of competing free-market protection agencies.
But wars are very expensive, and Tannahelp and Dawn Defense are both profit-making corporations, more interested in saving money than face. I think the rest of the story would be less violent than Miss Rand supposed.
The Tannahelp agent calls up his opposite number at Dawn Defense. ‘We’ve got a problem. . . .’ After explaining the situation, he points out that if Tannahelp sends six men and Dawn eight, there will be a fight. Someone might even get hurt. Whoever wins, by the time the conflict is over it will be expensive for both sides. They might even have to start paying their employees higher wages to make up for the risk. Then both firms will be forced to raise their rates. If they do, Murbard Ltd., an aggressive new firm which has been trying to get established in the area, will undercut their prices and steal their customers. There must be a better solution.
The man from Tannahelp suggests that the better solution is arbitration. They will take the dispute over my television set to a reputable local arbitration firm. If the arbitrator decides that Joe is innocent, Tannahelp agrees to pay Joe and Dawn Defense an indemnity to make up for their time and trouble. If he is found guilty, Dawn Defense will accept the verdict; since the television set is not Joe’s, they have no obligation to protect him when the men from Tannahelp come to seize it.
What I have described is a very makeshift arrangement. In practice, once anarcho-capitalist institutions were well established, protection agencies would anticipate such difficulties and arrange contracts in advance, before specific conflicts occurred, specifying the arbitrator who would settle them.
In such an anarchist society, who would make the laws? On what basis would the private arbitrator decide what acts were criminal and what their punishments should be? The answer is that systems of law would be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today. There could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars.
In such a society there might be many courts and even many legal systems. Each pair of protection agencies agree in advance on which court they will use in case of conflict. Thus the laws under which a particular case is decided are determined implicitly by advance agreement between the protection agencies whose customers are involved. In principle, there could be a different court and a different set of laws for every pair of protection agencies. In practice, many agencies would probably find it convenient to patronize the same courts, and many courts might find it convenient to adopt identical, or nearly identical, systems of law in order to simplify matters for their customers.
Before labelling a society in which different people are under different laws chaotic and unjust, remember that in our society the law under which you are judged depends on the country, state, and even city in which you happen to be. Under the arrangements I am describing, it depends instead on your protective agency and the agency of the person you accuse of a crime or who accuses you of a crime.
In such a society law is produced on the market. A court supports itself by charging for the service of arbitrating disputes. Its success depends on its reputation for honesty, reliability, and promptness and on the desirability to potential customers of the particular set of laws it judges by. The immediate customers are protection agencies. But the protection agency is itself selling a product to its customers. Part of that product is the legal system, or systems, of the courts it patronizes and under which its customers will consequently be judged. Each protection agency will try to patronize those courts under whose legal system its customers would like to live.
Consider, as a particular example, the issue of capital punishment. Some people might feel that the risk to themselves of being convicted, correctly or incorrectly, and executed for a capital crime outweighed any possible advantages of capital punishment. They would prefer, where possible, to patronize protection agencies that patronized courts that did not give capital punishment. Other citizens might feel that they would be safer from potential murderers if it was known that anyone who murdered them would end up in the electric chair. They might consider that safety more important than the risk of ending up in the electric chair themselves or of being responsible for the death of an innocent accused of murder. They would, if possible, patronize agencies that patronized courts that did give capital punishment.
If one position or the other is almost universal, it may pay all protection agencies to use courts of the one sort or the other. If some people feel one way and some the other, and if their feelings are strong enough to affect their choice of protection agencies, it pays some agencies to adopt a policy of guaranteeing, whenever possible, to use courts that do not recognize capital punishment. They can then attract anti-capital-punishment customers. Other agencies do the opposite.
Disputes between two anti-capital-punishment agencies will, of course, go to an anti-capital-punishment court; disputes between two pro-capital-punishment agencies will go to a pro-capital-punishment court. What would happen in a dispute between an anti-capital-punishment agency and a pro-capital-punishment agency? Obviously there is no way that if I kill you the case goes to one court, but if you are killed by me it goes to another. We cannot each get exactly the law we want.
We can each have our preferences reflected in the bargaining demands of our respective agencies. If the opponents of capital punishment feel more strongly than the proponents, the agencies will agree to no capital punishment; in exchange, the agencies that want capital punishment will get something else. Perhaps it will be agreed that they will not pay court costs or that some other disputed policy will go their way.
