If you limit those priviledges in time and make them part of civil duties you not only get a more ephatic, educated public (as they learn what a police force has to deal with first hand) you avoid them developing into a paramilitary structure within your society.
Or so goes the theory. Would be interesting to try this one out in practise.
The immediate drawback I notice is that in my country, local police have substantial training: 2 years full time (IIRC) so they must sign contracts beforehand such that if they were to quit before X years they would owe their jurisdiction the prorated amount of their training costs.
(OTOH, IIUC US County Deputies have almost no requirements, so YMMV)
Another thing to consider is that, at least in my country, police have a huge mandate. If we narrow the scope of the mission, we can reduce the amount of training necessary.
(come to think of it, that's not too far off from the apprenticeship model of many trades and professions in my country, except it would tend to develop T or even W shaped people instead of just I shaped...)
(lawyers might be more difficult to rotate? but if the legal code were simple enough, maybe almost all cases would come down to questions of fact instead of questions of law, enabling pro se representation? I suspect our anarchist citizens would have be substantially better educated than current modal standards.
cf RA Lafferty, Primary Education of the Camiroi)
I've always thought this is important. So much of modern day politics is far removed, abstract, and/or impersonal.
In our current system we've become used to listening to media pundits arguing about things happening on the other side of the country, our votes mixed in with hundreds of thousands of other people, across dozens of issues, for a blue or red team representative, representatives that often seem more beholden to political parties and lobbyist than to voters, the winning 51% lording it over the other 49% for a couple years.
It's completely different having a few dozen or a few hundred people together in a room, people who are your friends and family and neighbors, listening to different viewpoints, coming to consensus on issues that matter to the group.
If people can just get the things they need or want straightforwardly I don't think many would choose to get them by force. I don't think people form mafias because they're just looking for something to do, I think mafias usually form because a certain ethnic group or social class isn't able to get what they require through licit means. Eg, when Italians arrived in the United States, they faced immense prejudice and discrimination in hiring. In my view this is a mirror image of the hierarchy that was oppressing them to begin with.
Will there be super sophisticated criminals who need dedicated, specialist investigators to pursue? It seems like reasonable speculation. In that case though, these specialists don't need to be the same people as beat cops. A big problem with the police is that their mission is too broad and they can't possibly to a good job across the board. If we have a big computer crime problem we can form a computer crime investigation team, with various checks and balances, and all they're empowered to do is investigate and to present their findings to the other mechanisms of the justice system.
If they try to form a mafia it'll need to be broken up through the most peaceful means available. The earlier you're able to intervene, the more peaceful the means you're able to use. So for instance of someone is having trouble managing their rage and depression, and their community recognizes this in their adolescence, there's a lot that can be done to help them. In our current society, these things generally go unnoticed and when they are noticed, it's treated as an individual failing, and you're more likely to be abandoned than offered empathy and assistance. In my experience, hurt people hurt people.
If a mature mafia forms and is causing a ruckus, we'll need to overwhelm them with numbers and strategy, abolish their mafia, and take measures to prevent them from doing more harm. I believe that this would be rare, however. People aren't generally cruel to each other, and when they are it's often because they've suffered abuse. So it's a virtuous cycle, as we eliminate sources of abuse, abuse becomes rarer. I don't pretend it'll disappear entirely, but all we need to do to form a good society is reduce it to a manageable level and constantly be improving. Perfection is impossible, but it is not required.
What about turning this criticism around? Some people desire to abuse other people and to have power over them. Okay. What does that say about the structure of our current society? If we take this to be true, doesn't that suggest we should reform or abolish institutions that enable people like that? What happens if we take that to it's logical conclusion?
I was trying not to be too wordy and long winded (as I have a tendency to do), but I realized this could come off rather ominous. So just to be crystal clear, I'm am advocate of nonviolence.
I think courts would be private as well, and you'd live in a jurisdiction of your choice.
I also think that jurisdictions that didn't enforce court orders from other jurisdictions would be black-listed by those jurisdictions. Furthermore, individuals from a black-listed jurisdiction would be stigmatized in, or barred from entering the jurisdiction that couldn't obtain their cooperation.
There has to be a cost attached to unreasonably uncooperative behavior.
Also, the idea that hierarchies of any type cannot exist within anarchies is more socialist revisionism. Most anarchist societies over history have had hierarchies in some form or another. Somalia and Iceland's periods of anarchy are two such examples.
I don’t really see how the former could work really well in anarchy. Like hypothetically say you “owned” a workshop that could make something useful for the community, they would probably collectively agree that… they should just walk in and start using it. What next?
On the other hand, it seems to me that the general idea of markets could be used. Like, if there was a community workshop, but you were unusually good at making shoes, and had a workstation at that workshop, presumably nothing would prevent you from trading your shoes to other people. The economic value doesn’t really come from the asset of the workstation in that case, though, it comes from your abilities, right?
How does one capitalize in an anarchist society divorced from capitalism? As in, what does capital mean? What does it mean to profit?
How can one "outcompete" a "socialist firm"? When there is no money or private property, every firm belongs to everyone who wants it.
Why is a state necessary to punish hierarchies? Presumably in an anarchist world, people have learned to distrust and dislike hierarchies on principle, refuse to partake in it and join together to punish those who do.
Competition is not cooperation. Profit is not cooperation. Privatization is not cooperation.
But that sure sounds like a recipe for CEOs to become autocrats.
*Cough* ICC *cough*?
That's similar to the definition of countries, international treaties and frontiers.
I'm pretty skeptical about whether these private courts would/could work in the long term, but it is fascinating to read the theories.
For example: in my country, police can act on their own in criminal matters, but must have a court order to act on civil matters. This, to my uninformed mind, is already a proto-hierarchy. How would this sort of distinction be handled in a non-hierarchical manner?