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NOTE 12. The Public Sector, III: Police, Law, and the Courts

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Chapter 12 The Public Sector 3 Police, Law and the Courts

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Police Protection The market and private enterprise do exist,

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and so most people can readily envision a free market in most goods and services.

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Probably the most difficult single area to grasp, however, is the abolition of government

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Operations in the Service of Protection, Police, the Courts, etc., the area encompassing defense

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of person and property against attack or invasion.

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How could private enterprise and the free market possibly provide such service?

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How could police, legal systems, judicial services, law enforcement, prisons, how could

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these be provided in a free market?

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We have already seen how a great deal of police protection, at the least, could be supplied

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by the various owners of streets and land areas.

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But we now need to examine this entire area systematically.

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In the first place, there is a common fallacy, held even by most advocates of laissez-faire,

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that the government must supply police protection, as if police protection were a single, absolute

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is an absolute entity, a fixed quantity of something which the government supplies to all.

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But in actual fact, there is no absolute commodity called police protection any more than there is an absolute single commodity called food or shelter.

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It is true that everyone pays taxes for a seemingly fixed quantity of protection, but this is a myth.

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In actual fact, there are almost infinite degrees of all sorts of protection.

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For any given person or business, the police can provide everything from a policeman on

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the beat, who patrols once a night, to two policemen patrolling constantly on each block,

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to cruising patrol cars, to one or even several round-the-clock personal bodyguards.

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Furthermore, there are many other decisions the police must make, the complexity of which

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Which becomes evident as soon as we look beneath the veil of the myth of absolute protection.

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How shall the police allocate their funds, which are, of course, always limited, as are

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the funds of all other individuals, organizations and agencies?

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How much shall the police invest in electronic equipment, fingerprinting equipment, detectives

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as against uniformed police, patrol cars as against foot police, etc.

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The point is that government has no rational way to make these allocations.

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The government only knows that it has a limited budget.

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Its allocations of funds are then subject to the full play of politics, boondoggling

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and bureaucratic inefficiency, with no indication at all as to whether the police department

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is serving the consumers in a way responsive to their desires, or whether it is doing so

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efficiently.

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The situation would be different if police services were supplied on a free competitive

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market.

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In that case, consumers would pay for whatever degree of protection they wished to purchase.

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The consumers who just want to see a policeman once in a while would pay less than those

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For those who want continuous patrolling, and far less than those who demand 24-hour bodyguard service.

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On the free market, protection would be supplied in proportion and in whatever way that the consumers wish to pay for it.

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A drive for efficiency would be insured, as it always is on the market, by the compulsion to make profits and avoid losses,

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and thereby to keep costs low and to serve the highest demands of the consumers.

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Any police firm that suffers from gross inefficiency would soon go bankrupt and disappear.

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One big problem a government police force must always face is what laws really to enforce.

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Police departments are theoretically faced with the absolute injunction enforce all laws,

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But in practice, a limited budget forces them to allocate their personnel and equipment to

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the most urgent crimes.

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But the absolute dictum pursues them and works against a rational allocation of resources.

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On the free market, what would be enforced is whatever the customers are willing to pay

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for.

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Suppose, for example, that Mr. Jones has a precious gem he believes might soon be stolen.

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He can ask and pay for round-the-clock police protection at whatever strength he may wish

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to work out with the police company.

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He might, on the other hand, also have a private road on his estate he doesn't want many people

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to travel on, but he might not care very much about trespassers on that road.

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In that case, he won't devote any police resources to protecting the road.

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As on the market in general, it is up to the consumer.

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And since all of us are consumers, this means each person individually decides how much

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and what kind of protection he wants and is willing to buy.

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All that we have said about landowners' police applies to private police in general.

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Free market police would not only be efficient, they would have a strong incentive to be courteous

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and to refrain from brutality against either their clients or their clients' friends

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or customers.

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A private central park would be guarded efficiently in order to maximize park revenue rather than

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have a prohibitive curfew imposed on innocent and paying customers.

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A free market in police would reward efficient and courteous police protection to customers

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and penalize any falling off from this standard.

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No longer would there be the current disjunction between service and payment inherent in all

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government operations.

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A disjunction which means that police, like all other government agencies, acquire their

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revenue not voluntarily and competitively from consumers, but from the taxpayers, coercively.

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In fact, as government police have become increasingly inefficient, consumers have been

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in turning more and more to private forms of protection.

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We have already mentioned block or neighborhood protection.

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There are also private guards, insurance companies, private detectives and such increasingly sophisticated

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equipment as safes, locks and closed circuit TV and burglar alarms.

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The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice estimated

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in 1969 that government police cost the American public $2.8 billion a year, while it spends

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$1.35 billion on private protection service and another $200 million on equipment, so

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that private protection expenses amounted to over half the outlay on government police.

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These figures should give pause to those credulous folk who believe that police protection is

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is somehow, by some mystic right or power, necessarily and forevermore an attribute of state sovereignty.

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Every reader of detective fiction knows that private insurance detectives are far more efficient than the police in recovering stolen property.

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Not only is the insurance company impelled by economics to serve the consumer and thereby try to avoid paying benefits,

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But the major focus of the insurance company is very different from that of the police.

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The police, standing as they do for a mythical society, are primarily interested in catching

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and punishing the criminal.

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Restoring the stolen loot to the victim is strictly secondary.

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To the insurance company and its detectives, on the other hand, the prime concern is recovery

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of the Loot, and apprehension and punishment of the criminal is secondary to the prime

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purpose of aiding the victim of crime.

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Here we see again the difference between a private firm impelled to serve the customer,

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victim of crime, and the public police, which is under no such economic compulsion.

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We cannot blueprint a market that exists only as an hypothesis, but it is reasonable to

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to believe that police service in the libertarian society would be supplied by the landowners

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or by insurance companies.

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Since insurance companies would be paying benefits to victims of crime, it is highly

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likely that they would supply police service as a means of keeping down crime and hence

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their payment of benefits.

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It is certainly likely in any case that police service would be paid for in regular monthly

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Premiums with the police agency, whether insurance company or not, called on whenever needed.

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This supplies what should be the first simple answer to a typical nightmare question of

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people who first hear about the idea of a totally private police.

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Why, that means that if you're attacked or robbed, you have to rush over to a policeman

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and start dickering on how much it will cost to defend you.

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A moment's reflection should show that no service is supplied in this way on the free

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market.

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Obviously, the person who wants to be protected by Agency A or Insurance Company B will pay

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regular premiums rather than wait to be attacked before buying protection.

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But suppose an emergency occurs and a Company A policeman sees someone being mugged.

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Will he stop to ask if the victim has bought insurance from Company A?

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In the first place, this sort of street crime will be taken care of, as we noted above,

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by the police hired by whoever owns the street in question.

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But what of the unlikely case that a neighborhood does not have street police, and a policeman

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of Company A happens to see someone being attacked?

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Will he rush to the victim's defense?

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That of course would be up to Company A. But it is scarcely conceivable that private police

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Police companies would not cultivate goodwill by making it a policy to give free aid to

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victims in emergency situations, and perhaps ask the rescued victim for a voluntary donation

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afterward.

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In the case of a homeowner being robbed or attacked, then of course he will call on whatever

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police company he has been using.

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He will call police company A, rather than the police he calls upon now.

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Man ensures efficiency, low price, and high quality.

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And there is no reason to assume a priori, as many people do, that there is something

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divinely ordained about having only one police agency in a given geographical area.

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Economists have often claimed that the production of certain goods or services is a natural

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monopoly, so that more than one private agency could not long survive in a given area.

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Perhaps, although only a totally free market could decide the matter once and for all,

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only the market can decide what and how many firms and of what size and quality can survive in active competition.

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But there is no reason to suppose in advance that police protection is a natural monopoly.

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After all, insurance companies are not, and if we can have metropolitan, equitable, prudential, etc.,

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Insurance Companies Coexisting Side-by-Side? Why Not Metropolitan, Equitable and Prudential

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Police Protection Companies? Gustave de Molinari, the 19th century French

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free-market economist, was the first person in history to contemplate and advocate a free

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market for police protection. Molinari estimated that there would eventually

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turn out to be several private police agencies side-by-side in the cities, and one private

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Agency in Each Rural Area Perhaps, but we must realize that modern technology

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makes much more feasible branch offices of large urban firms in even the most remote

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rural areas.

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A person living in a small village in Wyoming, therefore, could employ the services of a

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local protection company, or he might use a nearby branch office of the Metropolitan

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Protection Company.

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But how could a poor person afford private protection he would have to pay for instead

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of getting free protection as he does now?

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There are several answers to this question, one of the most common criticisms of the idea

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of totally private police protection.

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One is that this problem of course applies to any commodity or service in the libertarian

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society, not just the police.

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It isn't protection necessary, perhaps, but then so is food of many different kinds, clothing,

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shelter, etc.

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Surely these are at least as vital, if not more so, than police protection, and yet almost

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nobody says that therefore the government must nationalize food, clothing, shelter,

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etc. and supply these free as a compulsory monopoly.

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Only poor people would be supplied in general by private charity, as we saw in our chapter

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on welfare.

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Furthermore, in the specific case of police, there would undoubtedly be ways of voluntarily

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supplying free police protection to the indigent, either by the police companies themselves

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for goodwill, as hospitals and doctors do now, or by special police aid societies that

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would do work similar to legal aid societies today. Legal aid societies voluntarily supply

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free legal counsel to the indigent in trouble with the authorities.

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There are important supplementary considerations. As we have seen, police service is not free.

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It is paid for by the taxpayer, and the taxpayer is very often the poor person himself. He

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He may very well be paying more in taxes for police now than he would in fees to private

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and far more efficient police companies. Furthermore, the police companies would be tapping a mass

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market. With the economies of such a large-scale market, police protection would undoubtedly

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be much cheaper. No police company would wish to price itself out of a large chunk of its

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and the cost of protection would be no more prohibitively expensive than, say, the cost of insurance today.

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In fact, it would tend to be much cheaper than current insurance, because the insurance industry today is heavily regulated by government to keep out low-cost competition.