One can imagine an idealized bargaining process, for this or any other dispute, as follows: Two agencies are negotiating whether to recognize a pro- or anti-capital-punishment court. The pro agency calculates that getting a pro-capital-punishment court will be worth $20,000 a year to its customers; that is the additional amount it can get for its services if they include a guarantee of capital punishment in case of disputes with the other agency. The anti-capital-punishment agency calculates a corresponding figure of $40,000. It offers the pro agency $30,000 a year in exchange for accepting an anti-capital-punishment court. The pro agency accepts. Now the anti-capital-punishment agency can raise its rates enough to bring in an extra $35,000. Its customers are happy, since the guarantee of no capital punishment is worth more than that. The agency is happy; it is getting an extra $5,000 a year profit. The pro agency cuts its rates by an amount that costs it $25,000 a year. This lets it keep its customers and even get more, since the savings is more than enough to make up to them for not getting the court of their choice. It, too, is making a $5,000 a year profit on the transaction. As in any good trade, everyone gains.
If you find this confusing, it may be worth the trouble of going over it again; the basic principle of such negotiation will become important later when I discuss what sort of law an anarcho-capitalist society is likely to have.
If, by some chance, the customers of the two agencies feel equally strongly, perhaps two courts will be chosen, one of each kind, and cases allocated randomly between them. In any case, the customer’s legal preference, his opinion as to what sort of law he wishes to live under, will have been a major factor in determining the kind of law he does live under. It cannot completely determine it, since accused and accuser must have the same law.
In the case of capital punishment, the two positions are directly opposed. Another possibility is that certain customers may want specialized law, suited to their special circumstances. People living in desert areas might want a system of law that very clearly defines property rights in water. People in other areas would find such detailed treatment of this problem superfluous at best. At worst, it might be the source of annoying nuisance suits. Thus the desert people might all patronize one protection agency, which had a policy of always going to a court with well-developed water law. Other agencies would agree to use that court in disputes with that agency but use other courts among themselves.
Most differences among courts would probably be more subtle. People would find that the decisions of one court were prompter or easier to predict than those of another or that the customers of one protection agency were better protected than those of another. The protection agencies, trying to build their own reputations, would search for the ‘best’ courts.
Several objections may be raised to such free-market courts. The first is that they would sell justice by deciding in favor of the highest bidder. That would be suicidal; unless they maintained a reputation for honesty, they would have no customers–unlike our present judges. Another objection is that it is the business of courts and legislatures to discover laws, not create them; there cannot be two competing laws of gravity, so why should there be two competing laws of property? But there can be two competing theories about the law of gravity or the proper definition of property rights. Discovery is as much a productive activity as creation. If it is obvious what the correct law is, what rules of human interaction follow from the nature of man, then all courts will agree, just as all architects agree about the laws of physics. If it is not obvious, the market will generate research intended to discover correct laws.
Another objection is that a society of many different legal systems would be confusing. If this is found to be a serious problem, courts will have an economic incentive to adopt uniform law, just as paper companies have an incentive to produce standardized sizes of paper. New law will be introduced only when the innovator believes that its advantages outweigh the advantages of uniformity.
The most serious objection to free-market law is that plaintiff and defendant may not be able to agree on a common court. Obviously, a murderer would prefer a lenient judge. If the court were actually chosen by the disputants after the crime occurred, this might be an insuperable difficulty. Under the arrangements I have described, the court is chosen in advance by the protection agencies. There would hardly be enough murderers at any one time to support their own protective agency, one with a policy of patronizing courts that did not regard murder as a crime. Even if there were, no other protective agency would accept such courts. The murderers’ agency would either accept a reasonable court or fight a hopeless war against the rest of society.
Until he is actually accused of a crime, everyone wants laws that protect him from crime and let him interact peacefully and productively with others. Even criminals. Not many murderers would wish to live under laws that permitted them to kill–and be killed.
And Stefan Molyneux, in Practical Anarchy, says:
Interpersonal Crimes
Crimes against persons, such as murder and rape, are generally considered separate and distinct from those against property. However, this is a fairly modern distinction. In the European system of common law, crimes against persons were often punished through the confiscation of property. A rape cost the rapist such-and-such amount, a murder five times as much, and so on. This sort of arrangement is generally preferred by victims, who currently not only suffer from physical violation – but must also pay taxes to incarcerate the criminal. A woman who is raped would usually rather receive a quarter of a million dollars than pay a thousand dollars annually to cage her rapist, which adds insult to injury. Thus, crimes against persons and crimes against property are not as distinct as they may seem, since both commonly require property as restitution. A man who rapes a woman, then, incurs a debt to her of some hundreds of thousands of dollars, and must pay it or be ejected from all the economic benefits of society.
