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The problem with most anarchists and those of similar philosophial bents is that they categorically reject governance. In their understandable desire to see the elimination of the evils of "government", they toss all dedicated public governing activity to the winds with the claim that the "market" will act as the governing mechanism, as if by its own and seemingly magical accord. This notion holds understandably strong appeal with those who love the notion of freedom, but does so in a way similar to the way in which the Star Trek franchise of low-quality science fiction appeals to its fans; the great benefits without having to do any real work. What these presumed lovers of liberty have failed to calculate in this model are a few factors that arise as problems, at least one of them even greater than that of so-called "government".


Allow me to explain.

Firstly and for example, when we speak of "private courts" as do so many anarchists, as being the free-market solution to issues of crime, tort, equity, and justice, there is the tacit assumption that those courts are to be beholden to those whom they ostensibly serve. This notion is all well and good, so far as it goes, but it never goes quite far enough. When such a private court goes rogue or corrupt in some other manner, and here it matters not whether it happens once, multiple times, or even becomes a habitual phenomenon, it matters no whit whether it is taken to task if the parties for whom injustice has been served have been irreparably damaged. This is especially true in cases where significant time has passed since the beginning of a sentence and time has already been served. How does one compensate those whose irreplaceable time has been stolen from them?


Yes, one can compensate with money, but that is a timid replacement for time, careers, opportunities, and family lost, as well as the rest of the grand miseries heaped upon the innocent without either just cause or authority. And who is to say that the courts in question will be held accountable, or even that they can be?


There is an angle played by anarchists that says the competitive marketplace will handle such situations, but of this I hold grave doubt. For one thing, who will establish the authority for a man or group thereof to hold a court accountable for its failures? By what authority does such a man or body thereof claim the valid power to do so? What is their standard of judgment, who gets to establish it, and by what authority do they do so? Of one thing we may rest assured is that such a court will deny any such authority, which brings us right back to the original problem we face today: an effective "governMENT" having been established and having positioned itself above those whom it is supposed to act as a servant, but in point of practical fact acts as master.


Secondly, the next grand assumption is that there will be market competition whereby multiple courts act in a given market space to countervail the excesses, corruptions, and incapacities of the another; the good old idea of "balance of powers". What of monopolies? Consider the case where a court does better enough than the rest to put their competition out of business, thereby becoming, let us assume, a regional monopoly. What is to stop them from pulling the Walmart trick whereby as the competition recedes into extinction, the prices are then gradually raised, leaving shoppers little choice, save perhaps to drive long distances to find better venues? What is to stop such a monopoly from going corrupt, and once done, who will hold them accountable? Bear in mind the wholly predictable human habit of seeking greater powers with a stern determination never to allow oneself to relinquish that power, once acquired.


What does one do when such a court comes into power and stands unchallenged? What does a population do when such a court becomes practically unchallengeable by any means other than that of open warfare, replete with killing, maiming, terrorizing the innocent, and the destruction of all manner of valuable property?


Such issues are never to my awareness addressed by the proponents of these theoretically free-market driven societies in any detail, save to assert that the market will see to them, presumably in a fair, equitable, just, and non-violent manner. I do not buy this for a moment, the reason being that the people of the United States of America have on their books every means of doing precisely this, and yet now suffer under one of the most virulently corrupt and dangerous governments on the planet at the time of this writing.


Let us imagine a group of citizens manages to overthrow such a monopolized court. What then? Does that population go without the benefit of a venue in which they may seek justice? For how long? What of the pending cases of the overthrown court? What of the cases closed where people are in prison for crimes they may not have committed? What of torts that never actually happened, yet for which parties had been held responsible? What of equities imposed that were not at all equitable? What of judgments that can now no longer be trusted in any manner or degree? What of the records of such events? What if no other private court steps up to fill the void? How would such a court be held accountable for its actions? By what standards and procedures would the new court take up its position?


The litany of such queries is vast and many of those questions lead to mine fields of thorny issues that are not so easily solved.


Let us bear in mind here that these courts are privately established, privately held, and privately operated. There is no principled mechanism by which such entities can be held accountable for their actions, save that the people break out the torches and pitchforks. Each process of establishment of such courts would be private matters, technically beyond the question of the marketplace. Granted, such establishments would almost certainly have to toe a line upfront. But in time and as it gained effective power, such courts would invariably seek to increase their influences, even if done in very thin increments that do not arouse the suspicions and possible anger of the people served, which is precisely what commonly happens with so-called "governments" in universal fashion, if at varying degrees of advance.


And what of arresting those accused of crimes who have been brought before a judge? Under what authority does one human being appropriate the liberties of another man, effectively kidnapping him for judgment by others? I cannot say that such authority does not exist, but that its application can run amok most wildly and in very short order, unless there are rules. But who drafts them? By what authority do they do so and by what standard? Who holds them accountable to the integrity of the rules they pass into what we may call "effective Law"?


