In 1954, Richard Doll and A. Bradford Hill do not release their anti-smoking paper, the evidence is buried and the link is never found.
People never find out smoking is dangerous, and it continues to be pushed as a medicine, how does this affect everything else from this point forward?

Infrastructure Career Pathway: A Comprehensive Guide

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Email: info@hiraedu. com The infrastructure career pathway is a rewarding and challenging journey that requires a strong foundation in technical skills, certifications, and experience. In this blog, we will outline the various stages of the infrastructure career pathway, the necessary CompTIA certifications, alternative paths, study resources, tips, and suggestions to help you succeed.
Stage 1: Help Desk Technician CompTIA Certification: CompTIA A+ Alternative Path: None Study Resources: CompTIA A+ study guide, online courses, practice exams Tips and Suggestions: Focus on building a strong foundation in hardware, software, and networking fundamentals.
Stage 2: Network Administrator CompTIA Certification: CompTIA Network+ Alternative Path: Cisco CCNA Study Resources: CompTIA Network+ study guide, online courses, practice exams, Cisco CCNA study materials Tips and Suggestions: Develop a deep understanding of networking protocols, routers, switches, and network architecture.
Stage 3: System Administrator CompTIA Certification: CompTIA Server+ Alternative Path: Microsoft MCSA Study Resources: CompTIA Server+ study guide, online courses, practice exams, Microsoft MCSA study materials Tips and Suggestions: Focus on building expertise in server management, virtualization, and cloud computing.
Stage 4: Cloud Engineer CompTIA Certification: CompTIA Cloud+ Alternative Path: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Study Resources: CompTIA Cloud+ study guide, online courses, practice exams, AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner study materials Tips and Suggestions: Develop a strong understanding of cloud computing platforms, migration, and security.
Stage 5: DevOps Engineer CompTIA Certification: CompTIA DevOps Foundation Alternative Path: Certified DevOps Engineer (CDE) Study Resources: CompTIA DevOps Foundation study guide, online courses, practice exams, CDE study materials Tips and Suggestions: Focus on building expertise in DevOps practices, agile methodologies, and automation tools.
Stage 6: IT Project Manager CompTIA Certification: CompTIA Project+ Alternative Path: PMP Certification Study Resources: CompTIA Project+ study guide, online courses, practice exams, PMP study materials Tips and Suggestions: Develop a strong understanding of project management principles, agile methodologies, and leadership skills.
Stage 7: Infrastructure Architect CompTIA Certification: CompTIA Cloud Essentials Alternative Path: VMware VCP-DCV Study Resources: CompTIA Cloud Essentials study guide, online courses, practice exams, VMware VCP-DCV study materials Tips and Suggestions: Focus on building expertise in cloud computing, virtualization, and data center management.
Stage 8: Cybersecurity Specialist CompTIA Certification: CompTIA Security+ Alternative Path: CompTIA PenTest+ Study Resources: CompTIA Security+ study guide, online courses, practice exams, CompTIA PenTest+ study materials Tips and Suggestions: Develop a strong understanding of security principles, risk management, and penetration testing.
Stage 9: Data Center Manager CompTIA Certification: CompTIA Data Center Virtualization Alternative Path: VMware VCIX-NV Study Resources: CompTIA Data Center Virtualization study guide, online courses, practice exams, VMware VCIX-NV study materials Tips and Suggestions: Focus on building expertise in data center management, virtualization, and cloud computing.
Stage 10: Chief Technology Officer (CTO) CompTIA Certification: None Alternative Path: None Study Resources: Industry reports, research papers, leadership courses Tips and Suggestions: Develop a strong understanding of business strategy, leadership, and innovation.
The infrastructure career pathway requires a combination of technical skills, certifications, and experience. By following this guide, you can navigate each stage with confidence and achieve success in your infrastructure career. Remember to always keep learning, stay up-to-date with industry trends, and seek mentorship from experienced professionals.

