This is a follow up post on my previous post: What is Law? What is Justice? - The case for Radical Violence and Separation of Law and Morality
If this was some dumb MSM platform that report #news every time some D-lister wears a bikini, my post would have broken the internet and there would have been college protests. Fortunately this is steemit and people have brains and sensibilities here.
I made my post to lay the foundations of what I think the Justice system should be. I'm not a fan of repetition. So I invite you to go and check out my post if you haven't already. I got some intelligent questions regarding the applications of Justice and I like to address them here. Here is one such question from
lets say you know who stole your horse (and he lives nearby) from the stable, what would you do then? Would you confront him about it or just forget about it? Or will there be a court system for this?
The purpose of law is to ensure each individual's sacrosanct right to be not aggressed upon. It's purpose isn't to do good or stop bad things from happening. The utility of law is screwing on aggressors and making the lives easier for those who do not violate the NAP. The kind of radical usage of violence I mentioned is an incentive structure to keep from most aggression from happening. It is wise to deal in ways that minimize the usage of aggression/violence. Now my question is if somebody had the audacity to steal your horse, would that person give up that horse without a fight. Unless you are Jackie Chan and the thief is a random lone thug, getting your horse back will not be a piece of cake. If it's a band of thieves and you are a random old retired person you are only going to loose the well being of your bone structure on top of your horse.
Anything that doesn't add value to the society shouldn't be kept around and anything that adds value should be embraced. Although we have effectively laid the groundwork on what Justice is, we still have problems carrying it out. This is where I become an anarcho-minarchist which sound like an oxymoron. It's just a name a coined up because I couldn't find a name for my state as a service model of government. Basically, my view of government is that it shouldn't be treated any different from any other business. This government could be sharded or non-sharded. The raison d'être of a government is solving this very real problem of convenience. It is a service that make Justice affordable for anyone without having to be personally involved. Market created specialization. Specializations lead to outsourcing activities to better suited, more capable and better experienced parties.
What exactly does this State as a Service model look like?
The state would be merely another function within the anarchy. It will be a special kind of a service industry like The Operating Systems or Smart contract platforms. The primary function of an anarcho-minarchist state is making the lives easier and more convenient of its citizens and naturally these kind of minarchies would show several elements of city states. These states would be opt-in systems like any service we are used to using. You are not chained to any smart contract platform. If you are heavily invested in one, it would be more difficult to migrate. When you are using say...... Ethereum, you are bound by its rules, methods of operation, features, limits etc. But you also gain some advantages like brand recognition, popularity, active developer eco-system etc.
There will also be lots of diversification like Komodo and Enigma. I've written about them here: Why EOS will be competing with Enigma and Komodo for marketshare more than any other Smart Contract Platform Different people are going to have different preferences and needs. A non smoker, non-alcoholist like me wouldn't mind or even prefer a place where intoxicants are prohibited. It's like picking a privacy coin instead of using a non-fungible coin. Not everyone values the same things at the same level. An urbanized area could be an asset to someone but another would prefer a more quiet and rural area. Modern structure of governments are almost impossible to opt-out and they function in a one size fits all model and they are not consumer-centric.
When we want to design a web page, paint the house, teach the kids, setup a company, fix a car, even engage in contemporary legal activities, we seek experts rather than doing it ourselves. Bitshares is a stand alone blockchain and it isn't running on any smart contract platform. Cobinhood is running on Ethereum. One could make a Bitshares-killer running on EOS. What I'm trying to say with this allegory is that some people can take care of them on their own like Bitshares. Think about the Jackie Chan scenario killing John Wick's dog and stealing his car. The dude would be fine. But what about a weaker person like some pro gamer that is a CS: GO legend?...... What about making John Wick solve his problems less violently?......
Cobinhood is a less awesome project on a MASSIVE smart contract platform. If the creators started from scratch and on their own, they wouldn't do very well. But now that they are on Ethereum which has some solid foundations, they can achieve hell a lot more. It's like putting that gamer legend in a huge but inefficient and mediocre jurisdiction. The gamer would gain some form of compensation which is much like what contemporary Justice system deliver when they do their work. Now think John Wick calls up "The Family" of Vin Diesel and the Covert Ops lead by Kurt Russell with Rock providing support and goes to meet up the Mafia. I'll tell you what happens. Nobody fires a gun. The Mafia pisses their collective pants and send off John Wick with a massive compensation and Vows to not lay a hand on any fluffy animal ever again and even sends a huge check for PETA. This is taking Bitshares onto EOS eco-system. It's everything on steroids.
But then again, Incentives Incentives Incentives
How do we keep things going in a productive and sustainable manner? Violence should only be a defense or a deterrent against violence. So we are stuck with fines, paying for damages, exile, quarantine (imprisonment of violent actors) and removal/limiting of existing rights within the system. Lots of Libertarians talk about private security. But that only gives good security and protection of the right to not be aggressed upon for those who are wealthy. Since a person can get rich in multiple ways, rich people are more common than badass people. But that's not inclusive or fair enough. What about the people who are only starting from the very bottom?
