The Individualist Manifesto jury system

17 views
Skip to first unread message

bas...@gmail.com

unread,
Jul 30, 2024, 10:38:45 AM7/30/24
to Individualist Movement

The Individualist Manifesto jury system 

Trevor Watkins 30/7/24

The Individualist Manifesto suggests a jury system for resolving disputes and grey areas within a community. This is probably the most contentious of the 4 components in the manifesto, so I am writing this article to help explain and clarify this issue.


Job 5:7 says that “Man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward”. Things fall apart. Conflicts always arise. In the past conflicts were resolved by the king, or through warfare. Nowadays they are resolved by courts and judges appointed by politicians in government. This critical function has been moved beyond the control of the individuals involved in the dispute. When other avenues such as compensation and apology have failed, I suggest that conflicts between individuals should be judged by other individuals using the tried and trusted jury system.

How will it work?

  1. One individual or group declares to another individual or group that a dispute exists.

  2. Being good individualists, the disputants mutually agree to settle the dispute using the jury system proposed in the Individualist Manifesto, to minimise conflict and costs.

  3. Jury duty is voluntary. Commonly members of the jury will be selected by the disputants.

  4. The size and composition of the jury must be consented to by both parties to the dispute.  If agreement on a jury cannot be reached in a reasonable time (7 days, for example), both sides select six jurors, and a foreman with a casting vote is chosen by random lottery of the jury members.

  5. Because it is a matter of chance as to which side obtains the casting vote on the jury, it will be important for both sides to select jurors committed to acting on the merits of the case, rather than jurors blindly supporting the side which appointed them.

  6. The members of the jury alone determine the rules for the hearing. 

    1. They may be guided by well-established rules of legal procedure and evidence, but they are not bound by it. 

    2. They may appoint a judge or judges to guide them.

    3. They may invite or allow lawyers to represent the parties.

    4. They may allow witnesses, cross-examine them, conduct investigations, seek the opinion of experts, or do whatever is required to reach a decision.

    5. Jury decisions are made by a simple majority vote.

  7. They will be funded equally by the parties to the dispute during the hearing, but may finally decide on any allocation of costs they see fit.

  8. Any jury decision may be appealed to another jury until one side or the other has 3 identical decisions in its favour. Thereafter the jury decision becomes binding upon both parties to the dispute, and is added to the set of legal precedents for that  community which defines their common law.

  9.  I believe that a class of professional, impartial jurors will arise whose primary asset will be their reputation for fair decisions. This class of jurors will provide the pool from which most parties to a dispute will make their jury selection.


Benefits

  1. Juries will be local and decentralised. Bad decisions will have immediate consequences visible to the community

  2. Because they are local, a jury will reflect the standards and customs of the community in which it is based.

  3. Conflict and costs will be reduced.

  4. Access to justice will not be denied because of wealth or position.

  5. Endless expensive delays will be reduced 

  6. By participating directly in the justice system, citizens exercise their freedoms and duties in a tangible manner.

Challenges

  1.  There's the risk of local biases influencing decisions, which could undermine the libertarian ideal of impartial and fair justice. Each side selects its own jurors, which should minimise this.

  2. The potential for injustice always exists even in the best systems, as the New York judiciary currently illustrates.

  3.  The Individualst Manifesto and the HarmConsentRule constitute the legal framework within which the jury operates. This may not be acceptable to all.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Jul 30, 2024, 3:27:35 PM7/30/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Since I was a leading opponent of the jury idea in previous discussions, let me jump right in with an initial response.

In a free market, ideas with merit and value should have no problem making a sustainable living alongside other good ideas. My suggestion therefore is to pitch this system as a business idea, especially since one of its benefits is supposed to be a reduction of costs. Let us shark tank the idea.

Speaking of costs, the assumption appears to be (not just here, but generally) that disputes are handled through the legal system with its courts, judges, lawyers, laws, acts, regulatory bodies, procedural formulations, etc... and that system is definitely not cheap. An alternative should be welcome.

However, I would suggest that people have for this very reason already found and resorted to alternatives. Enormous numbers of disputes (for sure the vast majority) never reach the official legal system... and those that do very rarely require arbitration i.e. is not declared between two parties.

Disagreements between colleagues are often settled by their boss. Disputes in a household by a parent or by the spouses splitting up or by someone sleeping on a couch. Disputes between humans and animals are usually resolved by means of a duel, often a very one-sided duel, depending on the size & type of animal.

Even when things are so serious that they are not easily resolved with one of the very common extra-judicial solutions, it is still resolved outside the legal system... for example, the most common killer in most of the world is a spouse... in other words, the dispute was handled by murder, might or duel.

It seems to be on the decline now, but when I was growing up not too long ago, the most common means of dispute resolution was to take it outside, which often included the waving of fists, the wielding of knives and the occasional discharge of a firearm or the breaking of a beer bottle.

A dictionary should not say how words should be used, but rather how words are actually used. The legal system should not reflect how men should act, but how they really act. I believe the people have spoken and they seem to have chosen to deal with it themselves, in the moment.

Maybe if there was a sufficiently cheap alternative, people would use that, but I suspect that a night on the couch is still cheaper than Trevor's Jury Services PTY LTD.

S.


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Individualist Movement" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to individualis...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/ace19f36-3695-4ced-8dae-bb8918f2b6b5n%40googlegroups.com.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Jul 30, 2024, 4:47:52 PM7/30/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

From, Martin Vlietstra

 

First of all, who am I. I worked with Trevor in the 1970's and in 1978 relocated to the United Kingdom. Trevor and I have kept in touch since then.

 

The United Kingdom has an arbitration system in place. Arbiters are appointed jointly by parties in dispute and are usually experts in the field. For example, if the dispute involves an IT system, the President of the British Computer Society (BCS) is empowered to appoint arbiters who are accredited by the BCS and who will establish the facts - "Did the software supplied comply with what was contracted?" A BCS-appointed arbiter will seldom award damages, though once the facts have been clarified, any damages will quickly be determined by reference to Common Law.

 

In my view, Stephen rightly identifies that any dispute settlement system should work first and foremost in the free market situation. In any market, there are a number of parties - the buyer and the seller (who do not necessarily know each other) and most importantly of all the regulator (who identifies what can be bought and sold in the market and how the product is packaged and how it is delivered and how it is paid for). Having a regulator in a free market improves transparency - if I am negotiating with you, does my price include government taxes or not? When is payment required? How is the product delivered? For the record, in the 1970's I sold peaches on the Johannesburg fruit and vegetable market (via an agent) and more recently I have worked on IT systems in both the London and Frankfurt financial industries.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Jul 30, 2024, 6:24:27 PM7/30/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
The problem with economics is that it is so very hard for most people to grasp. On the surface it seems straight-forward, but right below the surface is a veritable quagmire of complexity.

Regulators do indeed increase certainty and transparency, but at what cost ? We don't know, because we do not pay it directly or get to choose products without them for comparison.

For this reason, regulators can be considered a negative externality. Yes, negative, because we know socialism fails and thus the price of regulation must be higher than the benefits.

Some externalities are easier to quantify - we can tell, for example, how much the government has paid out in grants... and recipients certainly see grants as a benefit... but at what cost ?

Someone has to pay for the grants, the regulators and jurists. When provided by the government it seems to be free, but it is not and the consistent failure of socialist states suggest it's big.

The tricky bit in economics is to look past what can be seen and to recognize that which cannot readily be seen*... like the schools and hospitals and houses that could have been built.

* If I may borrow from the late Mr. Bastiat.

Trevor seems to be suggesting one way in which the market may provide justice / arbitration... and maybe the market would do it that way, but maybe it would not. Only trying will tell.

S.


Stephen vJ

unread,
Jul 30, 2024, 7:31:53 PM7/30/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
I suspect that the market may in fact come up with something totally unexpected, like accepting the cost to date as sunk and just walk away or a really nasty review on Yelp causing the other party to beg for forgiveness or privately contracted hitmen or a no-questions asked returns policy. Trying to determine pre-hoc what the market will come up with is like predicting stock prices - near impossible.

Stephen.

On Jul 30, 2024, at 16:24, Stephen van Jaarsveldt <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:



Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Jul 31, 2024, 8:36:30 AM7/31/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Hi Martin

Regarding the "need" of a regulator in the free market, the moment a market is subjected to any form of state applied regulation it is no longer free.


In a genuine free market, if there is a demand for parties that will ascertain " ... what can be bought and sold in the market and how the product is packaged and how it is delivered and how it is paid for” then service providers in this field will naturally arise to meet the demand without any need for a state imposed regulator.


Whether these parties are called “regulators” or whatever, their name will arise and shape itself in the free market to fit the demand … without any form of government intervention.


Paradoxically many pro “free market” economists stop short of being pro free market and fall back on the government to regulate the market.


Just a little bit here and a little bit there of intervention … but the moment that happens there will be immediately someone who benefits thanks to the intervention and others who do not.


The initial genuine free market system then starts degrading into a regulated market system that will increasingly favour some over many others.


Relating back to the jury discourse, arbitration is such a service that can and does arise naturally, contracting parties can agree on how disputes will be resolved.


However, any mutually trusted party that is willing to perform arbitration would be able to do so in a genuine free market. There may be formal professionals selling their arbitration services or informal mutually trusted ones ... the free market will provide.





--

" It is not the water in the fields that brings true development, rather, it is water in the eyes, or compassion for fellow beings, that brings about real development. "

—Anna Hazare

John Pretorius

unread,
Jul 31, 2024, 8:52:42 AM7/31/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
I agree. "Free market" must mean just that - free market. We must accept that it's not perfect, but any attempt to try to improve it with exceptions is going to collapse into a soggy mess. Same with free speech.

John Pretorius
13 Olive Lane, Morningside, Sandton 2196, South Africa
From: indivi...@googlegroups.com <indivi...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Gabri Rigotti <rigo...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 31 July 2024 14:36
To: indivi...@googlegroups.com <indivi...@googlegroups.com>

Stephen vJ

unread,
Jul 31, 2024, 9:11:43 AM7/31/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Luckily you can declare a dispute with the regulator or the government who created them and any sensible jury will surely decide to abolish it.