Finally, one other advantage can be termed the “Scrabble-Challenge Benefit.” In Scrabble, an accuser loses his turn if he challenges another player’s word and the challenge fails. Given the costs of resolving disputes, DROs would be very careful to ensure that those bringing false accusations would be punished through their own premiums, their contract ratings and by also assuming the entire cost of the dispute. This would greatly reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits, to the great benefit of all.
On a personal note, it has been my experience that, in talking over these matters for the last twenty-odd years, people honestly claim that they cannot conceive of a society without a centralized and coercive State. To which I feel compelled to ask them: exactly how many lawsuits have you pursued in your own life? I have yet to find even one person who has prosecuted a lawsuit through to conclusion. I also ask them whether they maintain their jobs through threats or blackmail. None. Do they keep their spouses chained in the basement? Not a one. Are their friends forced to spend time with them? Do they steal from the grocery store? Nope.
In other words, I say, it is clear that, although you say that you cannot imagine a society without a coercive State, you have only to look in the mirror to see how such a world might work. Everyone who is in your life is there by choice. Everyone you deal with on a personal or professional relationship interacts with you on a voluntary basis. You don’t use violence in your own life at all. If you are unsatisfied with a product, you return it. If you stop desiring a lover, you part. If you dislike a job, you quit. You force no one – and yet you say that society cannot exist without force. It is very hard to understand. People then reply that they do not need to use coercion because the State is there to protect them. I then ask them if they know how impossible it is to actually use the court system. They agree, of course, because they know it takes many years and a small fortune to approach even the vague possibility of justice. I also ask them if they are themselves burning to knock over an old woman and snatch her purse, but fear the police too greatly. Of course not. They just think that everyone else is. Well, after twenty years of conversations, I can tell you all: it’s not the case. Most people, given the correct incentives, act entirely honourably.
Of course, evil people exist. There are cold, sociopathic monsters in our midst. It is precisely because of the human capacity for evil that a centralized State always undermines society. Due to our capacity for sadism, our only hope is to decentralize authority, so that the evil among us can never rise to a station greater than that of excluded, hunted criminals. To create a State and give it the power of life and death does not solve the problem of human evil. It merely transforms the shallow desire for easy property to the bottomless lust for political power.
The idea that society can – and must – exist without a centralized State is the greatest lesson that the grisly years of the Twentieth Century can teach us. Our own society cannot escape the general doom of history, the inevitable destiny of social collapse as the State eats its own inhabitants. Our choice is not between the State and the free market, but between death and life. Whatever the risks of dissolving the central State, they are far less than the certain destruction of allowing it to escalate, as it inevitably will. Like a cancer patient facing certain demise, we must reach for whatever medicine shows the most promise, and not wait until it is too late.
The Stateless Society and Violent Crime
You might well now be thinking: how can a stateless society deal with violent criminals?
This challenging question can be answered using three approaches. The first is to examine how such criminals are dealt with at present; the second is to divide violent crimes into crimes of motive and crimes of passion, and the third is to show how a stateless society would deal with both categories of crime far better than any existing system.
The first question is: how are violent criminals dealt with at present? The honest answer, to any unbiased observer, is surely: they are encouraged.
A basic fact of life is that people respond to incentives. The better that crime pays, the more people will become criminals. Certain well-known habits – drugs, gambling, and prostitution in particular – are non-violent in nature, but highly desired by certain segments of the population. If these non-violent behaviors are criminalized, the profit gained by providing these services rises. Criminalizing voluntary interactions destroys all stabilizing social forces (contracts, open activity, knowledge-sharing and mediation), and so violence becomes the norm for dispute resolution.
Furthermore, wherever a law creates an environment where most criminals make more money than the police, the police simply become bribed into compliance. By increasing the profits of non-violent activities, the State ensures the corruption of the police and judicial system – thus making it both safer and more profitable to operate outside the law. It can take dozens of arrests to actually face trial – and many trials to gain a conviction. Policemen now spend about a third of their time filling out paperwork – and 90% of their time chasing non-violent criminals. Entire sections of certain cities are run by gangs of thugs, and the jails are overflowing with harmless low-level peons sent to jail as make-work for the judicial system – thus constantly increasing law-enforcement costs. Peaceful citizens are also legally disarmed through gun control laws. In this manner, the modern State literally creates, protects and profits from violent criminals.