Welcome back to my running series of WWF PPV Reviews from a ‘blind’ perspective (I have no idea what’s going to happen; the results, the feuds or how good any of the matches will be). I have always heard stories of the attitude era and golden age but never watched it myself so I set myself to watching every single PPV event chronologically. I am also watching Wrestling Bios ‘reliving the war’ series to keep me updated inbetween the events with the feuds, and to get excited about upcoming matches.
Before I review the matches, based on the past few episodes of raw and last PPVs I’ll let you know, going into the event, which match I’m most excited for and which feud I’m most excited to see.
Is it even a question? Even though I haven’t watched wwf during this era I’ve heard stories of how fantastic Austin vs Bret hart at WM13 is, feud and match wise this is my most hyped match of the night.
WWF Wrestlemania 13 1997 Review
Four way Tag Team Elimination Match 1.75/5
Rocky Maivia vs Sultan 1.75/5
HHH vs Goldust 2.5/5
Vader & Mankind vs Owen Hart & Bulldog 2.5/5
Stone Cold vs Bret Hart 6/5
Nation of Domination vs LOD & Johnson 3/5
Undertaker vs Sycho sid 1.5/5
In the opener of the match I thought it was just an 8 man slug fest will pinfalls to eliminate each person as they all just start beating the sh*t out of each other but then they go back to the usual tag team corners, a little disappointing but let’s see what this match has got.
The godwins are growing on me… just a bit, not very much but a bit; spitting on people, dancin around like mad men they’re an okay watch from time to time I won’t lie. What happened to lafon and furnas in this match though? Did they just disappear? It felt like a blink and you’ll miss it I swear they didn’t even get in the match but maybe I’m crazy. In terms of an opener with tag teams this was an okay match it wasn’t anything special but it did its job. The headbangers did some cool aerial moves, trying to prove themselves was good to see but not too much to say. It was a little messy with teams literally eliminating themselves, but nothing botched.
It feels like there’s been next to no build up to this sultan rocky match, it was just thrown together as, in terms of main attractions, the wwf was still pretty thin.
The match gets going and rocky is firing on all four cylinders tonight, he’s improved extremely quickly from his first match, show boating, over hyping the smallest of moves he’s getting exciting to watch. The same however can’t really be said about sultan, as soon as he gets control the match really slows down and gets pretty boring (holding a chin lock for all eternity). Rock gets back in control and here we go, he’s really feeling it tonight and his moves are looking really clean, especially his punch exchanges. This match wasn’t really anything too special but it’s great to see Rocky starting to warm up in the WWF. Sultan and sheik assault Rocky after the match and oh my god the splash from the top rope looked so painful for Rocky 💀. Then Rocky’s dad comes out to help and we get a great crowed pop after rock and his dad both slam the iron sheik, this was actually a really cool moment; father and son in the ring. The crowd still isn’t behind Rocky all that much yet still, which is kinda surprising as his wrestling is good to watch but I suppose his character itself is a little bland.
Chyna and HHH come to the ring and the camera pans to a couple of fans signs “HHH + CHYNA WHO HAS THE WILLY” which were f***ing hilarious, the public is always on point. It’s also insane how massive Chyna is here, she actually looks bigger than triple H. You would not wanna walk past her down a dark alley.
Goldust and HHH actually had a really good match, everything they did looked really clean, it was fast paced, good wrestling shown and an okay feud to fuel the fire between them. This is the best I’ve seen Goldust in a while and HHH is really building his repertoire of moves up; They had some great chemistry as well and the crowd starts getting into the match towards the end, a stark contrast to previous events where it would almost be silence until the main event. The match ends with marlena being shoved into Chyna and being literally tossed around like a rag doll I’m surprised her head didn’t come off, triple H hits a pedigree and it’s 1 2 3 goodnight Goldust. There wasn’t anything crazy but I enjoyed watching this match, well paced, good physical moments including Goldust going face first from the top rope into the side of the ring which looked really good.
Mankind and Vader REALLY work as a concept for a team in the WWF during this era for me, very intimidating but also two great entertaining wrestlers. Mix them with Owen hart and bulldog and you’ve got a great match on your hands… right? Well turns out maybe not. The two teams didn’t particularly click well as they were both heel teams with no baby face. This being said they still put on a good show (my god bulldog is incredibly strong to hold mankind up like he did and then do the same to Vader!?) but it wasn’t anywhere near as good as it should’ve been on paper. That finish as well? Why… I don’t know why they’d book that finish in a wrestlemania event, a double count out? 😴. I still think it had its good moments and I did enjoy watching it but like I say it wasn’t nearly as good as it should’ve been.
Now… I’ve heard so much about this match with stone cold and Bret hart at WM13, so I did have high expectations going in, and with a fantastic build up, an iconic series of promos from either side I was hyped I was ready willing and able to sit back and enjoy whatever I was about to see.
I gotta say it exceeded every single expectation I had. The crowd from the first punch to the end submission was absolutely electric, they ate up every single second of this match and I can’t blame them it was awesome!!! This is now in my top 5 matches of all time, maybe even top 3, it had everything I could’ve asked for. No interference from anyone else no weird ending no stupid sh*t going on just two legends having a full on war at the biggest wrestling event of the year. I also love how Austin never tapped and literally passed out from the pain which was a really good booking choice to keep his character still looking really strong. We had blood we had chairs we had ring bells and fighting in the crowd I’m gushing about this match. It was perfectly paced as well even when it ‘slowed down’ it was entertaining. Some iconic images of stone cold in the shooting star press, face covered in blood. Absolutely flawless match and the best match I’ve seen so far in this era. The crowd ends up backing Steve Austin for his efforts and because Bret decided to continue the assault after the bell, finally hearing that deafening ‘Austin’ chant throughout the stadium was really cool. I can’t say enough, if you haven’t seen this match go and watch it right this second you’re in for a massive treat. And this match gets its own 6/5 rating which I think I’ll introduce for matches that are all time legendary matches, in my opinion, and they aren’t gunna come out often but I have to, the whole thing was simply in its own league. WOWOW!
I’m just finding it hard to put into words how entertaining this was I was glued to the screen. A brutal submission when Bret Hart is pulling Steve’s leg off almost outside the ring and Steve is in the ring had me wincing. Also Austin’s selling, and his hype between shots shouting at Bret and giving him the double trouble with his hands it’s all just so iconic, this match must truly have cemented Austin as a main eventer going forward.
This whole match just screamed Attitude era style match and I seriously believe this must have been extremely influential on the wwf going into the coming years. Having seen Austin’s matches in the future I have to say this has got to be one of if not his best technical wrestling match of all time, I can see both wrestlers being even bigger stars after this match it was that good. Top 3 all time favourite matches, wow, well done to both of them for this. Experiencing this for the first time was magical I can’t imagine watching it live or being there, I’m very jealous. It’s currently a Monday evening and I was shouting and on my feet and as I write this I’m pacing back and forth with glee. I’m gunna have to take a break before the next match 😂.
It’s a shame that hart vs Austin wasn’t the main event because there’s absolutely no way anyone could upstage up to the match we’ve just seen, but I’ll try to go into the next couple of matches not comparing it to the previous one.
The LOD vs NOD match was absolute chaos I was literally laughing because it was so fun to watch, I had no clue what was going on there was so much to look at and once again this was another attitude era style match. It was pretty entertaining. It felt a little experimental and I would’ve liked to have seen at least a little bit of wrestling but during the whole bout there was maybe 3 or 4 moves that weren’t hitting each other with trash cans, literally hanging each other with nooses, freezing with fire extinguisher it was nuts.
We’re really feeling the influence of ECW in this match and it was great to hear the crowd so alive and enjoying it, they were probably riding the high of the legendary match we’d just seen as well as me. This was the first time seeing LOD for me and it was great, the reminded me of the Dudley boyz which are my second favourite tag team of all time. But seeing weapons finally introduced into the wwf was amazing and I’m super excited to see future brawls I think this is all taking a huge leap in the right direction for making mid card matches more enjoyable. Post match LOD hits a double flying closeline and on two NOD members and it was a decently booked bout. Not the best but good fun.
Shawn Michaels makes his way to the ring and like him or not it’s always great to see Shawn at wrestlemania, and here we go I’m ready for a great main event, obviously knowing the streak I know the outcome but I’m excited to see what the two monsters of the WWF can do in the ring. Side note, it’s really cool seeing undertaker come to the ring in his vintage attire.
Bret hart comes to the ring just as the match is about to get underway to fully engage with his heel turn in the WWF and I think it felt… a little bit out of place but he gets hit with a power-bomb to the applause of the audience which was pretty satisfying. Let’s get into this massive main event match, and oh boy… the main event.
I was majorly disappointed at this main event especially after the matches we’d just seen it just did not hit at all for me. It never felt like it really got going even in the last part with undertaker kicking out of a tombstone piledriver to a big crowd pop… it just didn’t feel like a main event.
Dont get me wrong Sid’s character is cool and he plays it well but he just cannot perform on the big stage with the big players of the business. I don’t know how you can book such a perfect match like Bret and Austin and then have this as the main event. Bret shouldn’t have interfered either the undertaker did not need it at all. The coolest part of this match was the undertakers iconic celebration afterwards. Please don’t let Sid main event again, he had a great push and was fun to watch but he just can’t do these matches when the time calls for something of this magnitude. Very disappointing, very slow match, and I won’t lie probably the worst main event I’ve seen on my journey through this era. I also looked it up and apparently sid literally sh*t his pants during this match? I’d love to know if that’s true or not. But yeah that’s all I really have to say about this one, not much happened and there was an extremely tedious segment in the middle of the match where sid was going to the second ring rope and dropping a double fist on undertaker which seemed to go on for so long and it was just boring.
Overall the event was pretty decent but the main event really let it down. I won’t let that sour how amazing Bret vs Austin was though, they truly carried this event and elevated it majorly and it’s worth watching even if just for that one match. I enjoyed most of the mid card alongside that as well but with all the build up to such a let down, actually think the main event was the worst match of the night, and that’s coming from a massive undertaker fan.
Overall rating 3.25/5

