Restraining the Political Caste
As outlined earlier, an individual must be a fully qualified member of their local militia in order to be eligible to hold any form of public office and, while required to maintain proficiency, is suspended from enforcement operations for the duration of their time on the tax dole. Legislation may be set by public officials but is executed by the people themselves, as militia or their subordinates.
Since the people as militia have discretion over which laws they enforce, and the manner in which they execute those laws, whether personally or through subcontracted agents, any legislation that is repugnant of the constitution, designed to protect life, liberty, or property, becomes void. There are no permanent tax-funded enforcement bureaucracies that answer directly to legislators. Thus, the legislative and executive branches are thoroughly separated in design and practice.
A political caste, those that derive their living through taxation, regulation, or some other legally enforced privilege does not exist in a private law society, and institutional mechanisms prevent one from forming. Public officials may receive remuneration for their periods of service in office and reimbursement for their expenses, but these payments are determined by their constituents, with only standardization guidelines recommended by the federation. Legislators cannot vote on salary increases or exclusive privileges for themselves with any guarantee of seeing them carried into policy. Nor can they offer benefits to lobbyists or special interest groups with impunity. A political entity that squanders resources on excessively generous compensation packages for their employees will lose constituent subscriptions and network affiliations. Again, private property implies contracts for services must be voluntary and severable. Unsatisfied customers and partners will simply take their business elsewhere or form new safeguards for their liberty.
Each political organization operates according to its own internal business rules, but most follow best industry practices for transparency, with all proceedings, reports, contracts, and expenditures readily searchable through artificial intelligence-enabled online portals. As part of their law enforcement functions, militia members monitor legislative and policy actions to ensure compliance with the limits of delegated authorities and prevent malfeasance.
As a matter of efficiency, legislative actions are largely coordinated remotely. Legislative and policy documents are generated in secure collaborative environments and voted upon using encrypted, auditable systems. Requirements for in-person meetings are minimal, thereby denying opportunities for lobbyists, provocateurs, or other corruption actors to compromise policymakers in a permanent capital location. Ceremonies and other formal proceedings largely occur on the sidelines of the “militia Olympics” and other regular training events.
Executive protection services for public officials are not provided by a centralized general fund or bureaucratic agency, but by the individual’s own militia unit or a subcontracted commercial provider. There is no permanent Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, Diplomatic Security Service, or other Federal Protective Service eating off the tax dole. Each public official relies upon their home militia unit for their security and, reciprocally, is expected to act honorably as that militia unit’s representative. As stated earlier, a militia unit may recall, remove, or simply withdraw protective escort services from any representatives under their watch in the event of any justified fidelity concerns. Of course, this does not happen over unsubstantiated allegations, routine controversies, or petty personality squabbles. Upholding a reputation for integrity and quality service is paramount to militia units and protection contractors that seek expanded subscriber bases and positive institutional legacies. Therefore, protection details fervently guard their principals while seeking to minimize disturbances or untoward appearances.
Fiat Funded Corruption
Questions remain about the source of Epstein’s wealth, financial structures, and the extent of his global activities. The first thing to note is that, under a private law framework and a market-chosen commodity money regime, it is unlikely that Epstein would have commanded the resources necessary to orchestrate such crimes.
Epstein built his empire with fiat money substitutes, unevenly distributed to preferred investment firms through the loose monetary policies of central banks. He and his ilk were foremost beneficiaries of the Cantillon Effect, where politically connected financial institutions receive newly created fiduciary media ahead of the rest of the population, allowing them to invest in assets at lower prices before the inflationary effects are fully manifested.
Without the state-centered fiat monetary system propping up crony financial firms, it is doubtful that Epstein would have profitably operated a money-management advisory or have been awarded such inordinate consulting fees that led to his roughly $600 million net worth. Nor would Epstein have been able to afford the ecosystem of elite properties, private aviation, and structured financial entities that facilitated his crimes.
Next, allegations that Epstein was acting on behalf of a foreign state as part of an intelligence operation to blackmail public officials and subvert key institutions invoke the need for decentralized law enforcement. Local police and state investigators were allegedly told by “federal officials” to back down or look the other way because of “national security” interests.
Again, with the United States operating as a federation of subsidiary republics and the “militia of the several states” responsible for executing “the laws of the union” at the local level, there would be no ability or capacity for officers of the general government to impede local law enforcement activities. The general government of the United States is only constitutionally delegated jurisdiction over three crimes, piracy, counterfeiting, and treason. Epstein was accused of none of these or, for that matter, anything tantamount to making war or threatening the “common defense” of the United States.
The National Security Myth
Further, there is no such thing as “national security” for the United States. Once again, the United States is, not a monolithic nation, but a federation of republics composed of multiple nations. It is important to distinguish between a nation, which is an ethno-linguistic cultural community, and a state or political organization incorporated to orchestrate security and justice functions in a given geographic territory.
