In a World Without Government ...

Since 1893, the Hague Conference on Private International Law, a melting pot of different legal traditions, develops and services Conventions which respond to global needs in the following areas:
International Protection of Children
International Protection of Adults
Relations between (Former) Spouses
Wills, Trusts and Estates
International Judicial and Administrative Co-operation
Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgments
Contracts
Torts
Securities
Trusts
Recognition of Companies
http://www.hcch.net/

Post 1

Sunday, April 2, 2006 - 7:15pm

Private International Law or just Private Law under the heading "conflict of laws." In fact, here in the USA, the "full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution does not much for gay marriage (so-called) or most other unlawful marriages, as when the age of majority was different for men and for women and was 21 or 18 depending. We here in the USA do not perceive the substrate of 50 "competing governments" that seems to hold together. Federalism is a thin frame. Something else is at work.

In Europe, however, the reality of a couple dozen nations has always been something to live with, even when putative "nations" such as "Germany" and "Italy" were only shells surrounding a dozen or more polities.

In the USA, the state of Lousiana still has a basis of Codex Napoleon within its laws and therein are THREE "books." The criminal law we all would understand. Even the civil law of torts is the governmentalist solution to past problems that we accept as unquestioned. However, Codex Napoleon had a "third book" -- Obligations, i.e, "business law" or "contract law."

In German common law there was a separate "book" on the many ways that a thing could be "owned" i.e., title to it bought or sold, insured, mortgaged, etc., etc., etc.

All of this has always existed since the days of Rome when the problems of "law" became more complicated than the commands of the ruling body. In Rome, they had to deal with the problems of an Alexandrian merchant selling grain from Britain to a town council in Greece. We fail to understand what it meant that Trajan was born in Spain. We think of him as a "Roman" emperor. Roman law may or may not have extended that far -- and one of the innovations of Roman law was that it superseded custom.

Few people ever read the BACKS of forms. You buy something. You issue a purchase order. The seller issues a bill of sale. The terms on those two documents may be quite different, even conflicting. Those two parties expect shipment to take place without actually reading the terms on the back of a bill of lading -- or trying to reconcile them. Yet, trade and commerce flow.

Post 2

Sunday, February 3, 2008 - 1:00pm

All choice-of-law cases pose essentially the same problem: several rules or sets of rules, also called legal systems purport to govern disputed issues or set of issues, also called legal relationship, at stake. Traditionally, continental private international law (P.I.L.) focuses on the legal relationship and connects it to the appropriate legal system by means of choice-of-law rules.

Lois de police and modern American theories have common grounds despite any mutual influence. Both theories attempt to solve the choice of law problem from a functional standpoint. Basically, a functional approach to choice-of-law process centers on the policies that underlie the competing rules through a two-step inquiry.

Guedj Thomas G., �The Theory of the Lois de Police, A Functional Trend in Continental Private International Law-A Comparative Analysis with Modern American Theories,� The American Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 39, No. 4. (Autumn, 1991), pp. 661-697.

The study of private settlement of cross-border trade and investment disputes through international commercial arbitration or other mechanisms has been much neglected by scholars of international political economy and international institutions. This oversight is attributable in part to the traditional focus of international relations on intergovernmental international organizations and the lack of attention to private international institutional arrangements. A further reason for the oversight is that arbitration is resolutely private, making information exceedingly difficult to obtain. Two distinguished international arbitrators, Alan Redfern and Martin Hunter, recently observed that the study of the practice of international commercial arbitration is like peering into the dark. Few arbitral awards are published and even fewer procedural decisions of arbitral tribunals come to light.

Private Justice in a Global Economy: From Litigation to Arbitration

Walter Mattli, International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 4, The Rational Design of International Institutions. (Autumn, 2001), pp. 919-947.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 2/03, 1:12pm)

Post 3

Sunday, April 25, 2010 - 4:17am

Jan Hendrick Sch�n was a bright young man, a postdoctoral researcher at Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies). He co-published articles about frontline physics. His works appeared in Nature and Science. At his peak, he was publishing one paper every eight days. He had a molecular laser and an atomic transistor. Then it all fell apart. Lucent could no nothing. He was their employee, to be sure, so they released him, but his work was signed by and signed off by his managers. He broke no "laws" in the common sense of that, violated no legislative injunctions, violated no one's "rights" if you will. The University of Konstanz revoked his doctorate. The University granted fully that his dissertation was beyond reproach: he had, indeed, earned his degree. But his actions at Lucent Technologies were egregious in the extreme. So, they removed their sanction. The fact is that universities have been a law unto themselves for over 800 years.

