Territorial and extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions are formed, as well as a decentralized cross-arbitration mechanism linking them. Natural law continues to be supported only by religious or ethical organizations, in whose understanding the guarantor of rights is God/karma. Thus, these organizations remain the only ones who guarantee the life and freedom of a person in territories with a population that has not entered into contract law. These people may be marginal, fragmented, poor, or simply very far from the ideas of ancap. And these people flock under the protection of such religious organizations.
1. Do you think such a situation is possible? 2. If so, is this process natural, and is it a legal objectification of the human being? 3. If this happened, how should our union of contractual jurisdictions proceed? Should it be perceived as a threat, and how should it be fought? Or, conversely, supported?
Ancap-chan’s Answer
1. In fact, this describes a fairly ordinary case of tribalism. While some people, in the event of legal conflicts, rely on those organizations that are obliged to provide assistance by contract, others simply rely on the help of coreligionists/like-minded people. There is nothing surprising about this; there are currently many extremely decentralized communities of interest in the world, from hitchhikers and fencers to libertarians and Krishnaites. They already generally provide primary legal assistance to their members, especially locals to newcomers. I don’t see why these mechanisms should suddenly look different in our model world with greater decentralization of law.
2. I realize that you and I interpret the model situation somewhat differently. You likely view “jurisdictions” as organizations to which a person is legally attached, and those who are not attached are as if outside the law. I view jurisdictions more as “areas of norm imposition,” into which a person may fall both according to contracts and outside of them. And since in the model situation states, as organizations of general jurisdiction on their territory, exit the stage, a huge number of situations arise in which the jurisdiction is unknown in advance. If I’m having sex in a car parked opposite a church, whose jurisdiction is it? The parking owner’s? The church’s? The wife of the person I’m having sex with? It all depends on the context. If the car is parked incorrectly, the parking owner deals with us. If the parking owner is a church, its employee may suggest we have sex elsewhere and not distract the parishioners from pious thoughts. If my partner’s wife has an agreement with him that such things are not accepted between them, then demanding information from me about how aware I was of his availability is entirely within her jurisdiction. But some universal jurisdiction, which cares about everything and can dictate its norms in any sphere—that is already the dark etatist past; in our model situation, these dinosaurs died out long ago and ignominiously.
3. Let’s consider the situation where, say, in some locality, some people call their insurance company during a conflict, while others write in a thematic chat “alarm, ours are being beaten!”, and people from the surroundings start gathering, ready to defend the interests of a member of their community. Should such a thing be perceived as a threat? That depends on what interests the community defends in the conflict. If it is determined to protect its own at any cost in any conflict, then it is a clear threat, and a conditional insurance company must be ready for war with this gang in such cases. But if it is determined to extinguish the conflict, then there are no problems; this is one of the most important functions of communities. A person feels comfortable in them, but in order to belong to them, they accept that other members of the community care about their behavior. In this situation, from the insurance company’s point of view, the community acts as an “insurance cooperative” and can be viewed as an equal counterparty.
The usual answer is that the difference lies in the right to freely leave. But the rules of life in a community can differ so much from the requirements of the outside world that leaving becomes practically impossible. Where would someone who leaves an Amish community, or a communist one, go? They are simply not adapted to life.
Where is the guarantee that some community won’t prepare for an aggressive war against others? Where is the guarantee that anyone wishing to leave the community will be allowed to? Where is the guarantee that someone who has left will be accepted elsewhere?
Anonymous question
States are territorial communities recognized by the leadership of other similar territorial communities as sovereigns over their territory. There can also be territorial communities that are not recognized as sovereigns. For example, condominiums. They may have their own customs, but the state remains the sovereign over that territory. There can be extraterritorial communities. An example is the church. The only church that also has its own state is the Catholic Church. It can be viewed both as an extraterritorial jurisdiction with sovereignty over a small territory and as a state with a very powerful diaspora abroad.
The freedom to leave does not separate communities from the state in any way; it has nothing to do with it here. There can be states with the freedom to renounce citizenship. There can be any other territorial and extraterritorial communities with the freedom to leave. And, similarly, all the same can exist without the freedom to leave. The freedom to leave is the characteristic by which we can judge whether a community is compatible with a libertarian order.
