This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, December 6, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

To understand fully those who advocate for less government and sometimes no government,

it's helpful to understand the institutions of governments

that exist around us without an official government seal of approval.

David Friedman, author of the classic machinery of freedom

and other libertarian works, spoke of the classic machinery of freedom and other libertarian works spoke at the Cato Institute

November 29th.

It seems to me that in terms of the logic of legal systems, that systems of private norms

are an example of one kind of a legal system.

The rules enforced by an Amish congregation

on its members are an example of a kind of legal system.

Neither of those has the option of locking you up or executing you or even finding you,

but they have other ways of imposing costs on you with the result that people mostly abide by them.

I mean the part of what's what I've been doing for the fair

while because I've been teaching the course on legal systems very different now for

I don't know maybe five or six years is trying to understand what I can about all of the different or many

of the different ways in which human beings achieve the objective legal system we're supposed

to achieve. And that that includes modern systems.

It includes systems where law enforcement is entirely private.

It includes quite a lot of systems where the ultimate sanction is as recently as England in the 18th century.

You had no police and essentially no public prosecutors.

...