Duryea, Edwin D., The Academic Corporation: A History of College and University Governing Boards, Falmer Press (Taylor & Francis Group), New York and London, 2000.
Leedham-Green, Elisabeth, A Concise History of The University of Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Paulsen, Friedrich, The German University and University Study, Charles Scribner, 1906.
Hart, James Morgan. German Universities: A Narrative of Personal Experience, G. P. Putnam, 1874.

Post 4

Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - 9:11am

Michael,
As is often the case, I don't know what your point is. And, for the record, he did not have "a molecular laser and an atomic transistor". His data was fudged.

Post 5

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - 7:04pm

Glenn, I am sorry that I did not write clearly for you. I thought that anyone who cared and did not yet know the story of Jan Hendrik Sch�n would check it out. The book Plastic Fantastic goes into detail.

To say that his data was fudged is a severe understatement, of course. At one point, he published the same graph for two different research reports.

My point was that while there were no remedies in the governmentalist sense of "law," there was a severe consequence as his University revoked his degree. Universities are a law unto themselves, and always have been. The idea that geographic monopolies are required for lawful society is obviously flawed.

Jurist Wolf Devoon said that government is just one way to instantiate law.

I stipulate.

Post 6

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - 11:23pm

Glenn,

Michael is arguing in favor of anarchy. Not understanding his point puts you in a large and often irritated group of people. He maintains that "law" will arise from many non-government sources and that this law will evolve to serve justice better than minarchy could provide. People have pointed out the many fallacies in his 'arguments' one by one, again and again. But it is a waste of time.

Post 7

Saturday, June 12, 2010 - 6:46am

In the Glenn Beck thread, Steve Wolfer went back to this basic discussion.

SW:
Metaphysics: Objective Reality
Epistemology: Reason
Ethics: Rational Self-Interest
Economics: Free Enterprise
Politics: Limited government

The Ayn Rand Institute states it somewhat differently here:

Ayn Rand was once asked if she could present the essence of Objectivism while standing on one foot. Her answer was:
Metaphysics: Objective Reality
Epistemology: Reason
Ethics: Self-interest
Politics: Capitalism

And further, they clarify this from Ayn Rand's own explanation.

Politics
"The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that no man has the right to seek values from others by means of physical force�i.e., no man or group has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others. Men have the right to use force only in self-defense and only against those who initiate its use. Men must deal with one another as traders, giving value for value, by free, mutual consent to mutual benefit. The only social system that bars physical force from human relationships is laissez-faire capitalism. Capitalism is a system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which the only function of the government is to protect individual rights, i.e., to protect men from those who initiate the use of physical force." Thus Objectivism rejects any form of collectivism, such as fascism or socialism. It also rejects the current "mixed economy" notion that the government should regulate the economy and redistribute wealth.

To say that the only function of government is to protect individual rights is not to say that government is the only agency or institution which can protect individual rights.

"Rational" self interest? Could the irrational ever be in your self-interest?

Furthermore, while we all agree on the importance of reason, in fact, Objectivists are not Rationalists. I had a rationalist professor for a Logic class (required for criminal justice at my community college). She was absolutely sure that A is A and absolutely unsure that the sun would rise in the east tomorrow morning, though she granted it probably would because it always seemed to before... but might not, because experiential reality is not absolute... Ayn Rand's Objectivism is a rational-empirical school of thought which maintains that reason is based on experience and experience validates reason. In the case of any uncertainty Rand herself said that experience -- not reason -- is the final arbiter. (If anyone is uncertain about uncertainty, perhaps a different discussion Topic would be helpfu.)

Post 8

Saturday, June 12, 2010 - 11:37am

All these discussions assume that a minimal government can only exist by means of initiation of force. At the risk of repetition, I have posted the following.