Stephen.

On Jul 31, 2024, at 06:52, John Pretorius <jrp...@gmail.com> wrote:



Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Jul 31, 2024, 10:02:54 AM7/31/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
😊👍👌 ...

Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Jul 31, 2024, 10:04:42 AM7/31/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

John's:

I agree. "Free market" must mean just that - free market. We must accept that it's not perfect, but any attempt to try to improve it with exceptions is going to collapse into a soggy mess. Same with free speech.

... 😊👍👌 ... 

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Jul 31, 2024, 10:30:20 AM7/31/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

I disagree.  

 

State regulation can often simplify things without compromising the fundamental tenant of a free market – namely that price is determined by supply and demand only.  Consider for example a government regulation that all weights and measures used in the market shall comply with certain regulations.  If these regulations are sufficiently wide, then they will aid transparency – it the buyer and seller agree a price per unit weight, then provided that the scales meet the government regulations, there is no need for the parties to verify the scales as part of the deal – the government has already done that. If I am buying eggs and the government has decreed what is meant by “large”, “medium” or “small” eggs, again both buyer and seller have an agreed yardstick against which they can base their agreement.

 

Again, the regulator might specify how bargains are to be paid for.  If it is cash, do I hand my cash over to the seller (which means that he has the added problem of carrying a large amount of cash around with him), or does he give me a chit, I settle at the cash desk and he then hands the product over to me.

 

Finally, the regulator should provide a means of settling disputes.  This is one of the reasons why he might specify what units of weight and measure should be used – he can verify the scales which were used were just scales.  In passing, may I mention the state of affairs in France in 1789 – each nobleman, each businessman, each trader had the right to nominate the units of measure that he was using – the king’s measures only applied to debts (taxes) owed to the king. There were over half a million different weights and measures.  One of the consequences was that when the Revolution broke out on 14 July 1789, one of the areas of concern that was addressed was that of weights and measures – the result was the metric system. If I buy a kilogram of apples today, I will get the same weight as if I bought a kilogram in 1799 (when the first prototype kilogram was put to use).

Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Jul 31, 2024, 11:46:15 AM7/31/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Hi Martin

Standardisation is a very useful phenomenon for trading therefore because it is useful it will naturally manifest in a genuine free market. 

The demand will just move to the more attractive supply naturally.

Your observations on France are indeed real world meaningful in the sense that France 1789 was not and still is not a free market society.

The historical system of kings and queens and dukes and counts and lords and barons have no place in a free market ... whilst there may have been ephemeral instances of free markets in those times, the markets would have been massively skewed by all sorts of interventions, especially as a result of wars when lands were conquered (stolen) and the conquered people subjected (enslaved) to the authority of the conquerors ... 







Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Jul 31, 2024, 12:29:38 PM7/31/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
I disagree with your disagreement.

Despite us all laughing at the USA for being the only remaining place on earth to still use imperial measurements, they have a) gotten to the top of the pile economically and b) are functioning just fine with a mix of measurements. Over time many of them are coming around to easier standards, simply because it is worth it, rather than through compulsion... and that is how it should happen - when you can, not when you must for the sake of appeasing some man-made god.

Secondly, there are many areas where standardization is much more important than the weight of eggs and where the market supplies some very precise guidelines without regulatory power to enforce it - see for example PMP and other certifications provided by PMI, the ITIL standard, ISO standards and the GSM standard. It is definitely possible for us to standardize without the government getting involved - the world is filled with good examples.

Thirdly, there have been some horrific unintended consequences from government standardization, for example where a farmer's eggs were larger than the government measurement for "medium", but not quite big enough for "large" and so it ended up being dumped or sold at great risk on the black market or exported elsewhere or lied about or the farmer reduced his chicken's feeding, thus killing millions of chickens in an attempt to conform to the legal standard, etc.

Regulation is bad. Period.

Trevor Watkins

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 8:23:27 AM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Hi Martin,
Great to hear from you again. I trust you are well.
Comments in red below
Trevor Watkins
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one



On Tue, 30 Jul 2024 at 22:47, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

From, Martin Vlietstra

 

First of all, who am I. I worked with Trevor in the 1970's and in 1978 relocated to the United Kingdom. Trevor and I have kept in touch since then.

 

The United Kingdom has an arbitration system in place. Arbiters are appointed jointly by parties in dispute and are usually experts in the field. For example, if the dispute involves an IT system, the President of the British Computer Society (BCS) is empowered to appoint arbiters who are accredited by the BCS and who will establish the facts - "Did the software supplied comply with what was contracted?" A BCS-appointed arbiter will seldom award damages, though once the facts have been clarified, any damages will quickly be determined by reference to Common Law.

 

In my view, Stephen rightly identifies that any dispute settlement system should work first and foremost in the free market situation. In any market, there are a number of parties - the buyer and the seller (who do not necessarily know each other) and most importantly of all the regulator (who identifies what can be bought and sold in the market and how the product is packaged and how it is delivered and how it is paid for). Having a regulator in a free market improves transparency - if I am negotiating with you, does my price include government taxes or not? When is payment required? How is the product delivered?

Why would a contract between sovereign individuals need a regulator? All the agreed terms would be in the contract, accessible to both parties. The contract might be setup on the blockchain as a "smart" contract, or it could be written on a table napkin. Once consented to by both parties, normally by signing, why should a generally incompetent and disinterested party like a regulator need to be involved?

Even a contract might be superfluous. I will supply you as long as you pay me. Miss one payment and I am gone.

Trevor Watkins

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 8:36:39 AM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Trevor seems to be suggesting one way in which the market may provide justice / arbitration... and maybe the market would do it that way, but maybe it would not. Only trying will tell.
 
During Covid I organised a zoom jury trial amongst libertarians based  on the girl in the Iraqi market scenario described in the IM manifesto notes. It was quite well supported, with about 10 jurors divided equally. I acted as the facilitator (not judge).  The decision reached was sensible, and accepted by both sides. 


Trevor Watkins
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAMr06S5Ds0neS-d3Ex5XO-ZNsqLbaY81LDtKbAgqjq6jz%2BuN1w%40mail.gmail.com.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 9:47:47 AM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Hi Trevor, Thank you for your greetings.

 

You might recall that when we were working together in the 1970's, I was doing a part-time BCom at UNISA which I never completed. One of the modules that I did pass was Commercial Law I. In that course I learnt that one of the important aspects of any contract is that there should be a built-in mechanism to resolve disputes. I also learned that certain types of contract were always void (ie the courts would never enforce them - such contracts generally involved committing illegal activities), some contracts were voidable (especially those contracted by a minor which could be unilaterally revoked) while others would be enforced by the law should one of the parties request the courts to do so. 

 

Contract Law also provides default solutions for many situations that might not be built into a contract. As an example, if A accepts an offer from B by post and after he posts the acceptance, but before B receives the acceptance, A drops down dead, can B demand that A's heirs honour the contract or not (and vice-versa)? In many decent contracts, such a situation is dealt with by the simple clause "This contract is to be interpreted under English Law" and legal precedents will be consulted.

 

Under English Law, many "default" situations can be over-ridden by the contract, but the courts will often take into consideration the negotiating power of the parties concerned when asked to over-ride a clause. English Law will usually uphold any decision reached by a reasonable arbitration system - a classic example being the concept of Sharia mortgages. As you might be aware, Moslems are not permitted to charge interest on loans.  If a Sharia-compliant bank makes a loan so that a borrower can buy a house, the bank becomes a joint owner of the house, and the borrower buys rents the part of the house that the bank owns and slowly buys fractions of the house from the bank. If the borrower dies and the house is sold, the bank then takes a portion of the proceeds of the sale equal to the fraction that they still own. Not only would such a process be upheld by the English courts, but the British tax office has modified its tax laws so that transfer tax on such loans is only paid once in line with non-Sharia loans.

 

I trust that this will help put into perspective what you are saying about jury systems for resolving disputes. In England, the courts would probably uphold a decision made by such a jury provided that it can be shown that if one party was much stronger than the other, that the process was equitable.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 10:10:48 AM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
I admit freely that my position on this may be more indicative of my personality than any objective criteria. In my almost half a century on this planet, I have never once felt the need or desire to make use of a lawyer or the official legal system... and not because I have somehow miraculously avoided disputes or the law, but because I personally prefer other means of dispute resolution. I know people on the other side of that preference spectrum who have a lawyer permanently on retainer and spend time in court every few weeks. If you're providing a service as described below, please don't consider my lack of support a reflection of your service - it just does not happen to fall in my taste. Others may love it.

Stephen.

On Aug 1, 2024, at 06:36, Trevor Watkins <bas...@gmail.com> wrote:



vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 10:41:47 AM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Hi Stephen,

 

I have had two instances where I have had to go to law – both connected with people owning me money and refusing to pay. In the first (in 1994), the client made me a scapegoat for a project that had gone wrong and the agency concerned refused to pay me fees in lieu of notice.  They were obviously giving me the run-around for about three months until I instituted a claim through the (English) small claims court.  When the summons landed on their desk, they paid me within 24 hours. The second instance (in 2009) a client who was in financial difficulties owed me a sum of money in excess of the small claims court limit. I suspected that the tax office would be declaring him bankrupt (in which case they take precedence over all other claimants), so I engaged a solicitor (lawyer) to ensure that I got my money before the tax office moved in.

 

I have had a third instance when I had an interaction with the law – I was on the jury for a case of attempted rape. In the event I ended up as foreman.

 

I have of course engaged a solicitor when buying and selling a house (the norm in the UK), to assist in drawing up my will and when dealing with my late in-laws affairs (I was the executor in both their estates and their solicitor held their wills).

 

Martin

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 10:58:32 AM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
That is very interesting - I definitely learned something new here. Thanks a lot for sharing that Martin !