While on the topic, in contrast to a state, government consists of the people, offices, agencies, and institutions erected to implement a state’s authority. Both states and governments are political entities with distinct activities. Politics is the dynamic of social coercion through combinations of psychological influence and physical force. Maintaining clear definitions of the terms, nation, state, government, and politics is imperative because blurring such distinctions is one of the ways in which cunning individuals undermine the proper administration of political authority (which should be solely for the protection of life, liberty, and property).
Referring to the United States as a nation is a form of cognitive warfare aimed at normalizing the idea of centralized authority at the expense of each member state’s local autonomy. Artificially lumping all the citizens of a state into a homogeneous nation erodes the distinct social bonds and genuine cultural identity of the people. It is an act of usurpation that undermines the subsidiarity principle and threatens the security of a “free state” within the federal structure. The same can be said for transforming the “militia of the several states” into National Guard structures, which are merely state-administered adjuncts of the United States Army or Air Force.
Centralization of power continues with the concentration of “national security” activities in the Executive Branch, the military-industrial complex, and various war powers resolutions that yield congressional responsibilities to the President. Easily corrupted by their physical presence in a capital city teeming with lobbyists, senators and representatives continually defer decision-making with vaguely worded “authorizations to use military force,” and unbridled military spending.
So, for a private property legal order to operate under the United States Constitution, there can be no National Guard or authorities invented pursuant to “national” security. Congress can raise an army for up to two years at a time and maintain a navy for patrolling territorial waters. They can declare war or issue letters of marque and reprisal. Any public official that strays from these constitutional limitations, as detailed above, faces harsh and immediate penalties from their constituents and personal liability for their actions.
Espionage and Treason
With local polities monitoring their public officers for any trespasses on the limits of delegated authorities, and grand juries working with the militia to investigate allegations of criminal violations, politicians and bureaucrats must walk a narrow path in the performance of their duties. Beyond mere recall from office, penalties for gross misconduct and oath breaking could result in an ignominious death if a public official is found guilty of making war on the people whose life, liberty, and property they swore to protect.
A private law society, and any Free State established to uphold that legal order, protects the property of its members. In contrast, the various manifestations of socialism institutionalize aggression against property and routinely interfere with contracts for the exchange thereof. Eternal vigilance is the necessary condition for people oriented toward preventing those entrusted with coordinating policy from perverting those institutions created for protection into mechanisms of parasitism and plunder.
Since the militia is the chief institution charged with implementing the policies promulgated by public officers, the people themselves who compose the militia are the ultimate check on which polices are put into effect at the local level, as well as the manner of implementation. Any public official supporting, advocating, or voting for policies that violate the rights and properties of their constituents is immediately pulled from office and subject to prosecution and penalty.
Remember, public officials conduct most business and voting through cryptographically secure remote means, and the absence of a permanent central capital denies convenient access to lobbyists and other corrupting influences. Public officers depend upon the local militia or a subcontracted provider for security escort on all official travel. This allows for immediate recall of any public official who steps out of line, assumes an undelegated authority, gets embroiled in scandal, or otherwise defiles the organization they represent.
Treason is a particularly egregious crime defined by hostile acts aimed at overthrowing the legal order or government an individual has previously sworn allegiance. The ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu rightly posited that “all war is based on deception” and, similarly, treason normally occurs through surreptitious means, such as espionage or aiding an enemy force.
Taxation is robbery, and there is no place for it in a free society. Political entities under a private property legal order gain revenue through voluntary subscriptions and are only authorized to spend from the public treasury according to the limits of contractually delegated functions. Any public official seeking to alter the voluntary and contractual nature of this arrangement is swiftly removed through the civil monitoring, grand jury, recall, and militia mechanisms built into the constitutional order.
Further, any public official spending, or conspiring to spend, from the public treasury in violation of contractual terms, particularly to benefit a hostile entity or foreign state, is committing treason, an act of war. Just as the political theorist Lysander Spooner wrote in his 1882 Natural Law; or the Science of Justice, the dividing line between peace and war is the treatment of property; what he called the science of mine versus thine.
In a private law society, any attack on another’s justly held property is treated as an act of war and there is no immunity for public officials. Jeffrey Epstein’s blackmail and bribery activities targeted U.S. public officials in order to, allegedly, provide diplomatic and material aid to a foreign state. Thus, any public official caught in the Epstein web would have been either deterred from advancing the corrupt agenda by fear of harsher penalties, removed from office at the first sign of compromise, or swiftly prosecuted as soon as they tried to leverage their positions for nefarious purposes.
