Talk:Polycentric law

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[edit] RTR

"Restitution Transfer and Recoupment" sounds a lot like revival of weregild though I don't know how to mention that seamlessly into the article. Nagelfar (talk) 02:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Weregild means treating murder as a tort; it is an instance of the general idea of preferring restitution (which benefits the plaintiff) to punishment (which is costly to almost everyone). RTR is a business model built on that background. It could function with respect to other compensable crimes even if murder were excluded. —Tamfang (talk) 22:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Statism with regard to Polycentric law.

Corporative federalism seems very much like a statist interpretation of Polycentric law, or a circumvolutory kind of federalism with similar common points at least in the framework of a state system (neither completely centralized or completely devolved federalism but with aspects of both extremes).

It makes me wonder, if theoretically there could be a condition in which polycentric law were the norm, wherein the rights of many groups had their own separate laws - wouldn't there ultimately be a state codifying such as its "federal" constitution? This is something that has always confused me with non-anomie forms of anarchism with regard to denial of the state (but with a legal system); Is it just that they conceive of a purely positive state with regard to 'natural law'? I don't even necessarily see how federalizing any jurisdiction by process of devolution would make that law any more 'natural' anyhow, just positive on a more direct scale.

It's interesting that the Corporativism espoused by Fascist Italy (and therefore it's ultimate "statolatry" & "totalitarianism") was similar in theory in many ways to Polycentric law but thought of as centralized, by the fact that there would be a guild system where individual interests of particular private groups were "officialized", accommodated specifically, and especially considered public branches and extensions of the national whole but interacted with in different ways by the central government based on their own interests (i.e. an ever growing legal bureaucracy based on whatever new special interests continually form, and made, at least in their own theory, with the consideration of those interests). It brings new interpretation to Fascism having it's philosophic origins with anarchist thinkers like Georges Sorel. If such "Fascist - Totalitarian" theories and visions were a conception of a "natural" state (if one views Giovanni Gentile's "Actual Idealism" with regard to government in such a way) I wonder if anarchism of this kind and Fascism of the corporative system are just two of the same thing but view the state differently. I just don't know whether "natural state" (as in the natural law terminology) is an oxymoron to anarchists or not, depends all on how you define "state" I suppose. I have thought it over quite a bit though and I don't necessarily see statism and anarchism as mutually exclusive anyway (maybe an extreme synthesis where they aren't, but definitely not fully incompatible) Nagelfar (talk) 07:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Off the top of my head —

• Suppose three law-providers agree that disputes between any two shall be resolved by the third; and each is forbidden to acquire ownership in the others. Is this a "federal constitution", and is this system a "state"? Some would say yes, but if so, we need another word for that which I would prefer to abolish. ;)
• No, devolved law is not inherently more natural than imperial law; but, where the individual has a choice of law-providers, an economic argument suggests that the system has a stronger tendency to converge toward natural law (by which I mean that system which maximizes overall wellbeing).
• Statists (not only Fascists) like to reify "community" and tell the citizens which interest group they belong to, rather than letting communities of interest emerge from individual choices.

—Tamfang (talk) 23:17, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to think of the governmental word "state" much like the word "condition" (and therefore the definition of the word "state" 'as government' much as the other definition for the same word; meaning 'state of being').

So I suppose the positive legal structure at any given time might be "the state", by which the interests of any group make agreements by word of mouth, unspoken agreement and normal living activities (even with the complete abolition of codified laws) naturally form, in my mind, some kind of state. I agree even this meaning represents a "restriction", the negative connotation of the word 'state', a societal limitation. As every definition or norm of activity is a limitation; theoretically by positive law attempting to approximate natural law as it is felt and understood by the particular system of governance.

However polycentric law and similar ideas almost pull against this limitation, and try to diversify it (thus opening it up and making it more free), but not against the nature of being a state; it is as if here the state is working against linear answers to natural law via the method of creating such multifarious positive law (and the more positive law, the greater the scope of the state) that natural law itself is perturbed in how it is to be expressed.

By this I mean I see natural law only temporally; I do not believe natural law is always a single absolute measure, it is peculiar to it's environs. Consider that as much as positive law is formed by natural law, the condition where archetypes necessitate natural law are changed by the current positive laws? Maybe, it seems, increasing the width & breadth of extant positive legal structure (making it many layered and more complex through something like polycentric law) might influence what natural law is; which in turn puts the requirements for future positive laws on to something even more complex? Maybe I'm getting too dialectical & Hegelian and I am certainly not adding much to immediately bettering the article as these pages are meant, but I hope you understand what I mean. Nagelfar (talk) 09:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Furthermore I can see how Polycentric law could have compulsory registration to make a voluntary choice for whatever free association to which one chose, like an effective political party made directly into a polity. Which could only work as long as it had a sufficient constituency to form it's own system (enough members to account for their values). Each of these may variously function as economically capitalist or economically socialist under the same territory (each legal corporate body being separate but federated to the whole, taxes etc work different depending on adherence) and therefore differently coercive within their individual structure, according to the beliefs of it's own constituents. There would have to be some normalizing measure by which an individual is accountable to break from or freely associate with each constituent polity and legal contract to & from another; this level of internal self-imposed governing would be a compulsory and coercive element (therefore statist, and not just statelike). There would also have to be a level of external, federal upholding of the separate integrity of each separate trans-territorial (corporate) legal manifold so one cannot simply jump ship from another and change their allegeance (which would be unsystematized anomie, not orderly like anarchism) which is also statist and limiting to it's own sphere, albeit of a contractual nature chosen by the member initially. The interaction between the external structure and the internal one would have to be one of diplomacy, as now we have diplomacy between nations, however this would be an internal state diplomacy between polycameral legalities of one state. Nagelfar (talk) 07:59, 13 April 2008 (UTC)