Post #17

I think Ted's comment on post #18 is not accurate. Some ideas were on the subject of voluntary taxes were discussed but the implementation of zats wasn't given before ... at least I've given another search on this site and can't find it.

Sam

Post 9

Saturday, June 12, 2010 - 3:45pm

Michael,

In that other thread, where you got my responses posted above, the context would explain why I laid out the basic elements of Objectivism. You continue to claim to be an anarchist and an Objectivist and I continue to point out that is absurd. I'm quite certain that Ayn Rand would agree or do you have some secret information somewhere that shows her to be a friend of anarchy?

I broke down economics and politics separately for a good reason. Some anarchists claim that a 'free market' will provide justice through competition. But they ignore the fact that you can't have 'free' market till you have in place a government with a monopoly on objective laws that are based upon individual rights (it doesn't have to be anywhere near perfect, but it has to be).

Under politics I listed "limited government" for obvious reasons. Ayn Rand did not support anarchy - not on one foot or two. But here you are quoting The Ayn Rand Institute and Ayn Rand.... are you saying they support your position that an anarchist can also be an Objectivist? That isn't what I read.

It makes sense to say "rational self-interest" because of the different uses of the words 'self' and 'interest.' It reduces the chance that someone will mistake 'self-interest' for some variant of hedonism or non-rational egoism.
-------------

Sam,

I agree. There are many ways to fully fund a minarchist government without involuntary taxation.

Post 10

Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 3:24am

Sam wrote: "... Some ideas were on the subject of voluntary taxes were discussed but the implementation of zats wasn't given before ..."

That was interesting. I am sorry to have missed it the first time around, but glad to have read it now. Your close reasoning opens many avenues for discussion. You are quite original.

Perhaps at the zeroeth level, voluntary taxes (zats) are a matter of ethos. Money has been tight these past few years, but last year my charities of choice were the USO and the Southern Poverty Law Center. This year, it was Doctors without Borders and Amnesty International. So, yes, charity toward government can work. Oddly enough perhaps, our accountant wants us to pay the most in taxes allowable under law because for him it is a matter of honor to be in the productive class.

For me, though, the remaining problem is that charities offer nothing upfront or in return. Some do. Some like the NPR/PBS fund-raisers do offer things like mailing labels. I bought a couple of decorative blankets from the Society of Roses. But any value exchanged is totally within me: I feel good. But this computer and the coffee I am drinking and the cup that holds the coffee, those all represent a different model entirely.

Communism theorized that the entirety of human action could be run as a charity. Capitalists suggest that defense and protection, mediation, arbitration and adjudication, can be economic goods. It may be that accepting government as a society's broadest charity is the appropriate middle ground.

It is interesting to consider.

Post 11

Thursday, June 17, 2010 - 5:04pm

"Philip Coates is Mugged"

The headline stood out in space, wriggling and pulsing. The woman next to me pointed her feye at it and clicked the buy. So did the boy on her left. Their eyes glazed and then refocussed. She said, "Well, he asked for it." The boy replied, "It's the only way." The woman said, "Let's fly over." They held hands and lifted off the ground on their surface effect Nikes.

THE HAYASHI ALTERNATIVE

It all started at LibberCon 2015. The intersection between libertarianism and science fiction would not seem like enough to draw a crowd of 20, let alone 2000, but the lines were long at the hotel and the ballroom was bustling with huxters. I spotted Phil Coates talking to L. Neil Smith. Behind Smith was a 10-foot circle of crackling lights that looked like a hula hoop holding thick soap film. "But that's impossible," Coates said. Smith heaved a sigh and said, "The mathema..." But I was impatient and said, "Like this!" and I shoved as hard as I could, my mere 145 lbs colliding with Coates' considerable bulk. He fell through the Broach. "Gotta make sure he doesn't get hurt," I said to Smith, and I dived in after Phil.

Phil Coates was getting up off the ground, nursing his bruises as I stepped through spritely. "What'd you do that for?" he said angrily. "Look, you want to get mugged in an anarcho-capitalist utopia, right? Well, it requires first the utopia ... and here we are courtesy of the Probability Broach. That was the easy part."

