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Comment by civilian | Hacker News Reader

Huh. Hopefully they are now elderly libertarians? Have their political views changed since that experience?

Not really. To be libertarian you have to be pretty idealistic. They don't qualify. Now they are just Republicans that don't trust the police.

Well, that's some progress anyway.

All it will take to fix our police problem is sufficient public will. There isn't any other barrier.

There are people with the will, attempting to fix it in NH:

"Reform Asset Forfeiture!" - http://schedule.nhlibertyforum.com/event/de3f714a09d0089b2fc...

https://freestateproject.org

That assumes an ethical standard, and that the public isn't completely ignorant or malevolent like the one used in top comment example.

It might be true that a large number of self-proclaimed libertarians are idealistic, but it's certainly not true that idealism is necessary for libertarian views.

Libertarians need someone to enforce property rights. Police/Private security firms have always been the strong-arm of the ruling class, nothing about the ideology contradicts that. As that strong-arm, they will be granted special privileges and authority that they will abuse.

Some libertarians advocate self-service (or privately contracted) enforcement with public adjudication.

Someone whose life is affected by having a car and a few grand taken from them v. Xe Domestic Security, Ltd

Prosecution: Xe stole my car and rent money and now I have no way to earn enough credits to buy my insulin and keep my apartment.

Defense: The offender was found travelling in an erratic and suspicious manner. As per the agreement made by travelling on Private Road Supranational's private road, the traveler is subject to searches of their person and vehicle if suspected of engaging in certain dangerous activities outlined in Section VI of the contract. In addition, any property suspected of use in a criminal or dangerous activity will automatically have its ownership transferred to Private Road Supranational, as detailed in Section V. Furthermore, we have no record of ever confiscating any of the offender's property.

Judge, brought to you by Lockheed Martin: This seems to be a pretty open and shut case.

I'm not a self-identified libertarian, and I never said it was necessarily a good idea, just that public (or publicly contracted) enforcement entity with special priveleges isn't an essential feature of a libertarian system; some suggest that citizens should contract with their own enforcers, and that enforcers should have no special privileges beyond those of all citizens.

Why do I get the creeping suspicion that this is modeled on an actual in rem civil forfeiture case, where only the names have changed?

sounds like 199x in Russia :) Does shooting in public qualifies as public adjudication?

By "public adjudication" I meant that government courts -- or at least a government function of licensing and assigning adjudicators -- would continue to exist to adjudicate disputes, even though enforcement would be private.

(Many libertarians also see the government courts as last-gasp fallbacks and prefer private adjudication, but most that I've seen discuss the issue recognize the possibility of impasse in getting parties to agree on a private adjudicator, and see that some government involvement here may be essential.)

Yes some libertarians go to the extreme of anarcho-capitalist where everything is settled by insurance companies, including murder. If you, or one of your thugs kills someone, then your insurance company pays the surviving family's insurance company to compensate the family and your insurance rates go up. You don't actually go to jail, you're punished monetarily.

If you're really wealthy you have such good insurance that they negotiate sufficiently low compensation that you can in effect have anybody killed. And it's called feudalism. Or in early U.S. times, this was the American frontier, a.k.a. the wild west, and hired guns.

Libertarians think they have some new bright idea that's never been tried before to counter the fact we're ignorant violent primates. We want something enough, get pissed off enough, we become irrational. Having the irrational hire enforcers is old hat. And it leads to things like the gangs of New York, butchery in the streets, the warlords of Somalia.

These same libertarians are the first to propose both open and conceal carry (of guns) which are the #1 enemy of free speech and civil discourse. It says, "if you argue better than I do, I might just have to let my gun do the talking, so keep your mouth shut smarty pants." So I think libertarians are idiots and not to be trusted, especially if they're armed.

These same libertarians are the first to propose both open and conceal carry (of guns) which are the #1 enemy of free speech and civil discourse.

Because clearly the same cops you've been roundly criticizing as "highwaymen" elsewhere in the thread should have a monopoly on the possession of firearms.

I've got a better idea: you guys move to Somalia. I'm fine where I'm at.

>I've got a better idea: you guys move to Somalia. I'm fine where I'm at.

it is great to send people to Somalia while sitting in US. Doing so in Somalia would have quite different result through "private enforcement" :)

And some advocate privately contracted adjudication as well.

There are more libertarian-proposed solutions to such problems than there are libertarians. Most of these slot neatly into the category of things that could work in theory, but have never been attempted.

Once you go beyond the political mainstream, alignment between individuals drops drastically. If you can't get anything you want by compromise, you don't have to compromise on anything.

You may be surprised by the number of varying and mutually incompatible ideas that different libertarians will have regarding any particular issue, each one insisting that their idea would totally work, if only conditions X, Y, and Z could be met.

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