I wonder, does anyone here know if there is a Jewish equivalent based on the biblical / old-testament forgiveness of debt every 7 / 50 years ?

S.


Vlietstra

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 11:30:20 AM8/1/24
to sjaar...@gmail.com, indivi...@googlegroups.com

I was not aware of anything like that when I was paying off my house.


However, under English Law, a debt is automatically cancelled if the lender does nothing about it for 7 years. A number of years ago, a neighbour wanted to buy a small piece of land from me. I decided that the hassle of registering the land transfer was too much, so I entered into an agreement whereby he rented the land from me for 12 years at a rate of £1 per annum (often known as a "peppercorn rent). In this way, as long as I collected the £1 annually and gave him a receipt, there was never any dispute as to the ownership of the land.


Sent via BT Email App


To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to unsub...@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">individualist+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Individualist Movement" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to unsub...@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">individualist+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Individualist Movement" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to unsub...@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">individualist+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Individualist Movement" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to unsub...@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">individualist+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Individualist Movement" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to unsub...@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">individualist+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Individualist Movement" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to unsub...@googlegroups.com">individualist+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAMr06S6uDJVyfOKjqUwm3_i2WZjcKe2gWR6R_CPPugOKVzZ5vw%40mail.gmail.com.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 1:06:38 PM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
That seems about normal and I forgot about buying & selling property - I've used lawyers 3 or 4 times for that - but in my view that is a form of racketeering, a scheme between the government and the lawyers. If it was up to me, the contract would simply be between myself and the buyer / seller, maybe with the estate agent, but I see no need to have lawyers involved in that process. I tried to avoid interacting with them as much as possible even in that process.

I can tell you the feeling is mutual... with our house before last the lawyers made a 30 minute appointment for us to sign the contracts.... they put about 2 reems in front of me and expected me to just sign based on their specialist advice, but I insisted on reading through every word and asked for clarification in about 4 or 5 places. After two hours their patience got quite thin, so I asked them to explain what they are being paid for if not exactly this, which seemed to baffle them - they clearly expected mountains of money for nothing and were shocked and horrified by me wanting to read what I was signing. I suspect they will avoid working with me about as much as I avoid working with them in future.

Two houses before that the contract was a full 3 pages long and there were absolutely no issues - I think if it was a free market, more people would be doing that, for efficiency's sake. In my experience, more words do not make for a better contract... on the contrary, longer contracts typically result in worse outcomes for all involved... and often the templates you get from CNA is just as good or better than bespoke contracts hand-crafted by ye olde lawyers guild.

There was one occasion where someone supposedly made a case against me (they stole from me so I fired them, then they supposedly sued me for unfair dismissal) and I was apparently summoned to appear in court, but as far as I'm concerned that was just a rumour seeing as I never received the summons and if it made it to court I hope the theft reported to police put a swift end to proceedings. My not getting summoned may be due to my flat refusal to sign for any registered letters, seeing as the post office wouldn't let me look at the item before signing for it. If I can't check that all the pages are there before signing for it, then I'm not accepting it - send it back and try some other way of reaching me.

I guess this is an example of how society and the choices of others impact on us, despite our best intentions and regardless of our consent. I have gone out of my way to avoid lawyers and courts, yet I have been grazed at least 3 times.

S.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 1:53:34 PM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

If the lawyers are doing their job properly, then there should not be any problems.  I have never bought or sold property in South Africa, but having spoken to my brother , I know that there is a big difference between property transfers in the UK compared to RSA.  In the UK, the idea is that if I am buying a new property and selling an old property, both transactions take place at the same time.

 

At the moment that the agreement is “completed” (the official jargon in the UK), money that I owe on the loan for my old house will be repaid (using money from the buyer) and any additional or alternative  loan that I might need for my new house will be made available to my solicitor. Before this happens,  the buyer's solicitor checks the official records and make sure that nobody has a loan secured against the property that his client is buying, or if they do, that the loan will be discharged when the property transfer takes place. He also checks on behalf of his client that the buyer has available funds to pay for the property. I never actually see any of the money that is changing hands until a few days after "the dust has settled", when any outstanding debts are settled up. It is not uncommon for there to be six or even more people linked up in a chain, all discharging their obligations simultaneously and part of the solicitor’s task is to ensure that everybody “exchanges contracts” (ie becomes committed to their part of the exchange) at the same time and that they are able to fulfil their part of the bargain.  “Rents of occupation” which I believe are used in South Africa are not used in the UK.

 

There are so many small points where I could be tripped up such as the seller has a second mortgage that I did not know about or the buyer not having enough money to buy my old property which is why I use a solicitor (who has a professional indemnity insurance).

Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 2:03:38 PM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
This is delightfully wonderful Stephen 😅👍👌 your:

" ... they put about 2 reems in front of me and expected me to just sign based on their specialist advice, but I insisted on reading through every word and asked for clarification in about 4 or 5 places. After two hours their patience got quite thin, so I asked them to explain what they are being paid for if not exactly this, which seemed to baffle them - they clearly expected mountains of money for nothing and were shocked and horrified by me wanting to read what I was signing."
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAMr06S4e-NdFnSEpRxVE%3DZrpn4DnbTvWnan0i6PQ%2BuqQCeNZ6A%40mail.gmail.com.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 2:23:29 PM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Having purchased a property in Canada within range of my remaining medium-term memory, I can say the process here (and most of North America) is far simpler and also a lot harder. That might sound like a contradiction, so let me elaborate a little bit and then we can go back to how that relates to the principles in the original topic...

When you own a property in Alberta (ironically provinces are called provinces, but have much of the legal autonomy that US states have... those being proper states, as in countries, belonging to or united under the federation... much like France and Germany are to the European Union... so each province has their own rules) it need not be registered in any central deeds office or authority.

The property might be within the boundaries of a town and then the town is incorporated, like a business... so you are an entity owning a property, within the fence of another legal entity. That is perfectly fine for the town to surround your property, just like Lesotho is surrounded by South Africa - they are independent.

What often happens though is that the town is incorporated first and are the initial owners of the plot of land... so when they sell it, they include in the initial sale a lien on the property, saying something like they are selling all rights to that piece of land, except their right to an annual tax to cover fire fighting, road repair, snow removal, street light and rubbish removal from the edge of the property. That is a lien or condition attached to the property in the initial sale.

So when you sell the property, it comes with a deed and all the liens or conditions agreed to by previous owners, to be carried over to the new owner. The contract itself is just a sale between the seller and buyer and could be a single page, but then it will have several attachments relating to the town, the provincial government, the local HOA, etc. where those exist.

The mortgage on the property comes with a lien or condition too, which says if you don't pay the bank, then they have a right to the house & land, usually after all the other pre-existing liens have been satisfied. The difference is that when you sell, the bank assumes you'll take the money from the buyer, pay off your mortgage, they'll release the lien on your house and then the buyer can make his own arrangements with his bank.

None of this is dependent on the sale of a previous property... you can put that down as a condition in the contract and some people do, but for the most part you can shake hands now, own the house tonight and move in tomorrow, because the only paperwork required is the sale contract and releasing the bank's lien related to the mortgage... which takes about 2 minutes.

In South Africa you are lucky if you see your money within 6 months of agreeing with a buyer. It's a very long, complicated and expensive process.

Now, back to the point... the fact that this can be done in such very different ways in different countries or provinces suggests that it could be done many different ways within a country. If we let go of all these silly rules, people can choose how they want to do it. Maybe people would want a centralized registry and some company would provide that... or maybe they want it simple.

I see no reason why it should work any particular way or why the government should be the one telling us which way that should be. Why can't we choose which way we want it to work for ourselves ? Why can't we have competing ways and choose one ? A huge amount of paper, time, effort and skill is being wasted by an artificially bloated system, which adds no value.

It has always boggled my mind why you are required to have lawyers and deeds offices and agents involved in buying a firmly planted house for R 750 000, but you can buy a R 7 500 000 Lamborghini which can be easily hidden, moved or taken across the border with hardly any paperwork. Talk about lack of consistent standards !

S.



vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 4:21:40 PM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

What else did the lawyer do for you? Did he ensure that all the deeds were in order and that no-one would take the house off you because the previous owner had not paid off his loan? Did you even know whether he had a second loan secured against the house? If a deposit changed hand when the contract was signed who would look after the deposit? If the deal fell through due to a problem on the part of the seller (for example the house burning down), would the buyer get his deposit back? These are all things that the lawyer should look after for you.

 

A few years ago, my wife and I put our house up for sale but failed to find a buyer. Part of the contract with the agency stated that if we exchanged contract with anybody who the agency had shown around within two years of taking the house off the market, the agency was due a commission. In my view, two years was ridiculous, but I said nothing knowing that the courts would not enforce such a clause. In the event, they did not even send me a list of the viewers they had shown around.

 

Coming back to Trevor’s suggestion of private contracts, I would not like to draw up a contract which takes into account all of these eventualities. The CNA template (WH Smith template in the UK) still needs to have the various appendices defining exactly which property was changing hands and cataloguing any liens against that property. It might also need special clauses specific to that property.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 5:09:18 PM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
There is a company called Equifax who will pull someone's credit record in exchange for a few bucks - you don't need a lawyer for that and it is optional... but for a few dollars, it's usually worth paying rather than taking the risk of not checking. The credit report will tell you if they can pay and have any outstanding debt secured against the property.

The bank has an incentive to ensure you are well insured and the insurance company has an incentive to check all these things too... so from a customer perspective, I merely apply for a loan and negotiate a good insurance premium - the bank and the insurance will do all the checks and then reflect what they find in my interest rate & premiums.

If someone feels like those companies might be cheating them (for example, there is not enough competition in the market to ensure bad actors are weeded out quickly) or if you know nothing about contracts or if you can't read, then a lawyer is probably a ridiculously expensive way to make yourself feel better about what you're signing. It's a choice.

