On Oct 16, 2011, at 12:16 PM, mgranich wrote:
http://news.yahoo.com/hair-attacks-force-ohio-amish-seek-outside-help-170921965.html
So, you'd need some sort of law enforcement with an anarchical society.
The Amish do have a law enforcement system, it is entirely voluntary, with no sanction higher than shunning, up to and including, excommunication.
But you mean the Amish do not have a system for effectively dealing with malcontents in their group who shave another’s beard. This is a strange case, so let’s add a more common and more difficult case, and Amish man murdering his wife, which occurred a decade ago.
The Amish are expressly nonviolent, and nonviolence is a necessary condition for a free market (but not sufficient).
Violence is a non-market event, like falling in love or an act of charity. The market is exchange of goods and services, and economy is the management of the household. There may be economic ramifications to falling in love or being charitable, and there may be economic ramificaitons of violence, but they are not market events. There is no more a market solution to violence than violence being a solution to a short apple crop.
(Now vast swathes of austrians theorists, led by Rothbard, do see market solutions to violence, but their antagonists have the better argument.)
When Amish shun, they are imposing an economic sanction, commensurate with the acuity of the shunning, the acuity being pitched perfectly by the opinions of the unversal group as to the damage of the offense.
An Amish totally shunned will find himself in Columbus Ohio knocking on a neighbors door notifying the neighbor that “in den morgan you vill help me build das haus, habst die frauen prepare and serve meals for die herren...” That boy will shivver and starve.
In the case of the beard shaving crime spree, the amish are faced with meeting violence, and calling the cops is controversial. Most Amish say no, but it only takes one caller to bring the cops. So this brings up the idea of a nonviolent people calling on the violence of the state to meet the violence of the beard shavers.
Now this is precisely the problem God was arguing against in 1 Samuel 8, where the israelites expressly wanted to shift responsibilty for self-defense to others. God rejected it, was importuned, made full disclosure, and then condemned Israel to its history of oppression.
The temptation to call the cops is always there. there is the hman temptation to call the cops, which is a facility the Israelites wanted for themselves, and hen there is the feed-th-bears problem of once it is there, people organize around its existence.
But what of the murder of the wife by the Amish man? Hard cases make bad law. Apparently one instance in Amish 250 year history in America. OK, but what about a homcidal maniac who has just killed his wife? Shun him?
If the Amish way were unversal, the maniac would starve to death, for lack of human association. But would he not lurk on the outskirts and rid homes and commit mayhem, pillage, more murder?
Let’s say he did. The Amish are not monolithic, and among the Amish, with their varying degrees of commitment and understand, there would be at least one who would find this intolerable and take a hatchet into the woods and sort the miscreant out, rules or no rules.
If an when the murderer was found murdered, that would likely be the end of it. And even if a bloody hatchet at the next barn raising gave away who did the deed, in a regime of shunning the fellow who sorted out the problem is unlikely to be sanctioned, and if I know some of those Amish gals, rewarded!
We see in anarchic societies there would not be universal nonviolence. Between the people angered to violence, and the invincibly ignorant, there is enough violence to keep perpetrators in check. Like the Amish, violence would be checked by shunning, when the entire community refused service to someone who took violence too far, or some measure thereof.
And think of it, no prisons, no courts, no cops, no tickets, just the occasional hatchet work in the woods and shallow graves.
Check out all of the peaceable people playing dodgebal at Cal Anderson Park a couple of nights a week. Watch with such force the throw the ball at each other, even occasionally knocking someone on the other side down. What athleticism is brought to the contest!
Let a player step 20 feet off the court and nail a pedestrian walking home with groceries from QFC. What was a game 20 feet away is in this instance now a crime.
Context matters. We mistakenly apply blunt force trauma to all non game situations, when there are so many other options. We call the police. if no police, there are enough of us who see force being abused, and step in. Many people fear the bully, but enough see the bully initiate force and think "game on." Such people are no more worried about the bully on Broadway then the sportsman opposite on the court in cal anderson park. In a free market, with no govt police, these sportsmen would be necessary, and sufficient.
AS they sorted the bully out, the immediate judgment of observers would bring justice to bear.
But this is mob rule, and street justice. Yes, but it is superior to what we have.
Plus you have to put it in the context of a superior economic system. There is a horrific video out there, for which I will not provide a link, of a driver running over a 2 year old girl in communist china, and then backing up to finish her off. A dead child is a fine, and injured child is incalculable medical bills. Some 18 people walk by the injured child. Such is communism, we do similarly horrible things in capitalism.
it would never happen in Hong Kong, where there is a different, more free market system. And in Hong Kong, there is far more fear of being shunned and far more direct addressing of non market problems, like violence, without government intervention.
As it stands, we must all tolerate the bully, until the police come to deal with it, or you might be arrested for objective grounds, not contextual or subjective grounds. So we wait for the police. Tick tock.
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