Thus the standard to compare the stateless society’s response to violent crime is not some perfect world where thugs are effectively dealt with, but rather the current mess where violence is both encouraged and protected.
Before we turn to how a stateless society deals with crime, however, it is essential to remember that the stateless society automatically eliminates the greatest violence faced by almost all of us – the State that threatens us with guns if we don’t hand over our money – and our lives, should it decide to declare war. Thus it cannot be said that the existing system is one which minimizes violence. Quite the contrary – the honest population is violently enslaved by the State, and the dishonest provided with cash incentives and protection.
State violence – in its many forms – has been growing in Western societies over the past fifty years, as regulation, tariffs and taxation have all risen exponentially. National debts are an obvious form of intergenerational theft. Support of foreign governments also increases violence, since these governments use subsidies to buy arms and further terrorize their own populations. The arms market is also funded and controlled by governments. The list of State crimes can go on and on, but one last gulag is worth mentioning – all the millions of poor souls kidnapped and held hostage in prisons for non-violent “crimes.”
Since existing States terrorize, enslave and incarcerate literally billions of citizens, it is hard to understand how they can be seen as effectively working against violence in any form.
How does a stateless society deal with violence? First, it is important to differentiate the use of force into crimes of motive and crimes of passion. Crimes of motive are open to correction through changing incentives; any system which reduces the profits of property crimes – while increasing the profits of honest labor – will reduce these crimes. In the last part of this section, we will see how the stateless society achieves this better than any other option.
Crimes of motive can be diminished by making crime a low-profit activity relative to working for a living. Crime entails labor, and if most people could make more money working honestly for the same amount of labor, there will be far fewer criminals.
As you have read above, in a stateless society, Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs) flourish through the creation of voluntary contracts between interested parties, and all property is private. How does this affect violent crime?
Let’s look at “break and enter.” If I own a house, I will probably take out insurance against theft. Obviously, my insurance company benefits most from preventing theft, and so will encourage me to get an alarm system and so on, just as occurs now.
This situation is more or less analogous to what happens now – with the not-inconsequential adjustment that, since DROs handle policing as well as restitution, their motives for preventing theft or rendering stolen property useless is far higher than it is now. As such, much more investment in prevention would be worthwhile, such as creating “voice activated” appliances which only work for their owners.
However, the stateless society goes much, much further in preventing crime – specifically, by identifying those who are going to become criminals, and preventing that transition. In this situation, the stateless society is far more effective than any State system.
In a stateless society, contracts with DROs are required to maintain any sort of economic life – without DRO representation, citizens are unable to get a job, hire employees, rent a car, buy a house or send their children to school. Any DRO will naturally ensure that its contracts include penalties for violent crimes – so if you steal a car, your DRO has the right to use force or ostracism against you to get the car back – and probably retrieve financial penalties to boot.
How does this work in practice? Let’s take a test case. Say that you wake up one morning and decide to become a thief. Well, the first thing you have to do is cancel your coverage with your DRO, so that your DRO has less incentive against you when you steal, since you are no longer a customer. DROs would have clauses allowing you to cancel your coverage, just as insurance companies have now. Thus you would have to notify your DRO that you were dropping coverage. No problem, you’re off their list.
However, DROs as a whole really need to keep track of people who have opted out of the entire DRO system, since those people have clearly signaled their intention to go rogue and live “off the grid.” Thus if you cancel your DRO insurance, your name goes into a database available to all DROs. If you sign up with another DRO, no problem, your name is taken out. However, if you do not sign up with any other DRO, red flags pop up all over the system.
What happens then? Remember – there is no public property in a stateless society. If you’ve gone rogue, where are you going to go? You can’t take a bus – bus companies will not take rogues, because their DRO will require that they take only DRO-covered passengers, in case of injury or altercation. Want to fill up on gas? No luck, for the same reason. You can try hitchhiking, of course, which might work, but what happens when you get to your destination and try to rent a motel room? No DRO card, no luck. Want to sleep in the park? Parks are privately owned, so keep moving. Getting hungry? No groceries, no restaurants – no food! What are you going to do?
So, really, what incentive is there to turn to a life of crime? Working for a living – and being protected by a DRO – pays really well. Going off the grid and becoming a rogue pits the entire weight of the combined DRO system against you – and, even if you do manage to survive and steal something, it has probably been voice-encoded or protected in some other manner against unauthorized use.
Let’s suppose that you somehow bypass all of that, and do manage to steal, where are you going to sell your stolen goods? You’re not protected by a DRO, so who will buy from you, knowing they have no recourse if something goes wrong? And besides, anyone who interacts with you may be dropped from the DRO system too, and face all the attendant difficulties.
