We will probably be seeing a lot more of what the classmate of your junio associate is feeling if we try to continue to push everyone to go to college. Not everyone has the qualities to have success in college and then find a job that pays more then they could have otherwise received to pay for all the college costs and the lost opportunity costs for not having a job for four to eight years. Colleges have become a sinkhole of money for many people as they get far in debt and then can only find a job that they could have gotten right out of high school.

Maybe Obama should be telling kids to instead go to trade schools or go get a job out of college and see where that takes you before going way in debt to go to college. For many people four years of any job experience would be far better then a degree that has little relationship to the job they are trying to get.

On the otherhand some jobs do need college degrees, but still they will be looking for the best and the brightest so just because you get a degree doesn’t ensure you will get a job in that field.

But with something like a 50,000 lawyer glut in just my state alone, the barriers are apparently not all that tough to hurtle.

And due to the surplus of lawyers, the law school “underachievers” — even after three extra years (instead of two, as is required for Masters programs like MBA’s) and tens of thousands of dollars in loans to pay off, will often land a job with a starting salary of $38,000. (State attorneys office)…Compare that to the average starting salary of your average MBA grad (two years, which is huge difference) coming out of a graduate school like Purdue….

That is, if they can find a job at all. Right now, nobody, and I mean nobody, in my region of S. Florida, is hiring new lawyers. Instead, young associates are getting laid off right and left. That news should make the lawyer-haters quite happy. Glad to be of service.

My junior associate has a classmate – who graduated near the bottom of their law school class; and then needed three attempts to pass the two-day bar exam. After 3+ years, he is still working as a night manager at a Marriot Hotel.

As long as those of us who paid tens of thousands of dollars for three years of post-graduate education (combined with the loss of the ability to earn other income for those three years), still get higher compensation than Joe “I bought the book “Law for dummies” and “CliffNotes on Law” and lookie here is my sign over my door” Smith; and as long as Joe self-taught Smith gets held to the same standards of performance I’m held to, when the malpractice suits come rolling in against him, then sure – I’m all for it! :)

If you’re going to go the “self study” route, then I think we’re going to have to simplify the laws — all laws, considerably. Don’t you? Not that that would be a bad thing. Thinking too hard often gives me a headache.

I don’t see anarcho-liberopia coming our way anytime soon, do you? At least not during my lifetime. I’m seeing a period of Stalino-topia, or perhaps not quite as bad — Franco-topia for a few decades, first. Perhaps Juan Peron-Argentino-topia, or Hugo-Chavezio-topia. After our hyper-inflation induced Weimer-Republico-topia.

Note that my endorsement of a legal system which includes liability for harm does not constitute a defense of our current system. The idea you mention (loser pays) is fundamentally playing at the margins, not the heart of the issue. Whether a system should encourage litigation (as ours arguably does) or discourage litigation (as a loser-pays system is designed to) is an argument more about litigation’s efficacy at preventing harm vs. its impediment to business and economic growth. Personal-injury litigation can be seen as a very targeted tax on entities who may cause harm, and thus the tax “rate” that best meets the balance of keeping people reasonably safe while not crippling economic growth is certainly debatable.

In anarcho-libertopia, we will have lawyers. Any time you have a situation where disputes are likely to arise, it is often more effective to have a specialist come in to help you argue your side of a dispute. This is even more true in an anarchist society with no coercive legal system, as contract law will likely see very high demand.

However, in anarcho-libertopia, we will not have a coercive legal system with the power to license (or refuse to license) lawyers. We won’t likely have a single legal system at all, more of a polycentric law system. Thus, anyone who can do self-study and hang a shingle will be allowed to practice law (if he can attract custom is another story).

I assume, then, that when I argue disbanding the legal framework of requiring practicing lawyers — by law — to pass the bar is something you’ll support? ;-)

You sound like a Brit. Do you live in Britain?

If so, if I were you I’d also be quite worried about the slowly but ever encroaching, day by day, incremental surrender to the imposition of Sharia law. In addition to your suffocating Nanny State socialism.

Oh, and how about if you go and actually read Henry VI. Then you’ll realize that Shakespeare was paying a compliment to lawyers, rather than ripping on them, with that quote.

As for how good al the statues are. If I built my own house, am I competent to wire it and to connect the gas hob – yes. Am I allowed to accoring to Statutory Law? Hell No! Why??