Where people go off the rails with contracts quite often (and many lawyers do this too) is that you do NOT have to spell everything out in the contract. If it is commonly accepted that payment is made by e-transfer between banks and you intend to pay that way, then there is no need to agree to it specifically in the contract. Courts will assume reason.

Failure to produce or partial production of what was contracted happens so often that there are very good precedents and guidelines for how to deal with those cases - it does not need to be specified in the contract. The courts will know how to deal with it, should it come to that.

The only things you typically need in a contract are a) the specifics of this particular contract and b) all the stuff you want to handle DIFFERENTLY to the generally accepted norm. For example, I'm selling you my car and we agree that I will pay you in white pebbles, then we should probably specify that in the contract... if I'm handing over bank notes, we do not.

Same with all the other many things already implied in most contracts - you only need to specify the bits where you're deviating from the typical. As such, a 100 page contract really bugs me - it means the lawyers want to deviate from best practices quite a lot... and that cannot be good. I am far happier with a 1 page contract, because then the wisdom of crowds prevail.

S.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 5:11:00 PM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Longer, more specific contracts lead to greater uncertainty, not more, because now it is up to the wording and the interpretation of it, rather than tried and tested and generally accepted guidelines which apply.

S.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Aug 1, 2024, 5:12:07 PM8/1/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
* not more... not less

typing too fast while multi-tasking

S.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 2, 2024, 4:20:16 AM8/2/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

First of all, Equifax cannot tell me whether or not my buyer has the funds to buy my house. That is because it is a private matter between him and his money lender and the money lender will take into account things like his income to ensure that he can service his debt.

I don't know about South Africa, but in the UK things have changed quite a bit over the last few decades. When I bought my first house in 1978, I had to take out a life insurance policy which was sufficient to cover the outstanding mortgage. The last time that I changed my mortgage (1993), I did not have to supply any "back-up securities" to the bank - my house was their security. The bank might choose not to insure the interest that they have in my property, or rather they self-insure in the way that all Anglo-American company cars are (or at least were) insured by Anglo-American insurance.

 

I agree with you that you do not have to spell everything out explicitly in a contract as case law covers many situations, though of course it helps if bank account details to which payment must be made are given in an attachment. Also, if there is likely to be a problem due to different nationalities involved (for example the South African arm of a British agency signs up a South African who is living in Johannesburg for a contract in London), it is sensible to specify whether South African or English Law applies to the contract. Again, it would be part of a lawyer’s duty to draw this to the attention of the parties concerned as they might not think about it.  What I noticed in the various contracts that I signed with IT contract agencies is that whenever they had a dispute with a contractor, they tend to write a clause in their standard contract to cover themselves and often repeat what case law says anyway (and sometimes get it wrong). A typical clause that I have often seen states "If any clause in this contract is contrary to law, then that clause shall be severed from the contract as though it never existed". The law says this anyway, so why repeat it.

 

One good reason to employ a lawyer is to ensure that clauses such as "Value Added Tax shall be added to the contract price at the rate of 20%" (the current UK rate) do not go into the contract. A much better clause would be ""Value Added Tax shall be added to the contract price". Such a statement is essential if the other party is not aware that the seller is VAT registered.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Aug 2, 2024, 6:56:57 PM8/2/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
When the transaction happens as quickly as here in Canada, you don't need to know if the person can pay or not. They shake hands, sign the contract and hand over or transfer the money. If they fail to hand over the money, then you turn to the other people still touring the house with the estate agent and ask if they'd like to buy it, because apparently it's still for sale despite the hand-shake from 5 seconds ago. I've seen one or two instances where people have asked for 2 or 3 days to come up with the money, but generally people here either have it ready to go or they lose the transaction... and the housing market is so quick that the seller couldn't be bothered.

Also, in a place where houses are made of wooden planks and where electrical wire is attached directly to said planks, most banks want at least insurance against fire. In South Africa and other places where houses are made of brick, a fire usually means loss of some contents, sometimes in more than one room, and maybe some damage to the roof... probably water damage from the fire department killing the fire. In North America on the other hand, a fire often means the complete destruction of the entire house and its contents. When a fire breaks out here, you have about 3 minutes to pull up your pants and get the hell out before it all goes up in smoke.

By the way, in South African contract law, the default is for the contract to originate at the place where the contract is accepted. In other words, if we're speaking on the phone and I am in Johannesburg and you are in Gaborone and I offer to sell you my car and you accept my offer, then the contract is considered to have been made in Gaborone. If you reject my offer and make a counter-offer, which I then accept, then the contract is considered to have been agreed on in Johannesburg. The law of the place where the contract is signed applies, so you don't need to specify. In much of Canada people do specify... or at least specify that it's NOT Quebec law. ;-)

In the end though, like with crime, the vast majority of contracts and agreements are not written down or even explicitly put on paper. People agree about things all the time without any formality. Where formality does happen, it is often imposed and totally unnecessary. That said, I too work in IT and would never start a major project without having a signed contract with vendors / customers. I agree that it is a good idea to get a specialist opinion to review the contract... but I don't see why that job has to be protected by and limited to members of ye olde lawyers guild. In fact, I have found that lawyers are often the worst at spotting issues in technical contracts.

I think it is appropriate to amend contract criteria to fit the environment... and the only people who can really do that, are the people directly involved in the contract.

S.

Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 1:55:26 AM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

In a genuine free market there would be a spectrum of options ranging from a Stephen Handshake to the most stringent and comprehensive documents.


Consumers could choose, at their own risk or expense, which options they wish to use.


There may be many regrets and nightmares but it should be up to each of us to secure that which we think works best.


Fraud may occur, as the dishonest of the more sophisticated try to prey on the less sophisticated but the market feedback signals will inform the demand and the more honest and sincere services will prevail.



To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAMr06S70rMDKfwLQMT8tDngRwZDbAhMgB6Adt3msbA8P2bTMWw%40mail.gmail.com.

Trevor Watkins

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 4:32:30 AM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Not all repressive institutions are government-based, although almost all depend on government coercion to exist. Many so-called libertarians are intelligent and wealthy, and are members of one of the protected professions. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, vets, pharmacists, nurses, architects - all restrict access to their profession and procedures by force of government licensing. You may not practice any of these professions without a slip of paper issued by the institution but enforced by the government and regulation. Of course this is supposedly to protect the public from unscrupulous actors, but actually it is just job reservation for educated dudes. The point of a system is what it does. There are many equally vital professions who were not smart enough (or dishonest enough) to climb on this bandwagon.

However this system, like so many others, survives because rich and influential people profit from it, at the expense of the common public. Are you one of them?
Trevor Watkins
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one


To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAGXOEN1LqVWThctdchFMppyMgknxYx%3DkBj9zCYVBo8eG_eHwMA%40mail.gmail.com.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 12:36:22 PM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

In the United Kingdom, the situation nis totally different.  If I am moving from one house to another, I will sell my old house and buy my new house at the same time and will rely on my buyer paying me on time in order that I can pay the owner of my new house.  It is not unknown for ten or more people to be connected in a chain like this. If one party pulls out, the whole chain collapses. There was one instance a number of years ago when there were 13 houses in the chain and the person at the bottom pulled out. The person who was buying the house at the top of the chain was able to raise enough money to also buy the house at the bottom of the chain and immediately put it back on the market.  This is why we can’t have a bunch of amateurs organising things.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 12:38:42 PM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
No, I'm not one of them, but the question seems almost accusatory. I do use public roads and sent my kids to public schools and happily accepted government grants when I qualified for them and even worked on two occasions for government departments who paid me a salary. Is that hypocritical ? No, I don't think so. You can be a pacifist and because of circumstances beyond your control sleep with a baseball bat next to the bed. If you want to be a lawyer or an accountant or an electrician, then you'll need to just the artificial hurdles and know that your customers are going to get fleeced because of a lack of competition and barriers to entry in your profession, but that's not your fault - it is the system, which is like an unfortunate force of nature or an act of god. Not doing the profession would make it worse.

Stephen.

On Aug 3, 2024, at 02:32, Trevor Watkins <bas...@gmail.com> wrote:



Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 12:41:34 PM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
I prefer amateurs over bureaucrats... and the market over all of them.

Stephen.

On Aug 3, 2024, at 10:36, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 12:50:24 PM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

I think that you are confusing contract law with market systems. My understanding of a “free market” is that it is a market where participants have equal negotiating power and that the price of the object being traded is determined only by the laws of supply and demand.  The law of contract provides a means of settling disputes between parties to a particular trade should they occur and that such disputes will be enforced by the courts if necessary and is independent of whether the market is a free market, an oligopoly or a monopoly.

 

Your suggestion that the “more honest and sincere services will prevail” is naive in the extreme in that the “small” participants in the market will get broken by the big players who have financial strength and who will form a monopoly which is the antithesis of a free market (in other words the free market model of participants who have equal negotiating power will be broken)..

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 12:59:26 PM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Yes, I am one of them – when I retired I was a Member of the British Computer Society, a Chartered Engineer and a European Engineer (in that order). The entry requirements for Eur Ing were seven years training of which three had to be pursuing an appropriate course of study at an appropriate tertiary level institution, two had to be practical experience and the last two could be either or a combination of both.  The BCS requirement was less stringent and provided that the course studied had a sufficient content of maths and physics, automatically provided admission as a CEng.  I had a number of contracts where I was fixing software that was inappropriately designed or coded by people who just did not really understand what they were doing.

 

None of the work that I did required the qualifications that I had, though the Eur Ing qualification did allow me to practice as self-employed when I was working in Germany.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 1:05:24 PM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
At one point Microsoft had 98% of the personal desktop computer operating system market, but;
1. They did not force a single person to install their software
2. Their position was constantly under pressure and did not last
3. Those who did not want to do business with them had options

In a free market size does not matter, because size only matters when there is compulsion i.e. the bigger guy can compel harder. Take away the compulsion and only the value of the product remains.

Stephen.