"What's the hard part?" he asked.

"Finding a mugger. You see, as Stuart Hayashi pointed out back in 2007 there is no reason to argue the metaphysically impossible. In 2010, you said:

"... you don't need a massive police presence or detectives or the legal power to investigate crimes and get testimony under anarchism because most people wouldn't steal or commit crimes because they know they would suffer loss of reputation, would be ostracized, and no one would trade with them.

I remember having a huge laugh at this out of touch yuppie academic intellectual. I pictured a hooded and anonymous (maybe even masked) teenage mugger wearing what the NY cops used to call 'felony shoes' speedily popping down a subway entrance at Broadway and 125th after he'd just stolen a purse only to emerge miles away in another borough.

I imagine myself interviewing the guy years later:

"Yeah I was stealing to support my cocaine habit. I was real concerned that somebody psychic years later would know I was pulling the robbery and they wouldn't have been willing to be my pusher or hire me as a pimp because of it. Had I only lived under anarcho-capitalism and read David Friedman in the crack house, I woulda-coulda-shoulda gone straight. Let that be a lesson to me about my reputation: I'll never get into Harvard now."

You challenged me to answer that fully. Heck, Phil, at the time, I took it to be a rhetorical question. I mean, consider that you said, (and I quote) "most people wouldn't steal or commit crimes because they know they would suffer loss of reputation." You see, Phil, the fact is that most people do not steal. They do not for many reasons, but basically, it all comes down to most people think it is wrong to do so and they do the right thing either for absolute reasons -- like Objectivism or Christianity -- or for cultural reasons because no one else around them does."

"So what?", he asked.

"Well, you posited a counter-factual. You assumed that some special utopia is necessary to keep most people honest. In fact, most people are honest, which is why society works as well as it does. We Objectivists believe that marginal improvements are possible."

"What does that have to do with Stuart Hayashi's thesis?" Phil asked. He was not stupid.

"Well, first of all, back in 2010, you posited an anarcho-capitalist utopia, which did not exist. You were hardly the first, from Thomas Moore's Utopia to Bellamy's Looking Backward, the Tannehills only drew up another science fiction scenario. The Probability Broach expanded on that theory in a more nicely drawn kind of way, with characters and scenes, showing a world very much like our own, but better.

"But in our Federalist World of 2010, the real question is not how to perceive crime in a perfect society. The problem is only can there be more marginal profits to entrepreneurs in our society who engage in the business of protection and adjudication. And there is. Only one-third of all patrol officers are public. In our own world,, twice as much investment is in private security, even for all the SWAT tanks and flying drones and camera at traffic lights. Moreover, for over 100 years, General Motors and Ford Motor Comany had huge private police forces while competing cheek by jowl and they never fired a shot at each other. And Pinkerton's never even fired on the government cops or vice versa. So, there was no reason to discuss metaphysically unreal scenarios. If you want to know if the free market can supply protection and adjudication as well as it provides shoes and french fries, you just have to open your eyes.

"But, leaving that aside, I waited five years for the Broach to bring you here. That is the other problem. In this world, muggers are rare. But they do exist. We just have to find one and arrange for you to be mugged and then see what happens."

"Why me?" he asked.

I had a pocketful of interesting coins in copper and silver, so we were set for a day or so. I walked Phil around the place. We had lunch and dinner, took in a 3D remake of Atlas Shrugged, and about 12:30 AM, we were finally in the "govtown" district, a refuge of hamiltonians where crime was real. The dark dirty streets were slopped with dank light from bars and churches. I walked us down the center of the street. At the end of the block, four toughs stood under a broken Walk sign. "OK," I said,

"OK, what?" Phil replied.

"Keep walking." I stepped off to the side and let the shadows hug me. Phil shambled forward uncertainly.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 6/17, 6:00pm)

Post 12

Thursday, June 17, 2010 - 8:10pm

Heh ... ;-)

Friday, June 18, 2010 - 5:01am

Philip Coates imagined: "... a huge laugh at this out of touch yuppie academic intellectual. I pictured a hooded and anonymous (maybe even masked) teenage mugger wearing what the NY cops used to call 'felony shoes' speedily popping down a subway entrance at Broadway and 125th after he'd just stolen a purse only to emerge miles away in another borough."

