Property norms are not some inventions by a class of officials, they are objective conflict-avoidance principles that exist prior to any enforcement.
How are those objective conflict-avoidance principles for people who don't have as much property as they want? What large society has experienced the absence of conflict without enforced rules about property?
"Property norms" is no more an objective, inherent concept that results in a non-conflict society than "might makes right" - and it's demonstrably less stable than most systems, due to the absence of enforceable guardrails. To think contract rights are more persuasive than law enforcement is ludicrous. Some people also don't have anything to lose or dgaf about owning anything through negotiation. And how do you account for unequal bargaining power outcomes - everyone will be happy with a freely negotiated contract even if they're poor negotiators?
If all humans already had a harmony of interests and respected each other's boundaries all the time, then nobody would waste even a single second discussing notions like "law" and "rights" and "law enforcement" and "crime" and "transgression"
"If.". People don't have a harmony of interests, though, and many don't respect boundaries regardless of origin of the boundaries. People break contracts, large and small, and the absence of societal (legal) consequences removes all incentives for bad actors not to act bad.
Legal and political structures, done well, temper whim.
Spare me that nonsense. The penal code says one thing, enforcers do another, discretion overrides both, corruption and budgets distort all of it.
Your ideal is nothing but individual discretion. And the fact that corruption or ambiguity exists is not a mature basis on which to craft a belief, particularly not one that ignores real and consistent historic behavior in favor of a concept that thinks paper is persuasive for those who disregard paper.
The same exact thing that stops every other criminal. Resistance, coalition, and the financial reality of conflict.
Lol, tell that to any unprosecuted criminal. There's not going to be grand-scale "resistance" or "coalition" vs a petty criminal. Many people take whatever they can get. People dispositioned to violating other people aren't holding back from violating contracts. Why would they?
consistent recognition of objective property boundaries (shortened: "anarcho-capitalism")
people who consistently respect property norms
Your view is premised on "consistent" and "recognition" (which implies agreement/ acceptance) being the norm, and yet you've not shown that that consistent recognition occurs, nor that it particularly occurs in the absence of the rule of law.
Show in a clear and concise manner how respecting property boundaries leads to permanent, systematic violation of those boundaries.
Show in a clear and concise manner how people respect property boundaries in the absence of law.
Your earlier examples - arbitration, private security in gated communities - operate under the schematic of the rule of law. Arbitration has the force of law, and is at a minimum adjacent to it (most arbitration is based in law; perhaps you are thinking of mediation). I can't speak to your Icelandic example, but you did describe it as a "legal" order. As for "Merchant Law," if you mean"
lex mercatoria" concepts from the Middle Ages, it's right there in the name, and it came about as a function of jurisdictional complexities and yes, a recognition of sovereign powers (states*). Violators were subject to confiscation of property. And it became considered common law, and has been further codified (
see, commercial international law (which, btw, led to arbitration as a resolution mechanism, rather than
lex mercatoria's decisionmaking "courts); or the UCC in the US, at least**).
*Yes, international law, which is mostly by agreement...but what are the wages of violation? Economic sanctions by pre- or considered agreement - or justification for war ("might"). International law is
jus gentium, though not
jus inter gentes - but it is still
jus and informed contract interpretation...by at least quasi-judicial fora.
**
Some may have disagreed, but the reality is that the UCC is a maturation of common law, which was a necessary maturation of law merchant.
A monopoly in the strict sense means a state grant of exclusive privilege. That's why it simply can't exist without a state. In the absence of such a privilege, it's true that a company can grow large, but it has no authority whatsoever to stop anyone from competing with it. All it can do is offer better prices or services, and surely that's not a bad thing from the point of view of the customer?
Do you even understand antitrust? Antitrust laws are aimed at mitigating commercial monopoly that stranglehold individuals. Yes, that varies by administrations' political perspectives, and yes, monopolistically-minded companies with significant power can conjure up plenty of justifying arguments, but they are trying to overcome legally prohibitive requirements, not access them.
It is, in healthier states, more state acquiescence to a company's resistance to law than state confirmation of it.