On Aug 3, 2024, at 10:50, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 3:33:13 PM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Stephen, you have only given half the story.

 

The other half is that Microsoft indulged in anti-free market practices - in particular Windows and Internet Explorer are two separate products but Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer in with Windows and refused to allow OEMs to install Windows unless they bundled Internet Explorer in as well. This effectively cut Netscape out of the market because user had to pay to use Netscape and had to go through the process of installing it.

Also, Microsoft did not publish full details of the Windows interface which meant that their Office suite could operate better than other companies' equivalents (such as Lotus 1-2-3) because the Microsoft product used unpublished functionality in Windows.

 

For what it is worth, good programming practice says that you should never use unpublished features of a system on which you are dependant because there is no guarantee that those features will be supported in years to come. In the context of Microsoft, Microsoft product developers knew which undocumented features they could use, but outside companies could not take the risk.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 3, 2024, 9:51:49 PM8/3/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Microsoft can surely do with their products whatever they like - they are not owned by the public. If they want to bundle or tie in their browser into their OS, they should be able to do that. The Netscape case has always seemed to me a great example of a private company, Netscape, finding it hard to keep their market share by legitimate means and resorting to government force and violence via the judicial system to keep their market share, rather than focusing on pleasing their customers more than their competition. That case was a disgrace and a blow to the industry and the free market. It replaced private ownership with public dictates.

What was particularly interesting to me at the time was that Microsoft at no point impeded the installation or use of Netscape, even though they could have. What they did do was to make it impossible to uninstall IE, but even back then they made it easy to install and change the default browser to something other than IE and it made sense to embed IE from purely technical considerations like shared functions in system DLL's at a time when disc space was a real consideration. I also find in interesting that Windows Explorer was embedded in Windows too (even today, if you remove Windows Explorer, the entire OS goes down) and yet there was no unti-trust cases brought by competitors in that market (like Norton Commander, which had a far better bulk file copy function, or FileZilla which has a much better FTP handling). 

Stephen.

On Aug 3, 2024, at 13:33, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Trevor Watkins

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 3:59:28 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
 This is why we can’t have a bunch of amateurs organising things.
Martin, do you remember a DRL project review in which Neville Belling explained why a computer project was late by saying "Well, Corrie, computers are complicated things". He did not expect the laughter and disdain that followed from a roomful of scientists working on the bleeding edge of high temperature and pressure physics. Most of them regarded computers of that time as merely glorified slide rules. 

"Experts" have brought us the global warming fiasco, covid 19, mRna vaccines, the Trump assassination response, and so on. Give me an "amateur" with a good track record anytime.

Trevor Watkins
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one


Trevor Watkins

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 4:09:45 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
 I am far happier with a 1 page contract, because then the wisdom of crowds prevail.
I totally agree - brevity and simplicity beat expert boiler plate every time. And if all else fails, rely on the wisdom of your peers, not the vested interests of experts.
Trevor Watkins
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one


To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAMr06S4GwbcwgCDsfZY15UdbgREn0m9UfxCuPc7AFJJhAjyYvA%40mail.gmail.com.

Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 7:53:59 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Hi Martin

Regarding your "I think that you are confusing contract law with market systems".

I am not confusing contract law with market systems at all … 😊


The genuine free market is the manifestation of a genuine libertarian/individualist system ... and only of a genuine libertarian/individualist system.


Such a system, a rose by any other name, be it called libertarian/individualist or x or y or z or whatever will not permit ethically or morally the initiation of physical force against any other, aka violence.


The use of physical force would only be allowed in self defence, in which case it is specifically not violence.


The prevailing term for this principle has in recent times been the Non Aggression Principle or NAP.


The problem with the NAP is that it is "nebulous" in that the axioms as to what constitutes the rights of individuals and hence the difference between violence and self defence are not comprehensively defined.


American libertarians have us mostly chasing our tails as a result of this, they bring about reactions like those of J D Vance, and also your understandable concerns that "the “small” participants in the market will get broken by the big players who have financial strength and who will form a monopoly which is the antithesis of a free market (in other words the free market model of participants who have equal negotiating power will be broken)..".


Currently, it is Ayn Rand's "Nature of Man", the NoM, that prevails in contemporary libertarian content as axiomatic “anchor” and thereby the difference between violence and self defence


Robert Nozick sought to firm up with an alternative philosophical axiomatic anchor for libertarianism, in his famous book, "Anarchy, State and Utopia" but it is disappointing.


The reader volume of his book is far better, but mostly it also leaves the source of ethics and morality unanswered. 


(One of the articles co-written by two Objectivist authors is however superb in how to go forward with implementing freer societies, in the real world, and also, surprisingly, absent in their writing the loathing that most Objectivists have for libertarians).


Ayn Rand really takes up the long standing idea of the nature of human beings as the source of a proper ethics and morality, the same idea that Aristotle, born in 384 BCE,  promoted.


Whether or not he was the first to do so is immaterial, he certainly is a champion for this and thus a point of reference.


In the East, Lao Tzu, born in 571 BCE has the same idea in his Tao, preceding Aristotle by a couple of centuries.


In the Western world this idea develops to some extent after Aristotle on and off and lingers on through the centuries until Locke, born 1632, among others, really takes it up.


This time as "God given" rights which lead to the American Constitution, effectively proto libertarianism.


Still somewhat immersed in the burning bush which spits out the stone tablets imposed by an Angry God, oft forgiving and merciful albeit She/He/It/Burning Bush as preferred pronouns will urge the throwing of LGBTQ+ etcetera off roofs.


Ayn Rand, born 19O5, almost a couple of centuries plus a half after Locke, gives it a massive push as a reaction to the coercive collectivism pronouncing altruism as the virtue and any instance of egoism as a sin, and with that the violence that raged and built sky high pyramids of human deaths in the 2Oth Century.


The problem with Ayn Rand is that she overshoots and pronounces egoism as the virtue and any instance of altruism as a sin.


And she projects herself, her instance of Man, as the "Nature of Man".


The common denominator of all these notions from Aristotle to Rand is that who we are as a result of natural selection should be the point to start discovering and unpacking of the ethics and morality appropriate for us.


If anything this is far more appropriate and scientific than the violence of angry gods …


The degree to which we as a species are altruistic or egoistic will manifest as a random distribution curve with a mean and a standard deviation.


This will be so even when the data is normalised and the influence of culture (religion, traditions etcetera) is removed.


There will be outliers beyond the 95% of us defined by the standard deviation left and right of the mean.


Rand is probably an egoistic outlier.


Mother Teresa is probably an altruistic outlier.


The rest of the most of us, within the standard deviation containing the 95% of us, are a mix.


I lean towards altruism rather than to egoism, and when I tried to go against my nature (in violation of the Tao, in my attempt to be a faithful disciple of Rand) and sought to be solely egoistic, in my few attempts, it never really worked out well.


So my sentiment is very much for your "small” participants", and I absolutely get where you are coming from.


That said, I recognise the pivotal effect of Rand's NoM.


Rand's NoM is powerful as a counter to coercive collectivism even if it is not sufficiently representative of us as a species.


It needs to be replaced and there is an answer to that but far too long to get into this already long reply.


And having done that, Trevor Watkins Harm Consent Rule, HCR, should replace the NAP, as a clearer and more practical vehicle to distinguish between violence and self defence ... well it already does a better job than the NAP and hopefully it will begin to be far more utilised.


So, far from me being “naive”, as you say, it is because I (like you I think) want your  "small” participants" to not be exploited by your "big players ".


The problem with any intervention by the government is that it sets off a flapping of butterfly wings that will in time become a tsunami of obstacles favouring those already in place, your "big players ", and disfavouring those who are trying to get there, your  "small” participants" .


Without the unimpeded possibility of disruptive competition, “natural” monopolies will emerge and the Gini Coefficient will rocket sky high.


😊 ... 




vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 8:04:29 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Trevor, I am also happier with very short contracts.  The essential points of a contract are:

 

  1. The law under which the contract is made
  2. Parties to the contract  
  3. The obligations of each party.
  4. Penalty clauses for non-compliance.

 

I will deal with each of these in turn.

 

The law under which the contract is made should be specified unless it is obvious from the context of the contract, in which case it can be omitted.

 

It is mandatory to include the identity of the parties to the contract.  If one is using a boiler plate for the contract, it is quite in order to identify the parties in an annex to the contract, but to refer to them as the “buyer” and the “seller” (or some such language in the main contract. The annex can give the full names, company registration details (if appropriate), individual’s identification details as required by local law, contact details etc.  In the UK it is normal to refer to an individual as “Keir Starmer of 10 Downing Stret London SW1A 2AA”, whereas I believe that in South Africa he would be referred to as “Keir Stamer born  in Southwick, England on 2 September 1962”.

 

The obligations of each party should be set out in brief on the main contract and expanded, if necessary, in an annex.  Ther annex might well contain a full engineering specification. It is mandatory to include an outline of each parties’ obligation and with the annex, it should be clear exactly what is required of each party. The obligations might also include warranties that describe the quality of workmanship expected and qualification of the personnel involved, though this part is optional.   

 

Penalties for non-compliance.  In many cases this section should be blank, though occasions can arise where such a section is very useful – particularly when project overruns are involved. The golden rule for including any clause in this section is to ask the question “If this clause were not there, what would the courts do? “ If the answer to the question is that things would be complicated, then the section should be drafted so as to give the courts guidance. AS an example,  when I was working on the Met Police Crime and Information Recording System (CRIS), the specification stated that my client would write and operate the system which would run 24x7. There was a permitted 8-hour window once a calendar month (agreed in advance) for maintenance. Any other down-time during core time would be penalised as a rate specified in Appendix B and outside core time at one third of that rate. (Appendix B was only available to the commercial department), but there was enough information in the rest of the contract that the maintenance team could make informed decisions about dealing with bugs, outages etc. When outages did occur, the supplier paid the penalties without argument and the customer-supplier relationship was maintained.  