Will there be underground markets? Perhaps – but where would they operate? People need a place to live, cars to rent, clothes to buy, groceries to eat. No DRO means no participation in economic life.
As well, prostitution, gambling and drugs will not be “illegal” in a stateless society – and the elimination of the war on drugs alone would, it has been estimated, eliminate 80% of violent crime. There are no import duties or restrictions, so smuggling becomes completely pointless. Currency would be private, as we will see below, so counterfeiting will be much harder.
Plus, no taxation – the take-home pay for an honest worker is far higher in a stateless society!
Fewer opportunities, lower profits – and greater incentives to do an honest day’s work – there is no better way to steer those who respond to incentives alone away from a life of crime.
Thus it is fair to say that any stateless society will do a far better job of protecting its citizens against crimes of motive – what, then, about crimes of passion?
Crimes of Passion
Crimes of passion are harder to prevent – but also present far less of a threat to those outside of the circle in which they occur.
Let’s say that a man kills his wife. They are both covered by DROs, of course, and their DRO contracts would include specific prohibitions against murder. Thus, the man would be subject to all the sanctions involved in his contract – probably confined labor and rehabilitation until a certain financial penalty was paid off, since DROs would be responsible for paying such penalties to any next of kin.
Fine, you say, but what if either the man or woman was not covered by a DRO? Well, where would they live? No one would rent them an apartment. If they own their house free and clear, who would sell them food? Or gas, water or electricity? Who would employ them? What bank would accept their money?
Let’s say that only the murderous husband – planning to kill his wife – opted out of his DRO system without telling her. The first thing that his wife’s DRO would do is inform her of her husband’s action – and the ill intent it may represent – and help her relocate if desired. If she decided against relocation, her DRO would promptly drop her, since by deciding to live in close proximity with a rogue man, she was exposing herself to an untenable amount of danger (and so the DRO to a high risk for financial loss). Now, both the husband and wife have chosen to live without DROs, in a state of nature, and thus face all the insurmountable problems of getting food, shelter, money and so on.
Thus, murderers would be subject to the punishments of their DRO restrictions, or would signal their intent by dropping DRO coverage beforehand, when intervention would be possible.
Let’s look at something slightly more complicated – stalking. A woman becomes obsessed with a man, and starts calling him at all hours and following him around. Perhaps boils a bunny or two. If the man has bought insurance against stalking, his DRO will leap into action. It will call the woman’s DRO, which then says to her: stop stalking this man or we’ll drop you. And how does her DRO know whether she has really given up her stalking? Well, the man stops reporting it. And if there is a dispute, she just wears an ankle bracelet for a while to make sure. And remember – since there is no public property, she can be ordered off sidewalks, streets and parks.
(If the man has not bought insurance against stalking, no problem – it will just be more expensive to buy with a “pre-existing condition.”)
Although they may seem unfamiliar to you, DROs are not a new concept – they are as ancient as civilization itself, but have been shouldered aside by the constant escalation of State power over the last century or so. In the past, undesired social behaviour was punished through ostracism, and risks ameliorated through voluntary “friendly societies.” A man who left his wife and children – or a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock – was no longer welcome in decent society. DROs take these concepts one step further, by making all the information formerly known by the local community available to the world as whole, just like credit reports. (If you prefer your information to be kept more private, DROs will doubtless offer this option.)
There are really no limits to the benefits that DROs can confer upon a free society – insurance could be created for such things as:
· a man’s wife giving birth to a child that is not his own;
· a daughter getting pregnant out of wedlock;
· fertility problems for a married couple;
· …and much more.
All of the above insurance policies would require DROs to take active steps to prevent such behaviors – the mind boggles at all the preventative steps that could be taken! The important thing to remember is that all such contracts are voluntary, and so do not violate the moral absolute of non-violence.
In conclusion – how does the stateless society deal with violent criminals? Brilliantly! In a stateless society, there are fewer criminals, more prevention, greater sanctions – and instant forewarning of those aiming at a life of crime by their withdrawal from the DRO system. More incentives to work, fewer incentives for a life of crime, no place to hide for rogues, and general social rejection of those who decide to operate outside of the civilized world of contracts, mutual protection and general security. And remember – governments in the 20th century caused more than 200 million deaths – are we really that worried about private hold-ups and jewelry thefts in the face of those kinds of numbers?