Prosecuting Official Misconduct
Allegations of official misconduct are taken seriously, not only because of the victim or victims’ right to justice, but on account of the reputational harm incurred to a political entity when one of its representatives goes rogue. Again, in a private law society, organic political associations only attract members, partners, and network affiliations through voluntary consent. An impeccable record of upstanding conduct and competent service delivery is indispensable to institutional sustenance and growth. Scandals and accusations of misconduct threaten an organization’s survivability. Thus, the members have powerful incentives to “police their own” with a variety of corrective mechanisms.
As detailed earlier, political industry standards and best practices maintain that all proceedings, contracts, policies, and transactions undertaken by politicians, bureaucrats, and subcontractors are transparent, with immutable records immediately subject to open-source monitoring. A representative’s voting record speaks for itself, yet the details of legislation and how policy gets practically implemented are often buried in minutiae. Therefore, citizen subcommittees, supported by Large Language Model (LLM), Machine Learning (ML), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) computer systems, scan official records to detect any hints of fraud, bribery, resource diversion, non-competitive steering, or procurement manipulation.
It is important to remember that in a private law society there are no tax-funded incentives or inducements for distractive pastimes, like sports and entertainment. There is no standing military bureaucracy with liaison outposts to the movie industry, sporting associations, or gaming tournaments. There’s no standing military to provide flyovers, parachute demonstrations, or band performances at various sporting events. There are no disbursements from public treasuries for “bread and circuses” used by public officials to distract the populace. While a variety of sports activities exist, they receive no official support from public officials, financial or otherwise. Instead, polities are, by charter, limited to only subsidizing activities that help organize, arm, and discipline the militia to perform necessary security and law enforcement functions, as detailed in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15 of the United States Constitution.
Therefore, citizens are highly civic-minded, practiced in the principles of discernment regarding policy, and oriented toward the administration of local self-government. While one’s militia unit is the most prominent aspect of civic and political life, other constituent-staffed activities and committees handle a variety of administrative functions. Second to the militia, grand juries are the most important vehicle for criminal investigations and law enforcement in a property-centered legal order.
Grand juries receive complaints, subpoena evidence, call witnesses, hear testimony, and issue indictments on all matters of public officer misconduct, independently of any “official” prosecutor or bureaucratic court system. Most grand jury proceedings occur in cryptographically secure online spaces and are not reliant upon state-furnished workspaces or facilitators.
While all able-bodied citizens are, in principle, obliged to perpetually serve their local militia as a condition of membership in a political community, service on a grand jury is limited to specific periods of time. Further, militia service is overt and nearly universal, yet grand jury participation is largely confidential and randomly selected to prevent any interference with the proceedings. Like other public officials, grand jury members are required to maintain militia proficiency during their periods of empanelment but are excused from law enforcement activities.
Grand juries issue orders to the militia for gathering records and witnesses, or to make arrests. In this way, the grand jury guides the militia toward addressing legitimate legal concerns but, since they face liability for any unlawful harms committed in the act investigation or enforcement, militia members create a check on the power of the grand jury and ensure a due process of law in all cases under their jurisdiction.
The combined efforts of subcommittee monitoring, grand jury indictments, and militia enforcement dissuade public officer misconduct, leading to the “frugal government” described in Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address. That is, decentralized popular constitutionalism and civic engagement, channeled into specific institutions for enforcing a common law oriented on private property, prevent public officers from perverting the mechanisms of security and justice into instruments of predation and plunder.
Wither Crime and Corruption
Having sketched key aspects of economics, society, law enforcement, and governmental institutions under a private property-centered legal order, solutions to Jeffrey Epstein’s adjudicated and alleged crimes become clear.
In 2008, Epstein pled guilty to two Florida state charges, felony solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors to engage in prostitution, in a highly controversial agreement that allowed him to evade federal sex trafficking charges. Victims and investigators have long alleged that Epstein ran a “vast network” where underage girls were sexually abused and lent to powerful business executives, politicians, and world leaders for illicit purposes.
Under a private property legal framework, such a state-orchestrated “sweetheart deal” would never have been brokered. Epstein’s evasion of justice occurred through the fundamental error of allowing state attorneys and federal prosecutors to conclude such an easy arrangement and end the investigation into what later turned out to be a vast conspiracy with geopolitical implications.
In a private property legal order, as outlined above, parents, guardians, and victim advocates seek restitution on behalf of children through common law courts and only settle when an adequate compensation plan is reached, up to and including corporeal punishment, depending on the severity of the crimes. Tax-funded bureaucrats do not get to decide on behalf of individual citizens what cases get settled, dropped, or prosecuted. Nor do public officials hold privileged access to relevant evidence. Information discovered by grand jury investigations and other legal proceedings becomes subject to public examination. This then opens the field for market-based justice actions.