 

As you can see, a well-written contract does not need to ramble on for pages and pages, but where the services of a lawyer might well be needed to ensure that none of the clauses inadvertently contradict existing law. In the case of the CRIS system, the specification ran to three ring binders of print-out, but for a system that logged over a million crimes  a year from 70 police stations spread over 34 police divisions. The crimes themselves  of ranged from petty thefts, domestic disturbances to murder and the system had to cope with the initial reporting of the crime, progress on investigating the crime, arrests right up to the stage where the crime was closed or handed over to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

 

Finally, may I remind you of a quote by the Fench philosopher/mathematician Blaise Pascal “I apologise for the length of this letter – I am in a hurry and do not have time to write it more concisely”.  

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 8:31:33 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Hi Stephen,

 

Under English law, a party can, in certain circumstance, petition the courts to set aside clauses in a contract even if the clauses in them selves are not illegal.  The principal test is whether or not the parties had equal negotiating powers and whether or not the terms were reasonable in the circumstances. The law book that I read ( and which my son has “borrowed on the permanent loan system” outlines two cases that illustrate opposite sides of the law.

 

Case 1: A successful pharmacist sold his practice to a large pharmacy chain. One of the clauses prohibited the seller from setting up a pharmacy within a certain period of time anywhere in the United Kingdom. A year later he set up a pharmacy 20 km from where he had previously practised. The large firm tried to close him down because he had breached his contract. The courts ruled that while it was reasonable to prohibit him from setting up a new business with the specified period in an area where he could poach his old clients back, the prohibition “anywhere in England” was excessive and the courts severed that clause from the contract.

 

Case 2: The inventor of the Maxim machine gun sold his patents to an arms manufacturer for a substantial sum of money. Part of the agreement prohibited the inventor from working in the arms trade for a period of ten years. A few years later, he re-entered the arms trade and was sued by the buyer of his patents. The courts ruled that as he was handsomely paid for his patents, the prohibition clause was reasonable.

 

I think that these two cases illustrate what happens in a real-world situation.

Trevor Watkins

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 8:33:17 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
A tour-de-force of the origins of libertarianism/individualism, and the current state of play. Many thanks, Gabri.
The moral of your story, as I understand it, is to be true to our principles, to not accept a flapping of butterfly wings that will in time become a tsunami of obstacles favouring those already in place.
Trevor Watkins
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one


To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAGXOEN1_LnvPjag%3DWxie166AOhkqs4N-dFP51k3bsekWChekDg%40mail.gmail.com.

Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 10:02:10 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Hi Trevor

Your "The moral of your story, as I understand it, is to be true to our principles, to not accept a flapping of butterfly wings that will in time become a tsunami of obstacles favouring those already in place." ... 😊👍👌

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAN6K2L%3DRwFA6niZ5XeG95avK%2BO-yvjRS1EosOxzQf%3D7-0ovGPg%40mail.gmail.com.

Leon Louw

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 10:43:28 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

The father of Trump’s would-be assassin, Matthew Crooks, is a registered libertarian.

His mother, registered Democrat.

Thomas Crooks had well over $1m in offshore accounts, perhaps from cryptocurrency trading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzx7M7BybL4


To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAGXOEN3ccf33ROr_xUDYeGmuitQiatWXKTTmGHoS1HXo8KmrXw%40mail.gmail.com.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 11:49:22 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
My sister, who is a highly intelligent and respected psychiatrist, once said to me that the main problem in her opinion with healthcare in South Africa is that all these charlatans, snake-oil salesmen, shaman, Sangomas, accupuncturalists, homeopaths and retail pharmacy counter attendants are allowed to sell their wares to an unsuspecting population. It should be outlawed, she said.

I agree that it is wrong to lie, cheat and deceive, but for many people it is not a choice between a cheap Sangoma or an equally cheap doctor - often the choice is Sangoma or die. If you outlaw the Sangoma, the choice narrows to just dying, because outlawing things can only remove options not add them.

Sometimes the amateur is the best option... sometimes the amateur is the only option, so outlawing the amateur eliminates the last resort and puts us back in the stone age.

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 01:59, Trevor Watkins <bas...@gmail.com> wrote:



Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 11:56:23 AM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Gabri: "Without the unimpeded possibility of disruptive competition, “natural” monopolies will emerge and the Gini Coefficient will rocket sky high.".

Well put. That was one of the central points of my LibSem presentation back in 2013-ish where I suggested that monopoly power and inequality come from government intervention and would not exist or be very short lived in a free market. I have the numbers to back that up here somewhere.

Stephen.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 12:10:03 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Firstly, as a sovereign individual I do not recognize the legitimacy of English law.

Secondly, the law should not override private agreements, period. In both those examples, the pharmacist and the inventor agreed to terms, whether detrimental to themselves or not is irrelevant... they should have thought of that before agreeing to it. They should have been held to what they agreed to. Clearly it was to the detriment of the pharmacy chain and the gun manufacturer to go back on the agreement and likely they would not have agreed in the first place had they known the court would limit their agreement in time.

Thirdly, now all contracts are in doubt, because any agreement can be amended by the crown. This is a disaster to the entire legal system and foundations of the very concept of contracts.

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 06:31, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 12:28:01 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Stehen, your: " That was one of the central points of my LibSem presentation back in 2013-ish where I suggested that monopoly power and inequality come from government intervention and would not exist or be very short lived in a free market. I have the numbers to back that up here somewhere."

😊👍👌 ... that would be interesting to see the data for your presentation if you happen to find it ... 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Individualist Movement" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to individualis...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/E5523B59-2769-486C-85BA-498E8C73EA81%40gmail.com.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 1:23:53 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
There is much to disagree with here... I'll limit my disagreement to a quote from one of the first pages of my 1994 edition of Commercial Law 101:

image0.jpeg

In summary & translated to English, the requirements for a contract to exist are;
1. Coincidence of desires
2. Ability to contract
3. Legally executable
4. Physically executable
5. Legal formalities

In the absence of government / in a free market, requirements 3, 5 and possibly 2 no longer apply.

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 06:04, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 1:30:53 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
The essentials of the contract itself depends on what kind of contract it is. A last will & testament could be considered a contract and the Guinness Book of Records lists the shortest legal will in history to be that of a soldier who during a battle in which he expected to perish scratched on the back of his dog tags; "All to wife.".

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 11:23, Stephen vJ <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:

There is much to disagree with here... I'll limit my disagreement to a quote from one of the first pages of my 1994 edition of Commercial Law 101:

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 2:02:13 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
I can definitely dig it up, but it would be even better if someone could update it with the latest figures, a) so we can have fresh numbers and b) to show that the results hold true over time. I don't have the time right now to reproduce it, but I might later in the month or I could tell you what I did and maybe someone else can do it, if they have an hour or two to spare.

First thing is to get the raw data for as many countries as possible listing their economic freedom index rankings over the last 30 or 40 years. It is important to get an average of economic freedom by country over a period of time, because inequality is not very elastic and changes very slowly, so you're trying to see a small change from a sustained policy. Good sources for this data are the Fraser Institute or Heritage Foundation. Best is to take an average of both or to do this for each of them, since they measure economic freedom a bit differently.

Now grab a measure of inequality - this can be a current snapshot, because it is the outcome you're trying to measure. A good source for this the Gini coefficient from the HDI dataset on the United Nations Human Development Index website. There are numbers on the FBI world fact book too, but last time I checked that was in a format which was hard to get into Excel and not much different to the HDI data.

Sadly, you'll need to eliminate countries where there is a Gini number, but no Freedom Index number or vice versa, since you need to plot them against each other and missing one of the two means you can't consider that country. Now you can plot graph in Excel so that freedom is on one axis and inequality is on the other, the country names being the plots / points.

In Excel you can then add a trend line and look for the R^2 value, which will tell you the relationship between economic freedom and inequality. Last time I did this with 30 years of freedom index data, there was a 12% negative correlation... in other words, for every one point of freedom over a 30 year period, Gini reduced by something like 26% and about 12% of that could be explained by economic freedom.

The important point being that the correlation is negative... there are many other conclusions one could make from the numbers, but for me the main point is that capitalism does not cause inequality, as many people expect, but could in fact be part of reducing it (slowly, over time)... and the causes of inequality are mostly non-economic ones, like imposing Apartheid on people or being North Korea.

I can't recall now if I made any adjustments for population size... I don't think I did. Once you start plotting economic freedom against things in the Human Development Index, you see all sorts of interesting things... like the impact of freedom on infant mortality rates, longevity, etc.

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 10:28, Gabri Rigotti <rigo...@gmail.com> wrote:



Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 3:57:04 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Stephen, I love it your:

"First thing is to get the raw data for as many countries as possible listing their economic freedom index rankings over the last 30 or 40 years. It is important to get an average of economic freedom by country over a period of time, because inequality is not very elastic and changes very slowly, so you're trying to see a small change from a sustained policy. Good sources for this data are the Fraser Institute or Heritage Foundation. Best is to take an average of both or to do this for each of them, since they measure economic freedom a bit differently." and the rest of your explanation of the methodology ... 😊👍👌 ... excellent ...

The only cautionary point I would make is that the term "capitalism" is very compromised and almost never coincides with a genuine free market.

The term "capitalism" is the albatross around the neck of the free market, many violators of the free market seek to declare themselves as champions for the free market but they in practice violate it to gain non free market advantages over their competitors ...

We should ditch the term "capitalism" and focus purely on the genuine free market else the hordes adorned with that Che Guevara T Shirt will keep on getting the better of us who support the genuine free market, the only free market ... 

Historically, the term "capitalism" arose well after the term "free market" ... it may have been invented to justify and launder the stolen (conquered via violence) assets of the wealthy European aristocratic families when the writing was on the wall for the feudal system ... 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/2C387462-F9F6-4027-A9A8-8DD57641883C%40gmail.com.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 4:38:33 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Hi Stephen,

 

If you are in England, English Law applies. If you enter into an agreement with somebody else and you agree that your agreement is bound by English Law, large chunks of your contract can be left out because English Law takes care of them. 