Your concerns regarding guarantees of how decent the order will be in various communities, and how dangerous these orders will be for both the members of the community and those around them, are quite justified, since current sovereign territorial communities aka states cannot provide any such guarantees and regularly demonstrate that such concerns are not groundless.
Today, a state can be coerced into observing propriety in three ways: by the threat of attack from other states, the threat of severing interstate economic ties, and the threat of internal regime instability. In a world without states, similarly, a community that is dangerous to others would have those same incentives to behave decently. So why abolish states at all?
In principle, there is no need. If the vast majority makes constant active efforts to ensure that territorial sovereigns do not violate individual rights, it will be a quite decent world. But in such a world, states would not have the opportunity to fight those who wish to associate in a different manner, for example, within the framework of a contract. Thus, a world of minimal states will inevitably be diluted by extraterritorial associations of people who maintain rules within themselves that are not tied to a territory.
As for the fear that people fleeing a highly exotic community will find themselves completely maladapted to life in a global world, it seems exaggerated to me. There are a huge number of migrants in the world who adapt to life in new conditions, and the easier it is, the more they like these new conditions. So this particular factor is not something to fear. Migrants are dangerous if they become a tool of politics. Purely economic relations benefit all their participants.
If the Amish are such maladapted folks, why are they so wealthy?
For example, a friend invited me to a party at his house. I brought apple juice with me. Suddenly, the police burst in, and it turns out that juice is prohibited in his contractual jurisdiction. 1) Did I start violating the NAP from the moment I took it out? 2) How does the effect of another jurisdiction apply to me if I have not entered into contracts with it? 3) What happens if I am a user of another jurisdiction that the first one does not recognize and simply engages in vigilantism?
A similar question: will self-ownership help if a person runs onto someone else’s field? Can I shoot them without a trial or investigation?
What could be called laws under ancap is the codification of successful practices. Such codes, which generalize successful practices on various topics, are in demand in a stateless society because they save effort by allowing one to avoid analyzing every case from scratch. Saving effort will mean saving money, and a cheap court, all other things being equal, will naturally win in the competitive struggle against an expensive one. But even if an expensive court provides a higher quality review of the issue, there will also be demand for a cheap one; this is a natural market segmentation by price.
Thus, by recognizing the jurisdiction of a particular company over oneself regarding a certain circle of issues, a person under ancap usually has the opportunity in advance to find out which sets of norms are used within that jurisdiction.
Furthermore, humanity has a rich experience in resolving conflicts between persons belonging to different jurisdictions. In most cases, it was a convenient practice to recognize the laws of the party on whose territory the conflict occurred. Deviations from this principle were usually stipulated separately. This could be related, for example, to the particularly important status of certain persons, or to the disputed status of the place where the conflict occurred. Thus, the concept of diplomatic immunity and international maritime law emerged.
Now let’s move directly to your questions. Let’s replace apple juice with a more understandable irritant. You brought sausage to a vegan party and began to eat it with appetite alongside the salad. Naturally, for vegans, this is a very irritating situation. And they know in advance that something like this would upset them greatly. Therefore, the party announcement usually states right away that it is a vegan party, no meat will be served, and bringing it along is prohibited. Thus, your actions violate the agreed-upon conditions of presence, and you are fully entitled to be evicted from the party.
Worse, if the announcement states that the party is vegan, no restrictions are explicitly written, you are not a vegan and do not hide it, but you were invited anyway. Respecting the hosts’ right not to serve you meat, you decide to provide for yourself—and you run into a legal conflict. Here, both the hosts, who failed to explain the rules to you, and you, who failed to understand the local defaults, are in an awkward position. Usually, such mishaps are resolved by one of the parties making concessions, but if the party hosts do not concede, you will still be evicted, because this is a place where their interpretation of disputed norms takes priority. I had a similar case during a Kupala night celebration when I started kissing a guy; it turned out he was taken, and his girl confronted me for it, which caused my bewilderment: I sincerely believed that different rules apply on Kupala night—but I yielded; the world didn’t end over that guy, basically. Similarly, our hypothetical vegans might yield to you, albeit with a sense of deep bewilderment at your tactlessness.
