Why would anyone bother to punish acts done against me?
I mean, *why* people bother is really a question about human psychology — I don’t have a definitive answer to that. What matters is that they *do* bother: there really are quite a few people who volunteer as jurors, for instance, not to mention those who resort to illegal (and most often criminal) forms of punishment, often at great personal risk, when they feel the justice system has failed to deliver. I absolutely do not condone such behavior, mind you, but it does show that the system *could* in principle be run at no cost through (likely part-time) volunteer work alone. Now, I’m not saying that it *should* be: it would certainly be less thorough and render more wrong verdicts, which is part of the reason why I think having a professional system in place, like most (all?) countries do today, is well worth the money. But the libertarian claim that we absolutely can’t do without a paid criminal justice system seems to me… well, just obviously mistaken as a matter of empirical fact. As for the peasants: I’m sure other peasants would volunteer.
I mean, *why* people bother is really a question about human psychology — I don’t have a definitive answer to that. What matters is that they *do* bother: there really are quite a few people who volunteer as jurors, for instance, not to mention those who resort to illegal (and most often criminal) forms of punishment, often at great personal risk, when they feel the justice system has failed to deliver. I absolutely do not condone such behavior, mind you, but it does show that the system *could* in principle be run at no cost through (likely part-time) volunteer work alone. Now, I’m not saying that it *should* be: it would certainly be less thorough and render more wrong verdicts, which is part of the reason why I think having a professional system in place, like most (all?) countries do today, is well worth the money. But the libertarian claim that we absolutely can’t do without a paid criminal justice system seems to me… well, just obviously mistaken as a matter of empirical fact. As for the peasants: I’m sure other peasants would volunteer.