 

For example, I want to buy your vintage car and pay you a deposit for it with the object of paying the balance and taking delivery the following day. That night your garage is struck by lightning and catches fire with the result that the car is destroyed.  Your contract required that the car be delivered in good working order, so what now? YOU can consult the law books and see what precedents have been set for that or similar circumstances and act accordingly.

 

You have said that “the law should not override private agreements”.  English Law identified three types of contract – contracts that are void, contracts that are voidable and contract that are binding:

 

  • Suppose that you and somebody else  have an argument and you and I have a contract that you will pay me R1 million if I “eliminate” that other person. I lure him into an ambush and “eliminate him” and then come to you for my R1 million.  You tell me to “f*ck off”. I take you to court to sue you for the R 1 million. The court will turn round and rule that the contract was void “ab initio” and cannot be enforced. (They will probably also arrest me for murder).

 

  • A voidable contract is a contract that was made by somebody who does not have the ability to make a contract – for example, somebody who is under 18 or somebody who is mentally deficient. In addition, there are man laws which protect people who have a weak negotiating power. An example of the latter is the garage owner who has a sign up stating “Vehicles are left at owner’s risk”.  If I left my car at such a garage and when I came back, I found that it had been dented, the [English] courts would almost declare exclusion to be null and void on grounds that if I leave my car at the garage, I can expect them to take reasonable care of it.

 

In short, as I have said before, the free market assumes equal negotiating power between parties.  Where the parties have unequal negotiating power, I have no problem with the law acting in a way so as to reduce the inequality.  

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 5:29:32 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Hi Stephen,

 

I am a little puzzled by your stats.  First of all, may I place on record that I have tutored A-Level students (year 12 & 13) in stats on a one-to-one basis. Also, Trevor and I were often involved with calculating statistical problems when we were at DRL (1970’s).

 

You mentioned the R^2 factor.  Do you have the full  name for that factor?  I know that the Correlation coefficient is often represented by the symbol R (-0.12 in your case) and I cannot find any reference to an R^2 factor.

 

You made a number of assertions based on the fact that R was negative. Unless you calculate the confidence limits of R, such assertion are meaningless.  In particular, you should test the whether or not you can reject the nul hypothesis of R=0 and since you calculate R as being -0.12, this test is almost an absolute MUST.

 

I am afraid that your explanation of correlation coefficient is not what I have read in the text books. What I have read is summarised in the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_correlation_coefficient. What a correlation of -0.12 means is that X and Y have a weak negative correlation (ie the points have a wide scatter, but not quite random), but it says nothing about the value of the slope as you suggested.  What you are looking for is the slope of the regression line through the points, not the correlation coefficient.

 

Martin

 

From: indivi...@googlegroups.com <indivi...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Stephen vJ
Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2024 7:02 PM
To: indivi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: IM: The Individualist Manifesto jury system

 

I can definitely dig it up, but it would be even better if someone could update it with the latest figures, a) so we can have fresh numbers and b) to show that the results hold true over time. I don't have the time right now to reproduce it, but I might later in the month or I could tell you what I did and maybe someone else can do it, if they have an hour or two to spare.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 5:40:15 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
As a sovereign individual, I don't recognize the legitimacy of definitions assigned to words by people like Karl Marx, who I think was the first to make the capitalism vs. socialism distinction, incorrectly obviously. All of these terms are loaded now, so I do avoid using the term capitalism... except here, where we know what it means. ;-)

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 13:57, Gabri Rigotti <rigo...@gmail.com> wrote:



Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 5:55:45 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
I have been in countless situations where people have grown unhappy with the contracts they were bound to, then I ask both sides what their ideal outcome would be, ignoring law, the contract and sunk costs... and then finding that both parties basically want the same thing, which is often simply walking away.

Once both sides realize they want the same thing, the solutions are glaringly obvious - just mutually agree to walk away (or whatever the common desire is). People get so wound up in law and process and formality that they forget that all of this is about relationships between human beings. I never start with the law, but with what the parties want... and rarely does that result in a debate over semantics or protracted fights over historical paperwork.

image

The paved route is what contracts and the law make provision for, the path actually taken is the free market. We can try to re-plan and pave where people really walk or we can just leave it be or we can scream and shout and put up "stay off the grass" signs... I personally prefer the freedom to choose.

Stephen.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 6:06:45 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
There are two separate concepts in my statement below and maybe I did not mention R directly or make a clear distinction between the two for brevity's sake... let me take another stab at it.

If you plot per capita income on one axis and economic freedom on the other, you'll find the slope is such that about the centre of the plot every point of additional freedom adds approximately $10 000 US per person per year, however the R using sum of squares is around 0.68, suggesting that only 68% of the additional $10 000 per person per year can be attributed to one point of economic freedom and either a) the amount will deviate by 32% or b) the other 32% will be explained by other reasons or c) some combination of those.

Hope that helps.

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 15:29, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 6:11:01 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
A quick Google suggests that my memory is not totally rusted through.

image

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 16:06, Stephen vJ <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:

There are two separate concepts in my statement below and maybe I did not mention R directly or make a clear distinction between the two for brevity's sake... let me take another stab at it.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 6:14:21 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

I understand fully what you are saying. When my father ran his own business, he took on a partner for a period. My (now ex-) brother-in-law Tony, an attorney, drew up the partnership agreement and once each had signed both copies, Tony put each copy in an envelope and sealed the envelope. He then turned to my father and said “Roy, if you ever break this seal, the partnership is over”.

 

If two people both wish to walk away from a contract, there will inevitably be some tidying up to do (for example how to split the outstanding rent, water and electricity bill).  If these can be agreed, then there will be no problems. If however agreement cannot be reached, this is where the courts come in and where the law is applied. In such cases, assuming that the people concerned are rational, they will get some legal advice on “If, hypothetically speaking, we go to court, what is the court likely to rule?”  If they are sensible, they would then follow the likely outcome and save the costs of actually going to court.

image001.jpg

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 4, 2024, 6:53:54 PM8/4/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
When people disagree, the most common solution seems to be violence. That might be because the law does not provide satisfactory results or just the heat of the moment, but I think for most common people the court is a last resort. I recently saw on TV a rapist sentenced to life in prison and they asked the victim's father if justice was served and with tears in his eyes he said, no, the MF must die ! Someone in the jail shortly after obliged the father's wishes, to which a bunch of people commented that justice was served after all.

A few years ago I was speaking to a guy about the ugly divorce he was going through and at some point it came out that he expected things to be split approximately 10% to him, 10% to her and the other 80% to the cost of the sharky lawyers they hired... so I asked, why not let her take 80% ? That would double his portion and presumably turn out better for the kids. He was quiet for a bit and then rushed off... a while later I heard the lawyers had already taken 20% by the time we spoke, but they amicably split the remaining 80% about 45:35.

Examples abound... yes, lawyers and law and courts have their place, but I really think a) it is the last resort and b) has plenty that can be improved... and c) much of that improvement can be brought about by deregulation and a free market in which ideas like Trevor's jury system can be put to the test and tried out in direct comparison with other solutions.

Stephen.

On Aug 4, 2024, at 16:14, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



I understand fully what you are saying. When my father ran his own business, he took on a partner for a period. My (now ex-) brother-in-law Tony, an attorney, drew up the partnership agreement and once each had signed both copies, Tony put each copy in an envelope and sealed the envelope. He then turned to my father and said “Roy, if you ever break this seal, the partnership is over”.

 

If two people both wish to walk away from a contract, there will inevitably be some tidying up to do (for example how to split the outstanding rent, water and electricity bill).  If these can be agreed, then there will be no problems. If however agreement cannot be reached, this is where the courts come in and where the law is applied. In such cases, assuming that the people concerned are rational, they will get some legal advice on “If, hypothetically speaking, we go to court, what is the court likely to rule?”  If they are sensible, they would then follow the likely outcome and save the costs of actually going to court.

 

Martin

 

From: indivi...@googlegroups.com <indivi...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Stephen vJ
Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2024 10:56 PM
To: indivi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: IM: The Individualist Manifesto jury system

 

I have been in countless situations where people have grown unhappy with the contracts they were bound to, then I ask both sides what their ideal outcome would be, ignoring law, the contract and sunk costs... and then finding that both parties basically want the same thing, which is often simply walking away.

 

Once both sides realize they want the same thing, the solutions are glaringly obvious - just mutually agree to walk away (or whatever the common desire is). People get so wound up in law and process and formality that they forget that all of this is about relationships between human beings. I never start with the law, but with what the parties want... and rarely does that result in a debate over semantics or protracted fights over historical paperwork.

 

<image001.jpg>

viv...@iafrica.com

unread,
Aug 5, 2024, 10:03:55 AM8/5/24
to individualist
Great story Stephen!

From: "Stephen vJ" <sjaar...@gmail.com>
To: "individualist" <indivi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, August 5, 2024 12:53:37 AM

 

<image001.jpg>

 

 

I am not confusing contract law with market systems at all … \uD83D\uDE0A

\uD83D\uDE0A ... 

 

Petrus Potgieter

unread,
Aug 5, 2024, 10:21:54 AM8/5/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
The legal system is definitely the last resort because it is so expensive. The survival of the species/commmunity or whatever (decent standards, perhaps) definitely sometimes require that individuals cut their nose to spite their face. If you have ten minutes, consider watching

The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma and The Evolution of Cooperation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvAbjfJ0x0

on this topic.


Op 05-08-2024 om 16:03:35 +0200 skryf viv...@iafrica.com viv...@iafrica.com:
> Great story Stephen!
> __________________________________________________________________

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 5, 2024, 12:59:29 PM8/5/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Let me put courts into perspective. I agree that they are a last resort so what any sensible people do if there is a dispute is to check past records of the courts and see what they would do if, hypothetically, their case went to court. In 99% of cases, things are clearly laid out n the law by means of Acts of Parliament and legal precedents. Once they have checked what the law says it would do, they do that anyway. 