Now let’s move from elaborate tales to conclusions.
You are not obliged to follow the norms that you did not pledge to follow.
You may be forced to comply with them if it is a fundamental point for the enforcing party, but not for you.
You have the right to demand compensation for such coercion, but it is not a fact that you will receive it.
The more the parties are interested in future cooperation, the more likely it is that they will make mutual concessions regarding a specific current case.
In light of these theses, how can we resolve the second case, with trespassing—that is, the violation of property boundaries, even without explicit damage to that property?
A person is not obliged to be aware that you are against them walking across your field. It is better to put a sign on the border saying “No Trespassing,” so that the person knows that a famous Willy No-Trespassing lives here, and he is not to be trifled with (for additional reading, I recommend the well-known text about Piglet’s grandfather, floating around the internet).
You can force a person to leave the field if this is fundamental for you. And if they have read the sign and ignored it, you can carry out the enforcement using lethal force, without wasting time on additional persuasions.
Compensation may be demanded from you if, for example, there was a beaten path across your field, the boundary was not marked, the sign turned out to be unreadable and hidden in the grass, and then you pop out like a jack-in-the-box with a Winchester in hand and start shooting. State your rules in the most explicit form possible.
The more you are interested in future cooperation with the trespasser, the more likely it is that you will allow them on your field, even if they wandered in without permission. For example, it turned out to be a traveling salesman with a magical gift of persuasion, and now he will be your permanent supplier of tin foil hats.
In the book “After the State”, published in 2008, Alexei Shustov provides (pp. 66-67) a list of questions that remain unresolved in the panarchic model he proposed. Since then, thought has not stood still, and the Bitarch and I propose brief outlines of solutions to these issues.
1. How to organize border security? How to build and fund armedforces designed to protect the country from external force attempts?
As a reminder, the Shustov model is the construction of a panarchy within Russia as a single entity without dividing it into territorial units; therefore, the problem of external borders in such a poly-state remains relevant.
Border security in peacetime is quite pointless. It is impossible to block or levy duties on the cross-border movement of goods in a poly-state—the existence of a single ECU offering free trade is enough, and the entire flow will go through this internal offshore. The same applies to visa regimes. Individual ECUs may enforce boycotts of certain goods, people, and information for their clients, but this is carried out at the consumer level, not through border control.
Regarding protection from military invasion, the most important thing in the defense doctrine is the presence of citizens who have something to defend. The example of Ukraine shows that even under very unfavorable starting conditions, the self-organization of citizens works wonders. If free arms circulation exists in a number of the country’s jurisdictions, this significantly simplifies the task. However, such a militia plus private military companies are capable of handling territorial defense tasks rather. Meanwhile, a doctrine of preventing an attack by creating a personal threat to the leaders of the aggressor country can further reduce risks. With minimal coordination capabilities, governments will be able to agree on joint funding for a corresponding project of high-precision non-nuclear medium-range weapons, or some other surprises of the same sort.
2. How to organize
international relations? Who and on
what basis will represent the
country in interaction with
foreign states?
International relations consist of border demarcation, the procedure for extraditing criminals, visa regimes, and various duties.
Regarding borders, territorial states will find it difficult here, as their citizens will likely also begin to enter into agreements with ECUs—and it would be good if only with those attached to the corresponding territorial jurisdiction, because they might just as well agree with transnational ECUs. Cellular communication works in the border zone in both directions; similarly, regulations in the border zone will interpenetrate, further blurring the concept of the territorial state.
The procedure for extraditing criminals is relevant only in a situation of noticeable differences in legal systems and especially in law enforcement. Bargaining is inevitable here, in which more influential jurisdictions will have an advantage, but influence is an unstable substance and is distributed unevenly. In general, it will be the same as it is now, only more dynamic. At least, in situations of clear injustice, public outrage will be of greater importance for contract jurisdictions than for current democracies.