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There is a final nightmare which most people who have contemplated private protection agencies consider to be decisive in rejecting such a concept.

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Wouldn't the agencies always be clashing? Wouldn't anarchy break out with perpetual

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conflicts between police forces as one person calls in his police while a rival calls in

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his? There are several levels of answers to this

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crucial question. In the first place, since there would be no overall state, no central

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or even single local government, we would at least be spared the horror of interstate wars

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with their plethora of massive super destructive and now nuclear weapons. As we look back through

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history isn't it painfully clear that the number of people killed in isolated neighborhood rumbles

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or conflicts is as nothing to the total mass devastation of interstate wars? There are good

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reasons for this.

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To avoid emotionalism, let us take two hypothetical countries, Ruritania and Walldavia.

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If both Ruritania and Walldavia were dissolved into a libertarian society, with no government

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and innumerable private individuals, firms and police agencies, the only clashes that

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could break out would be local, and the weaponry would necessarily be strictly limited in scope

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Hope and Devastation Suppose that in a Ruritanian city, two police

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agencies clash and start shooting it out.

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At worst, they could not use mass bombing or nuclear destruction or germ warfare, since

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they themselves would be blown up in the Holocaust.

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It is the slicing off of territorial areas into single governmental monopolies that leads

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to mass destruction.

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For then, if the single monopoly government of Walldavia confronts its ancient rival,

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the government of Ruritania, each can wield weapons of mass destruction and even nuclear

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warfare, because it will be the other guy and the other country they will hurt.

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Furthermore, now that every person is a subject of a monopoly government, in the eyes of every

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other government, he becomes irretrievably identified with his government.

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The Citizen of France is identified with his government, and therefore, if another government

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attacks France, it will attack the citizenry, as well as the government of France.

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But if Company A battles with Company B, the most that can happen is that the respective

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customers of each company may be dragged into the battle, but no one else.

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It should be evident, then, that even if the worst happened, and a libertarian world would

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Should indeed become a world of anarchy, we would still be much better off than we

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are now, at the mercy of rampant anarchic nation-states, each possessing a fearsome

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monopoly of weapons of mass destruction.

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We must never forget that we are all living and always have lived in a world of international

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anarchy, in a world of coercive nation-states unchecked by any overall world government,

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and there is no prospect of this situation changing.

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A libertarian world then, even if anarchic, would still not suffer the brutal wars, the

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mass devastation, the A-bombing that our state-ridden world has suffered for centuries.

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Even if local police clash continually, there would be no more Dresdens, no more Hiroshimas.

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But there is far more to be said.

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We should never concede that this local anarchy would be likely to occur.

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Let us separate the problem of police clashes into distinct and different parts, honest

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disagreements and the attempt of one or more police forces to become outlaws and to extract

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funds or impose their rule by coercion.

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Let us assume for a moment that the police forces will be honest and that they are only

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Surely riven by honest clashes of opinion, we will set aside for a while the problem

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of outlaw police.

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Surely one of the very important aspects of protection service the police can offer their

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respective customers is quiet protection.

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Every consumer, every buyer of police protection would wish above all for protection that is

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efficient and quiet, with no conflicts or disturbances.

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Every police agency would be fully aware of this vital fact.

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To assume that police would continually clash and battle with each other is absurd, for

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it ignores the devastating effect that this chaotic anarchy would have on the business

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of all the police companies.

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To put it bluntly, such wars and conflicts would be bad, very bad, for business.

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Therefore, on the free market, the police agencies would all see to it that there would

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would be no clashes between them, and that all conflicts of opinion would be ironed out

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in private courts, decided by private judges or arbitrators.

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To get more specific, in the first place, as we have said, clashes would be minimal

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because the street owner would have his guards, the storekeeper his, the landlord his, and

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the homeowner his own police company.

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Realistically, in the everyday world, there would be little room for direct clashes between police agencies.

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But suppose, as will sometimes occur, two neighboring homeowners get into a fight.

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Each accuses the other of initiating assault or violence, and each calls on his own police company.

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Should they happen to subscribe to different companies? What then?

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Again, it would be pointless and economically as well as physically self-destructive for

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the two police companies to start shooting it out.

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Instead, every police company, to remain in business at all, would announce as a vital

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part of its service the use of private courts or arbitrators to decide who is in the wrong.

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The Courts

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It is then that the judge or arbitrator decides Smith was in the wrong in a dispute and that

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he aggressed against Jones.

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If Smith accepts the verdict, then whatever damages or punishment is levied, there is

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no problem for the theory of libertarian protection.

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But what if he does not accept it?

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Or suppose another example.

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Jones is robbed.

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He sets his police company to do detective work in trying to track down the criminal.

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The company decides that a certain Brown is the criminal.

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Then what?

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If Brown acknowledges his guilt, then again there is no problem and judicial punishment

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proceeds, centering on forcing the criminal to make restitution to the victim.

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But again, what if Brown denies his guilt?

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These cases take us out of the realm of police protection and into another vital area of

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of Protection, judicial service, that is, the provision in accordance with generally

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accepted procedures of a method of trying as best as one can to determine who is the

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criminal or who is the breaker of contracts in any sort of crime or dispute.

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Many people, even those who acknowledge that there could be privately competitive police

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service supplied on a free market, balk at the idea of totally private courts.

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How in the world could courts be private?

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How would courts employ force in a world without government?

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Wouldn't eternal conflicts and anarchy then ensue?

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In the first place, the monopoly courts of government are subject to the same grievous

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problems, inefficiencies, and contempt for the consumer as any other government operation.

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We all know that judges, for example, are not selected according to their wisdom, probity,

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for efficiency in serving the consumer, but are political hacks chosen by the political

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process. Furthermore, the courts are monopolies. If, for example, the courts in some town or

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city should become corrupt, venal, oppressive, or inefficient, the citizen at present has

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no recourse. The aggrieved citizen of Deep Falls, Wyoming must be governed by the local

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In a libertarian society, there would be many courts, many judges to whom he could turn.

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Again, there is no reason to assume a natural monopoly of judicial wisdom.

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The Deep Falls citizen could, for example, call upon the local branch of the Prudential Judicial Company.

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How would courts be financed in a free society?

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There are many possibilities.

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Possibly, each individual would subscribe to a court service, paying a monthly premium and then calling upon the court if he is in need.

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Or, since courts will probably be needed much less frequently than policemen, he may pay a fee whenever he chooses to use the court,

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with the criminal or contract breaker eventually recompensing the victim or plaintiff.

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Or, in still a third possibility, the courts may be hired by the police agencies to settle

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disputes.

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Or, there may even be vertically integrated firms supplying both police and judicial service.

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The Prudential Judicial Company might have a police and a judicial division.

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Only the market will be able to decide which of these methods will be most appropriate.

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We should all be more familiar with the increasing use of private arbitration even in our present

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society.

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The government courts have become so clogged, inefficient and wasteful that more and more

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parties to disputes are turning to private arbitrators as a cheaper and far less time-consuming

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way of settling their disputes.

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In recent years, private arbitration has become a growing and highly successful profession.

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Being voluntary, furthermore, the rules of arbitration can be decided rapidly by the

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parties themselves, without the need for a ponderous complex legal framework applicable

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to all citizens.

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Arbitration therefore permits judgments to be made by people expert in the trade or occupation

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concerned.

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Currently, the American Arbitration Association, whose motto is, the hand clasp is mightier

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has 25 regional offices throughout the country with 23,000 arbitrators.

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In 1969, the association conducted over 22,000 arbitrations.

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In addition, the insurance companies adjust over 50,000 claims a year through voluntary arbitration.

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There is also a growing and successful use of private arbitrators in automobile accident claim cases.

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It might be protested that while performing an ever greater proportion of judicial functions,

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the private arbitrator's decisions are still enforced by the courts, so that once the disputing

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parties agree on an arbitrator, his decision becomes legally binding.

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This is true, but it was not the case before 1920, and the arbitration profession grew

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00:27:26.520 --> 00:27:32.360
grew at as rapid a rate from 1900 to 1920 as it has since.

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In fact, the modern arbitration movement began in full force in England during the time of

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the American Civil War, with merchants increasingly using the private courts provided by voluntary

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arbitrators, even though the decisions were not legally binding.

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By 1900, voluntary arbitration began to take hold in the United States.

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In fact, in medieval England, the entire structure of merchant law, which was handled clumsily

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and inefficiently by the government's courts, grew up in private merchants' courts.

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The merchants' courts were purely voluntary arbitrators, and the decisions were not legally

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binding.

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How then were they successful?

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The answer is that the merchants, in the Middle Ages and down to 1920, relied solely on ostracism

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Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results.

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The merchant who broke the understanding would not be able to make a decision on their own.

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00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:36.040
In other words, should a merchant refuse to submit to arbitration or ignore a decision,

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the other merchants would publish this fact in the trade and would refuse to deal with

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the recalcitrant merchant, bringing him quickly to heel.

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Woldridge mentions one medieval example.

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by the Results.

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The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither

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would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows and

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their power over his goods proved, if anything, more effective than physical coercion.

323
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Take John of Homing, who made his living marketing wholesale quantities of fish.

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When John sold a lot of herring on the representation that it conformed to a three-barrel sample,

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In modern times, ostracism became even more effective, and it included the knowledge that anyone who ignored an arbitrator's award could never again avail himself of an arbitrator's services.

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Industrialist Owen D. Young, head of General Electric, concluded that the moral censure of other businessmen was a far more effective sanction than legal enforcement.

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Nowadays, modern technology, computers and credit ratings would make such nationwide ostracism even more effective than it has ever been in the past.

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00:30:06.760 --> 00:30:14.760
Even if purely voluntary arbitration is sufficient for commercial disputes, however, what of frankly criminal activities?

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The mugger, the rapist, the bank robber.

330
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In these cases, it must be admitted that ostracism would probably not be sufficient,

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even though it would also include, we must remember, refusal of private street owners to allow such criminals in their areas.

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For the criminal cases, then, courts and legal enforcement become necessary.

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00:30:36.760 --> 00:30:40.760
How, then, would the courts operate in the libertarian society?

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In particular, how could they enforce their decisions?

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In all their operations, furthermore, they must observe the critical libertarian rule

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that no physical force may be used against anyone who has not been convicted as a criminal.

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Otherwise, the users of such force, whether police or courts, would be themselves liable to be convicted as aggressors if it turned out that the person they had used force against was innocent of crime.

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In contrast to statist systems, no policeman or judge could be granted special immunity to use coercion beyond what anyone else in society could use.

339
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Let us now take the case we mentioned before.

340
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4. Mr. Jones is robbed. His hired detective agency decides that one, Brown, committed

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00:31:31.120 --> 00:31:37.940
the crime, and Brown refuses to concede his guilt. What then? In the first place, we must

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recognize that there is, at present, no overall world court or world government enforcing

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its decrees. Yet, while we live in a state of international anarchy, there is little

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People are no problem in disputes between private citizens of two countries.

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Suppose that right now, for example, a citizen of Uruguay claims that he has been swindled

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by a citizen of Argentina.

347
00:32:01.900 --> 00:32:03.760
Which court does he go to?

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He goes to his own, that is, the victim's or the plaintiff's court.

349
00:32:08.540 --> 00:32:13.900
The case proceeds in the Uruguayan court, and its decision is honored by the Argentinian

350
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court.

351
00:32:15.380 --> 00:32:20.940
The same is true if an American feels he has been swindled by a Canadian, and so on.

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00:32:20.940 --> 00:32:26.300
In Europe after the Roman Empire, when German tribes lived side by side and in the same

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areas, if a Visigoth felt that he had been injured by a Frank, he took the case to his

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own court, and the decision was generally accepted by the Franks.

355
00:32:36.820 --> 00:32:42.780
Going to the plaintiff's court is the rational libertarian procedure as well, since the victim

356
00:32:42.780 --> 00:32:47.740
Brown or plaintiff is the one who is aggrieved and who naturally takes the case to his own

357
00:32:47.740 --> 00:32:48.740
court.

358
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So, in our case, Jones would go to the Prudential Court Company to charge Brown with theft.

359
00:32:56.100 --> 00:33:00.520
It is possible, of course, that Brown is also a client of the Prudential Court, in which

360
00:33:00.520 --> 00:33:02.500
case there is no problem.

361
00:33:02.500 --> 00:33:06.980
The Prudential's decision covers both parties and becomes binding.

362
00:33:06.980 --> 00:33:12.740
But one important stipulation is that no coercive subpoena power can be used against Brown.

363
00:33:12.740 --> 00:33:18.140
Brown, because he must be considered innocent until he is convicted.

364
00:33:18.140 --> 00:33:23.100
But Brown would be served with a voluntary subpoena, a notice that he is being tried

365
00:33:23.100 --> 00:33:29.200
on such and such a charge and inviting him or his legal representative to appear.

366
00:33:29.200 --> 00:33:34.620
If he does not appear, then he will be tried in absentia, and this will obviously be less

367
00:33:34.620 --> 00:33:40.460
favorable for Brown, since his side of the case will not be pleaded in court.

368
00:33:40.460 --> 00:33:45.420
If Brown is declared guilty, then the court and its marshals will employ force to seize

369
00:33:45.420 --> 00:33:52.020
Brown and exact whatever punishment is decided upon, a punishment which obviously will focus

370
00:33:52.020 --> 00:33:56.320
first on restitution to the victim.

371
00:33:56.320 --> 00:34:00.460
What however if Brown does not recognize the Prudential Court?

372
00:34:00.460 --> 00:34:04.380
What if he is a client of the Metropolitan Court Company?

373
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Here the case becomes more difficult.

374
00:34:06.800 --> 00:34:08.320
What will happen then?

375
00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:12.940
First, victim Jones pleads his case in the Prudential Court.

376
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If Brown is found innocent, this ends the controversy.

377
00:34:16.120 --> 00:34:20.500
Suppose, however, that defendant Brown is found guilty.

378
00:34:20.500 --> 00:34:24.240
If he does nothing, the Court's judgment proceeds against him.

379
00:34:24.240 --> 00:34:29.540
Suppose, however, Brown then takes the case to the Metropolitan Court Company, pleading

380
00:34:29.540 --> 00:34:33.060
inefficiency or venality by Prudential.

381
00:34:33.060 --> 00:34:36.280
The case will then be heard by Metropolitan.

382
00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:42.280
If Metropolitan also finds Brown guilty, this too ends the controversy, and Prudential will

383
00:34:42.280 --> 00:34:44.980
proceed against Brown with dispatch.

384
00:34:44.980 --> 00:34:50.320
Suppose, however, that Metropolitan finds Brown innocent of the charge.

385
00:34:50.320 --> 00:34:51.640
Then what?

386
00:34:51.640 --> 00:34:57.080
Will the two courts and their arms-wielding marshals shoot it out in the streets?

387
00:34:57.080 --> 00:35:01.840
Once again, this would clearly be irrational and self-destructive behavior on the part

388
00:35:01.840 --> 00:35:03.400
of the Courts.

389
00:35:03.400 --> 00:35:08.360
An essential part of their judicial service to their clients is the provision of just,

390
00:35:08.360 --> 00:35:14.560
objective and peacefully functioning decisions, the best and most objective way of arriving

391
00:35:14.560 --> 00:35:18.380
at the truth of who committed the crime.

392
00:35:18.380 --> 00:35:23.840
Arriving at a decision and then allowing chaotic gunplay would scarcely be considered valuable

393
00:35:23.840 --> 00:35:26.240
judicial service by their customers.

394
00:35:26.240 --> 00:35:32.960
Thus, an essential part of any court's service to its clients would be an appeals procedure.

395
00:35:32.960 --> 00:35:39.120
In short, every court would agree to abide by an appeals trial, as decided by a voluntary

396
00:35:39.120 --> 00:35:44.300
arbitrator to whom metropolitan and prudential would now turn.

397
00:35:44.300 --> 00:35:49.000
The appeals judge would make his decision, and the result of this third trial would be

398
00:35:49.000 --> 00:35:51.780
treated as binding on the guilty.

399
00:35:51.780 --> 00:35:56.480
The Prudential Court would then proceed to Enforcement.

400
00:35:56.480 --> 00:35:58.440
An Appeals Court.

401
00:35:58.440 --> 00:36:02.820
But isn't this setting up a compulsory monopoly government once again?

402
00:36:02.820 --> 00:36:08.880
No, because there is nothing in the system that requires any one person or court to be

403
00:36:08.880 --> 00:36:11.080
the Court of Appeal.

404
00:36:11.080 --> 00:36:17.220
In short, in the United States at present, the Supreme Court is established as THE Court

405
00:36:17.220 --> 00:36:19.220
of Final Appeal.

406
00:36:19.220 --> 00:36:25.000
Also the Supreme Court judges become the final arbiters, regardless of the wishes of plaintiff

407
00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:27.480
or defendant alike.

408
00:36:27.480 --> 00:36:32.940
In contrast, in the libertarian society, the various competing private courts could go

409
00:36:32.940 --> 00:36:38.600
to any appeals judge they think fair, expert and objective.

410
00:36:38.600 --> 00:36:45.920
No single appeals judge or set of judges would be foisted upon society by coercion.

411
00:36:45.920 --> 00:36:48.560
How would the appeals judges be financed?

412
00:36:48.560 --> 00:36:53.680
There are many possible ways, but the most likely is that they will be paid by the various

413
00:36:53.680 --> 00:36:59.280
original courts who would charge their customers for appeals services in their premiums or

414
00:36:59.280 --> 00:37:01.480
fees.

415
00:37:01.480 --> 00:37:06.660
But suppose Brown insists on another appeals judge, and yet another.

416
00:37:06.660 --> 00:37:10.360
Couldn't he escape judgment by appealing ad infinitum?

417
00:37:10.360 --> 00:37:16.200
Obviously, in any society, legal proceedings cannot continue indefinitely.

418
00:37:16.200 --> 00:37:19.160
There must be some cut-off point.

419
00:37:19.160 --> 00:37:24.920
In the present statist society, where government monopolizes the judicial function, the Supreme

420
00:37:24.920 --> 00:37:29.580
Court is arbitrarily designated as the cut-off point.

421
00:37:29.580 --> 00:37:34.960
In the libertarian society, there would also have to be an agreed-upon cut-off point.

422
00:37:34.960 --> 00:37:41.140
And since there are only two parties to any crime or dispute, the plaintiff and the defendant,

423
00:37:41.140 --> 00:37:46.500
It seems most sensible for the legal code to declare that a decision arrived at by any

424
00:37:46.500 --> 00:37:49.940
two courts shall be binding.

425
00:37:49.940 --> 00:37:54.700
This will cover the situation when both the plaintiffs and the defendants' courts come

426
00:37:54.700 --> 00:38:00.820
to the same decision, as well as the situation when an appeals court decides on a disagreement

427
00:38:00.820 --> 00:38:06.000
between the two original courts.

428
00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:09.500
The Law and the Courts

429
00:38:09.500 --> 00:38:14.860
It is now clear that there will have to be a legal code in the libertarian society.

430
00:38:14.860 --> 00:38:16.260
How?

431
00:38:16.260 --> 00:38:23.100
How can there be a legal code, a system of law, without a government to promulgate it?

432
00:38:23.100 --> 00:38:28.260
An appointed system of judges or a legislature to vote on statutes?

433
00:38:28.260 --> 00:38:34.380
To begin with, is a legal code consistent with libertarian principles?

434
00:38:34.380 --> 00:38:39.660
To answer the last question first, it should be clear that a legal code is necessary to

435
00:38:39.660 --> 00:38:44.040
lay down precise guidelines for the private courts.

436
00:38:44.040 --> 00:38:50.420
If for example Court A decides that all redheads are inherently evil and must be punished,

437
00:38:50.420 --> 00:38:56.340
it is clear that such decisions are the reverse of libertarian, that such a law would constitute

438
00:38:56.340 --> 00:38:59.420
an invasion of the rights of redheads.