 

For example, a friend of my fathers ran a building firm and would often send one of his employees to buy things on the business account.  One day the employee bought a substantial amount of goods and “did a runner”.  Who should bear the loss – my father’s friend or the shopkeeper? A check of legal precedents showed that in similar situations the court had ruled that the employer, not the shop-keeper should bear the loss, the reason being that by “habit and repute”, the employee had frequently bought things on his employer’s behalf. My father’s friend reimbursed the shop-keeper without complaint. In cases that are less clear-cut, one ort other of the parties could have consulted their lawyer who would (or rather should) advise them to pay up as that is what the courts would order anyway.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 5, 2024, 1:22:26 PM8/5/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

My reading of the relevant text books tells me something different.  It tells me that if you start off by taking the average per capita income in the countries under observation and then calculated the SQUARE of the difference, you will get an initial variation. If you then pair each income figure with an associated IoF value and fit a linear regression to the data, then 68% of the SQUARE of the variation will disappear, NOT 68% of the variation itself.  The remaining 32% will be the value of the SQUARE of the variation.

 

The Pearson Index of Correlation to which I was referring (called R, not R^2) is slightly different and is used when one does a full Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Until I saw your posting, I had never come across the R^2 parameter (which does NOT equal R*R).

 

Martin.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 5, 2024, 1:40:41 PM8/5/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
image

Stephen.

On Aug 5, 2024, at 11:22, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 6, 2024, 12:26:28 AM8/6/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Gabri, you seem to like math of the deterministic type... this might be for you. If I were to try and derive a formula with which to predict average per capita income for a certain country, I might go about it like so;

I = (0.68 x (10000 x (A - F))) + $18381
and
E = (0.32 x (10000 x (A - F))) / 2

Where:
I is the per capita income we're trying to predict
F is the economic freedom index score for the country
A is the average economic freedom index score for all countries
E is how far away from the correct answer we expect to be, all other factors having been ignored
... oh, and $ 18381 is the average international per capita income last time I checked.

That's my first stab at it. Now let's see if this works...

Pick a country, any country, then we'll plug in the numbers and see if it sticks.

Stephen.

On Aug 5, 2024, at 11:40, Stephen vJ <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:


<image.gif>

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 6, 2024, 12:56:28 AM8/6/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Actually, I can't wait. Curiosity killed the cat, but it's what humans live for.

I'll do Canada and then you guys can do your pet country or roll your eyes and go back to watching the olympics or whatever. Here goes...

A from Heritage's index is 58.6, Canada's score is 72.4, so A - F ... oh, crap, issue #1... it should be F - A... ok, so F - A = 72.4 - 58.6 = 13.8.

Oh crud, issue #2... I had in mind a single digit index like Frasers, so we need to divide those scores by 10... so 7.24 - 5.86 = 1.38

I = 0.68 x 10000 x 1.38 + 18381
I = $ 27 765 pppy

E = 0.32 x 10000 x 1.38 / 2
E = $ 2 208

So I predict Canadian per capita income is going to be $ 27 765 give or take $ 2 208. Let's see...

Dang, it's $ 57 760. I'm way off. I can think of a few reasons, like the recent decline in Canada's score, the fact that it's towards the edge of the scale and the fact that I'm swinging around a machete here.

Anyway, the point is that there is a correlation between income and freedom, child mortality and freedom, inequality and freedom... in all those cases and several others the correlation is positive.

Freedom is not the only factor and in some cases it is not the leading / major factor... however in no case does freedom ever impact negatively on any given policy.

image

Stephen.

On Aug 5, 2024, at 22:26, Stephen vJ <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Gabri, you seem to like math of the deterministic type... this might be for you. If I were to try and derive a formula with which to predict average per capita income for a certain country, I might go about it like so;

Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 6, 2024, 1:20:16 AM8/6/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Hi Stephen

Yes, that will be very interesting ... 😊👍👌

Will try Italy as an EU nation smothered in red tape, and say Singapore as a market based but authoritarian nation ... 

As you say I doubt that " ... freedom ever impacts negatively on any given policy".



To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/C805BA2D-A5A2-4831-9B9E-536D0F590F03%40gmail.com.

vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 6, 2024, 9:33:11 AM8/6/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

Hi Stephen, Gabri and others,

 

May I suggest an alternative approach:

 

Assume that you have full data sets for N countries

Since the model assumes that the economic freedom index is the independent variable and the income per capita is the dependant variable, allocate the economic freedom index to the x-axis and the income per capita to the y-axis.

 

We are trying to generate an equation

y = α + βx

 

Denote the values used to set up the equations by X and Y (vectors each with N elements and stored as two columns on an EXCEL spreadsheet)

 

Define

α = INTERCEPT (X, Y)   where INTERCEPT is an EXCEL function

β = SLOPE (X,Y) where SLOPE is an EXCEL function.

 

We now have the values for α and β.

 

If we compare the calculated values of y(i) with the original values, then  

y(i) = α + βx(i) + n(i)

where n(i) is the noise associated with the fit. The noise is made up of errors in measurement noise, modelling noise and random noise.

 

If we assume that n(i) has a Gaussian distribution we can replace it with kg(i)

where k is a constant (see later)

g(i) is a random value from a normalised gaussian distribution (ie μ = 0 and σ² = 1).

Such a distribution guarantees that 68% of values lie between -1 and 1, that 95% of values lie between -2 and 2 and that 99.7% lie between -3 and 3.

 

The value k is calculated as follows:

s² = variance of Y values = VAR(Y)

s = standard deviation of Y values = SQRT(s²)

R = Correlation between the X and Y sets of data = CORREL (X,Y)

k = s * SQRT(1-R²).

 

This approach is taken straight from the text books, from what I learnt in my Stats course at UNISA, from my experience at the Diamond Research Laboratory (Johannesburg) and at the BP Research Laboratory (London) and from what I taught when tutoring A Level maths in recent years.  

 

Wikipedia sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_correlation_coefficient

Trevor Watkins

unread,
Aug 6, 2024, 9:53:42 AM8/6/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Can I suggest that this very technical discussion be moved to its own thread under a descriptive name. Otherwise we are doomed to remember such a discussion occurred, but we have no idea under which topic.
Trevor Watkins
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one


Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 6, 2024, 10:42:58 AM8/6/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Yes please ... it is one that needs to be its own focus ... 😊👍👌 ... with the Stephen catalyst and the Trevor refinement ...

I would like to bring in the Gini Coefficient into this as well to see if we can (as hypothesis) distill the beneficial real world effect, namely that not only does per capita income rise with greater freedom but so too the Gini Coefficient decreases ...

The coercive collectivists inevitably resort to the Gini Coefficient when they find themselves painted into the corner ...

Higher per capita income and a lower Gini Coefficient would be an ace ... !!!



To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAN6K2Lm06hzEptRdB3HnQpOnqeeoiCwW1nHcyu5hAxRMUibP0w%40mail.gmail.com.

Stephen van Jaarsveldt

unread,
Aug 6, 2024, 2:47:43 PM8/6/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
For some reason I can't seem to change the Subject line (which is the easiest way to create a new thread while keeping some history below)... so if someone else has that capability, it would be greatly appreciated.

Gabri, that's exactly how I started with this... there are 5 x generally accepted goals in macroeconomics (growth, price stability, exchange rate stability, low unemployment and distributive equity*)... of which the free market obviously excels in 4 of the 5.

* Note: Not equality, since perfect equality will be exceptionally inequitable.

These are all very hard to measure, but we have a proxy or "close enough" measure for each of them... GDP, PPI, Big Mac Index, Gini and % Unemployment... so it should be possible to quantify them and determine a trade-off value.

So my original goal back in 2009 was to see, if there is a trade-off between equity and the other 4 goals, how big that trade-off would be... and possibly to argue that the other 4 over-shadow the 1, somewhat objectively.

Imagine my surprise when I found that there was no trade-off and that the free market gives a 5 out of 5 score. I re-did the whole thing with other data sources and ran it by a couple of professional statisticians. An ace, as you say.

Now, the one big gripe I still have with all this (and have not found a solution to yet) is that the Gini coefficient has some significant limitations. Gaussian distribution would be far better, but is not easily distilled to a single number.

S.


To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/individualist/CAGXOEN2yEn%2B-D1Nd8_xc1pHMBjRHQ82VG8jew1eSpA-dBzdpig%40mail.gmail.com.

Stephen vJ

unread,
Aug 6, 2024, 11:21:40 PM8/6/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Yes, that's basically what I was trying to do, with the huge improvement of adding distribution rather than a linear relationship. That's great. I might have time to find & crunch some actual numbers next weekend (this weekend is out - my daughter is coming to visit). If anyone else has a few hours spare, I would be very interested in the current state of affairs and what anomalies & discoveries come from doing this exercise.

I so wish the rest of the world could know just how objective and impartial some of the conclusions can be, rather than shooting at each other over ideological differences.

Stephen.

On Aug 6, 2024, at 07:33, vlietstra via Individualist Movement <indivi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



vlie...@btinternet.com

unread,
Aug 7, 2024, 4:24:43 PM8/7/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com

If you are interested, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?most_recent_value_desc=false, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita,  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita   where you can get data to test your hypothesis. 

 

If you want to include GINI in your model alongside economic freedom index, you will need to build a model of the type

 

                Z = αx + βy + γ.

 

This cannot be done directly using EXCEL, but EXCEL can be used to do the number crunching once the maths has been sorted out. If anybody want to go down that route and doesn’t really know where to start from a mathematical point of view, let me know and I will sketch out how to do it.

 

Regards

Gabri Rigotti

unread,
Aug 7, 2024, 4:37:46 PM8/7/24
to indivi...@googlegroups.com
Hi Martin

Your:

If you want to include GINI in your model alongside economic freedom index, you will need to build a model of the type

 

                Z = αx + βy + γ.


Yes ... 👍👌


Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages