May 7, 2020, 11:14 PM
by John Mark
“The way Propertarian law gives the little guy power to punish powerful people via the courts (and cleans up the judiciary and clarifies/strengthens jurisprudence) is good, but won’t the little guy still be at a disadvantage due to lack of ability to pay lawyers compared to the rich?”
(Common question)(There may be more to the answer than I am putting here, but this is part of it.)
As I understand it, it will work largely the same way it works now, when, say, an individual sues a car company for selling cars with faulty brakes & people die. Or a group of individuals get together and do it. Often lawyers take the case not cuz of pay up front but because of good chance of getting a nice chunk of the payout. (Most people who win these types of cases don’t win cuz they’re rich, but because they’re right.) But under P-law the ability to keep people accountable for imposing costs (breaking reciprocity) in this manner will be greatly expanded to cover all actions/activities & no more hiding behind position (politician, judge) or corporate veil (CEO).
And…good question, but if someone asks this question and eventually concludes “this system won’t work perfectly” (nothing will be perfect, but “much better than now” is certainly possible) and then goes to “it’s not worth supporting or trying this idea”, the onus is then on them to provide a better solution to stopping violations of reciprocity and keeping the powerful accountable.
No one ever suggests a better solution. The only one that comes close is “an all-powerful strongman that just punishes people with arbitrary power”, but if we’re strong enough to support and defend such a person who rules arbitrarily, we would also be strong enough to implement propertarian law and cut out the arbitrariness. Arbitrariness carries much larger risk of abuse, and an all-powerful monarch or strongman’s percentage chance of good decisions being made consistently is better than democracy but worse than good rule of law, and much less durable than good rule of law (what if king/strongman’s heir is dumb or evil or capricious etc), so why wouldn’t we just implement and defend P-law instead of supporting and defending a strongman?