

Ask HN: Who is the best libertarian hacker you know? - ebaysucks

To: All talented hackers looking to build a startup with a libertarian mission.
CC: All people who know such people (please forward this post).<p>I recently acquired the domain name judge.me and want to build an online court system, or more precisely, online judging market place (i.e. we build the market place, not the service).<p>I'm looking for a libertarian technical co-founder. Below I summarize the philosophy of this idea, my background and what I'm looking for in a technical co-founder.<p>The philosophy behind this idea is that "incentives change the world, technology changes incentives". Specifically, by building a market place for arbitration, we want to incentivize people to not use the government courts, lowering support for a democratic monopoly on justice along the way (but not explicitly). Think of it as building the 21th century equivalent of building the place where common law judges can hold their hearings and judge their cases.<p>My background is in strategy consulting but I consider myself an economist. I am well read in the relevant complexity theory and philosophy of law to the point where a philosophy of law professor told me my thinking on this topic is worthy of starting a phd. In short, I think I have the "incentives" part covered. I'm also learning Ruby on Rails and the related concepts (OO, MVC, TDD, CRUD, ...) so I can understand and help out the technical co-founder as much as possible.<p>The ideal technical co-founder loves to "think in technology", i.e. knows and can communicate all consequences and trade-offs in using certain technologies and methodologies. I'm currently leaning to building the site in Ruby on Rails and its related technologies, but ultimately this is to the technical co-founder to decide. Also, the co-founder should have an interest in libertarian thought, so the macro-economic consequences of what we'll be building are clear (and very motivating!) when I explain them (and we discuss them!). Last but not least, this person should not be under any contract that gives away the IP of the work (s)he does for judge.me.<p>If interested, please leave your contact details below so we can have a Skype video chat about this idea. When we decide to join forces, the goal should be to build a MVP as soon as possible, get feedback from the libertarian community and apply for YCombinator when we start to get traction.<p>If you know somebody who could be interested, please forward this post.<p>Hopefully this request will be the start of something beautiful. I honestly believe this idea can change the world and hope you do too.<p>Kind regards,
PJ
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mindcrime
Mondo righteous! I'd love to offer to help, as I am _very_ much a Libertarian
(anarcho-capitalist, voluntaryist, market anarchist, whichever term you
prefer), but I'm too tied up with projects now.

I'll definitely be a very interested spectator though, and will be rooting you
on. I'd love to see this happen.

Edit: shared this link with all my Facebook friends, many of whom are
Libertarians and at least a few of whom are hackers.

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HowardRoark
Same here. Loved the idea though!

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ebaysucks
Hi Howard, can I contact you to be a beta user when we launch the MVP?

Thanks!

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_0ffh
Well, maybe ESR is free... =)

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ebaysucks
Thanks for the tip, I'll ask ESR to consider this idea!

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_0ffh
You're welcome! Actually I was a bit reluctant to answer "ESR". While he's
surely the best libertarian hacker who's work I know of, he's also very high
profile and therefore quite possibly busy. Best of luck!

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bartonfink
PJ -

Would you mind dropping me a line? I am very interested in the idea, and would
like to contribute. My contact information is on my user page.

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ebaysucks
Mail sent - Look forward to talking to you!

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znt
I couldn't get my head around the idea. Can you please give an example case of
this service's usage?

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ebaysucks
You have a dispute with someone (small claim, divorce, ...). Instead of going
with the gov't court you open an arbitration case on judge.me where you ask
some internet user(s) to judge you. You agree to stick to the ruling, if not
your public profile will mention that unwillingness and you won't be able to
use judge.me again (social coercion) in disputes with anyone who "follows" the
judges you ignore.

This is called kritarchy, rule by judges. The basis for this is not "law" by
force, but voluntary cooperation so you don't get excluded from the community
(subcommunities). The judges are the community leaders, what we today call
politicians. The judges themselves compete for the arbitration cases by their
price/efficiency/ideology, and whatever "market outcome" is the result of
supply and demand becomes the "common law".

I expect most people not to accept certain judges. E.g. I would ignore a
ruling by a communist judge that they can use my car and would prefer to be
excluded from the communist communities. If the entire world would operate
like this you'd get "polycentric law", i.e. instead of battling with promises
of how good your ideology is in elections you compete with the results
(standard of living) your ideology provides in practice.

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bmelton
I'm almost certain I don't have the time to be a co-founder, but I'd love to
contribute.

My email address is in my profile. If you're not inundated with offers, drop
me a line.

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ebaysucks
I'm going to shoot you an email right now.

