ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist) (08/16/84)
> >All that discussion of suing suggests one more question for libertarians. > >Should motorists be legally required to purchase liability insurance? > > Clearly a question for the owners of roads that the drivers wish to drive > on. > Nat Howard I'm not sure we understand each other. Somebody smashes their car into me, I win a lawsuit against them but the person does not have enough money to pay the judgement. Currently, most states attempt to protect me in this situation by requiring the the person to carry insurance. The question I was trying to get at is what protection I would have in a libertarian so- ciety. I don't see why the owner of the road would be involved in the case at all. Kenneth Almquist
kiessig@idi.UUCP (Rick Kiessig) (08/18/84)
Regarding the requirement of carrying insurance:
The question was what happens if you get hit by someone
who doesn't have car insurance, with the statement that we are protected
from this today by having a law which requires motorists to carry
a certain amount of insurance.
Well, what happens today if you're hit by an uninsured
motorist? Even though people are required by law to carry a
certain amount of insurance, many people simply ignore that
law and carry none. Enter "Uninsured Motorist" coverage,
which specifically covers this case. If people were not required
by law to carry insurance, several things could happen in a Libertarian
society: the insurance companies could change their
coverage and/or rate schedules to compensate (higher rates for
uninsured motorist coverage, for example). Courts would insist
that offenders pay back any damages, hence a MUCH higher incentive
to insure yourself than today, where we have a law with no real
meat behind it. Road owners could insist on you providing
certificates of insurance before letting you drive on their roads,
or perhaps alternately include an insurance premium in any road tolls.
The thing that people need to realize is that laws aren't
the solution to everything. Given the establishment of some
simple, universal rights, everything else falls out as a result.
This is what our founding fathers tried to do. We have forgotten
this, and let goverment get carried away with what was originally
supposed to be a 'sacred power'. What ever happened to our beliefs
that innocent people should be protected at all costs? Our justice
system is explicitly set up to let a few guilty people go free,
rather than have an innocent person wrongly convicted. Yet the rest
of government seems to ignore that fact (most notably the IRS),
and imposes stronger and stronger legislation, taking away more and
more of our freedoms.
--
Rick Kiessig
{decvax, ucbvax}!sun!idi!kiessig
{akgua, allegra, amd, burl, cbosgd, decwrl, dual, ihnp4}!idi!kiessig
Phone: 408-996-2399nrh@inmet.UUCP (08/21/84)
>***** inmet:net.politics / hou3c!ka / 6:29 am Aug 10, 1984 >All that discussion of suing suggests one more question for libertarians. >Should motorists be legally required to purchase liability insurance? > Kenneth Almquist >---------- > Clearly a question for the owners of roads that the drivers wish to drive on. Nat Howard
nrh@inmet.UUCP (08/22/84)
#R:ccieng2:-47100:inmet:7800118:000:1060 inmet!nrh Aug 7 09:58:00 1984 >***** inmet:net.politics / tty3b!mjk / 4:42 pm Aug 2, 1984 >Libertarian position on medical regulation: if you go to a quack and >his surgery results in you losing a leg, you'll know not to go back >to him again. If his surgery results in your death, that's OK: you >can sue. > >Disclaimer: I am not a libertarian. > >Mike Kelly >---------- Statist position on medical regulation: if you go to a surgeon, and he knows how to help you, but his ideas are out of favor with the state, he won't operate, and if you die as a result, you can't sue the state -- and people think you're crazy if you try. Disclaimer: I am not an idiot. [For those curious, there would still be people like Ralph Nader, and the American Medical Association in a libertarian society. They just would not have the power to forbid others from working. The AMA in particular could "certify" people, but one would be free to go to a non-certified doctor (although the AMA would probably try to sue anybody that advertised themselves as "AMA certified" even though they weren't).
nrh@inmet.UUCP (08/23/84)
>***** inmet:net.politics / ucbvax!faustus / 6:42 pm Aug 13, 1984 >Much of the argument in favor of less government and more >personal freedom people have been giving makes sense, but >"private courts"? This is something I can't understand. Say I >have some gripe against you and decide to sue you. Who gets to >decide which court we will go to? VERY briefly, you and I both subscribe to private police systems or arbitration services. Such services would provide (as a matter of course) agreements with each other about what happens when their members conflict. If, for example, you subscribe to Alpha Security, and I subscribe to Beta Security, chances are that Alpha and Beta would ALREADY have some agreement on how to arbitrate disputes in the situation where a client of Alpha's and a client of Beta's conflict. They would have these agreements to enable them to avoid costly (and embarrassing) armed conflict. For more details, read "The Machinery of Freedom", by David Friedman. >Say you have been burning >tires in your front yard, and it just happens that the judge who >sits in the court of your choice also burns tires in his spare >time. Hardly fair, I would say, but I have no more power to >force you to to a different court than you have to force me to >go to this one. We indeed have no power at all. The problem, though, is that whichever one of us seemed reluctant to go to such a court (by refusing to go, unreasonable demands about evidence, whatever) is showing himself to be guilty. Will their insurance company keep up protection if they aren't willing to adjudicate a valid complaint? Will anyone deal with them except on a cash-up-front basis if it's clear that they won't deal with a civilized court? Illegal behavior is EXPENSIVE. >Now, with government-run courts, this problem >doesn't occur... It's certainly true that with government-run costs CERTAIN problems don't occur. I'd rather have this "problem" (no single final court system) than a court system where judges need not prove their competence except to voters and officials. I'd much rather see one where judges must prove their competence to a market. >Or say that I win a decision against you, but >you decide that you want to continue burning tires anyway. So I >call the police and tell them that you aren't obeying the court. >What are they supposed to do, enforce the decisions of every >private court that decides to call itself that? Right now, arbitration agreements are written so that failure to obey the decision of the arbiters is a BREACH OF CONTRACT. If a state court system remains, you sue the leaf-burner for breach of contract, and you wait the several years for the state court system to get to your complaint. >Or maybe the >police force should be private also, or perhaps every private >court should have its own police force to enforce its >decisions. I think it's obvious where this leads. I suggest you read the above-mentioned book to find out where it might lead. Until then..... >I think that the problem with most Libertarian thinking is that >it assumes that without government, people will be resonably >civilized and cooperative. This is absurd -- without a big >powerful government keeping order, within a few months everybody >would be at each other's throats and it wouldn't be long before >society would degenerate into a bunch of armed feudal states... I suppose that's possible. It didn't happen, though, in medieval Ireland or Iceland, both given in a lecture by Friedman as examples of minimal-government societies. There were plenty of clans, or small organizations, but no big, powerful, government keeping order.