To my defense, the syllabus initially said open book. We’re allowed one cheat sheet. The class is Admin law. I have been studying profusely since I realized this last night. (been 12 hours). I am basically up to around unfair methods of competition & ALJ and rule adjudication wrinkle. (still have hard look review, notice & comment rulemaking, rulemaking exceptions, hoctor and interpretive rules, judicial review, CHEVRON, Major Questions Doctrine, appointment & removal left to go over). Any suggestions? (I have my outline done, but it’s 130 pages & I lost so much time doing it, that I didn’t even get to actually study the content.) Anyways. i’m freaking out & can really use some advice. Any suggestions for my one cheat sheet 3x11 paper? it can be double sided. Or any examples of cheat sheets for admin? Goodluck to those that have finals today & stressed like me! sending light✨

Simulation theory is a philosophical concept that suggests reality as we perceive it might be a simulated or artificial construct rather than an objective, independent existence. Proponents argue that advanced civilizations could create realistic simulations, and if such simulations are numerous, the odds are that we are living in one. It's a thought experiment rather than a scientifically proven theory.
Simulation theory posits that our reality may be akin to a computer-generated simulation rather than an independently existing, fundamental reality. This idea stems from the possibility that technologically advanced civilizations could create highly realistic simulations populated with conscious entities. If such simulations outnumber actual realities, the likelihood of being in a simulated existence increases. However, it's crucial to note that this is speculative and lacks empirical evidence. It's more of a philosophical concept than a scientific theory at this point.
The concept of a simulated reality has roots in philosophical and scientific discussions over time, but the modern articulation of simulation theory is often credited to philosopher Nick Bostrom. In 2003, Bostrom presented a paper titled "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" where he formulated the simulation argument, outlining the idea that advanced civilizations could create ancestor simulations, and the likelihood of us living in one of these simulations. While Bostrom popularized the contemporary discussion on simulation theory, it's essential to acknowledge that similar ideas have appeared in various forms throughout history.
Philip K. Dick, a science fiction writer, explored themes related to reality, identity, and the nature of existence in many of his works. While he didn't explicitly propose simulation theory, some of his writings, such as "Ubik" and "A Maze of Death," delved into the blurring boundaries between reality and illusion. Dick's stories often questioned the nature of perception and the subjective experience of reality, influencing discussions on topics that align with aspects of simulation theory. While not a proponent of the formal simulation theory, Dick's ideas have contributed to the broader exploration of reality in science fiction literature.
Philip K. Dick's works frequently explore the concept of alternate realities, simulated environments, and the fragility of perceived truths. In novels like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (the basis for the film "Blade Runner"), he delves into the nature of consciousness and the artificial creation of beings that question the boundaries of humanity.
Dick's narratives often involve characters experiencing a shifting, uncertain reality, prompting readers to question the nature of their own existence. While not explicitly framing his stories within a simulation theory context, Dick's exploration of these themes has influenced the broader cultural conversation about reality, perception, and the potential for simulated experiences.
Several other writers have explored themes related to simulated realities, alternate dimensions, and the nature of existence. Some notable examples include:

1. Arthur C. Clarke: In his "Odyssey" series, particularly "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke touches on themes of extraterrestrial influence and the evolution of human consciousness, hinting at the possibility of a higher intelligence shaping human experiences.
   
2. William Gibson: As a pioneer in cyberpunk literature, Gibson's works like "Neuromancer" and "Virtual Light" delve into virtual realities, cyberspace, and the blending of human consciousness with technology.
   
3. Stanisław Lem: The Polish science fiction writer explored philosophical and existential questions in works like "Solaris," where the nature of reality is profoundly questioned in the context of an alien planet.
   
4. Isaac Asimov: While best known for his contributions to robotics and artificial intelligence, Asimov's stories often touch on the impact of advanced technology on human perception and reality.
   
5. Greg Egan: A contemporary science fiction writer, Egan's works such as "Permutation City" and "Diaspora" explicitly engage with ideas related to simulated realities, consciousness, and the nature of existence.
   

These authors, among others, have contributed to the rich exploration of these themes in science fiction literature. Each brings a unique perspective to the question of what it means to exist and the potential complexities of reality.

1. Neal Stephenson: In "Snow Crash," Stephenson blends cyberpunk elements with a virtual reality metaverse, exploring the implications of a digital realm on society and identity.
   
2. H.P. Lovecraft: While primarily known for cosmic horror, Lovecraft's stories often involve encounters with incomprehensible entities and dimensions that challenge the sanity of those who perceive them, hinting at the fragility of human understanding.
   
3. Douglas Adams: In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, Adams uses humor and absurdity to comment on the arbitrary and chaotic nature of the universe, prompting readers to question the reliability of their perceptions.
   
4. Greg Bear: In "Queen of Angels," Bear explores the intersection of neuroscience and virtual reality, raising questions about the malleability of consciousness and the potential for constructed realities.
   
5. Rudy Rucker: A mathematician and science fiction author, Rucker's "Ware Tetralogy" delves into the world of artificial intelligence, uploaded consciousness, and the blurring of boundaries between the physical and digital realms.
   

These writers have made significant contributions to the exploration of reality, consciousness, and simulated experiences within the realm of speculative fiction. Their diverse perspectives and imaginative storytelling continue to influence discussions about the nature of existence and the possibilities of alternate realities.

