Pre-Emancipation Jewry’s Torah Courts in GAME THEORY

Non-State Courts

Part 2 of the courts sequence

In a modern nation-state like the US, the legal system is an arm of the government and integrated with the government’s monopoly on force. Police forcibly arrest criminal suspects; convicted criminals or losers in civil cases are forced to go to prison or pay fines and damages. Ultimately, all the penalties in the legal system are enforced by armed agents of the government.

But legal systems don’t inherently require a state.

David Friedman, in Legal Systems Very Different From Ourshas explained how non-state societies (like Somaliland and medieval Iceland) and self-governing communities within states (like the Romani, the Amish, and pre-emancipation Jews) were able to use courts for dispute resolution without a monopoly on violence.

Implementations differ, of course. But the basic shared model is that a non-state court system is not a dispute-resolution agency administered by the state, but a protocol for dispute resolution administered by anyone who wants to.

Here’s how it works, in broad strokes.

When two parties have a conflict, they take their dispute to a court. Key elements of a court include a judge or panel of judges, an opportunity for both sides to state their case, a formal method for establishing the facts of the case and how the law applies, and a verdict or judgment.

If the judgment comes with penalties (“Alice shall pay $50,000 to Bob”), there are no police to threaten Alice with violence if she doesn’t pay the penalty. Instead, people who don’t abide by court judgments become outlaws. They are expelled from the community and the protection of the law.

Continue reading…

From Rough Diamonds, here.

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Continue reading…

From WP Beginner, here.


What are you looking at me for?!

Bionic Mosquito Doesn’t QUITE Extend Forgiveness to Corona Caesars…

Let’s First See if They Drown

In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes.

–          Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty, Opinion by Emily Oster

I came across this piece thanks to Karen De Coster, referenced in her LRC blog post entitled The Satanic Church-of-Covid Left Begs for Mercy.  I will allow her to introduce it (in case her title isn’t sufficient):

The sham propaganda continues to twist in the wind, looking for one last chance to be embraced by the gaslighted masses.

Returning to Oster.

We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself.

That was very scientific.  Homemade masks.  I wonder what surgeons and epidemiologists thought about that before March 2020?

It’s bad enough that the parents in this family were deluded, what they did to their children was horrendous:

Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

Someone’s dad should have decked the other child’s dad.

These precautions were totally misguided. … But the thing is: We didn’t know.

Bullsh!#.  We did know.  Those telling you to mask and social distance knew that they were lying.  Countless pre-stupidity peer-reviewed studies were clear: masking by amateurs with pretend masks (let alone homemade masks) was useless – and even harmful – when it came to dealing with airborne viruses.

We knew that anyone younger than seventy years old with no co-morbidities was at virtually zero risk of serious complications.  We knew that continuing in school was the best option for young people.  We knew that the virus (such as it was) travelled equally well in both strip clubs and churches, but only one of these was closed.  We knew when politicians and other leaders went to restaurants or hair salons without masking while we were all forced into a face diaper that it was a lie.  We knew that these modern jabs were based on science that failed every test before.  We knew that forcing the decision of jab or job on individuals was both immoral and corrupt.

We knew.  And so did those who said otherwise.

And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong.

And on every topic, the people most listened to were always wrong, and those who were cancelled were (almost) always right.  This latter group wasn’t made up of just loons like me; hundreds of prominent and world-renowned doctors and scientists were cancelled because they didn’t agree with MSNBC, CNN, or “the science.”  Go back and read the Great Barrington Declaration (as mild as it is), written in October 2020 and signed initially by almost fifty doctors and scientists and currently by almost one million individuals.

They knew.  But Collins and Fauci and others worked to crush this attempt at minimal rational pushback.

The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.

Nope.  I don’t want to gloat; that’s not good enough for me.  And nope, I won’t merely allow the criminals to retrench; that isn’t justice.

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.

The Downsides of Reading Online

The Physical Effects of E-Reading

by Christyna Hunter on February 24, 2014

We’re in the middle of an e-reading craze. Libraries are dashing around to add more digital titles to their catalogs. Libraries are lending out e-readers and even opening bookless branches. (See past PLA Online articles here and here.) We know that e-reading offers tons of great benefits for readers; but let’s slow down a minute and consider possible adverse effects.

According to a recent Scientific American article, reading paper versus electronic material makes a difference when it comes to memory and learning. In digital format, readers tend to skim, looking for keywords. As a result the full content of the material is often lost.

Screen reading takes more mental energy thereby leaving less for actual content retention. Students who read text via a computer screen did a little bit worse on a reading comprehension test than those students who used actual textbooks. During the test, they were able to look back at their textbooks for answers. The students who used actual textbooks retained not only more information but memory as to where that information was located.

Also, “seeing” only a page or two at a time rather than the whole book is disorienting to the reader. Although most e-readers have a digital readout somewhere on the screen of the readers progress within the book, that’s not enough. To physically hold the book and flip through individual pages makes the reader feel more grounded to the experience than a simple readout of her progress on the screen. When readers are grounded to the experience, material is more likely to be remembered.

This article, as well as a recent report by ABC News, lists the physical side effects of e-reading. Headaches and neck pain are the biggest complaints of those who use e-readers. Eye strain and dry eyes are others. Nearly 70% of American adults show these side effects according to the ABC News report.

And the concern is higher for children. E-readers are often the only device children read nowadays so the side effects mentioned above could harm children at an early age. If not caught, the harm could lead to more problems earlier in life.

There are ways to prevent these issues. Don’t spend more than 20 minutes at a time staring at an e-reader or computer screen. Be sure to blink often to lubricate your eyes. Take many breaks. Be sure to do safe neck exercises to ward off a stiff neck and shoulders.

Or just read an actual book!

From Public Libraries Online, here.