439
00:38:59.420 --> 00:39:04.980
Hence any such decision would be illegal in terms of libertarian principle and could not

440
00:39:04.980 --> 00:39:08.060
be upheld by the rest of society.

441
00:39:08.060 --> 00:39:13.580
It then becomes necessary to have a legal code which would be generally accepted and

442
00:39:13.580 --> 00:39:17.260
which the courts would pledge themselves to follow.

443
00:39:17.260 --> 00:39:22.540
The legal code simply would insist on the libertarian principle of no aggression against

444
00:39:22.540 --> 00:39:28.700
person or property, define property rights in accordance with libertarian principle,

445
00:39:28.700 --> 00:39:34.180
set up rules of evidence such as currently apply in deciding who are the wrongdoers in

446
00:39:34.180 --> 00:39:40.660
any dispute and set up a code of maximum punishment for any particular crime.

447
00:39:40.660 --> 00:39:45.860
Within the framework of such a code, the particular courts would compete on the most efficient

448
00:39:45.860 --> 00:39:51.700
procedures and the market would then decide whether judges, juries, etc. are the most

449
00:39:51.700 --> 00:39:56.220
efficient methods of providing judicial services.

450
00:39:56.220 --> 00:40:02.420
Are such stable and consistent law codes possible with only competing judges to develop and

451
00:40:02.420 --> 00:40:06.800
apply them, and without government or legislature?

452
00:40:06.800 --> 00:40:12.140
Not only are they possible, but over the years, the best and most successful parts of our

453
00:40:12.140 --> 00:40:16.540
legal system were developed precisely in this manner.

454
00:40:16.540 --> 00:40:22.780
Legislatures, as well as kings, have been capricious, invasive, and inconsistent.

455
00:40:22.780 --> 00:40:27.780
They have only introduced anomalies and despotism into the legal system.

456
00:40:27.780 --> 00:40:33.420
In fact, the government is no more qualified to develop and apply law than it is to provide

457
00:40:33.420 --> 00:40:35.140
any other service.

458
00:40:35.140 --> 00:40:40.380
And just as religion has been separated from the state, and the economy can be separated

459
00:40:40.380 --> 00:40:50.140
from the state, so can every other state function, including police, courts, and the law itself.

460
00:40:50.140 --> 00:40:55.820
As indicated above, for example, the entire law merchant was developed not by the state

461
00:40:55.820 --> 00:41:00.140
or in-state courts, but by private merchant courts.

462
00:41:00.140 --> 00:41:05.300
It was only much later that government took over mercantile law from its development in

463
00:41:05.300 --> 00:41:07.460
merchant's courts.

464
00:41:07.460 --> 00:41:13.620
The same occurred with Admiralty Law, the entire structure of the law of the sea, shipping,

465
00:41:13.620 --> 00:41:15.620
salvages, etc.

466
00:41:15.620 --> 00:41:20.300
Here again, the state was not interested, and its jurisdiction did not apply to the

467
00:41:20.300 --> 00:41:21.820
high seas.

468
00:41:21.820 --> 00:41:26.900
So the shippers themselves took on the task of not only applying, but working out the

469
00:41:26.900 --> 00:41:31.460
whole structure of Admiralty Law in their own private courts.

470
00:41:31.460 --> 00:41:38.340
Again, it was only later that the government appropriated Admiralty Law into its own courts.

471
00:41:38.340 --> 00:41:45.340
Finally, the major body of Anglo-Saxon law, the justly celebrated Common Law, was developed

472
00:41:45.620 --> 00:41:53.620
was developed over the centuries by competing judges applying time-honored principles rather than the shifting decrees of the state.

473
00:41:53.620 --> 00:41:59.620
These principles were not decided upon arbitrarily by any king or legislature.

474
00:41:59.620 --> 00:42:07.620
They grew up over centuries by applying rational and very often libertarian principles to the cases before them.

475
00:42:07.620 --> 00:42:13.620
The idea of following precedent was developed not as a blind service to the past,

476
00:42:13.620 --> 00:42:18.720
in the past, but because all the judges of the past had made their decisions in applying

477
00:42:18.720 --> 00:42:25.060
the generally accepted common law principles to specific cases and problems.

478
00:42:25.060 --> 00:42:31.720
For it was universally held that the judge did not make law as he often does today.

479
00:42:31.720 --> 00:42:38.880
The judge's task, his expertise, was in finding the law in accepted common law principles

480
00:42:38.880 --> 00:42:47.120
and then applying that law to specific cases or to new technological or institutional conditions.

481
00:42:47.120 --> 00:42:54.240
The glory of the centuries-long development of the common law is testimony to their success.

482
00:42:54.240 --> 00:42:59.560
The common law judges, furthermore, functioned very much like private arbitrators, as experts

483
00:42:59.560 --> 00:43:03.920
in the law to whom private parties went with their disputes.

484
00:43:03.920 --> 00:43:10.200
There was no arbitrarily imposed Supreme Court whose decision would be binding, nor was

485
00:43:10.200 --> 00:43:15.520
precedent, though honored, considered as automatically binding either.

486
00:43:15.520 --> 00:43:19.720
Thus the libertarian Italian jurist Bruno Leone has written,

487
00:43:19.720 --> 00:43:35.220
Courts of judicature could not easily enact arbitrary rules of their own in England, as they were never in a position to do so directly, that is to say, in the usual, sudden, widely ranging and imperious manner of legislators.

488
00:43:35.220 --> 00:43:50.220
Moreover, there were so many courts of justice in England, and they were so jealous of one another, that even the famous principle of the binding precedent was not openly recognized as valid by them until comparatively recent times.

489
00:43:50.220 --> 00:43:58.220
Besides, they could never decide anything that had not been previously brought before them by private persons.

490
00:43:58.220 --> 00:44:03.180
Finally, comparatively few people used to go before the courts to ask from them the

491
00:44:03.180 --> 00:44:07.340
rules deciding their cases.

492
00:44:07.340 --> 00:44:14.660
And on the absence of supreme courts, it cannot be denied that the lawyer's law or the judiciary

493
00:44:14.660 --> 00:44:20.860
law may tend to acquire the characteristics of legislation, including its undesirable

494
00:44:20.860 --> 00:44:27.100
ones, whenever jurists or judges are entitled to decide ultimately on a case.

495
00:44:27.100 --> 00:44:32.100
In our time, the mechanism of the judiciary in certain countries where supreme courts

496
00:44:32.100 --> 00:44:37.220
are established results in the imposition of the personal views of the members of these

497
00:44:37.220 --> 00:44:42.880
courts, or of a majority of them, on all the other people concerned, whenever there is

498
00:44:42.880 --> 00:44:49.060
a great deal of disagreement between the opinion of the former and the convictions of the latter.

499
00:44:49.060 --> 00:44:55.060
But this possibility, far from being necessarily implied in the nature of lawyer's law or

500
00:44:55.060 --> 00:45:01.460
of Judiciary Law is rather a deviation from it.

501
00:45:01.460 --> 00:45:07.580
Apart from such aberrations, the imposed personal views of the judges were kept to a minimum,

502
00:45:07.580 --> 00:45:12.980
a, by the fact that judges could only make decisions when private citizens brought cases

503
00:45:12.980 --> 00:45:20.820
to them, b, each judge's decisions applied only to the particular case, and c, because

504
00:45:20.820 --> 00:45:25.940
Because the decisions of the common law judges and lawyers always considered the precedence

505
00:45:25.940 --> 00:45:27.620
of the centuries.

506
00:45:27.620 --> 00:45:34.300
Furthermore, as Leoni points out, in contrast to legislatures or the executive, where dominant

507
00:45:34.300 --> 00:45:41.140
majorities or pressure groups ride roughshod over minorities, judges, by their very position,

508
00:45:41.140 --> 00:45:48.180
are constrained to hear and weigh the arguments of the two contending parties in each dispute.

509
00:45:48.180 --> 00:45:53.820
These are equal as regards the judge, in the sense that they are free to produce arguments

510
00:45:53.820 --> 00:45:55.420
and evidence.

511
00:45:55.420 --> 00:46:02.700
They do not constitute a group in which dissenting minorities give way to triumphant majorities.

512
00:46:02.700 --> 00:46:08.700
And Leone points out the analogy between this process and the free market economy.

513
00:46:08.700 --> 00:46:14.360
Of course, arguments may be stronger or weaker, but the fact that every party can produce

514
00:46:14.360 --> 00:46:30.080
Professor Leoni found that in the private law area, the ancient Roman judges operated

515
00:46:30.080 --> 00:46:34.300
in the same way as the English common law courts.

516
00:46:34.300 --> 00:46:37.120
The Roman jurist was a sort of scientist.

517
00:46:37.120 --> 00:46:42.680
The objects of his research were the solutions to cases that citizens submitted to him for

518
00:46:42.680 --> 00:46:48.680
just as industrialists might today submit to a physicist or to an engineer a

519
00:46:48.680 --> 00:46:54.440
technical problem concerning their plants or their production. Hence private

520
00:46:54.440 --> 00:46:59.800
Roman law was something to be described or to be discovered, not something to be

521
00:46:59.800 --> 00:47:04.920
enacted. A world of things that were there forming part of the common

522
00:47:04.920 --> 00:47:11.320
heritage of all Roman citizens. Nobody enacted that law. Nobody could change it

523
00:47:11.320 --> 00:47:18.640
by any exercise of his personal will. This is the long-run concept, or if you prefer,

524
00:47:18.640 --> 00:47:22.760
the Roman concept, of the certainty of the law.

525
00:47:22.760 --> 00:47:28.480
Finally, Professor Leone was able to use his knowledge of the operations of ancient and

526
00:47:28.480 --> 00:47:35.000
common law to answer the vital question, in a libertarian society, who will appoint the

527
00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:40.220
judges to let them perform the task of defining the law?

528
00:47:40.220 --> 00:47:45.700
His answer is the people themselves, people who would go to the judges with the greatest

529
00:47:45.700 --> 00:47:51.980
reputation of expertise and wisdom in knowing and applying the basic common legal principles

530
00:47:51.980 --> 00:47:54.620
of the society.