There is no system that will replace faulty men with perfect angels, but the stateless society, by rewarding goodness and punishing evil, will at least ensure that all devils are visible – instead of cloaking them in the current deadly fog of power, politics and propaganda.
These Cages Are Only for Beasts…
As mentioned above, DROs are private insurance companies whose sole purpose is to mediate disputes between individuals. If you and I sign a contract, we both agree beforehand to submit any disputes we cannot resolve to the arbitration of a particular DRO. Furthermore, we may choose to allow the DRO to take action if either of us fails to abide by its decision, such as property seizure or financial penalties.
So far so good. However, a problem arises if I have no DRO contract, and turn to a life of theft, murder and arson. How can that be dealt with? Above, I suggested that DROs would simply band together to deny goods, services and contracts to violent criminals.
Some readers may be concerned about the power that DROs have in a stateless society. When describing how a stateless society could deal with murderers, we are reviewing an extreme situation, not everyday economic and social relations. A doctor might say: if a patient has an infected leg, and you have no antibiotics, amputate the leg. This does not mean that he advocates cutting off limbs in less serious circumstances. When I say that DROs will track violent criminals and try to deny them goods and services, I do not mean that DROs would be able to do this to just anyone. First of all, customer choice would make this impossible. A store owner can ban anyone he likes – but he cannot do so arbitrarily, or he will go out of business. Similarly, if people see a DRO acting unjustly or punitively, it will quickly find itself without customers.
The most important thing to remember is that DRO contracts are perfectly voluntary – and that hundreds of DROs will be constantly clamoring for our business. If we are afraid that they will turn into a myriad of quasi-police states, they have to address those fears if want they us as customers.
How will they do that? Why, through contractual obligations, of course! In order to sign us up, DROs will have to offer us instant contractual release – and lucrative cash rewards – if they ever harass us or treat us arbitrarily. As a matter of course, DRO contracts will include a provision to submit any conflicts with customers to a separate DRO of the customers’ choosing. All this is standard fare in the reduction of contractual risk.
In other words, every person who says, “DROs will turn into dangerous fascistic organizations,” represents a fantastic business opportunity to anyone who can address that concern in a positive manner. If you dislike the idea of DROs, just ask yourself: is there any way that my concerns could be alleviated? Are there any contractual provisions that might tempt me into a relationship with a DRO? If so, the magic of the free market will provide them. Some DROs will offer to pay you a million dollars if they treat you unjustly – and you can choose the DRO that makes that decision! Other DROs will band together and form a review board which regularly searches their warehouses for illicit arms and armies. DROs will fund “watchdog” organizations which regularly rate DRO integrity.
If none of the above appeals to you, then the DRO system is clearly not for you – but then neither is the current State system, which is already one-sided, repressive and dictatorial. And remember – in a free society such as I describe, you can always choose to live without a DRO, of course, or pay for its services as needed (as I mention in “The Stateless Society”) – as long as you do not start stealing and killing.
For those who still think DROs will become governments, I invite you to take a look at a real-world example of a DRO – one of the world’s largest “employers.” Currently, over 300,000 people rely on it for a significant portion of their income. Most of what they sell is so inexpensive that lawsuits are not cost-effective, and transactions regularly cross incompatible legal borders – in other words, they operate in a stateless society. So how does eBay resolve disputes? Simply through dialogue and the dissemination of information (see http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/unpaid-item-process.html). If I do not pay for something I receive, I get a strike against me. If I do not ship something that I was paid for, I also get a strike. Everyone I deal with can also rate my products, service and support. If I am rated poorly, I have to sell my goods for less since, everything else being equal, people prefer dealing with a better-rated vendor (or buyer). If enough people rate me poorly, I will go out of business, because the risk of dealing with me becomes too great. There are no police or courts or violence involved here – thefts are simply dealt with through communication and information sharing.
Thus eBay is an example of the largest DRO around – are we really afraid that it is going to turn into a quasi-government? Do any of us truly lie awake wondering whether the eBay SWAT team is going to break down our doors and drag us away to some offshore J2EE coding gulag?
Any system can be abused – which is why governments are so abhorrent – and so checks and balances are essential to any proposed form of social organization. That’s the beauty of the DRO approach. Those who dislike, mistrust or fear DROs do not have to have anything to do with them, and can rely on handshakes, reputation and trust – or start their own DRO. Those whose scope prohibits such approaches – multi-million dollar contracts or long-term leases come to mind – can turn to DROs. Those who are afraid of DROs becoming mini-States can set up watchdog agencies and monitor them (paid for by others who share such fears, perhaps).