So that they can confiscate a portion of the earnings of Electricians and Gas men, hire an army of jobsworths to police the system and supervise training and testing, and impose hefty fines upon anyone who competently carries out electrical and gas work as well as the odd cowboy.

The reason for all this is given as “For the safety of the General population”.

If the General population is so immature and stupid that it cannot look after itself it deserves to go the way of dinosaurs. How could mankind grow and evolve in years past when we did not have all these suffocating rules?

How can people live and thrive in lesser developed countries, where they do not have this intrusive legislation and half of the workforce working for the Government?

And,

“Next time you go to an electronics store, try to buy something with a power cord that’s not UL Listed. I’m willing to bet you can’t do it, and that’s not because the law says so, but because that store doesn’t want the liability of selling you something that might burn your house down.”

Thank you, Brad W. As a civil litigator, I must say, you just made an EXCELLENT argument in support of the Personal Injury Bar in this country remaining as it is, and not being forced into “loser pays fees” system like they have in places like Britain. And also keeping intact our system of trial by jury. Threat of personal injury litigation where a little guy injured consumer can go up against Giganto Corp., USA, and with the knowledge that the jury will be comprised of fellow citizens who make the same sort of purchases he made down at Radio Shack, does unfortunately add ultimate costs to the goods and services we purchase – BUT it also serves to encourage responsible corporate behavior….without the need for Nanny State intervention and control.

And I say that as somebody who practices on the other side of the fence, rather than on “the dark side” as we on our side call the plaintiff’s bar.

Next time somebody comes out with that tiresome (and quoted entirely out of context) Shakespere quote about killing all the lawyers, or advocates a loser pays fees change in our system, I’ll be expecting you to enter the fray and defend our current system.

You clearly never got the point of libertarianism if authoritarianism is now your preference. Libertarianism is not about you getting to do what you want to other people with impunity, it is the exact opposite: you may not do what you want to other people, period, without consent. That means, among other things, you may not: steal their property, assault their person, confine or attack them for offending you, dictate to them how they may behave on their own private property, invade their private property for any reason, and so on. The “mass” does not have rights, each individual in it has rights. To say the “mass” has rights is really to say those not belonging to whatever “mass” you belong to has fewer rights than you, or that some elite group making decisions for the mass has greater rights than the rest. The concept of group rights is a self-contradictory assertion, the claim that all have equal rights but some majority or part of it are more equal than others.

In short, you may not for any reason use force, threat of force, or fraud to deprive another of life, liberty, or property. If you can derive from that principle a means to abuse others legitimately, please, feel free to poke holes in it. Perhaps this isn’t the right place to debate it, but I’ll be happy to debunk your claims.

Let’s start with your complaint about hunting. If you feel it’s important to preserve certain species from hunting or extinction, buy land on which to house them. If you cannot afford to do that, organize enough people to donate money on the project who can. By pure democratic majority, it requires 50+% of the population to implement a law to steal from me my money in order to effect this protection; that means, in theory, you should be able to organize 154.5 million people or so to help you out.

Your water rights argument is specious entirely. If there are X number of people requiring water in a region, they will consume Y amount of water whether they do so by drilling their own wells or by paying a water company to extract the same water for them. If there is not enough water to supply the area, the water company imports water; if some wish to drill wells and take their chances with dirty and intermittent water supplies, and others pay a company to import water for them, that is their business. Once again if half the population feels it is necessary to avoid depleting the water table, they are advised to discontinue their own use, which would instantly cut consumption by about half. If that’s not enough, they’re welcome to provide better water service at a lower cost from external sources and entice well owners to switch over.

The basic problem with libertarianism is the simple fact that we live in a world of nearly 7 billion people and growing. Land and resources are finite (at least at the current moment of technology)

So the well your wife proposes to dig affects the water table of those around you, and, when multiplied by the thousands of other people around you, can affect the water situation of a whole region (see Montana). The wildlife you propose to hunt are not able to withstand the onslaught of the other thousands who would hunt them for lack of regulation. And please don’t respond that “some independent agency” would step in – there are too many historical examples of extinct species for me to believe that. The list can go on…

I am very sympathetic to providing the maximum rights to the individual, but I have come to realize that many use these rights as an excuse to have no concern for how their actions affect others. The mass (which after all are simply other people) have rights as well.