Duties, as shown above, if they exist at all, will only be unilateral, from the side of monopoly territorial entities; a poly-state cannot afford customs.
3. How to organize
an effective rebuff to attempts by external forces
of the financial-economic sector
to heat up contradictions between different
governments [ECUs] and exhaust the country
by playing on this?
One can imagine a hypothetical foreign Putin sponsoring conservative ECUs in Russia that advocate for spiritual values, and it becomes more profitable to become a client of such an ECU. Meanwhile, he might, for example, deny visas to clients of liberal ECUs and prohibit investments in his lucrative raw-material economy. Usually, this leads to the “market deciding” to create imitative structures that demonstrate to the outside the traits for which people are willing to pay, but ignore the internal content: first, it is cheaper, and second, there is no internal demand for it.
Moreover, the world does not revolve around a single foreign Machiavelli, so those ECUs that he dislikes will cooperate with someone else.
4. How to solve
environmental issues?
Each jurisdiction solves these issues in its own way. A liberal one leaves it to the owners, who, in turn, insure risks with insurance companies. A socialist one supports supervisory organizations that live for issuing fines or shaking down larger bribes (a bribe will not be more expensive than an insurance policy, otherwise the subject will flee to the liberals). Greens may found their own jurisdiction where consumers will support eco-friendly producers with money and boycott those who ignore the environment.
As for negative externalities arising from environmental disasters, they are compensated much more effectively through court in the presence of competing jurisdictions than under a monopoly burdened by a conflict of interest in the form of state ownership.
5. What to do
with objects of cultural and historical
heritage of the people to guarantee
their preservation?
Objects of cultural and historical heritage bring profit because they are interesting to tourists. For them to be preserved, it must be profitable to preserve them. For this, in turn, the owners of these objects must benefit from tourism. This is typical liberal logic, thanks to which the owner of each specific potentially interesting object decides whether it is more profitable to try to earn from the flow of tourists or to use the object in some other way, for example, to demolish it and build something else. As a result of such an approach, a quite diverse building landscape is formed, where antiquity neighbors modernity.
Other ECUs may introduce regulations that prohibit the destruction of historical monuments, but they will have to somehow compensate the owners for this inconvenience, otherwise they will flee to the liberals. Thus, in ECUs for lovers of antiquity, taxes for the maintenance of monuments are inevitable. As a result, through third-party funding, monuments whose direct monetization is difficult can be preserved.
Organizations like UNESCO will also contribute to solving the problem, as they are capable to a certain extent of influencing tourist flows by labeling: this is a world heritage site, and this is not. However, I suspect that soon UNESCO’s influence on the tourism business will become lower than that of a hypothetical TripAdvisor, and there will be no need to sponsor this bureaucratic dinosaur at the state’s expense.
6. How to regulate
relations in the field of natural resources,
especially specific ones such as water,
air, marine biological resources (which move
across the territory and are therefore not
tied to coordinates in space)?
In its time, hunting and gathering lost the economic competition to farming and animal husbandry due to their low efficiency. Similarly, as free fresh water, free sea fish, and free clean air become more expensive, the industrial production of these resources near the places of their consumption will become profitable. In short, this is not a question of jurisdictions at all, but a purely technical-economic question.
7. How to regulate
relations in places with a high concentration
of immovable property, where the actions
of one owner can affect the
essential characteristics of a neighboring
owner’s property (for example,
the construction of buildings that block
existing ones)?
Of course, such issues are more conveniently solved within functional jurisdictions, such as homeowners associations. This is not provided for within the Shustov model, so the issue falls into the sphere of disputes between different jurisdictions, and it is difficult to predict what practices will emerge here.
8. How to organize effective protection against cartel agreements by the strongest players of various markets that have a predisposition to monopolization?
In a free market, a monopoly is formed only if the overall size of the market is comparable to the optimal size of a company in terms of labor productivity. In all other cases, monopolization is unprofitable, and it can either be an entrepreneurial error that will quickly bankrupt the company, or this monopoly is imposed by means of violence, which no longer has anything to do with a free market. Thus, the effective protection against monopolization is precisely the free market, and in a situation of competing jurisdictions with free entry and exit, the prerequisites for the market being free are far greater than under the current state of affairs.