531
00:47:54.620 --> 00:48:00.740
In fact, it is rather immaterial to establish in advance who will appoint the judges, for

532
00:48:00.740 --> 00:48:06.080
in a sense everybody could do so, as happens to a certain extent when people resort to

533
00:48:06.080 --> 00:48:09.800
private arbiters to settle their own quarrels.

534
00:48:09.800 --> 00:48:15.180
For the appointment of judges is not such a special problem as would be, for example,

535
00:48:15.180 --> 00:48:21.600
that of appointing physicists or doctors or other kinds of learned and experienced people.

536
00:48:21.600 --> 00:48:28.400
The emergence of good professional people in any society is only apparently due to official

537
00:48:28.400 --> 00:48:29.400
appointments, if any.

538
00:48:29.400 --> 00:48:35.440
It is in fact based on a widespread consent on the part of clients, colleagues and the

539
00:48:35.440 --> 00:48:41.440
and the public at large, a consent without which no appointment is really effective.

540
00:48:41.440 --> 00:48:47.560
Of course, people can be wrong about the true value chosen as being worthy, but these difficulties

541
00:48:47.560 --> 00:48:53.160
in their choice are inescapable in any kind of choice.

542
00:48:53.160 --> 00:48:58.720
Of course, in the future libertarian society, the basic legal code would not rely on blind

543
00:48:58.720 --> 00:49:03.340
custom, much of which could well be anti-libertarian.

544
00:49:03.340 --> 00:49:08.380
The Code would have to be established on the basis of acknowledged libertarian principle

545
00:49:08.380 --> 00:49:14.920
of non-aggression against the person or property of others, in short, on the basis of reason

546
00:49:14.920 --> 00:49:20.360
rather than on mere tradition, however sound its general outlines.

547
00:49:20.360 --> 00:49:25.880
Since we have a body of common law principles to draw on, however, the task of reason in

548
00:49:25.880 --> 00:49:31.460
correcting and amending the common law would be far easier than trying to construct a body

549
00:49:31.460 --> 00:49:37.420
Society of Systematic Legal Principles, de novo, out of the thin air.

550
00:49:37.420 --> 00:49:43.340
The most remarkable historical example of a society of libertarian law and courts, however,

551
00:49:43.340 --> 00:49:47.500
has been neglected by historians until very recently.

552
00:49:47.500 --> 00:49:53.540
And this was also a society where not only the courts and the law were largely libertarian,

553
00:49:53.540 --> 00:49:59.460
but where they operated within a purely stateless and libertarian society.

554
00:49:59.460 --> 00:50:04.920
This was ancient Ireland, an Ireland which persisted in this libertarian path for roughly

555
00:50:04.920 --> 00:50:11.760
a thousand years until its brutal conquest by England in the seventeenth century.

556
00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:17.280
And in contrast to many similarly functioning primitive tribes such as the Igbos in West

557
00:50:17.280 --> 00:50:25.460
Africa and many European tribes, pre-conquest Ireland was not in any sense a primitive society.

558
00:50:25.460 --> 00:50:31.460
It was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly

559
00:50:31.460 --> 00:50:35.940
and most civilized in all of Western Europe.

560
00:50:35.940 --> 00:50:42.440
For a thousand years then, ancient Celtic Ireland had no state or anything like it.

561
00:50:42.440 --> 00:50:47.540
As the leading authority on ancient Irish law has written, there was no legislature,

562
00:50:47.540 --> 00:50:51.760
no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice.

563
00:50:51.760 --> 00:50:56.260
There was no trace of state-administered justice.

564
00:50:56.260 --> 00:50:59.100
How then was justice secured?

565
00:50:59.100 --> 00:51:03.800
The basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the Tuath.

566
00:51:03.800 --> 00:51:09.360
All freemen who owned land, all professionals and all craftsmen, were entitled to become

567
00:51:09.360 --> 00:51:11.960
members of a Tuath.

568
00:51:11.960 --> 00:51:18.080
Each Tuath's members formed an annual assembly, which decided all common policies, declared

569
00:51:18.080 --> 00:51:24.240
War or Peace on Other Tuatha and Elected or Deposed Their Kings.

570
00:51:24.240 --> 00:51:30.440
An important point is that in contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound

571
00:51:30.440 --> 00:51:36.920
to a given tuath, either because of kinship or of geographical location.

572
00:51:36.920 --> 00:51:42.600
Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from a tuath and join a competing

573
00:51:42.600 --> 00:51:43.600
tuath.

574
00:51:43.600 --> 00:51:50.560
Often, two or more tuatha decided to merge into a single, more efficient unit.

575
00:51:50.560 --> 00:51:56.740
As Professor Joe Peden states, the tuath is thus a body of persons voluntarily united

576
00:51:56.740 --> 00:52:01.820
for socially beneficial purposes, and the sum total of the landed properties of its

577
00:52:01.820 --> 00:52:06.640
members constituted its territorial dimension.

578
00:52:06.640 --> 00:52:12.480
In short, they did not have the modern state, with its claim to sovereignty over a given,

579
00:52:12.480 --> 00:52:19.840
Usually Expanding Territorial Area, Divorced from the Landed Property Rights of its Subjects.

580
00:52:19.840 --> 00:52:26.560
On the contrary, Tuatha were voluntary associations, which only comprised the landed properties

581
00:52:26.560 --> 00:52:28.960
of its voluntary members.

582
00:52:28.960 --> 00:52:37.040
Historically, about 80 to 100 Tuatha coexisted at any time throughout Ireland.

583
00:52:37.040 --> 00:52:39.600
But what of the elected king?

584
00:52:39.600 --> 00:52:42.560
Did he constitute a form of state ruler?

585
00:52:42.560 --> 00:52:48.320
Chiefly, the king functioned as a religious high priest presiding over the worship rights

586
00:52:48.320 --> 00:52:53.760
of the Tuath, which functioned as a voluntary religious as well as a social and political

587
00:52:53.760 --> 00:52:55.800
organization.

588
00:52:55.800 --> 00:53:01.520
As in pagan pre-Christian priesthoods, the kingly function was hereditary, this practice

589
00:53:01.520 --> 00:53:04.440
carrying over to Christian times.

590
00:53:04.440 --> 00:53:10.520
The King was elected by the Tuath from within a royal kin group, which carried the hereditary

591
00:53:10.520 --> 00:53:12.360
priestly function.

592
00:53:12.360 --> 00:53:17.040
Politically, however, the King had strictly limited functions.

593
00:53:17.040 --> 00:53:22.720
He was the military leader of the Tuath, and he presided over the Tuath assemblies.

594
00:53:22.720 --> 00:53:29.120
But he could only conduct war or peace negotiations as agent of the assemblies, and he was in

595
00:53:29.120 --> 00:53:35.600
in no sense sovereign and had no rights of administering justice over Tuath members.

596
00:53:35.600 --> 00:53:41.000
He could not legislate, and when he himself was party to a lawsuit, he had to submit his

597
00:53:41.000 --> 00:53:44.720
case to an independent judicial arbiter.

598
00:53:44.720 --> 00:53:50.800
Again, how then was law developed and justice maintained?

599
00:53:50.800 --> 00:53:56.840
In the first place, the law itself was based on a body of ancient and immemorial custom,

600
00:53:56.840 --> 00:54:03.840
passed down as oral and then written tradition through a class of professional jurists called the Brijans.

601
00:54:03.840 --> 00:54:08.840
The Brijans were in no sense public or governmental officials.

602
00:54:08.840 --> 00:54:13.840
They were simply selected by parties to disputes on the basis of their reputations for wisdom,

603
00:54:13.840 --> 00:54:18.840
knowledge of the customary law, and the integrity of their decisions.

604
00:54:18.840 --> 00:54:24.840
As Professor Peden states, the professional jurists were consulted by parties to disputes

605
00:54:24.840 --> 00:54:31.840
For advice as to what the law was in particular cases, and these same men often acted as arbitrators

606
00:54:31.840 --> 00:54:33.780
between suitors.

607
00:54:33.780 --> 00:54:38.760
They remained at all times private persons, not public officials.

608
00:54:38.760 --> 00:54:43.640
Their functioning depended upon their knowledge of the law and the integrity of their judicial

609
00:54:43.640 --> 00:54:45.400
reputations.

610
00:54:45.400 --> 00:54:52.640
Furthermore, the Brehans had no connection whatsoever with the individual tuatha or with

611
00:54:52.640 --> 00:54:54.360
their kings.

612
00:54:54.360 --> 00:55:00.200
They were completely private, national in scope, and were used by disputants throughout

613
00:55:00.200 --> 00:55:01.200
Ireland.

614
00:55:01.200 --> 00:55:07.520
Moreover, and this is a vital point, in contrast to the system of private Roman lawyers, the

615
00:55:07.520 --> 00:55:10.200
Brijan was all there was.

616
00:55:10.200 --> 00:55:17.520
There were no other judges, no public judges of any kind in ancient Ireland.

617
00:55:17.520 --> 00:55:22.680
It was the Brijans who were schooled in the law, and who added glosses and applications

618
00:55:22.680 --> 00:55:25.600
to the law to fit changing conditions.

619
00:55:25.600 --> 00:55:31.080
Furthermore, there was no monopoly, in any sense, of the Brehan jurists.

620
00:55:31.080 --> 00:55:37.320
Instead, several competing schools of jurisprudence existed and competed for the custom of the

621
00:55:37.320 --> 00:55:39.720
Irish people.

622
00:55:39.720 --> 00:55:43.240
How were the decisions of the Brehans enforced?

623
00:55:43.240 --> 00:55:49.380
Through an elaborate, voluntarily developed system of insurance, or sureties.

624
00:55:49.380 --> 00:55:54.920
Men were linked together by a variety of surety relationships, by which they guaranteed one

625
00:55:54.920 --> 00:55:59.840
another for the righting of wrongs and for the enforcement of justice and the decisions

626
00:55:59.840 --> 00:56:01.880
of the brihands.

