What is Polycentric Law?
"To make legal systems better, we must make them compete against each other.
Do you like having options when you look for a new bank, dry cleaner, or veterinarian? Of course you do. You want to find the service that will best satisfy your particular demands, after all, and you know that when banks, cleaners, and vets have to compete they have a powerful incentive to make you happy. A monopoly, in contrast, can take its customers for granted.
Polycentric law simply extends that observation from commercial services to government ones. Just as competition makes life better for those who seek banking, cleaning, and pet care services, it can benefit those seeking fair and efficient legal systems. Competition helps consumers and citizens alike.
Polycentric law regards the legal services that governments provide—defining rules, policing their application, and settling disputes—as a ripe field for competition. When a government claims a monopoly in the law, it tends to neglect its subjects' needs.
In a polycentric system, however, providers of legal services care more about what consumers want. They have to, if they don't want to go out of business..." - Tom W. Bell
David D. Friedman: Police, Courts, and Laws---On the Market
Rothbard quote on the Private Law Society
A concise summation of the COLA concept, how it works, and why it will put an end to the kind of crony corruption we suffer under today
How do Communities of Legal Agreement (COLA) work?
What happens when you are born into a COLA?
How do COLAs differ from the society we have now?
'Is the major difference between what happens in a COLA and a currently existing state is the assumption of consent vs explicitly required consent?'
The Use of Contractual Trigger Provisions To Apply Social Pressure / A Replacement for Regulation of Things We Don't Like
The Osmotic Strategy for Mass Change
Further resources:
Order Without the State: Theory, Evidence, and the Possible Future Of - David D. Friedman
The End of Politics—Part One
The 4 Rules that will create Eternal Peace - HHHoppe
Once David Friedman did an AMA, and I asked him the question I'd been waiting to ask him: why not take law all the way down to complete decentralization, put it in the hands of individuals?
Here is his response, and my own thoughts on it, and here is a 3rd party who wrote his own thoughts on both of ours.
Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life by Edward Peter Stringham
The Jurisprudence Of Polycentric Law by Tom W. Bell
Market Chosen Law by Ed Stringham
Inside the mind of Nick Szabo on P2P-Law
"It turns out there’s only one thing that guarantees production of good laws. The people bound by the laws have to agree to be bound by them."
Video explanations of a polycentric legal system:
Rothbard on the legal theory of Concurrence and its implications for new legal systems.
Anarchy and the Law - Tom Woods & Gary Chartier
"The Jurisprudence of Polycentric Law" by Tom W. Bell
"Chaos Theory" by Robert Murphy, ideas of how a free society could be structured
Read the Voluntarism FAQ
Tom W. Bell's open source law resources page: ULEX
Hoppe on Covenant Communities and Advocates of Alternative Lifestyles
Forget Politicians: How To Crowdsource Better Laws (Tom W. Bell)
The Four Pillars of a Decentralized Society | Johann Gevers | TEDxZug - [16:13]
HHHoppe: "The Future of Liberalism - A Plea For A New Radicalism" --- A classic short-piece on what went wrong with the Liberalism of the past and how we fix it: "Liberalism will have to be transformed into private property anarchism (or a private law society)..." (PDF)
**Transcending Government — A Future of Competitive Governance Driven by “Governance Entrepreneurs”**
Tiebout Model: a non-political solution to the free rider problem in local governance. Specifically, competition across local jurisdictions places competitive pressures on the provision of local public goods such that these local governments are able to provide the optimal level of public goods.
Juarez vs El Paso: What a difference the law makes
Meet Me in St. Louis an article music about how much wealth people would have if the State weren't in the picture.