In short, either the majority of human beings can cooperate for mutual advantage, or they cannot. If they can, a stateless society will work – especially since millions of minds far better than mine will be constantly searching for the best solutions. If they cannot, then no society will ever work, and we are doomed to slavery and savagery by nature.
Therefore, I stand by my thesis in “Caging the Beasts” above – if you mug, rape or kill, I will support any social action that thwarts your capacity to survive in society. I want to see you hounded into the wilderness, refused hotel rooms and groceries – and I want your face plastered everywhere, so that the innocent can stay safe by keeping you at bay. I abhor the thug as much as I abhor the State – and it is because such thugs exist that the State cannot be suffered to continue, since the State always disarms honest citizens and encourages, promotes and protects the thugs.
And a little later:
Stateless Prisons
One of the great challenges of anarchistic philosophy is the problem of prisons, or the physical restraint of violent criminals. Let us examine the punitive mechanisms that might exist in the absence of a coercive State system.
Firstly, we can assume that in the absence of a State, DROs will necessarily band together to deny the advantages of a modern economic life to those individuals who egregiously harm their fellow citizens. Such necessities as bank accounts, credit, transportation, lodging, food and so on, can all be withheld from those who have been proven to have committed violent crimes. Also, in a stateless society, since there is no such thing as “public” property, violent criminals would have a tough time getting anywhere, since roads, parks, forests and so on would all be privately owned. Anybody providing aid or comfort to a person convicted of a violent crime could face a withdrawal of services and protections from their own DRO, and so would avoid giving such help.
However, this solution alone has not been sufficient for some people, who still feel that sociopathic and violent criminals need to be physically restrained or imprisoned for society to be safe.
Before tackling this issue, I would like to point out that if the problem of violent sociopaths is very extensive, then surely any moral justifications for the existence of a State become that much more untenable. If society literally swarms with evil people, then those evil people will surely overwhelm the State, the police, and the military, and prey upon legally disarmed citizens to their hearts content. If, however, there are very few evil people, then we surely do not need a State to protect us from such a tiny problem. In other words, if there are a lot of evil people, we cannot have a State – and if there are few evil people, then we do not need a State.
Also, whenever punitive measures are discussed, fears arise about unjust punishments. What if DROs act against someone who has been wrongly convicted of a crime? Well, according to our usual methodology, we must remember to compare a stateless society not to some perfect utopia, but rather to existing statist societies. Are people currently unjustly sent to prison? You bet. Are non-violent drug users jailed? Yes, by the millions. Do some people pretend to confess to less grievous crimes because they are threatened with terrifying sentences if they do not? Of course. Do the police manufacture evidence? Yes. Are policemen rewarded for preventing crimes, or obtaining convictions? The latter.
And – are war criminals such as George Bush charged with their genocidal crimes? Of course not. They are given pensions and speaking tours.
If we live in a terrifyingly obese nation, saying we should not bother dieting because some thin people get diabetes is irrational to say the least.
The Rapist
Let us imagine what might happen to a rapist in a stateless society. All general DRO contracts will include “rape protection,” since DROs will want to avoid incurring the medical, psychological and income costs of a rape for one of their own customers. Part of “rape protection” will be the provision of significant financial restitution to a rape victim. (Women who can’t afford “rape protection” will be subsidized by charities – or lawyers will represent them pro bono in return for a cut of the restitution.)
If a woman gets raped, she then applies to her DRO for restitution. The DRO then finds her rapist – using the most advanced forensic techniques available – and sends an agent to knock on his door.
“Good morning, sir,” the agent will politely say. “You have been charged with rape, and I’m here to inform you of your options. We wish to make this process as painless and non-intrusive as possible for you, and so will schedule a trial at the time of your earliest convenience. If you do not attend this trial, or testify falsely, or attempt to flee, we shall apply significant sanctions against you, which are outlined in your existing DRO contract. Our agreement with your bank allows us to freeze your assets – except for basic living and legal expenses – the moment that you are charged with a violent crime. We also have agreements with airlines, road, bus and train companies, as well as gas stations, to prevent you from leaving town until this matter is resolved.
“You can represent yourself in this trial, choose from one of our lawyers, or we will pay for any lawyer you prefer, at standard rates. Also, as per our existing contract, we are to be allowed access to your home for purposes of investigation. You are free to deny us this access, of course, but then we shall assume that you are guilty of the crime, and will apply all the sanctions allowed to us by contract.