9. How to counter attempts by socially maladjusted individuals (those currently called criminals) to undermine the public safety system,built on the principle of equal rights agreements, and achieve a chaos profitable for them?
Freedom of gun ownership and the right to self-defense work wonders in this regard. Individual ECUs that do not recognize their clients’ right to independently offer armed resistance to violence will be forced to indeed make every effort to suppress armed violence using professional police; otherwise, they will lose the loyalty of their clients, who will move to jurisdictions that at least do not get in the way.
Furthermore, a potential offender cannot always immediately determine which jurisdiction their potential victim belongs to, and consequently, whether they are ready to fight back. Thus, even a single ECU that allows its clients to arm themselves becomes a positive externality for the others.
To start, I recommend reading the question itself and my answer to it. I primarily covered the transition between panarchy and ancap, while in the “Anti-state” channel you can read another answer from Ved Neuman, which mainly concerns the transition from statism to panarchy.
What is the point of rooting for CJ if it’s obvious that the most hardworking and lucky people will choose a CJ that is more pleasant in terms of tax contributions, rather than CJUSSR2.0? Who is going to feed them?
анонимный вопрос
In the article about FCJ recently translated by our team, the approaches to how consumers choose certain jurisdictions are, in my opinion, covered quite well. I want to draw attention to the first two letters of the abbreviation: these are not just contractual jurisdictions, they are also functional and overlapping.
Indeed, a purely socialist jurisdiction providing all types of services simply will not survive in the market, especially if it is contractual, meaning one can freely exit it. A socialist jurisdiction is effective when it provides the service of delivering public goods with a strong positive economy of scale.
Examples of such spontaneously emerging jurisdictions are analyzed in detail in Elinor Ostrom’s book “Governing the Commons”. For instance, mountain pastures are extremely inconvenient to divide into small plots, and they are used for grazing by residents of several surrounding villages. To prevent the predatory exploitation of this rare common resource, they develop their own complex system of norms and enforcement, thereby forming a functional contractual jurisdiction. However, this jurisdiction is responsible for conflict resolution only regarding the pasture and does not interfere at all in matters such as school education. And in this sphere, for example, a network of public schools funded on a parity basis by all CJ members (socialism again!), a private school paid for by students’ parents, and a private school funded by an endowment fund can compete perfectly. This is exactly an example of overlapping jurisdictions.
Putting up fences here to stop the neighbor’s livestock from eating private grass would cost more than it’s worth.
Among many oppositionists, there is an opinion that it is enough to do in Russia “as in Europe” and we will live almost in paradise. They usually praise Western countries for the separation of powers, honest courts, a transparent budget, smart regulation, fair taxes, freedom of speech, and many other things missing in the RF. But some of these people then begin to notice that all those achievements, for which they were ready to leave their homes, are slowly but surely fading even in their beloved West, let alone being transferred to Russia.
Why does this happen, and why is it pointless to wait for the state to improve, just as it is pointless to emigrate? I am ready to propose a hypothesis based on thoughts from the lectures of the famous sociologist Ella Paneyakh (they are on YouTube). I cannot guarantee the absolute accuracy of this hypothesis, but I believe the probability of it being true is over 99%.
In her lectures, Ella explains the theory of the stationary bandit, explaining the positive (creative, progressive) vector along which the state guided society as a necessity for military superiority over other stationary bandits. If one of them preferred traditional values and obscurantism, while another preferred progress and human rights, the latter would sooner or later achieve technological superiority over the former. Ultimately, traditionalists and supporters of a “brutal” violent hierarchy were simply conquered by more progressive states. Since the development of technology is impossible without respect for the individual and human rights, states were forced to adopt the best practices for ensuring personal freedoms from one another, increasing trust in the tax system through a transparent budget, creating social elevators for youth, fighting corruption, and offering asylum to defectors.