Several unrealities need addressing. As noted above, Morris G. Tannehill was not a yuppie academic intellectual. (Neither was he the primary author of TMFL.) After a tour in the US Army as a paratrooper, he went to a Bible school and became an evangelist. I do not know about Jeff Riggenbach or Roderick Long or Jarrett Wollstein or any of your other enemies. I do know that "yuppie" means "young urban professional" and it is a term from the 1980s, after the hippies went back to work, so it is an anachronism. You are a preppie, though, right?

Your perpetrator has made NYC's five boroughs his territory. That is not metaphysically impossible, but it is statistically unlikely. Female burglars are an exception, but generally offenders perpetrate in their own neighborhoods. That is sociologically important because I was in a class where the police officer instructor spoke in one breath about your having "people in your community and perpetrators." I did not interrupt, but perps are people in the community, also, and if you deny that fact, you are like a chemist who does not know mixtures from compounds. In fact, as "crime" (so-called) includes unlicensed establishments from auto repair and plumbing to bars and (ahem) druggists you have to see criminals as members of a community in order to understand crime -- if you want to do anything about it.

Police know that it is an easy claim that 80% of your calls come from 20% of your addresses in every neighborhood. In the rich, white suburbs crime -- domestic violence; breaking and entering; vandalism -- is swept under the rug. But the calls still come in as men beat their wives, as kids break into shops and shoot out street lights, and as boys rape girls because they have experienced spousal rape in their own homes. Your assumption that "yuppies" are a better class of people is metaphysically unreal on several grounds.

On the other hand, private police are not just elements of anarcho-Objectivist science fiction. The word "police" appears nowhere in the US Constitution. The idea that governments provide "police and courts" because they have "a monopoly on force" goes back only about to John Stuart Mill's time -- certainly not to Aristotle -- and was most widely associated with the German sociologist Max Weber who gave it full expression in his essay "The Law as a Profession." In point of fact, President Abraham Lincoln hired Allan Pinkerton to protect him. The Pinkertons were known to do what the public police could not.

Moreover, again, those "police" (so-called) were often only the elected county sheriff and a limited number of sworn deputies. Boston, Philadelphia and New York vie for the title of "first police force" going back to the early 1830s depending on whether we mean first full-time, first continous, or first professional (paid). Chicago, Baltimore and others run distant fourths.

Relative to your running mugger, the point is that private police could and did pursue across cities and counties, whereas public police and sheriffs were stopped by their boundaries as robbers, burglars, and murderers escaped on trains at twenty or thirty miles per hour.

In today's world, here and now, private options eclipse the "Soviet agriculture" model of protection, as I said, over two to one in terms of manpower and capital, both. The trend goes back over 40 years when it was first measured that public policing was not a monopoly.

Post 14

Friday, June 18, 2010 - 10:22am

Michael wrote, "anarcho-Objectivist"

How cute! But, Michael, wishing won't make it so. There are no anarchists who are Objectivists, and no Objectivists that are anarchists. This is the real-world, not the anarcho-world.

It is so much like the old Soviet style of propaganda - they could have spoken of "Libertarian-Communism." They liked the idea of attempting to steal meanings they had no right to.

Here is another one: "Christian-atheism" which would please neither side... and that is more like the what Michael attempted. Only a tiny number would cling to it, blindly ignoring how ridiculous it makes them appear to those who treat words as having meanings.

Thinking about it, I guess it is a good that anarchists have this desire to attach "anarcho" to other words. It announces their idiocy so that the rest of us can move on to read something that might be worth our time. As far as actual meaning that prefix is very close to zero. Anarcho = Zero government, zero stability, zero freedom, zero intellectual value.
----------------

In another thread Philip Coates wrote:

I remember reading some floating, bizarre anarcho-capitalist idea when I had been a New York City boy, experiencing those gritty streets and their crime for a few years. I think it was something fatuous by David Friedman (or maybe Roy Childs or Morris Tanenbaum or Murray Rothbard) to the effect that you don't need a massive police presence or detectives or the legal power to investigate crimes and get testimony under anarchism because most people wouldn't steal or commit crimes because they know they would suffer loss of reputation, would be ostracized, and no one would trade with them.