Sam the Sandown Clown is a mysterious entity witnessed by 2 children on the Isle of Wight in May 1973, the links below provide more detailed information, but the summary is simple: the children met a bizarre clown-entity who claimed to be All Colors Sam and they even spoke to him for quite some time, the entity's strange apperance and behavior stand out among humanoid sightings, he or any other being like him were never seen again, it's a case that deserves to be discussed once again.
https://theghostinmymachine.com/2022/05/30/encyclopaedia-of-the-impossible-sam-the-sandown-clown/
https://www.paranormalcatalog.net/ufos/sam-the-sandown-clown
https://obscurban-legend.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sandown_Clown
https://www.curiousarchive.com/sam-the-sandown-clown-alien-man-in-black-or-folie-a-deux/
https://thommquackenbush.com/20210329-clown.php
https://bufora.org.uk/documents/BUFORAJournalVolume6No.5JanFeb1978.pd
Let's start with the appearance of the entity, he was very tall but not inhumanly so, his skin was paper-like and the colorful face and and the few digits on his hands and feet are very odd and it's to hard say if they were part of his face or it was part of a mask or helmet, his behavior is very strange but the children were able to communicate with him anyway.
He was a little clumsy and didn't write the sentence in the correct order, but he wasn't hostile and feared people, he also stopped the loud sound when he noticed the kids were scared, he was evasise to their questions and it stands out how he didn't wish to neither help nor harm the kids or other humans, he didn't seem to have many plans besides eating berries in a way that is too strange to make sense.
Keep in mind he's only called a clown because that's what he reminded the children of, but his similarity to a clown is rather superficial and his description vaguely reminds me of a doll too, we don't even know what was his real name as he said he wasn't actually named Sam, making me think he was actually calling the children Sam and his name really was simply All Colors.
His house and the machine he used to speak are a little unusual but nothing that couldn't exist in the early 70s when he was sighted, he said he had another base in the mainland but I'm unsure if he meant Great Britain or mainland Europe, it's also easy to miss the detail he said there were others like him, but none of them were ever sighted.
The remaining question is who or what was Sam? He could have been a lie made up by the children or perhaps a shared hallucination, he could have been somebody playing a prank on the kids or perhaps an abuser preying on them, but then we would have to wonder why he never tried to harm them when they were alone, another possibility is that he was a mentally ill hermit wearing a very unusual costume and that could explain his weird behavior and looks.
If he was a supernatural being, it stands to question what exacly he was, he vehemently denied being a ghost and I believe this is true, if we picture a ghost as a dead human I cannot think of any person acting so strange, still he claims to be kind of like a ghost in an odd sort of way, making me think he meant he was a supernatural being while not revealing what he truly was exactly.
It's been suggested he was an alien and his house was really an UFO, it could be true, but it was never seen flying despite having disappeared later, I've read suggestions he was a robot, if that is true, he was certainly not from Earth, because even over 50 years later we cannot build robots that look and act like him.
For some reason he reminds me somewhat of older accounts of fairy encounters, it makes me wonder if the kids didn't step into another reality by accident, or maybe it was Sam who stepped into our reality by accident and left later, of course there is no proof there is any truth to this sighting, but it's so unique and vaguely disturbing it's worthy of being remembered, for the children could have truly met something that wasn't quite human. Let's just be glad he didn't have a red balloon with him.