After World War II, as a result of the emergence of the doctrine of deterrence through the threat of mutually assured destruction, wars between more or less developed countries ceased completely. After all, no politician will dare to start a war if they know they themselves can be destroyed. As a result, the incentive to develop and create better conditions for their own citizens disappeared. After all, no one is threatening you, and your own population can be suppressed even with ordinary batons and tear gas.
The lack of an incentive to develop does not mean a stop in the competition of state practices; it is just that now states adopt methods of oppressing their own citizens from one another — hidden taxes, internet censorship, fighting protests and rallies, social ratings, surveillance, etc. You have probably noticed that some of these appeared first here and then in the West, others vice versa. But in general, both here and in the West, the volume of rights and freedoms is gradually, and at an increasingly rapid pace, decreasing. Emigration becomes pointless, because after a certain amount of time, all those shortcomings for which you left will also appear in your new location.
How can we bring back the competition of positive practices? By getting rid of the territorial monopoly of the state and moving to a system of extra-territorial contractual jurisdictions (ETCJs), we will create an incentive for individual ETCJs to compete for citizens. After all, switching to another ETCJ would be as simple as changing a mobile operator. Consequently, the managements of these companies will be interested in offering the best conditions for citizens.
People often ask how a libertarian society can be built by coming to power through elections. I will not dwell in detail on whether a libertarian party can come to power through elections at all, because this is the weakest point of the entire idea.
What options for building a libertarian society can the LPR choose? Mikhail Svetov often mentions them in his lectures, so I will try to explain them in plain language and provide my own comments.
1) Federalization. Mikhail constantly praises the USA and Switzerland for their model of national organization, reminding us that the RF is also de jure a federation (but not de facto—due to the violation of the constitution by the state’s first person). In this case, it will be possible to test various models of libertarianism in different regions and transfer best practices from one to another. The advantage of this approach is that in the event of an error, the consequences will be limited to one region rather than spreading across the entire country.
2) Homesteads. The idea is borrowed from the history of the settlement of the USA, when settlers from Europe occupied vacant lands, and later the government recognized their property rights to these plots. Svetov proposes to distribute the uninhabited territories of Siberia and the Far East in this way, granting settlers the right to autonomy, as if they were colonizing Mars (and accordingly, the opportunity to experiment with various libertarian models). Successful practices from these regions could then be gradually transferred to the main part of the country. Although, judging by the comments on this idea, people are not very eager to move to regions with such a harsh climate and a total lack of infrastructure.
3) Minarchism. A gradual transition to ancap is carried out through the gradual reduction of state functions across the entire country at once (as if the RF were a unitary state, which it is de facto now). Svetov means exactly this path when he calls himself a “forced minarchist.” This immediately raises the question of the stability of minarchism as such, which is further amplified by the centralization of power. A single unsuccessful reform could easily incite the people’s rage and end the LPR’s time in power, which would then create a negative image for the entire libertarian idea in the eyes of the general public for a long time.
Personally, I would propose another option—federalization of the country (simply follow the current constitution of the RF, it’s already in there) and the creation of competing extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions within regions that have approved the experiment by referendum. As the model is refined and “pitfalls” are eliminated, the geography can be expanded, gradually making all of Russia libertarian.
To the last paragraph, I would like to add that an extraterritorial jurisdiction is extraterritorial precisely so as not to be limited by some narrow list of regions. Today, there is one extraterritorial jurisdiction in the world—the jurisdiction of the United States of America. This state does not care whose territory its citizen is on; they continue to exercise their jurisdiction over them. But it is, of course, not contractual.
If I understand correctly, all possible rules/laws fall under the competence of the contractual jurisdiction, which can establish any rules on its territory, including the age of majority, and may adopt anything from a Sharia court to any other system, being limited in the adoption of laws only by the NAP regarding other jurisdictions—that is, entities that have not entered into an agreement with them to comply with their rules. Meanwhile, the institution (I don’t know what to call it if not a state) that legally stands above the jurisdictions is not concerned with establishing such specific rules, but only monitors compliance with the NAP. I admit that I may be catastrophically mistaken, as I have only recently become acquainted with libertarianism, and I would be glad if you could clarify these nuances regarding jurisdictions and their right to establish any rules on their territory.