I remember having a huge laugh at this out of touch yuppie academic intellectual. I pictured a hooded and anonymous (maybe even masked) teenage mugger wearing what the NY cops used to call 'felony shoes' speedily popping down a subway entrance at Broadway and 125th after he'd just stolen a purse only to emerge miles away in another borough.

I imagine myself interviewing the guy years later:

"Yeah I was stealing to support my cocaine habit. I was real concerned that somebody psychic years later would know I was pulling the robbery and they wouldn't have been willing to be my pusher or hire me as a pimp because of it. Had I only lived under anarcho-capitalism and read David Friedman in the crack house, I woulda-coulda-shoulda gone straight. Let that be a lesson to me about my reputation: I'll never get into Harvard now."

Michael's 'answer' is above in posts 11 and 13 - an absurd mismash of irrelevancies (anarcho-irrelevant? No, that would be redundant.)

Post 15

Sunday, June 20, 2010 - 5:35pm

> At the end of the block, four toughs stood under a broken Walk sign...I stepped off to the side...Phil shambled forward uncertainly.

Michael, the glaringly obvious thing wrong with your scenario, other than the fact that I never shamble and am never uncertain, is that any number fewer than eight (8) 'toughs' could mug me.

As you mentioned, I'm a big guy.

Your other obvious mistake, which you would regret long after you had emerged from the hospital, is that you, who set it up, would escape my running you to ground after I'd disarmed and maimed them.

In your anarcho-bizarro-disneyland, you would be in for a particularly brutal thrashing, as the instigator of violence is more thoroughly punished than the violent.
(Edited by Philip Coates on 6/20, 5:37pm)

Post 16

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - 6:53am

PC: "... I never shamble and am never uncertain... [no] fewer than eight (8) 'toughs' could mug me. ... you would be in for a particularly brutal thrashing, as the instigator of violence is more thoroughly punished than the violent. ... "

Nice to know that you think you can take of yourself. Obvious self-confidence is a barrier to victimization. Victimology is an aspect of criminology. We seek not to blame the victim, of course, and within that stricture, it is nonetheless clear that victims make themselves available to perpetrators.

The matter is complicated on many levels in many aspects. Take domestic abuse. Typically, they are a matched set: a woman of low self-esteem who was abused as a child finds a batterer who himself was abused and like her witnessed abuse in his home. Should she come to a realization and attempt to leave the relationship, he will follow her. Often, it ends only with her death, seldom with his. If she leaves the home, he will find her. She has no protections under the law and the penalties he suffers -- restraining orders, personal protection orders, jail, prison -- do not stop him.

The law -- which prohibits the rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges -- has few bright lines to differentiate that situation from two guys in a bar, arguing about a close referee call on the TV who decide to take it out back and settle their differences.

In a society without government -- my scenario came from L. Neil Smith's "Probability Broach" -- you might expect the kind of vengeance with which you threaten me in relatiation for my setting you up. However, in a society with government you do not. Government holds the monopoly on retaliatory force. If the word monopoly has any meaning, then you can defend yourself in the moment, but you cannot take it past that.

Thus, victimology reveals that often the apparent victim was the original perpetrator. The original victim came back to more than even the score. You might say that the perpetrator got what he deserved, but that would transform rule of law into anarchy.

Similarly, here in Michigan, if you come home and find an intruder in your house, your are required to leave the premises. You do not have the right to get a gun from your car and go into the house to kill the intruder. You have to call the police. That is rule of law. Otherwise, we have anarchy.

Now, oddly enough, perhaps, in Texas the law is different, and yet it remains law and not anarchy. I believe that this exemplifies Aristotle's observation that tradition is stronger than law. He was speaking of the fleeting laws of the assembly but I think that the point can be understood more broadly. It imight be said that the reason that Texas is not an anarchy and Somalia is has little to do with sales figures for The Market for Liberty. On the other hand, a more insightful analysis might draw disturbing parallels between Texas and Somalia beginning with religious fundamentalism and ending with ethnic conflict.

