The analysis of natural motivation resulting from natural government, as opposed to artificial motivation resulting from artificial government, has led to these proposals for settling conflicts without setting up a recognised coercive authority, and for voluntary co-operation on a large scale.
The basic principle is to make coercive arbitration available to everyone, but controllable by no one. To do this, systems could be arranged at all levels of government so that any person could call for random arbitration of any disagreement with any other person.
The most important word is any. Any person could call, for any reason. There would be no need to look for a law. It would be up the random arbiters and their chosen experts, to determine the spirit of which agreed-on custom or routine applies to the case.
So no one would be immune. A person could make a case against a stranger, a neighbour, a policeman, a planner, a big businessman or anyone else.
But the catch is, that the person who calls for arbitration, could not struggle to select his or her arbiters - they would be chosen at random. And he or she could not pressure the arbiters, since it would be the arbiters who had the recognised power. The arbiters could penalise anyone who tied to pressure them.
Therefore, being free from power struggles, and motivated to avoid unreasonably offensive actions, the random arbiters would be more likely to approximate a just decision, as compared with our power-struggling system of artificial government.
Nevertheless, the most personally profitable option in every case would be to seek with all sincerely a voluntary settlement in order to avoid random arbitration.
The term 'case' must be defined, in order to prevent someone from making a case against a whole society, and the arbiters subsequently making an arbitrary law.
A case might be defined as anyone's grievance, to be arbitrated by nine randomly chosen arbiters, whose decision would be binding on a maximum of fifty people as designated by the arbiters, for a time period of six months. This would give the arbiters just enough power to settle a case.
The most a random arbitration could do to a person, would be to send the person to prison. To get out of prison, a friend or relative could call for another random arbitration to decide whether the person has been sufficiently rehabilitated.
Random arbiters and their chosen experts would most likely not appreciate unreasonable calls for arbitration. And so their decisions would be designed to discourage future unreasonable calls. Their decisions might require an unreasonable caller to pay the arbiters for interrupting their routines, and for their loss of time on their jobs.
The actual random selection would need to be done in view of all who wanted to witness it. It might be done in a large indoor stadium, supervised by the chief of police. It might also be shown live on television.
After the random selection, the arbiters would be contacted and expected at the court house two days later at 9am. If any of the arbiters didn't want to do it, then another arbiter would be randomly selected in his place.
The police force could be just as sophisticated as anything we have in our artificial government. They could be hired through proposal bulletins. Neighbourhoods might hire their own policemen. But as people became more experienced with sincerely seeking co-operative agreements, the need for police would diminish.
Jack Coxe, 13730 Willow Creek Road, Ionc, CA 95640, USA (tel 209 274 2210).
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