“If you are found to be innocent of this crime, we will pay you the sum of twenty thousand dollars, to be funded by the woman who has charged you with rape. We will also offer free psychological counseling for you, in order to help you avoid such accusers in the future.”
The trial will commence, and will return a verdict in due course. (It seems highly likely that lie-detectors will be admissible, since they are more than 90% accurate when used correctly, which is better than most witnesses. The reason that they are not admissible now is that they would make lawyers less valuable, and also would reveal the degree to which the State police lie.)
If the man is found guilty, he will receive another visit from his DRO representative.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the agent will say. “You have been found guilty of rape, and I’m here to inform you of your punishment. We have a reciprocal agreement with your bank, which has now put a hold on your accounts, and provided us limited access. We will be deducting double the costs of our investigation and trial from your funds, and will also be transferring half a million dollars to the woman that you raped. We are aware that you do not have sufficient funds to cover this cost, which we will address in a moment. We also have reciprocal agreements with the companies that provide water and electricity to your house, and those will now be cut off. Furthermore, no gas station will sell you gasoline, and no train station, airline or bus company will sell you a ticket. We have made arrangements with all of the local grocery stores to deny you service, either in person or online. If you set foot on the street outside your house, which is owned privately, you will be physically removed for trespassing. Your wife and children can leave at any time. If they have no place to go, we will cover their transition costs, and charge you for them.
“Of course, you have the right to appeal this sentence, and if you successfully appeal, we would transfer our costs to the woman who has accused you of rape, and pay you for the inconvenience we have caused you. If, however, your appeal fails, all additional costs will be added to your debt.
“I can tell you openly that if you choose to stay in your house, you will be unable to survive for very long. You will run out of food and water. You can attempt to escape your own house, of course, leaving all of your possessions. If you do successfully escape, be aware that you are now entered into a central registry, and no reputable DRO will ever represent you. Furthermore, all DROs which have reciprocal agreements with us – which is the vast majority of them – will withdraw services from their own customers if those customers provide you with any goods or services. For the rest of your life, it will be almost impossible for you to open a bank account, use centralized currency, carry a credit card, own a car, buy gas, use a road – or any other form of transportation – and gaining food, water and lodging will be a constant nightmare for you. You will spend your entire existence running, hiding and begging, and will never find peace, solace or comfort in any place.
“However, there is an option. If you come with me now, we will take you to a place of work for a period of ten years. During that time, you will be working for us in a capacity which will be determined by your skills. If you do not have any viable skills, we will train you. Your wages will go to us, and we will deduct the costs of your incarceration, as well as any of the costs I outlined above which are not covered by your existing funds. A small amount of your wages will be set aside to help get you started after your release.
“During your stay with us, we will do our utmost help you, because we do not want to have to go through all of this with again you in the future. You will take courses on ethics. You will take courses on anger management. You will take psychological counseling. You will emerge from your work term a far better person. And when you do emerge, all of your rights will be fully restored, and you will be able to participate once more in the economic and social life of society.
“You have a choice now, and I want you to understand the full ramifications of that choice. If you come with me now, this is the best offer that I can give you. If you decide to stay in your house, and later change your mind, the penalties will be far greater. If you escape, and later change your mind, the penalties will be greater still. In our experience, 99.99% of people who either run or stay end up changing their minds, and end up that much worse off. The remaining 0.01%? They commit suicide.
“The choice is now yours. Do the right thing. Do the wise thing. Come with me.”
Can we really imagine that anyone would choose to stay in his own house and die of thirst, unable to even flush his toilet? Can we imagine that anyone would choose a life of perpetual running and hiding and begging? Even if the rapist had no interest in becoming a better person, surely the cost/benefit of the options outlined above would convince him.
There will always be a small number of truly evil or insane people within society. There are far better ways of dealing with them than our existing system of dehumanizing, brutal and destructive State gulags, which generally serve only to expand their criminal intent, skills and contacts. Also, it is important to remember that the existing State prisons contain relatively few evil or insane people. The majority of those in jail are nonviolent offenders, enslaved and in chains because they used recreational drugs, or gambled, or went to a prostitute, or did not pay all their taxes, or other such innocuous nonsense – or turned to crime because State “vice” prohibitions made crime so profitable, and State “education” kept them so ignorant.
Our choice, then, is between a system which removes the tiny minority of evil people from society, rehabilitates them if all possible, and makes them work productively to support their own confinement – or a State system which spends most of its time and energies enslaving innocent people, while letting the evil and insane roam free – or become Commander in Chief.
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