627
00:56:01.880 --> 00:56:07.460
In short, the brihands themselves were not involved in the enforcement of decisions,

628
00:56:07.460 --> 00:56:12.680
which rested again with private individuals linked through sureties.

629
00:56:12.680 --> 00:56:15.140
There were various types of surety.

630
00:56:15.140 --> 00:56:20.340
For example, the surety would guarantee with his own property the payment of a debt, and

631
00:56:20.340 --> 00:56:26.220
then join the plaintiff in enforcing a debt judgment if the debtor refused to pay.

632
00:56:26.220 --> 00:56:31.500
In that case, the debtor would have to pay double damages, one to the original creditor

633
00:56:31.500 --> 00:56:35.260
and another as compensation to his surety.

634
00:56:35.260 --> 00:56:42.140
And this system applied to all offenses, aggressions and assaults, as well as commercial contracts.

635
00:56:42.140 --> 00:56:48.700
In short, it applied to all cases of what we would call civil and criminal law.

636
00:56:48.700 --> 00:56:54.340
All criminals were considered to be debtors who owed restitution and compensation to their

637
00:56:54.340 --> 00:56:58.040
victims, who thus became their creditors.

638
00:56:58.040 --> 00:57:03.100
The victim would gather his sureties around him and proceed to apprehend the criminal

639
00:57:03.100 --> 00:57:08.560
or to proclaim his suit publicly and demand that the defendant submit to adjudication

640
00:57:08.560 --> 00:57:11.640
of their dispute with the brihans.

641
00:57:11.640 --> 00:57:17.160
The criminal might then send his own sureties to negotiate a settlement or agree to submit

642
00:57:17.160 --> 00:57:20.000
the dispute to the Brihands.

643
00:57:20.000 --> 00:57:25.120
If he did not do so, he was considered an outlaw by the entire community.

644
00:57:25.120 --> 00:57:29.880
He could no longer enforce any claim of his own in the courts, and he was treated to the

645
00:57:29.880 --> 00:57:34.000
opprobrium of the entire community.

646
00:57:34.000 --> 00:57:39.320
There were occasional wars, to be sure, in the thousand years of Celtic Ireland, but

647
00:57:39.320 --> 00:57:44.360
But they were minor brawls, negligible compared to the devastating wars that racked the rest

648
00:57:44.360 --> 00:57:45.800
of Europe.

649
00:57:45.800 --> 00:57:51.280
As Professor Peden points out, without the coercive apparatus of the state, which can,

650
00:57:51.280 --> 00:57:57.400
through taxation and conscription, mobilize large amounts of arms and manpower, the Irish

651
00:57:57.400 --> 00:58:03.920
were unable to sustain any large-scale military force in the field for any length of time.

652
00:58:03.920 --> 00:58:10.480
Irish wars were pitiful brawls and cattle raids by European standards.

653
00:58:10.480 --> 00:58:15.960
Thus we have indicated that it is perfectly possible, in theory and historically, to have

654
00:58:15.960 --> 00:58:21.920
efficient and courteous police, competent and learned judges, and a body of systematic

655
00:58:21.920 --> 00:58:29.120
and socially accepted law, and none of these things being furnished by a coercive government.

656
00:58:29.120 --> 00:58:34.920
Government, claiming a compulsory monopoly of protection over a geographical area and

657
00:58:34.920 --> 00:58:42.320
extracting its revenues by force, can be separated from the entire field of protection.

658
00:58:42.320 --> 00:58:47.060
Government is no more necessary for providing vital protection service than it is necessary

659
00:58:47.060 --> 00:58:49.480
for providing anything else.

660
00:58:49.480 --> 00:58:55.340
And we have not stressed a crucial fact about government, that its compulsory monopoly over

661
00:58:55.340 --> 00:59:00.860
for the Weapons of Coercion has led it over the centuries to infinitely more butcheries

662
00:59:00.860 --> 00:59:07.300
and infinitely greater tyranny and oppression than any decentralized private agencies could

663
00:59:07.300 --> 00:59:09.900
possibly have done.

664
00:59:09.900 --> 00:59:15.600
If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation and tyranny levied on society

665
00:59:15.600 --> 00:59:21.840
by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan state and

666
00:59:21.840 --> 00:59:29.680
and Tri-Freedom, Outlaw Protectors.

667
00:59:29.680 --> 00:59:33.160
We have saved for the last this problem.

668
00:59:33.160 --> 00:59:38.060
What if police or judges and courts should be venal and biased?

669
00:59:38.060 --> 00:59:42.960
What if they should bias their decisions, for example, in favor of particularly wealthy

670
00:59:42.960 --> 00:59:44.160
clients?

671
00:59:44.160 --> 00:59:49.040
We have shown how a libertarian legal and judicial system could work on the purely free

672
00:59:49.040 --> 00:59:53.040
Free Market, Assuming Honest Differences of Opinion.

673
00:59:53.040 --> 00:59:58.440
But what if one or more police or courts should become, in effect, outlaws?

674
00:59:58.440 --> 01:00:00.000
What then?

675
01:00:00.000 --> 01:00:04.560
In the first place, libertarians do not flinch from such a question.

676
01:00:04.560 --> 01:00:11.000
In contrast to such utopians as Marxists or left-wing anarchists, anarcho-communists or

677
01:00:11.000 --> 01:00:16.880
anarcho-syndicalists, libertarians do not assume that the ushering in of the purely

678
01:00:16.880 --> 01:00:30.440
We do not assume that the lion will lie down with the lamb, or that no one will have criminal

679
01:00:30.440 --> 01:00:33.880
or fraudulent designs upon his neighbor.

680
01:00:33.880 --> 01:00:39.200
The better that people will be, of course, the better any social system will work.

681
01:00:39.200 --> 01:00:44.300
In particular, the less work any police or courts will have to do.

682
01:00:44.300 --> 01:00:47.720
But no such assumption is made by libertarians.

683
01:00:47.720 --> 01:00:53.860
What we assert is that given any particular degree of goodness or badness among men, the

684
01:00:53.860 --> 01:00:59.660
purely libertarian society will be at once the most moral and the most efficient, the

685
01:00:59.660 --> 01:01:04.540
least criminal, and the most secure of person or property.

686
01:01:04.540 --> 01:01:09.960
Let us first consider the problem of the venal or crooked judge or court.

687
01:01:09.960 --> 01:01:14.520
What of the court which favors its own wealthy client in trouble?

688
01:01:14.520 --> 01:01:19.600
In the first place, any such favoritism will be highly unlikely, given the rewards and

689
01:01:19.600 --> 01:01:22.500
sanctions of the free market economy.

690
01:01:22.500 --> 01:01:27.860
The very life of the court, the very livelihood of a judge, will depend on his reputation

691
01:01:27.860 --> 01:01:34.500
for integrity, fair-mindedness, objectivity, and the quest for truth in every case.

692
01:01:34.500 --> 01:01:37.120
This is his brand name.

693
01:01:37.120 --> 01:01:44.120
If a good word of any venality leak out, he will immediately lose clients, and the courts will no longer have customers.

694
01:01:44.120 --> 01:01:53.120
For even those clients who may be criminally inclined will scarcely sponsor a court whose decisions are no longer taken seriously by the rest of society,

695
01:01:53.120 --> 01:01:59.120
or who themselves may well be in jail for dishonest and fraudulent dealings.

696
01:01:59.120 --> 01:02:04.720
If, for example, Joe Zilch is accused of a crime or breach of contract, and he goes to

697
01:02:04.720 --> 01:02:10.980
a court headed by his brother-in-law, no one, least of all other honest courts, will take

698
01:02:10.980 --> 01:02:13.680
this court's decision seriously.

699
01:02:13.680 --> 01:02:20.920
It will no longer be considered a court in the eyes of anyone but Joe Zilch and his family.

700
01:02:20.920 --> 01:02:26.280
Contrast this built-in corrective mechanism to the present-day government courts.

701
01:02:26.280 --> 01:02:31.720
Judges are appointed or elected for long terms, up to life, and they are accorded a monopoly

702
01:02:31.720 --> 01:02:35.200
of decision-making in their particular area.

703
01:02:35.200 --> 01:02:40.960
It is almost impossible, except in cases of gross corruption, to do anything about venal

704
01:02:40.960 --> 01:02:43.240
decisions of judges.

705
01:02:43.240 --> 01:02:49.440
Their power to make and to enforce their decisions continues unchecked, year after year.

706
01:02:49.440 --> 01:02:55.620
Their salaries continue to be paid, furnished under coercion by the hapless taxpayer.

707
01:02:55.620 --> 01:03:01.500
But in the totally free society, any suspicion of a judge or court will cause their customers

708
01:03:01.500 --> 01:03:05.560
to melt away and their decisions to be ignored.

709
01:03:05.560 --> 01:03:11.300
This is a far more efficient system of keeping judges honest than the mechanism of government.

710
01:03:11.300 --> 01:03:18.480
Furthermore, the temptation for venality and bias would be far less for another reason.

711
01:03:18.480 --> 01:03:23.560
Business firms in the free market earn their keep, not from wealthy customers, but from

712
01:03:23.560 --> 01:03:30.200
from a Mass Market by Consumers. Mises earns its income from the mass of the population,

713
01:03:30.200 --> 01:03:35.840
not from a few wealthy customers. The same is true of metropolitan life insurance today,

714
01:03:35.840 --> 01:03:41.900
and the same would be true of any metropolitan court system tomorrow. It would be folly indeed

715
01:03:41.900 --> 01:03:47.140
for the courts to risk the loss of favor by the bulk of its customers, for the favors

716
01:03:47.140 --> 01:03:53.360
of a few wealthy clients. But contrast the present system, where judges, like all other

717
01:03:53.360 --> 01:03:58.680
Other politicians may be beholden to wealthy contributors who finance the campaigns of

718
01:03:58.680 --> 01:04:01.640
their political parties.

719
01:04:01.640 --> 01:04:07.680
There is a myth that the American system provides a superb set of checks and balances, with

720
01:04:07.680 --> 01:04:12.500
the executive, the legislature and the courts all balancing and checking one against the

721
01:04:12.500 --> 01:04:18.220
other so that power cannot unduly accumulate in one set of hands.