Profit-motivated attorneys are incentivized to vigorously advocate on behalf of crime victims and seek the maximum restitution package based on precedent and custom. Further, private attorneys are driven to expand their client base of victims and implicate the widest field of criminal co-conspirators to hold liable. Simultaneously, grand juries and militia, working on behalf of each political entity in the federation, would have conducted inquests on any public officials involved under their jurisdiction. Thus, numerous investigations, public and private, acting independently and in concert, would have probed Jeffrey Epstein’s activities to reveal the fullest possible tapestry of facilitators, clients, and victims.
The Culture of Accountability
Ultimately, a private property legal order depends upon the values of the people composing that society and their willingness to assert self-government through continual action. Sustainable social justice requires continued popular participation in the necessary institutions of vigilance committees, grand juries, and, especially, the militia. Leaving these crucial functions in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats, affording them a near monopoly on justice and security functions, is a path to ruination.
The United States could operate as an organic, voluntary, and decentralized federation of independent republics with the most local polities retaining the preponderance of authority. There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits this type of operational practice, and, in fact, the member states could, as Madison described in Federalist 45, assert their “indefinite” powers over the “few and defined” of the general government at any time. However, the multifarious reasons why the member states of the federation do not rein in the out-of-control regime in Washington D.C. stem from more than just a lack of popular will. Everyone knows there are problems but lack clarity about what to do. To effectuate positive change, dissatisfaction with the status quo must be channeled into constructive reforms, and that first requires discernment as to what constitutes right action.
Right action is that which promotes a social and legal order that protects private property through the enforcement of two fundamental laws: Do all you have agreed to do and do not encroach upon other people or their property. These two laws encourage discernment by providing clear, intersubjectively ascertainable boundaries for the legitimate application of force. Property boundaries, beginning with the human body and culturally appropriate buffer zones, are physical demarcations for applying, as Lysander Spooner, cited above, termed the science of justice, or the science of mine versus thine.
Violations of property, also known as crimes, or contracts to exchange property, also known as breaches, are the only justifiably enforceable claims in a private law society. All other assertions of rights must be rejected, particularly by those involved in the enforcement, lest they face liability. There can be no special interest group rights (minorities, inanimate objects, abstractions, irrational actors (non-humans), forces of nature, etc.). All rights are rooted in property titles, and all law is orchestrated toward maintaining the integrity of, or arranging restitution for, violations of legitimately held property claims.
Passing strict laws is meaningless unless people uphold them. There can never be enough paid law enforcement officers to overcome a depraved population. That politics is downstream from culture, and that institutions only reflect prevailing social attitudes, is an inescapable fact that is especially true for a private law society.
The present description of how a private property legal order could function as a federation of republics under a constitutional framework, like the United States, assumes that the people are sufficiently civic minded to staff the key institutions, namely grand juries and militia.
There are ways, as outlined above, to align financial and psychological incentives to encourage participation in these organizations that are “necessary” for securing a Free State. Yet, there is much more to be explored on how to make the arrangement sustainable, resistant to the Iron Law of Oligarchy or other forms of centralization.
Another issue for future research is how a private law society can overcome the atrophy of security consciousness over time. The adage that “hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times” speaks to observable sociological phenomenon and theories of generational cycles. The tremendous prosperity made possible through a private law society’s productivity makes the population susceptible to indulgence and lethargy.
Having the militia act as a training center for not only teaching “when” the use of force is legitimate, through studies in history, law and political economy, but also “how” to apply force through technical and tactical means, is essential to both inculcating and integrating a disciplined population, with a shared baseline of values, that is capable of self-government.
This discipline is also imperative for instilling the type of self-esteem that prevents elevating public officials to an exclusive status or falling prey to propaganda. Indeed, the militia, both as an educational institution and enforcement mechanism, is vital to keeping all government actors restrained to the limits of their delegated authority.
The Swiss political theorist Karl Ludwig von Haller conceived of a private law arrangement as an “eidgenosse,” or a network of alliances based on oaths. In German, “eid” means oath and “genosse” means companion or comrade. An “eidgenossenschaft” or federation of oath-fellows, implies a voluntary agreement among people with equal legal standing.
Of course, Switzerland is not a utopia, and Swiss history is not free from episodes of injustice and subjugation. Further, political theory always differs from political practice. The map is never the territory, and no plan survives contact with reality.
However, the idea of an “eidgenossenschaft,” an oath-based legal order between equals, precludes any privileges or immunities for the likes of a corruption agent like Jeffrey Epstein. Citizen-based law enforcement and prosecution, without dependence upon tax-funded politicians and bureaucrats, is the key. These necessary institutions already exist in the legacy of Anglo-American jurisprudence and the United States Constitution.
A private law society becomes ever more achievable as people orient on the goal of inviolate property rights, enforceable through two fundamental laws, and activating the legal remedies already available. The necessary substratum for putting rogue officials, along with the insidious racket that Epstein leveraged, is an organized, armed, and disciplined population willing to assert and enforce the principle of equal justice under a common law.