From: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 22:30:46 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Socio-Economic Cults (Re: Cypherpunk Cults)
Message-ID: <5d899dc016989b104a08057a85bc9e88@anon.efga.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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"John Smith" <jsmith58@hotmail.com> wrote:
>You know, there's a reason people started using judges to help settle
>disputes.  There's a reason the common law evolved with the idea of
>proportionate response and restitution.  This kind of
>shoot-everybody-I-think-harmed-me approach just doesn't work.  Nobody
>knows what someone else will consider harm worth shooting over.  If
>somebody disagrees that a shooting was justified, they'll shoot back,
>and feuds begin.

See "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman.  (Sorry if this is
old hat to you or other members of this list.)

Friedman's legal arrangement works something like this: Say you kill
somebody.  If you want to protect your life from revenge, you
immediately report what you did to three people nearby who were
uninvolved.

This keeps you inside the legal system.  Afterwards, a compensation
arrangement is made between your protection company and the protection
company of your victim.  This occurs within the legal framework.  If
you do not comply with the compensation agreement, you are outlawed.
Outlaws receive no legal protection.

You can change protection companies anytime you like.

Improbable?  This is very similar to the Icelandic legal system of
circa 1000 C.E.  Friedman claims that this worked quite well for many
years.  Icelanders at that time were murderous pirates, yet in Iceland
they murdered each other much less frequently than Americans do now in
the United States.

The compensation payments were typically nontrivial - on the order of
twenty years of income.

Some interesting aspects of medieval Icelandic politics: no prisons,
no standing army, no single political leader, and no taxes.

Just Another Cypherpunk

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