The reason that I pushed you through the Probability Broach was that you found New York City a gritty lawless place where masked muggers successfully evade the police merely by running away and taking a subway. But they have police in New York City -- Transit Authority cops in particular, as well as city officers -- and courts, and prosecutors, and all the rest. So, why do they have masked muggers running around? I believe that they do not -- at least not out of proportion for the population.

In fact, the last time I saw a hoodlum with a red bandana over his face -- no kidding -- it was in Fowlerville, Michigan, a village of 3,000. And in Fowlerville they blew a siren at 10:00 PM to announce the curfew. I'm just saying that laws and orders do not make a lawful orderly society. That requires a population of rational, reality-based individuals. ... perhaps a utopia ...

That said, just as you can protect your savings with free market alternatives to the Federal Reserve Bank, so, too, can you assure your own safety and find justice by engaging the agoric alternatives to calling the police and filing a complaint.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 6/22, 7:04am)

Post 17

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - 7:24am

MEM: "In fact, the last time I saw a hoodlum with a red bandana over his face -- no kidding -- it was in Fowlerville, Michigan, a village of 3,000. And in Fowlerville they blew a siren at 10:00 PM to announce the curfew. I'm just saying that laws and orders do not make a lawful orderly society. That requires a population of rational, reality-based individuals. ... perhaps a utopia ..."

Incidentally, the City of Chester, PA has recently declared a "State of Emergency" in reaction to 4 murders, inluding a toddler. Chester is a smaller city, next to Philadelphia, so I thought this interesting in light of the above.
http://http://cbs3.com/local/Chester.Mayor.Declares.2.1761494.html

From the article:

The mayor of Chester says fear in the community prompted him to declare a state of emergency to battle violence that has killed four people in eight days, including a toddler shot on his family's doorstep. Mayor Butler decided to impose the state of emergency after police found a man shot to death on the 400 block of Rose Street Saturday morning. It is the city's fourth homicide in just over a week. The State of Emergency went into effect Saturday evening and will remain in effect until Thursday morning. During the State of Emergency, Chester City officials will dispatch what they're calling "saturated patrol units" and enforce a curfew in five of the worst sections of the city. Residents will be required to remain in their home from 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. and gatherings of three or more will require a permit.

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 6/22, 7:25am)

Post 18

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - 8:15am

Thanks, Joe. I found the link and a couple of others.
Yours from CBS Local
http://cbs3.com/local/Chester.Mayor.Declares.2.1761494.html

This from the ABC affiliate
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=7507954

This from the Delaware County Times included many comments.
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/06/19/news/doc4c1cbff5591a0517567692.txt
The comments were revealing on many levels. These are the people who cared to express an opinion, the best and the brightest, you might say.

Chester began losing its mainstay shipyard and automobile manufacturing jobs as early as the 1960s, causing the population to be halved in fifty years from 65,000 in 1950 to under 37,000 in 2000. Poverty and crime rose as the city declined. In 1995, the state designated Chester as a financially distressed municipality. Soon thereafter, the city's schools ranked last among the state's 501 districts, leading Pennsylvania education officials in 2001 to hire the for-profit Edison Schools to run the local school district for three years.

When Chester became eligible for Pennsylvania's Opportunity Zone (KOZ) program, firms began to accept state and local tax breaks to invest in KOZ-designated areas of this southeastern Pennsylvania city. The Wharf at Rivertown, a $60 million renovation of the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO)'s 396,000 sq ft (36,800 m2) generating plant, which was originally built in Chester in 1918, has returned the waterfront to the local residents, providing both recreational and office space for new local endeavors. ... AdminServer is an upstart insurance software solution company that has drawn the market's attention. ... Sun Shipbuilding converted part of the shipyard to a smaller shipping concern and sold its interest, then sold off portions of the rest to new users, such as the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution Chester. Harrah's Casino and Racetrack built its facilities beginning in 2005, launching harness racing along the Delaware River in September 2006, and its racino in January 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester,_Pennsylvania

Post 19

Thursday, July 1, 2010 - 6:48pm