We can't let the governments take a cut from their services. There could be some miner exceptions here and there. I'm not going to be too strict here trying to make my own kingdom sitting in front of my laptop. I'm drawing the basic outlines. In my recent post I explained why most cryptos should simply burn the fees instead of giving them to anyone because miners wouldn't want to work hard to reduce Tx fees with a conflict of interest present. A service provider taking a cut would mean that the service provider has some immediate gain for favoring those who make the complaints. So where do we look for inspiration?
How did insurance providers came to be?
Why would anyone have a good medical, automobile, home insurance? People buy an insurance when they feel like they won't be able to pay out of pocket when some troubles come into their lives. Insurance companies have their own flaws in the current system. But the idea is that not everybody gets into a pinch at the same time. It's a process of pooling resources. With Justice defined and transperency upheld using blockchain or similar technology, we cannot have a bunch of reviewers refusing to serve Justice because anybody that can prove that they have faced aggression without being the first aggressor or that they have faced violence that far exceeded their own aggression (Eg: getting shot for punching someone in the face) will be entitled to Justice system. The governments will be judged according to the quality of service they provide just like how Operating systems and Smart Contract platforms are judged.
I think a flat tax would be the best funding mechanism. You can't walk up to a person who got his/her stuff stolen and say: "You have been robbed once this month and considering the severity of the robbery we cannot allocate enough Justice to find all of the aggressors and recoup your full costs. Would 50% be alright?" This is just BS. It's better than anarchy with private security for a poor person. But hey, we are already doing better than the cavemen. We even have ice-cream and smart phones.
Better isn't enough reason to sit back and give up. We should always try to do just a little bit better. That's how we came to this point of history. We innovated and made things more efficient and built systems that would bring forth prosperity. NAP is sacrosanct and everybody has the right to be not aggressed upon. So I think a flat tax would be the best. People with more wealth are naturally at a higher risk and they also consume more resources. Helping to safeguard the rights of the poor is beneficial to everyone in the long run. Think about all the people who joined and did well on STEEM blockchain thanks to a tiny bit of STEEM that funded them. Nobody will be paying more or less than anyone considering that they are paying proportional to their income. Personally I prefer to see this in the form of a VAT which is taxed at the point of making a purchase for consumption. This would eliminate the need to spy on anyone's financials and Zero Knowledge proofs and privacy centric smart contracts or side-cahins can be utilized for the job.
Sharded and Non-Sharded Governments
It's a fancy and efficient way of saying if it's an all in one package or not. Think Bitshares and STEM. One is a trading platform and the other is a social media platform. They exist independently managed by different entities despite sharing similar philosophies. We could add few more things like the Syscoin decentralized marketplace and https://aragon.one which is a very relevant to the current discussion and few more services later, we can have a full fledged government. Managing a lot of things and doing a lot of things can be difficult. So just focusing on one thing only has its benefits to both the creators and the consumers. This model isn't actually that far from the general anarcho-capitalism. But it has obvious drawbacks too. That's why there is the Non-Sharded Government model which is harder to execute and maintain properly.
I've previously introduced EOS as this: Imagine a blockchain which can run all 5 of the FAANG companies on itself and still have the ability to run a bunch of more projects. That is the EOS general purpose smart contract blockchain platform. Instead of a bunch of different accounts all over the place and having to take long and complicated steps to combine the uses of individual Shards, we can have a single full fledged package like Microsoft Office Package. It has all the tools and resources you need for your office activities and they all work and mesh with each other. This is a Non-Sharded Government. The single best example there I could find is Metaverse ETP(https://mvs.org) which attempts to be Blockchain as a Service which is going to be like your web designer or tax adviser but for all your blockchain activities bringing you:
- Smart contracts
- Digital Asset Registration
- Digital Identity Design
- Oracle Intermediary
- Decentralized Exchange
Basically pretty much everything.
Hopefully I clarified myself on the matters of enforcing Justice. This is harder to write about as they have more practical aspects compared to simply defining Law & Justice. Basically my point is that the most efficient and productive way to deal with violations of law is to combine resources and show enough ability of force so that the violence would't be used in the first place in the act of carrying out Justice.
Not everyone is going to face violence at the same time. Only a tiny fraction of mad criminals would fight a battle they cannot win. Justice will be carried out transparently based on principles. There are various ways these things can be carried out and individuals can opt-in for different systems like the ones that only based on the preservation of NAP to more specialized ones focused on its own niche (Eg: Singapore/HK (Financial) Vs Macau (Gambling that is almost 8 times as big as Las Vegas) Vs Japan (Culture and Entertainment)
The post got a little too long and I unfortunately have a life AFK. So I'll have to to do another follow up post to continue some of the content. Until then;