722
01:04:18.220 --> 01:04:22.640
But the American checks and balances system is largely a fraud.

723
01:04:22.640 --> 01:04:28.140
For each one of these institutions is a coercive monopoly in its area, and all of them are

724
01:04:28.140 --> 01:04:33.740
part of one government, headed by one political party at any given time.

725
01:04:33.740 --> 01:04:40.080
Furthermore, at best, there are only two parties, each one close to the other in ideology and

726
01:04:40.080 --> 01:04:45.760
personnel, often colluding, and the actual day-to-day business of government is headed

727
01:04:45.760 --> 01:04:51.640
by a civil service bureaucracy that cannot be displaced by the voters.

728
01:04:51.640 --> 01:05:07.640
In contrast to these mythical checks and balances, the real checks and balances provided by the free market economy, what keeps A&P honest is the competition, actual and potential, of Safeway, Pioneer and countless other grocery stores.

729
01:05:07.640 --> 01:05:12.640
What keeps them honest is the ability of the consumers to cut off their patronage.

730
01:05:12.640 --> 01:05:26.640
What would keep the free market judges and courts honest is the lively possibility of heading down the block or down the road to another judge or court, if suspicion should descend on any particular one.

731
01:05:26.640 --> 01:05:33.640
What would keep them honest is the lively possibility of their customers cutting off their business.

732
01:05:33.640 --> 01:05:40.640
These are the real, active checks and balances of the free market economy and the free society.

733
01:05:40.640 --> 01:05:46.040
The same analysis applies to the possibility of a private police force becoming outlaw,

734
01:05:46.040 --> 01:05:53.440
of using their coercive powers to exact tribute, set up a protection racket to shake down their victims, etc.

735
01:05:53.440 --> 01:05:56.440
Of course, such a thing could happen.

736
01:05:56.440 --> 01:06:02.440
But in contrast to present-day society, there would be immediate checks and balances available.

737
01:06:02.440 --> 01:06:10.440
There would be other police forces who could use their weapons to band together to put down the aggressors against their clientele.

738
01:06:10.440 --> 01:06:23.440
If the metropolitan police force should become gangsters and exact tribute, then the rest of society could flock to the prudential, equitable, etc. police forces, who could band together to put them down.

739
01:06:23.440 --> 01:06:39.440
And this contrasts vividly with the state. If a group of gangsters should capture the state apparatus with its monopoly of coercive weapons, there is nothing, at present, that can stop them, short of the immensely difficult process of revolution.

740
01:06:39.440 --> 01:06:44.820
In a libertarian society, there would be no need for a massive revolution to stop the

741
01:06:44.820 --> 01:06:47.260
depredation of gangster states.

742
01:06:47.260 --> 01:06:52.760
There would be a swift turning to the honest police forces to check and put down the force

743
01:06:52.760 --> 01:06:55.620
that had turned bandit.

744
01:06:55.620 --> 01:07:00.200
And indeed, what is the state anyway but organized banditry?

745
01:07:00.200 --> 01:07:05.060
What is taxation but theft on a gigantic unchecked scale?

746
01:07:05.060 --> 01:07:10.540
What is war but mass murder on a scale impossible by private police forces?

747
01:07:10.540 --> 01:07:13.840
What is conscription but mass enslavement?

748
01:07:13.840 --> 01:07:18.840
Can anyone envision a private police force getting away with a tiny fraction of what

749
01:07:18.840 --> 01:07:26.400
states get away with, and do habitually, year after year, century after century?

750
01:07:26.400 --> 01:07:30.660
There is another vital consideration that would make it almost impossible for an outlaw

751
01:07:30.660 --> 01:07:36.260
Law Police Force to commit anything like the banditry that modern governments practice.

752
01:07:36.260 --> 01:07:40.840
One of the crucial factors that permits governments to do the monstrous things they habitually

753
01:07:40.840 --> 01:07:46.580
do is the sense of legitimacy on the part of the stupefied public.

754
01:07:46.580 --> 01:07:52.180
The average citizen may not like, may even strongly object to, the policies and exactions

755
01:07:52.180 --> 01:07:57.780
of his government, but he has been imbued with the idea, carefully indoctrinated by

756
01:07:57.780 --> 01:08:03.420
by centuries of governmental propaganda that the government is his legitimate sovereign

757
01:08:03.420 --> 01:08:08.460
and that it would be wicked or mad to refuse to obey its dictates.

758
01:08:08.460 --> 01:08:13.740
It is this sense of legitimacy that the state's intellectuals have fostered over the ages,

759
01:08:13.740 --> 01:08:20.780
aided and abetted by all the trappings of legitimacy, flags, rituals, ceremonies, awards,

760
01:08:20.780 --> 01:08:22.780
constitutions, etc.

761
01:08:22.780 --> 01:08:30.160
A bandit gang, even if all the police forces conspired together into one vast gang, could

762
01:08:30.160 --> 01:08:33.020
never command such legitimacy.

763
01:08:33.020 --> 01:08:35.760
The public would consider them purely bandits.

764
01:08:35.760 --> 01:08:40.520
Their extortions and tributes would never be considered legitimate though onerous taxes

765
01:08:40.520 --> 01:08:42.960
to be paid automatically.

766
01:08:42.960 --> 01:08:48.260
The public would quickly resist these illegitimate demands, and the bandits would be resisted

767
01:08:48.260 --> 01:08:50.280
and overthrown.

768
01:08:50.280 --> 01:08:56.360
Once the public had tasted the joys, prosperity, freedom and efficiency of a libertarian, stateless

769
01:08:56.360 --> 01:09:02.960
society, it would be almost impossible for a state to fasten itself upon them once again.

770
01:09:02.960 --> 01:09:09.800
Once freedom has been fully enjoyed, it is no easy task to force people to give it up.

771
01:09:09.800 --> 01:09:16.020
But suppose, just suppose, that despite all these handicaps and obstacles, despite the

772
01:09:16.020 --> 01:09:22.020
What if the love for their newfound freedom, despite the inherent checks and balances of the free market,

773
01:09:22.020 --> 01:09:28.020
suppose any way that the state manages to re-establish itself? What then?

774
01:09:28.020 --> 01:09:32.020
Well, then, all that would have happened is that we would have a state once again.

775
01:09:32.020 --> 01:09:36.020
We would be no worse off than we are now with our current state.

776
01:09:36.020 --> 01:09:43.020
And, as one libertarian philosopher has put it, at least the world will have had a glorious holiday.

777
01:09:43.020 --> 01:09:49.320
Karl Marx's ringing promise applies far more to a libertarian society than to communism.

778
01:09:49.320 --> 01:09:58.420
In trying freedom, in abolishing the state, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

779
01:09:58.420 --> 01:10:01.180
National Defense

780
01:10:01.180 --> 01:10:06.980
We come now to what is usually the final argument against the libertarian position.

781
01:10:06.980 --> 01:10:11.020
Every libertarian has heard a sympathetic but critical listener say,

782
01:10:11.020 --> 01:10:17.260
All right, I see how this system could be applied successfully to local police and courts.

783
01:10:17.260 --> 01:10:22.300
But how could a libertarian society defend us against the Russians?

784
01:10:22.300 --> 01:10:27.180
There are, of course, several dubious assumptions implied in such a question.

785
01:10:27.180 --> 01:10:31.120
There is the assumption that the Russians are bent upon military invasion of the United

786
01:10:31.120 --> 01:10:34.760
States, a doubtful assumption at best.

787
01:10:34.760 --> 01:10:39.100
There is the assumption that any such desire would still remain after the United States

788
01:10:39.100 --> 01:10:42.740
had become a purely libertarian society.

789
01:10:42.740 --> 01:10:49.240
This notion overlooks the lesson of history that wars result from conflicts between nation-states,

790
01:10:49.240 --> 01:10:54.860
each armed to the teeth, each direly suspicious of attack by the other.

791
01:10:54.860 --> 01:10:59.740
But a libertarian America would clearly not be a threat to anyone, not because it had

792
01:10:59.740 --> 01:11:05.380
no arms, but because it would be dedicated to no aggression against anyone or against

793
01:11:05.380 --> 01:11:07.400
any country.

794
01:11:07.400 --> 01:11:11.800
Having no longer a nation state, which is inherently threatening, there would be little

795
01:11:11.800 --> 01:11:15.160
chance of any country attacking us.

796
01:11:15.160 --> 01:11:20.240
One of the great evils of the nation state is that each state is able to identify all

797
01:11:20.240 --> 01:11:22.320
of its subjects with itself.

798
01:11:22.320 --> 01:11:28.320
Hence, in any interstate war, the innocent civilians, the subjects of each country, are

799
01:11:28.320 --> 01:11:32.120
subject to aggression from the enemy state.

800
01:11:32.120 --> 01:11:37.560
But in a libertarian society there would be no such identification and hence very little

801
01:11:37.560 --> 01:11:40.680
chance of such a devastating war.

802
01:11:40.680 --> 01:11:46.400
Suppose for example that our outlaw metropolitan police force has initiated aggression not

803
01:11:46.400 --> 01:11:50.320
only against Americans but also against Mexicans.

804
01:11:50.320 --> 01:11:55.240
If Mexico had a government then clearly the Mexican government would know full well that

805
01:11:55.240 --> 01:12:01.480
Americans in general were not implicated in the metropolitan's crimes and had no symbiotic

806
01:12:01.480 --> 01:12:07.720
relationship with it. If the Mexican police engaged in a punitive expedition to punish the

807
01:12:07.720 --> 01:12:13.480
metropolitan force, they would not be at war with Americans in general as they would be now.

808
01:12:14.280 --> 01:12:20.040
In fact, it is highly likely that other American forces would join the Mexicans in putting down

809
01:12:20.040 --> 01:12:27.720
the aggressor. Hence, the idea of interstate war against a libertarian country or geographical area

810
01:12:27.720 --> 01:12:30.900
would most likely disappear.

811
01:12:30.900 --> 01:12:36.240
There is, furthermore, a grave philosophical error in the very posing of this sort of question

812
01:12:36.240 --> 01:12:38.140
about the Russians.