анонимный вопрос
Regarding contractual jurisdictions, I have already had to answer. In short: a jurisdiction is not a territory, but a venue (legal competence), and a contractual jurisdiction differs from any other by its voluntary nature. Specific parties to a specific conflict agreed to have their case heard in a specific court and entered into a contract with that court. But today, for once, we are not talking about the court, but about the rules, so jurisdictions have nothing to do with this at all.
Any owner of a territory can theoretically establish any conditions under which they are willing to tolerate the presence of outsiders on their territory. Outsiders can either follow these rules or sabotage them if they believe that the potential costs of sanctions for sabotage are lower than the costs of following the rules.
The closer the rules established by the owner of the territory are to those that are understandable and familiar to people, the less effort the owner will have to spend to ensure their compliance. Yes, I can establish a ban on weapons, photography, and clothing on my territory, but if potential visitors to my beach are not yet used to the fact that beaches can be nudist, I will initially have to conduct a long explanatory campaign. And even then, it’s not a given that I will manage to convince people about weapons and photography; perhaps they will only agree to undress, and then I myself will give in and change the rules. Thus, from the sum of many private wishes and actions, spontaneous orders emerge, which eventually constitute our understanding of a norm. It is for this very reason that all these endless discussions of the criteria of “normal” exist.
As a result of many private actions, certain criteria of a norm become practically ubiquitous, receive precise formulations, and become generally accepted principles. In fact, this is exactly what the non-aggression principle is—it is a convenient convention, the observance of which reduces friction in society, and therefore societies that adhere to it tend to prosper. Meanwhile, some criteria of a norm remain purely a matter of taste. In one community, it is the norm to consider a person over 16 years old as having legal capacity, while in another, it is any member of the tribe who has passed the initiation rite, regardless of the age at which they passed it.
This is roughly like asking what the difference is between equality and a jury trial. The first is a principle. The second is an institution. Between them is a cause-and-effect relationship.
NAP is the non-aggression principle, stating that no one has the right to use aggressive violence with impunity. Contractual jurisdictions are an institution for conflict resolution based on adherence to the NAP.
The point of contractual jurisdictions is that one subject enters into an agreement with another subject stating that they are subject to their jurisdiction. The agreement also specifies what limitations this jurisdiction has. The existence of a contract between the court and the subject is a mandatory condition that ensures compliance with the NAP, since under the contract, the subject agrees to execute the court’s decision or agrees that they will be forced to execute it. Without such prior consent, an attempt to force a convicted person to execute a court decision becomes a violation of the non-aggression principle.
The most elementary example of a contractual jurisdiction is an arbitration court. Two parties to a conflict enter into a contract with a court to resolve one specific conflict, pledging to execute the court’s decision regardless of what it may be. An arbitration court provides the highest possible degree of fairness in conflict resolution, but is poorly suited for cases of extreme bitterness between parties, as well as situations where the parties are barely acquainted and simply cannot find a single person whom both parties trust.
In cases where a pure arbitration court is difficult, intermediaries begin to step in. I entrust the settlement of my conflict to someone I have chosen as my representative, and after some effort, they provide me with a result: here the opponent is ready to make such-and-such a concession, here it makes sense for me to make a concession, I can also count on such-and-such compensation, but I must pay such-and-such for the mediation. I agree to this, and a settlement occurs. Or I disagree and negotiations continue.
The more stable a society is, the more likely it is that such mediation contracts will become more long-term and the results of their activity more predictable. People generally love to generalize and average things out to save effort and not worry about minor details. Thus arises what is usually meant by the words “contractual jurisdictions,” although this is only a specific case of them: a system in which practically everyone is bound by a permanent contract with one jurisdiction or another, and it is that jurisdiction that handles all their conflicts, whether they bring claims against others or others bring claims against them. A contractual jurisdiction can be freely changed, but this will likely happen no more often than people change mobile operators today.
To a certain approximation, such a judicial system existed in Iceland during the Age of Sagas, that is, in the period of the absence of a state, when jurisdiction, along with priestly functions, was carried out by the so-called godi, and a landowner could enter one godord or another or move to a different one.
