Moving Beyond Government "Solutions"

Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Wed, 9 Oct 96 12:03:43 PDT


"David Musick" writes:
>I realized (with some amazement that I'd never noticed it before) that people
>were assuming that the way to solve social problems is by making some kind of
>law. That was such a basic assumption, that the issue was about what kind of
>laws we should make, rather than whether we could solve the problems better by
>trying solutions which didn't require government and laws at all.

Yes there are lots of ways to handle problems without laws, especially
via informal social mechanisms (See Bensons' "Order Without Law").
But I'd also like to make sure everyone remembers that you can have
law without government. Private law, explicit but voluntarily agreed
on. Just because "there aught to be a law" doesn't mean there aught
to be coersion.

Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/