What of the arrestee who objects to the private court to which he has been taken, perhaps claiming his distrust of the ability to get a fair shake there? What if there are no other venues in the given locale? What of the difference of opinion on such matters of trust between arrestor and arrestee? Will the private court have its own private enforcers to affect such arrests? How would such enforcers, whether officers of the court in question, or ordinary citizens, be held accountable for their actions, most particularly in the case where the accused is found to have been innocent of the charges?


We could go on for days hammering out the various questions, not to mention the ways in which practical administration can go wrong. Furthermore, by now we should be able to see that there stands a grand gorilla in this room that speaks to the need for a consistent and universal standard by which justice is best to be administered, however imperfectly at times. Private means private, which means that within the bounds of the entity, what they say, goes. Anyone not seeing the great and looming hazard there is either not paying attention, or suffers from some grave deficiency, mental or moral.


And so we come in a sense, full-circle, in that it can be seen that a public system of courts remains the best solution in this imperfect world. But a proper public court system would differ from that under which we now suffer in some fundamental ways. More broadly speaking, a proper system of governance would be public, yet very different, not so much structurally, but rather in terms of the nature of the powers of the parties in question, that is, the servants and those whom they are charged to serve.


Today, "government" stands as the de-facto master, the people being the serfs; the proles; those whose faces are effectively smashed with Orwell's proverbial boot. In a properly formed and administered system of governANCE, the word "government" would be dismissed from service, once and for all time. The powers of the people to regulate most directly the ways in which the servants of governance (we may call them SOGs just to be cute) comport themselves in the discharge of their duties, would be clear and unassailable in principle. Making such powers practically invincible would, as in all cases, be left to the people. Americans hold that power now, yet they have allowed themselves to be cowed into serfdom by forces that have consistently acted against their better interests: the interests of their status as Freemen. The responsibility for this dolorous and rue-worthy outcome rests almost wholly on the people. While it may be said that the so-called "politicians" had neither cause nor authority to engage in their felonious perfidies against the people to whom they swore their oaths, it can come as no surpriser that they have done so, just as it is no surprise that a man is bitten when he carelessly chooses to play with a sidewinder. It is only to be expected that a political office holder or other agent of "government" is going to inevitably go wrong, left to his devices unsupervised.


Because this devolution is perfectly predictable in effectively all cases, there can be only one practicable solution: the people must hold and exercise the power to hold accountable all such agents of governance who stray from the narrow path that defines their duties, such as they may be in each case. The people must be able to punish such violators of the Public Trust in ways brutal and cruel such that all who occupy positions of Special Trust (in other words, SOGs) are given the occasion graphic reminder of the tenuous nature of their positions and that they serve at the pleasure of the people. I have outlined the basics of such powers and responsibilities in my Amendment XXVIII to the Constitution of the United States of America, a proposal I would see added to the document yesterday and made the Law of the land forthwith.


When the people are able, ready, and eager to bring violators of the Public Trust to justice, and to mete out grave punishments for those duly convicted of their crimes against those to whom they swore oaths of good faith and competent service upon their words and their honors, the face of the world will change to vast improvement in short order.


We suffer the slings and arrows not of the chances of outrageous fortune, but of the mostly synthetic machinations of other men, whether their actions are the products of blundering incompetence, good but wrong-headed intention, or outright criminality. It is up to us to change this. There is no cavalry coming to rescue us from the boogie-men of "government". We must be our own cavalry. We must insist upon the changes needed to wrest our freedoms from the hands of the most dangerous men on the planet, keep those liberties close to our bosoms, and guard them with Patrick Henry's jealously, the more greenly covetous, the better.


At the end of the day, what is required is knowledge and determination sufficient to the maintenance of liberty. There will always be those who seek to take from you that which is yours without your consent. The only way to adequately ensure agains this is an attitude of absolute intolerance for trespass in enough of a population to make the consequences far too ghastly to even contemplate.


The problem with "government" lies in the minds of men, and not in anything materially substantive. There is nothing wrong with "government" as a concept, but the practice tends to be far removed from theory. That can be remedied, but the cost is high, requiring a vast adjustment in the attitudes of most people. When people take "government" as something that actually exists in itself, independent of humanity, they have sealed their fates as serfs and possibly even as slaves. But when people recognize that "government" is nothing other than a collection of other people no different from themselves, everything becomes open to change in that they see their own authority to hold to account those in whom they have vested their belief that the agents of "government" will execute the functions of governance with competence and faith to that trust.


The solutions to the problems addressed here lie with you and you alone. Get yourself educated; develop a love of liberty; learn to see the challenges and risks as blessings of freedom and not a curse. Finally, spread the gospel of freedom to everyone you know and have them do the same. It is not too late to reclaim that which has been so wrongly and feloniously stolen away, but you have to act. Waiting for someone else to come to the rescue will assure your fate as a less-than-human.


Be well my friends, and as always please accept my best wishes