Why I oppose monopolistic justice (sic) systems
June 5, 2008 – 8:17 am by JohnThe only remaining halfway-decent argument against the unregulated free market that I’ve encountered is that private police, courts, and retribution systems would be unaccountable to the actual justice of natural law and result in an increase in unchecked use of force against innocents. This would happen, they say, because there is no final legal authority in a free society. Unfortunately for minarchists and other Statists, their argument doesn’t hold much water, for several reasons, not the least of which is that non-monopolistic legal systems have already existed in the past, in places like medieval Ireland, the Icelandic Free State, and others that Bruce Benson has detailed. Additionally, while the nature of a defense/trial/retribution system involves the use of retaliatory and even preventive force, which might complicate the implementation of such societal systems in a free society, there is simply no compelling reason that capitalism would be more efficient and fair at everything else except this.
Perhaps the most incontrovertible reason of all that legal systems in a free society would be better than our Statist systems is that our Statist systems are so farcically inefficient and so disastrously unjust that non-monopolistic legal systems would at least be no worse.
The example of the day is Ryan Frederick, a Virginia man whose life is being ruined by a justice system he wanted no part of and had no choice but to submit to. His life is in the process of being ruined because of the very fact that the State is the final, ultimate legal authority in our society and he has literally no recourse against it. Radley Balko has followed his case closely from the beginning. To quote that most recent blag post:
A Chesapeake, Virginia grand jury indicted 28-year-old Ryan Frederick on charges of capital murder yesterday. The more severe charge (he was originally charged with first-degree murder) means the state will likely seek the death penalty, though there has been no official announcement as of yet.
Last January, Frederick shot and killed Det. Jarrod Shivers during a drug raid on Frederick’s home. Police were looking for a major marijuana growing operation in Frederick’s garage. They didn’t find one. Frederick had no prior criminal record, and had a misdemeanor amount of pot (he says a few joints) in his home at the time of the raid. His home had also been broken into a few days prior to the raid.
We now know that the police informant whose tip led to the raid was responsible for the break-in. We also know that informant had credit card fraud charges pending against him that were dropped just before the raid. What we still don’t know is if his burglary of Frederick’s home was done with the knowledge or consent of the police.
Every one of the police officers who entered his home had no right to be there nor to break into his home any more than you or I did. The fact that they call themselves the police and have certain uniforms on does not give them free rein to go breaking into people’s homes, terrorizing them, stealing their property, or beating, shooting, or killing them.
The police department’s status as a monopolistic law-enforcement entity allows it to do such things and get away with it, and to charge its victims as criminals instead of vice versa. The justice (sic) system’s status as another wing of the State, in direct cooperation with the police department, allows it to terrorize, kidnap, and enslave a young man who acted only in self-defense against those criminals, and suffer no consequences for such unjust aggression.
In other words, as is so often the case and as I try to chronicle on this web page, the exact horrors that Statists assign to their imaginary anarchic society are true of the very real Statist society we suffer in every day.
Perhaps the Statist would argue, Of course, in any human society, injustices will be committed and people will suffer wrongly, and they will have no chance of being saved from it by well-meaning individuals like you and me; the reason the State is better is because it minimizes such instances, whereas anarchy would produce a slew of examples like this where the victim had no recourse and no defense against the injustices committed against him.
I obviously think that is less than unlikely, but I suppose that’s a debate worth having. The best beginning to that debate is for Statists to admit that there is something terribly wrong with our Statist legal system. At the very least, admit that. I think Anthony de Jasay was wright when he wrote in his masterpiece The State (emphasis in original):
In conflict with his own kind [another individual or private company], he would have the faculty of appeal, of recourse to a superior instance. Freedom from conflict of like with like, however, puts him in potential conflict with the higher instance. In opting for the latter, the possibility of recourse is given up. The state cannot be seriously expected to arbitrate conflicts to which it is an interested party, nor can we invoke its help in our quarrels with it. This is why accepting private interference, no matter how much it resembles “Darwinist sweepstakes,” is a risk of a different order from that of accepting state interference. The prudential argument against putting public in place of private constraints is not that one hurts more than the other. It is the somewhat indirect but no less powerful one that doing so makes the state unfit to perform the one service for civil society which no other body can render—that of being the instance of appeal.
As an example of how free, non-coercive, and voluntary justice systems would work better than monopolistic Statist ones, consider the fact that many of my Statist friends think it is okay for people who wear uniforms with certain words on them to break into someone’s home, rob him, and shoot at him, and then accuse their victim of a crime and enslave him for the rest of his life; but I would have nothing to do with such a ridiculous legal system in a free society and nor would any other sensible person, and therefore such evil, impractical, and violent legal codes would become less and less acceptable over time.
1 Trackback(s)