813
01:12:38.140 --> 01:12:44.400
When we contemplate any sort of new system, whatever it may be, we must first decide whether

814
01:12:44.400 --> 01:12:47.080
we want to see it brought about.

815
01:12:47.080 --> 01:12:53.900
In order to decide whether we want libertarianism or communism or left-wing anarchism or theocracy

816
01:12:53.900 --> 01:13:00.300
or any other system, we must first assume that it has been established, and then consider

817
01:13:00.300 --> 01:13:05.940
whether the system could work, whether it could remain in existence, and just how efficient

818
01:13:05.940 --> 01:13:08.500
such a system would be.

819
01:13:08.500 --> 01:13:14.940
We have shown, I believe, that a libertarian system, once instituted, could work, be viable,

820
01:13:14.940 --> 01:13:22.440
and be at once far more efficient, prosperous, moral, and free than any other social system.

821
01:13:22.440 --> 01:13:28.080
But we have said nothing about how to get from the present system to the ideal.

822
01:13:28.080 --> 01:13:35.060
For these are two totally separate questions, the question of what is our ideal goal and

823
01:13:35.060 --> 01:13:41.840
of the strategy and tactics of how to get from the present system to that goal.

824
01:13:41.840 --> 01:13:45.760
The Russian question mixes these two levels of discourse.

825
01:13:45.760 --> 01:13:51.400
It assumes not that libertarianism has been established everywhere throughout the globe,

826
01:13:51.400 --> 01:13:57.040
but that for some reason it has been established only in America and nowhere else.

827
01:13:57.040 --> 01:13:58.680
But why assume this?

828
01:13:58.680 --> 01:14:04.280
Why not first assume that it has been established everywhere and see whether we like it?

829
01:14:04.280 --> 01:14:11.120
After all, the libertarian philosophy is an eternal one, not bound to time or place.

830
01:14:11.120 --> 01:14:17.080
We advocate liberty for everyone, everywhere, not just in the United States.

831
01:14:17.080 --> 01:14:22.040
If someone agrees that a world libertarian society once established is the best that

832
01:14:22.040 --> 01:14:28.040
he can conceive, that it would be workable, efficient, and moral, then let him become

833
01:14:28.040 --> 01:14:29.560
a libertarian.

834
01:14:29.560 --> 01:14:35.560
Let him join us in accepting liberty as our ideal goal, and then join us further in the

835
01:14:35.560 --> 01:14:42.800
separate and obviously difficult task of figuring out how to bring this ideal about.

836
01:14:42.800 --> 01:14:48.160
If we do move on to strategy, it is obvious that the larger an area in which liberty is

837
01:14:48.160 --> 01:14:53.520
first established, the better its chances for survival, and the better its chance to

838
01:14:53.520 --> 01:14:57.920
resist any violent overthrow that may be attempted.

839
01:14:57.920 --> 01:15:02.320
If liberty is established instantaneously throughout the world, then there will of course

840
01:15:02.320 --> 01:15:05.800
be no problem of national defense.

841
01:15:05.800 --> 01:15:09.400
All problems will be local police problems.

842
01:15:09.400 --> 01:15:14.960
If, however, only Deep Falls, Wyoming becomes libertarian, while the rest of America and

843
01:15:14.960 --> 01:15:20.480
the world remain statist, its chances for survival will be very slim.

844
01:15:20.480 --> 01:15:25.640
If Deep Falls, Wyoming declares its secession from the United States government and establishes

845
01:15:25.640 --> 01:15:31.440
a free society, the chances are great that the United States, given its historical ferocity

846
01:15:31.440 --> 01:15:37.060
towards secessionists, would quickly invade and crush the new free society, and there

847
01:15:37.060 --> 01:15:42.220
There is little that any Deep Falls police force could do about it.

848
01:15:42.220 --> 01:15:48.220
Between these two polar cases, there is an infinite continuum of degrees, and obviously

849
01:15:48.220 --> 01:15:54.100
the larger the area of freedom, the better it could withstand any outside threat.

850
01:15:54.100 --> 01:15:58.940
The Russian question is therefore a matter of strategy rather than a matter of deciding

851
01:15:58.940 --> 01:16:05.380
on basic principles and on the goal toward which we wish to direct our efforts.

852
01:16:05.380 --> 01:16:10.340
But after all this is said and done, let us take up the Russian question anyway.

853
01:16:10.340 --> 01:16:15.060
Let us assume that the Soviet Union would really be hell-bent on attacking a libertarian

854
01:16:15.060 --> 01:16:18.860
population within the present boundaries of the United States.

855
01:16:18.860 --> 01:16:25.260
Clearly, there would no longer be a United States government to form a single nation-state.

856
01:16:25.260 --> 01:16:30.140
In the first place, the form and quantity of defense expenditures would be decided upon

857
01:16:30.140 --> 01:16:33.260
by the American consumers themselves.

858
01:16:33.260 --> 01:16:38.480
Those Americans who favor Polaris submarines and fear a Soviet threat would subscribe toward

859
01:16:38.480 --> 01:16:41.060
the financing of such vessels.

860
01:16:41.060 --> 01:16:46.220
Those who prefer an ABM system would invest in such defensive missiles.

861
01:16:46.220 --> 01:16:50.620
Those who laugh at such a threat or those who are committed pacifists would not contribute

862
01:16:50.620 --> 01:16:54.220
to any national defense service at all.

863
01:16:54.220 --> 01:16:58.360
Different defense theories would be applied in proportion to those who agree with and

864
01:16:58.360 --> 01:17:01.900
support the various theories being offered.

865
01:17:01.900 --> 01:17:07.900
Given the enormous waste in all wars and defense preparations in all countries throughout history,

866
01:17:07.900 --> 01:17:12.720
it is certainly not beyond the bounds of reason to propose that private voluntary defense

867
01:17:12.720 --> 01:17:17.300
efforts would be far more efficient than government boondoggles.

868
01:17:17.300 --> 01:17:20.960
Certainly these efforts would be infinitely more moral.

869
01:17:20.960 --> 01:17:23.080
But let us assume the worst.

870
01:17:23.080 --> 01:17:28.480
Let us assume the Soviet Union at last invades and conquers the territory of America.

871
01:17:28.480 --> 01:17:29.920
What then?

872
01:17:29.920 --> 01:17:35.360
We have to realize that the Soviet Union's difficulties will have only just begun.

873
01:17:35.360 --> 01:17:40.200
The main reason a conquering country can rule a defeated country is that the latter has

874
01:17:40.200 --> 01:17:46.080
an existing state apparatus to transmit and enforce the victor's orders onto a subject

875
01:17:46.080 --> 01:17:47.480
population.

876
01:17:47.480 --> 01:17:54.840
Britain, though far smaller in area and population, was able to rule India for centuries because

877
01:17:54.840 --> 01:18:00.240
Because it could transmit British orders to the ruling Indian princes, who in turn could

878
01:18:00.240 --> 01:18:03.480
enforce them on the subject population.

879
01:18:03.480 --> 01:18:09.480
But in those cases in history where the conquered had no government, the conquerors found rule

880
01:18:09.480 --> 01:18:12.680
over the conquered extremely difficult.

881
01:18:12.680 --> 01:18:17.040
When the British conquered West Africa, for example, they found it extremely difficult

882
01:18:17.040 --> 01:18:23.800
to govern the Igbo tribe, later to form Biafra, because that tribe was essentially libertarian

883
01:18:23.800 --> 01:18:29.560
and had no ruling government of tribal chiefs to transmit orders to the natives.

884
01:18:29.560 --> 01:18:34.920
And perhaps the major reason it took the English centuries to conquer ancient Ireland is that

885
01:18:34.920 --> 01:18:40.540
the Irish had no state and that there was, therefore, no ruling governmental structure

886
01:18:40.540 --> 01:18:44.640
to keep treaties, transmit orders, etc.

887
01:18:44.640 --> 01:18:49.840
It is for this reason that the English kept denouncing the wild and uncivilized Irish

888
01:18:49.840 --> 01:18:55.640
English as faithless, because they would not keep treaties with the English conquerors.

889
01:18:55.640 --> 01:19:00.940
The English could never understand that, lacking any sort of state, the Irish warriors who

890
01:19:00.940 --> 01:19:05.660
concluded treaties with the English could only speak for themselves.

891
01:19:05.660 --> 01:19:09.920
They could never commit any other group of the Irish population.

892
01:19:09.920 --> 01:19:16.280
Furthermore, the occupying Russians' lives would be made even more difficult by the inevitable

893
01:19:16.280 --> 01:19:20.580
Eruption of Guerrilla Warfare by the American Population.

894
01:19:20.580 --> 01:19:25.800
It is surely a lesson of the 20th century, a lesson first driven home by the successful

895
01:19:25.800 --> 01:19:31.720
American revolutionaries against the mighty British Empire, that no occupying force can

896
01:19:31.720 --> 01:19:37.360
long keep down a native population determined to resist.

897
01:19:37.360 --> 01:19:42.880
If the giant United States, armed with far greater productivity and firepower, could

898
01:19:42.880 --> 01:19:48.480
would not succeed against a tiny and relatively unarmed Vietnamese population.

899
01:19:48.480 --> 01:19:54.000
How in the world could the Soviet Union succeed in keeping down the American people?

900
01:19:54.000 --> 01:19:59.320
No Russian occupation soldier's life would be safe from the wrath of a resisting American

901
01:19:59.320 --> 01:20:01.000
populace.

902
01:20:01.000 --> 01:20:07.200
Guerrilla warfare has proved to be an irresistible force precisely because it stems not from

903
01:20:07.200 --> 01:20:12.320
a dictatorial central government, but from the people themselves, fighting for their

904
01:20:12.320 --> 01:20:16.320
and their liberty and independence against a foreign state.

905
01:20:16.320 --> 01:20:23.320
And surely the anticipation of this sea of troubles, of the enormous costs and losses that would inevitably follow,

906
01:20:23.320 --> 01:20:30.320
would stop well in advance even a hypothetical Soviet government bent on military conquest.