Lange post op mises forum over 'the law'

Maar enorm interessant!

Hier vind je hem. Enkele highlights.

Hoppe’s argument suggests that there are two conditions for the existence of interpersonal conflict: more than one person and scarcity. There seems to be many forms of conflict which do not originate from scarcity, such as debates over metaphysics or religion, which may even go to fists. However, law is concerned only with real (physical) conflicts. Until a verbal argument goes to fists, it is not a real conflict. Law, in a private law society, is not concerned with resolving moral or metaphysical disputes[5].

(...)

Property becomes owned through original appropriation. Original appropriation is the rule of first use: the first to use an otherwise unowned resource thereby becomes its rightful owner. If I am wandering through unowned wilderness (say, a thousand years ago when much of the Earth’s surface was unowned wilderness) and I pluck an apple from a wild apple tree, the apple becomes mine because I am using it and I am the first to put it to use. It is clear that use of unowned resources constitutes an improvement of social welfare since no one is hurt by my consuming the apple yet I am helped thereby. Since physical objects exist in a context of space and time adjacent to other physical objects, they are entangled, that is, how I use this physical object may affect some other physical object to which I do not have a property claim. Defining what constitutes valid or justifiable uses of physical resources is part of the problem that law solves.

(...)

But property or any other conflict-avoidance strategy is imperfect because it is impossible to foresee the future or divine all possible consequences of following a certain conflict-avoidance strategy. No rule can, in all cases, prevent conflicts from ever arising. Hence, conflicts are inevitable.

Property conflicts arise as a result of unilateral changes of property boundaries. The voluntary redrawing of boundary lines obviously results in an improvement of the human condition. But since I can always be materially better off by unilaterally redrawing the boundaries of property to give myself more at the expense of others, I am motivated to do so. Real conflict results when individuals act according to the incentive to unilaterally redraw property lines. The definition of real conflict is unilateral redrawing of property boundaries.

(...)

It is safe to assume that parties to a legal dispute are primarily motivated by adversarial self-interest. The US legal system makes this presumption very explicit. Given that the parties to the dispute are only in court to avoid physical conflict, in a private law society, this is not a very strong assumption. But this assumption leads to the breakdown of both the natural law (Rothbardian) and positive law (Friedmanian) approach to anarchic or private law. Friedman presents the case that anarchic law leads to the best or most efficient outcome for society. That is, Friedman is arguing from the point of view of social justice or social welfare. But this approach assumes that the individual cares about social welfare. That is, by presenting his arguments for anarchist law in the frame of how it improves social welfare, Friedman is assuming that the reader – and by implication anyone who is trying to ascertain what the law is and ought to be – cares about social justice or social welfare. This may accurately describe the typical, liberal academic but those most affected by the question of what the law is – real participants in real legal disputes – are not likely to share the same proclivity for social justice wherever it conflicts with their own interests. Since law, in a private law society, is the production of voluntary, non-violent resolutions to real disputes, only a definition of law which is acceptable to adversarial, self-interested individuals will suffice.

Rothbard argues from the point of view of natural law, starting first from the physical fact of an inalienable will in the living body and reasoning in the Lockean fashion from this fact to property rights in the body and thence to the preconditions for the body’s continued existence: standing room, air to breath and liberty to appropriate unowned natural resources or to utilize the body to produce and exchange for vital necessities. Leaving aside the potential technical problems within the natural rights arguments, there is a greater deficiency vis-à-vis applying natural rights to law. In a legal dispute involving a clear aggressor and a clear victim, the aggressor has already exhibited a disregard for morality and human rights. The purse thief is hardly concerned with the fact that his actions are immoral or violate the rights of his victim. Hence, it is of no use to expound upon his violations of natural rights. As with Friedman’s approach, Rothbard’s approach fails because it is not applicable to real disputes. That is, Rothbard’s definition of law is not useful to real individuals involved in real conflicts.

(Kleine opmerking; 'k vind zijn punt hierboven over Rothbard niet sterk. Ik snap wat hij wilt zeggen - 'mensen zijn niet gemotiveerd door Rothbardiaanse of Friedmaniaanse overwegingen' - maar dat betekent dat het Friedmaniaanse of Rothbardiaanse argument niet correct (kunnen) zijn.)

So what is the law? Law is the alternative to violent conflict when conflict-avoidance strategies (such as property lines) have failed to avoid conflict. In terms of rights in property, law is the production of new, stipulated property-lines which resolve real conflicts without further violence.

This definition immediately raises the question of how disputes can be resolved between asymmetrically powerful parties. In modern law systems, the aggressor (accused) has an incentive to resolve the conflict with his victim by means of law because the state will immediately retaliate against the accused for failure to comply with a court trial. In other words, the state offers the options of non-violent dispute resolution or immediate, overwhelming retaliatory violence (appear in court or be arrested or possibly even killed for failure to comply). In a stateless society, it appears that an aggressor would have no incentive to seek non-violent resolution of a dispute with his victim. After all, an aggressor usually will not attack unless he reasonably believes he can get away with the attack in the first place. That is, he has already calculated that he can win a martial contest with the victim.

(...)

Since the court, in a private law society, is only selling its services as a mutually agreed-upon decision-maker, the rules which emerge governing what is justifiable violence will be those decisions which have in the past succeeded in settling disputes. That is, case law emerges out of the chaos of innumerable disputes and attempted resolutions of those disputes. Both the natural law and positive law approaches agree that a body of precedents will emerge from non-violent resolution of real conflicts in a private law society and that it is this body of decentralized dispute-resolution which becomes law per se. Rights and general laws emerge from the pattern of successful resolution of past real conflicts by non-violent means, just as common law developed in England and the US prior to the creation of legislatures.

Law a a discovery procedure

De tekst 'Law as a Discovery Procedure' lijkt mij een uiterest interessante tekst.

[Na het lezen: deze tekst is een absolute aanrader aan iedereen die in de liberale, maar ook in de niet liberale, beweging zit. Zéker lezen. Hij gaat je veel bijleren, sowieso.]

Van de inleiding:

This paper will attempt to unify the respective notions of a discovery procedure that are present in the study of law and economics. The second section of this paper will briefly review the relevant parts of Hayek’s argument and clarify what is meant by an “effective” discovery procedure. The third section will explain why the common law process is not, in fact, a procedure that is systematically effective in discovering legal rules. Government legislative processes are seen to be ineffective for the same reason. The third section will then outline a private legal process that, arguably, offers more promise.
The fourth and fifth sections will discuss some criticisms of a private legal process, emphasizing those made by William Landes and Richard Posner. The sixth section will argue that, even if it were ultimately found to be defective, the mere outlining ofsuch a process yields “some interesting consequences that are not so obvious” for traditional issues in legal philosophy. The issues will include questions in tort and contract law, the proper relationship between law and morality, and whether law and morality are properly seen as essentially utilitarian devices or as manifestations of rights to be honored independent of utilitarian considerations.

We beginnen te lezen.

We lezen eerst een recapitulatie van het Hayekiaans inzicht over de verspreiding van kennis en de waarde van markten vis a vis de overheid. We ontdekken ook het waarom van deze tekst:

As Hayek commented at the end of his 1968 lecture, however, an effective competitive process requires a complementary legal environment that defines and enforces rights concerning propertyand contracts. But Hayek’s 1968 lecture did not go far in outlining the features ofsuch a legal environment except to say that appropriate “protection for private initiatives and enterprise can only ever be achieved through the institution of private property and the whole aggregate of libertarian institutions of law” (Hayek 1978, p. 190).

Hij vervolgt dan met wat de essentie zal zijn van zijn kritiek op de Common Law visie van Hayek:

But neither Hayek’s praise nor his limited criticism of the common law process takes full account of the modern literature on the economics of property rights and other research in law and economics. As we shall see, this work makes clear why the common law process sometimes goes awry; it has started to articulate the precise conditions under which the process will, or will not, be effective. It also suggests why government legislative bodies cannot be counted on as a corrective device and points to radically different legal institutions as a possible means of at least shedding light on the principles on which many legal issues might be resolved.

Hij gaat dan over op het bespreken van wat nu concreet de issue is. 'k denk dat de meest relevante zin dit is:

The notion of an effective discovery procedure, on the other hand, refers to an ongoing process whereby information about not-yet-exhausted gains from trade is continually and economically uncovered and disseminated to individuals.

en

To summarize, if we say that one social process constitutes a more effective discovery procedure than another, we mean that it constitutes a systematically more economical way of generating and transmitting information about not-yet-exhausted gains from trade (as these are subjectively valued by individuals), including information about those gains that are or are not attainable after considering transactions costs.

Hij heeft ook een interessante (zij-)kritiek op de standaard Law & Economics literatuur.

That must be more plainly said is that government institutions, by definition, involve property rights that are not freely transferable. (...) That is, institutional failure is seen as avoidable—if appropriate property rights structures can be established. The establishment of appropriate property rights structures is, in turn, seen as a basic function of government. But government itself is governed by a property rights structure that the literature would deem inappropriate, so how can it be expected to carry out its tasks successfully?

Heerlijke opmerking. Hij bespreekt zijn kritiek op gelijkaardige wijze op de common law, i.e. dat er een verkeerde eigendomsstructuur is.

Hayek provides some other possible explanations for the common law process being defective, but none of them gets to the fundamental issue: the property rights structure governing the process. It is not necessarily undesirable if upper-class individuals provide

De eigendomsstructuur is immers zo:

The property rights structure is. Insofar as common law judges are decisionmakers of enterprises—government courts—for which rights are not transferable, and sometimes not even defined, they are in the position of central economic planners.” They cannot know all the circumstances oftime and place that would be relevant to efficient decisions, and there is no discovery procedure to duplicate that which prevails in free markets.’

Het laat niet te veel aan de verbeelding is wat de uiteindelijke conclusie zal zijn, maar de argumentatie is zowel origineel ('k kan me niet herinneren die al tegengekomen te zijn) als dat hij redelijk terecht is, zover ik kan zien. Hij bespreekt dan ook een privaat justitiesysteem - zonder al te postief te zijn over de mogelijkheden. Het is duidelijk dat hij het niet als een utopie beschouwt - en terecht dat hij het niet zo beziet.

Six major points of controversy will now be discussed with respect to a private legal system:

1. (1) the incentives for private courts to provide impartial justice,
2. (2) the incentives to articulate legal precedents,
   
3. (3) the incentives for standardizing legal rules across jurisdictions,
   
4. (4) the problems posed by instances of large numbers of small claims,
   
5. (5) the private protection for legal rights that would emerge, and
   
6. (6) the desirability ofthe social conventions that would underlie a private system of law.

All of these points of controversy cast doubton whether a private legal system would be governed by an effective legal discovery procedure.

'k laat het aan de lezer over om zelf de auteur zijn bespreking van deze kritische punten te lezen. 'k zal trachten de essentie van elk tegenargument te citeren.

1. the most striking outcome of such confrontations [tussen competetieve jurisdicties] was the emergence (discovery) of relatively uniform rules of law to resolve differences among competing court systems. These rules were independent of the will of any single (monopoly) authority. The issues governed by them included not only a variety of substantive disputes among individuals, but procedural disputes between church and king concerning court jurisdictions and recalcitrant parties.
   
   
2. In a private legal system, the articulation of clear and unbiased precedents would be a matter of self-interest for courts insofar as it is a way of establishing brand-name capital. (...) From a more dynamic perspective, however, one can see why the incentives to articulate precedents would be likely to dominate. First, one can envision a market in legal decisions in which enterprising couits would sell the written opinions of their judges to law firms or to the various retrieval services on which lawyers rely. Beyond this, one would expect the formation of insurance organizations to help individuals and firms pool risks with respect to liability and litigation costs. (...) To the extent that these organizations had clients with conflicting interests—with some clients more likely to be plaintiffs in certain classes of cases, and other clients more likely to be defendants—the organizations would have an interest in having courts articulate unbiased precedents, so as to minimize the number offuture disputes occurring and, in turn, their costs. These organizations would also have an interest in reducing litigation costs by encouraging lawabiding behavior on the part oftheir clients. (...) In a private legal system, one would expect courts to compete with each other to establish contractual arrangements with such organizations. The organizations would agree in advance to bring their disputes to those tribunals that had reputations for setting clear precedents.
   
   
3. But the more important point is that the degree of the law’s uniformity that does, in fact, emerge under more pluralistic legal institutions (e.g., the Law Merchant) contributes to the view that there exists a rule of law that is independent of the will of state rulers. Indeed, the existence of pluralistic legal institutions makes the rule of law necessary as a means ofeconomizing on the costs of resolving disputes among courts with overlapping jurisdictions. And the rule of law is the protector of liberty.
   
   
4. Businesses, including private courts, certainly welcome a strong demand for their products, but one must be careful about exactly what it is that people want. Depending on the circumstances, people demand litigation-avoidance rather than litigation. More specifically, one would expect insurance companies in a private legal system to associate only with those courts that economized on the need for litigation. This association would be the private sector counterpart. to companies’ lobbying of politicians for no-fault insurance under current institutions. In a private legal system an enterprising court could announce that, effective on such-and-such a date, it would offer new contractual terms for insurance companies so that, in return for a flat fee that was based on a company’s past involvement in legal disputes, the court would hear any cases the company wished to bring before it during the next 12 months—under the proviso that the court would refuse to assign fault in accident cases involving motor vehicles. Assuming insurance companies would prefer a no fault system, such acourt could charge lower fees and gain a competitive edge.
   
   
5. The point is [na enkele empirische voorbeelden] that people can be excluded from security if they do not pay for it; spillover benefits need not exist. (Als reactie op het monopolie-argument van externaliteiten.) (...) To say, as Buchanan does, “conflicts may occur, and one agency will win,” is to assume that agencies continually fight each other until only a single one is left instead ofsettling disputes in a more peaceful, lower-cost fashion that enables many firms to survive and prosper.
   Several examples of stateless societies serviced by private protection efforts have existed in history. Some ofthese societies lasted far longer than countries that tried to forestall a general outbreak of lawlessness by subjugating a state to a constitution.
   De auteur is echter ook niet bang voor het inzien van de beperkingen: "Needless to say, a purely private legal system would not survive in such conditions."
   
   
6. Zijn bespreking van dit laatste punt is heel genuanceerd en is, waarschijnlijk, het meest interessante van heel de tekst (pg. 519-521 of 23-25 van de pdf) en zou ik dus zeker aan willen raden aan iedereen. 'k kan echter niet weerstaan aan de laatste zin toch te citeren - dat zeker geen conclusie is van al de rest, maar simpelweg een laatste opmerking aan een genuanceerd stukje: " A strength of a nongovern mental system may also be that, if a disagreement about fundamental values does arise, no one has a state readily available through which he can try to impose or subsidize his views."

Hierna vervolgt de auteur door de implicaties van zijn visie te bespreken op het vlak van Tort en Contract law, de relatie tussen moraliteit en wetgeving, de relatie tussen individuele rechten en nut en anarchisme en libertarisme.

Over tort law

A thoroughgoing Austrian position would thus maintain that the extent to which strict liability prevails should be the object of a discovery procedure. The issue could be resolved in a market for court services.

Over contract law

To be sure, no judge would know the “correct” damage award that would generate precisely the “proper” subjective experience for B, but there are undoubtedly occasions when compensatory damages would be preferable to all parties concerned, especially if high bargaining costs existed to hinder A and B from negotiating a settlement among themselves. Again, the matter could be resolved in a market for courts.

Over de relatie tussen wetgeving en moraliteit

[the market process] at least offers the prospect of uncovering the information that is relevant for deciding when it is worthwhile to resort to the formal enterprises of the law.

(Hij kiest hier ook voor een comperatieve analyse. Het is waar dat sommige zaken onderdeel moeten zijn van de legale structuur en anderen zuiver van moraliteit, maar de vraag is welk proces we laten oordelen over wat bij wat hoort. Centrale (wetgeving) planning of een gedecentraliseerd proces?)

Over de relatie tussen individuele rechten en nut

Speaking more concretely, the paper emphasizes that a deep respect for rights of private property (and the liberty they secure) is the sine qua non of the system under discussion. At the same time, the paper has argued that in some cases a process of articulating and enforcing a complete set of private rights is probably too costly. As in other matters, resource scarcity would constrain what people would choose to do.

Over libertarisme en anarchisme (uiterst relevant!)

This paper has cast doubt on the germaneness of such a perspective. [Een perspectief dat 'anarchisme' noodzakelijkerwijze direct en compleet 'libertarisch' is.] As previously discussed, the legal rights to property and contract would probably not be absolute in a private legal system. To some extent, then, the system might not be purely libertarian. Nor would a private legal system necessarily consider a person’s legal rights to be infringed only if he (or his tangible property) had been physically invaded or defrauded.

en

People can, of course, try to persuade others, including the judges in a future private legal system, to adopt a philosophy ofstrict, or even ultrastrict, “anarcho-libertarianism,” just as they can try to persuade today’s legislators to enact a particular combination ofpolicies or, for that matter, persuade private enterprises to sell partictilar products at particular prices. The problem is that people in whatever politicoeconomic system is under discussion are faced with incentives that are not systematically consistent with the particular actions being asked ofthem. Thus, if an ideological movement succeeded in bringing about a pure state ofanarcho-libertarianism (as improbable as that seems), this result would probably not constitute a stable politicoeconomic equilibrium.

Een compleet privaat systeem kan echter moeilijkheden hebben om met bepaalde situaties om te gaan:

1. (1) Especially in areas threatened by external forces, such as predator states, one cannot dismiss lightly the concern that protection agencies may constitute natural monopolies;
2. (2) there may be public-good/prisoner-dilemma situations such that even those wary of government powers would deem a state to be a necessary evil; and
   
3. (3)the process that is to guide the formation and sustenance of norms and values does not inspire great confidence. As previously discussed, this last concern can be seen as a special case of the second concern above.
   

We stappen over naar de conclusie:

One can favor a stateless system, believe it could be reasonably stable for an extended period, and still conclude that, like it or not, the system would eventually break down or evolve into something else. The same can be said with regard to a system oflimited government. Nothing lasts forever, and to arrive at this or any other truism one does not need much of a discovery procedure.

En nu mijn conclusie.

Het was zonder enige twijfel een goede tekst. Vooral omdat ik zelf rondloop met enkele gelijkaardige gedachten (zeker omtrendt de relatie tussen anarchie en liberalisme, i.e. dat anarchisme niet noodzakelijk compleet liberalisme betekent en dat er in anarchie ook rechtsregels zijn die niet veel met liberalisme te maken hebben). Hij was ook enorm genuanceerd - en duidelijk beseffend wat de beperkingen zijn van een anarchistisch systeem en wanneer dit in de problemen kan komen.

David Friedman over de Joodse wet

Hier

Suppose you kill someone who is dying of a lethal disease. Maimonides concludes that that isn't really murder, since he would have died anyway—while pointing out that you have to be really sure he was dying of a lethal disease.

Now suppose someone who is dying of a lethal disease kills someone else. If, being a helpful sort, he commits the crime in the presence of the court, he has committed murder and can be convicted of doing so. If, however, he only commits the murder in the presence of witnesses, there is a problem.

Witnesses, in this case or others, might lie. In other cases, one thing discouraging them from perjury is that if it is discovered that their false testimony led to the execution of an innocent defendant, they will be found guilty of murder and themselves executed. But if their testimony leads to the execution of an innocent defendant who is himself dying of a lethal disease, they won't be executed, because killing someone who is dying of a lethal disease isn't murder.

Since the witnesses are not at risk of execution for perjury, they might commit it, so their testimony can not be trusted—cannot be taken as sufficient evidence to convict someone of murder. So if someone who is himself dying of a lethal disease commits murder, and doesn't do it in the presence of the court, he cannot be convicted.

There is a certain beautiful logic to this very screwy result.

Dit is toch wel raar te noemen, denk ik dan?

Over klimaatsverandering

Ik ben geen wetenschapper, dus ik kan geen commentaar geven op de wetenschap achter klimaatsverandering. Wat ik wel trachten te doen, is enkele zaken onderscheiden van elkaar.

1. Het is 1 ding om aangetoond te hebben dat de mens de oorzaak is van de grote veranderingen de laatste jaren. Het is een andere om daaruit af te leiden dat we deze veranderingen zouden kunnen omkeren.

2. Het is 1 ding om de veranderingen in het verleden te reconstrueren, het is een andere om zomaar aan te nemen dat een toename in de co2 (enkel en alleen) zal zorgen voor een blijvende stijging van de temperatuur. Zover ik het zie, wijzen ze er allemaal op dat het klimaat door heel veel verschillende factoren beïnvloed wordt. Als je dus de toekomst gaat voorspellen, moet je modellen hebben die alle relevante factoren kunnen incorporeren. Het lijkt mij niet logisch onmogelijk dat bepaalde stijgingen in de temperatuur zal betekenen dat er bepaalde effecten optreden die er voor zorgen dat de temperatuur terug daalt. Daarmee heb ik niet gezegd dat dit is, maar dat is wel iets dat bewezen moet worden. (Ik vraag me af in welke mate je kan bewijzen dat je met 'alles' rekening hebt gehouden; hoe hou je rekening met het onvoorspelbare?)

3. De kwestie 'of er iets gedaan moet worden' is een economische/politieke, geen klimaatwetenschappelijke. En daarbij is het niet logisch noodzakelijk uitgesloten dat adaptie de beste strategie is om om te gaan met klimaatsverandering. Het is in de eerste plaats een gebrek aan kapitaalgoederen: als je gigantische dammen zou kunnen bouwen, dan zal het de landen in nood niet zoveel schelen dat ze 'in theorie' onder water lopen. Klimaatsverandering zo bekeken is dan vooral een probleem van niet genoeg middelen om ons aan te passen aan de veranderingen.

4. Zelfs als er 'iets gedaan wordt', is het nog niet logisch noodzakelijk zeker dat het verminderen van de co2 uitstoot alleen maar positieve gevolgen heeft. Het zou kunnen van wel, maar dat is alweer iets dat bewezen moet worden en niet iets waar zomaar van uitgegaan mag worden.

Buh; ongetwijfeld weet de wetenschap dit allemaal wel - anders is het maar slechte wetenschap - maar het is mij niet duidelijk dat de massa leken (waar ik ook toebehoor) dit wel doorheeft.

Bryan Caplan zijn cursus voor het komende jaar

Over public choice kan je hier vinden.

Week 1: The Logic of Collective Action

Week 2: Voting, I: The Basics

Week 3: Voting, II: Information and Bargaining

Week 4: Voter Motivation, I: Selfish, Group, and Sociotropic Voting

Week 5: Voter Motivation, II: Ideological Voting

Week 6: Voter Motivation, III: Miscellaneous

Week 8: Wittman and Democratic Failure

Week 9: Expressive Voting

Week 10: Ignorance, Irrationality, and Aggregation: Theory and Evidence

Week 11: Behavioral Political Economy

Week 12: Dictatorship

Week 13: Constitutions

Week 14: Anarchy

Hayek zijn 'Economic Freedom & Representative Government'

Is nu beschikbaar!

Leuk citaat.

"Such a legislative assembly could be achieved if, first, its members were elected for long periods, secondly, they were not eligible for re-election after the end of the period, and, thirdly, to secure a continuous renewal of the body in accord with gradually changing... Lees verder opinions among the electorate, its members were not all elected at the same time but a constant fraction of their number replaced every year as their mandate expired; or, in other words, if they were elected, for instance, for fifteen years and one-fifteenth of their number replaced every year. It would further seem to me expedient to provide that at each election the representatives should be chosen by and from only one age-group so that every citizen would vote only once in his life, say in his fortieth year, for a representative chosen from his age-group."

Ik ben niet zeker of ik hier voorstander van ben, maar het is een leuk gedachteexperiment.

Hoe de overheid doodt

Ik heb zonet naar het nieuw geluisterd, maar met maar 1 oor. Dus de kleine caveat is er natuurlijk dat het zou kunnen dat ik de feiten verkeerd heb begrepen. Maar als ik de feiten correct heb begrepen - en het lijkt mij zeker niet onrealistisch dat het zo is gebeurd - dan is de overheid, meer bepaald: welbepaalde regulering - alweer verantwoordelijk voor het overlijden van een kind.

Het verhaal gaat over een onthaalmoeder die veroordeeld is omdat ze een kind heeft laten sterven - in haar eigen kots notabene. Allemaal heel tragisch; maar waarom verwijt ik dit dan 'regulering'? Is het niet duidelijk dat de onthaalmoeder verantwoordelijk is? Eigenlijk niet, want als we verder luisteren, komt er een aap naar de mouw. De moeder in kwestie heeft eerst moeten zorgen dat het 'teveel' aan kinderen - gedefinieerd door de arbitraire overheid in kwestie - weg moest, vooraleer ze de hulpdiensten kon bellen. Indien er niet zo'n regulering was, had ze waarschijnlijk niet moeten vrezen voor een straf voor een 'teveel' aan kinderen en hoogstwaarschijnlijk direct de hulpdiensten kunnen bellen.

Het is misschien niet zo duidelijk als sommigen het wel willen, maar incentives doen er wel degelijk toe. Regulering, als ex ante middel om dit soort zaken te vermijden, kan even goed zorgen voor ex post incentives om dit soort zaken te verergeren. Regulering is geen wondermiddel.

Herverdeling en Liability

Ik zit al een paar dagen met een bepaalde gedachtegang in mijn hoofd, na literatuur van 'Law's Order' van David Friedman. Dit boek is een inleiding in 'Law & Economics', die de verwantschap tussen 'wet' en 'economie' onderzoekt op een waardenvrije analyse. (Hij stelt bijvoorbeeld ergens letterlijk dat overwegingen van ethiek niet belangrijk zijn. Hij stelt niet dat ze niet belangrijk zijn, maar wel dat ze voor deze bepaalde vorm van waardenvrije wetenschap geen plaats hebben.)

Een van de zaken die in dit boek behandeld wordt, is het concept van 'liability', i.e. 'verantwoordelijkheid voor de gevolgen van je daden'. Een eenvoudig voorbeeld daarvan is dat indien ik jou iets verkoop & dit blijkt giftig te zijn, dan zou ik wel nog eens verantwoordelijk kunnen zijn. Ik zou echter dit concept willen toepassen op iets waar libertariërs een ferme kritiek op hebben: het concept van 'sociale zekerheid'.

Libertariërs zijn, logischerwijze, tegen de massieve overheidsbureaucratie die een systematische welvaartsherverdeling van rijk naar arm zou beogen, maar in de praktijk een herverdeling is van alle ladingen van de bevolking naar alle andere ladingen, waarbij de overheid zelf nog wat kan graaien in de geldpot, ten koste van de producerende mensen in de samenleving. Ook creërt ze hiermee een gigantische hoop externe effecten zoals mensen die quasi compleet afhankelijk worden van de overheid, minder algemene productie (dus in het geheel minder welvaart in de samenleving) & dergelijke zaken. Uitgebreide analyses van een concept zo verdorven als de sociale zekerheid zullen nog wel aan de orde komen.

Wat ik me echter afvraag, is of in een vrije samenleving er plaats zou zijn voor een 'liability' in de vorm van het 'weigeren van hulp'? Natuurlijk is het 'weigeren van hulp' niet te vergelijken met het verkopen van een goed, dat blijkbaar een gevaarlijk goed is, vermits in dit tweede geval er een overdracht gebeurd is van een product, in goederen trouw & bij het 'weigeren van hulp' niet. 

Stel, bijvoorbeeld, dat iemand aan uw hypotethische deur staat en smeekt om binnen te komen omdat hij anders zal doodbloeden/aangevallen worden/etc. U slaat echter de deur toe & even later wordt de man dood teruggevonden. Nu kan er achterhaald worden dat hij inderdaad aan mijn deur heeft gestaan & dat ik hem niet heb binnengelaten/geen vorm van hulp geboden. Zou het mogelijk zijn in een vrije samenleving dat u dan vervolgd wordt of behoort u te kunnen zeggen dat dit binnen de aspecten van uw recht was?

Intuïtief zou ik zeggen dat het een verkeerde afleiding van het recht is om te zeggen dat u, aan uw deur, geen enkele vorm van verantwoordelijkheid zou hebben ten opzichte van deze man. Andere libertariërs zijn het daar echter niet mee eens. Ik weet het niet zo goed. Ik laat daarom de vraag maar open. 

Adriaan