(Repost from HousingUK)
TLDR: I own a share if freehold flat and the other freeholder lives abroad, is incapacitated and has no next of kin, just a legal representative appointed by a government organisation in the country she lives in. I need to sell my flat and extend the lease but two years in I have got nowhere in getting the deeds signed. What can I do?
Hi Housing UK readers,
I wanted to see if you had any fresh ideas on how to approach this situation I find myself in.
I purchased a flat in 2011. The flat is one of two in a Victorian conversion. Both flats are self-contained.
I am the sole registered leasehold proprietor of flat B and have been living in the flat since 2011.
Miss X is the sole registered leasehold proprietor of flat A, and has owned the flat since 2001. The flat is being rented as Miss X retired abroad in 2006.
Miss X and I also both own a share of the freehold, which is split 50/50.
I’m in contact with Miss X for a few years after I buy, but all admin relating to building management is dealt with by her estate agents and she defers any discussions to them.
Fast forward to September 2022. I need to sell my flat as I want to move to a different city, and have some debt I need to pay off. The flat is listed for sale in late October 2022.
There are 84 years left on the lease for both myself and Miss X. I reach out to Miss X to inform her of my plans and that I will need her signature for the various deeds, and that we should extend the lease. The email bounces back and her phone line is disconnected.
I contact the estate agents who manage flat A. They have also not heard from Miss X for a while, I can tell they know more, but they are unwilling to share any details. In a tactical move, I list my flat for sale with them too, to try and get their help with Miss X (a whole other hilarious side story). I am repeatedly assured by them that the situation with Miss X will not hinder the sale of the flat (a huge lie).
March 2023 I finally find some buyers (with another agent) and start the conveyancing process, including extending the lease and transferring the freehold.
May 2023. After chasing Miss X’s estate agents for weeks, I discover that Miss X is now incapacitated and hospitalised with dementia. Miss X has no partner or children, no next of kin and no legal representation in the UK. She is under the care of a government agency in the European country she resides in. A lawyer employed by the agency, let’s call him SP, has been appointed as her legal representative and is in contact with the UK estate agents. SP sends documents to verify his status to the agents, who confirm legitimacy via their lawyers. SP is very hard to reach, rarely answers emails or his phone.
I find a solicitor specialised in property law to help me navigate this situation. As Miss X is not deemed “absent”, the solicitor suggests that it’s best to try and resolve this with the appointed legal representative (SP), as any other legal routes available for absentee freeholders through UK courts wouldn’t apply (as we know where Miss X is). I explain the situation to SP, he talks to a judge and informs me he lacks capacity to make decisions about the leasehold and freehold matters without court / judicial approval in his country.
SP also asks for help with gaining access to Miss X’s UK bank account. All rental income from her flat in the UK is being transferred to a UK bank account via the estate agents. I share information on obtaining power of attorney in the UK and suggest it would be best to appoint a lawyer in the UK to help with all matters.
November 2023. After several months of backwards and forwards with SP to try and find out exactly what legal documents the judge wants to see in court, under his guidance my solicitor produces papers, documents and evidence, we get them translated, postilled and posted. SP is confident the judge will be happy and grant permission for signatures.
The documents make it clear that the authority being sought for SP to sign the leasehold extension and transfer of freehold are in no way prejudicial to Miss X and in fact extending the lease would add value to her property should she decide to sell in future.
A court date is set 3 months later. Sigh. More waiting.
I lose my buyers (understandably).
February 2024. The court date arrives. The judge rejects the request for permission for SP to sign papers on behalf of Miss X. It’s not fully clear why this is rejected. After speaking to SP it seems that the judge now wants SP to obtain access to Miss X’s bank account before moving forward. I am surprised that no progress has been made with that.
I go back to my solicitor. Now that we can show that steps have been taken to locate Miss X and get the deeds signed by her legal deputy without recourse, they suggest that we can apply to court in the UK to have another trustee appointed to sign the transfer and deed, and suggests appointing counsel to make the application to UK courts, which should be “run of the mill”. We choose a barrister, the situation is explained, documents shared, and I’m given a 3 week timeframe for papers to be produced for court.
In the meantime we connect SP to a solicitor in the UK who can help with obtaining PoA, as no progress has been made with that yet.
A few days later the barrister gets in touch, more bad news.
Under TLATA, there would be a breach of trust if all required consent from the current trustees was not obtained, so it is not sufficient to just add another trustee, Miss X would need to be replaced as outlined in the Trustee Act 36(1). However under the Trustee Act 36(9), where a trustee lacks the ability to perform their function, no new trustee can be appointed without consent from the Court of Protection. I am informed that making this application to the CoP is lengthy, costly and risky. The barrister says it would be faster and safer to wait for SP to obtain the relevant permissions.
We reach out to SP again to see what progress has been made. None. Some documents need to be translated and he is unwilling to pay for the translations (it seems their organisation has no money). We offer to pay now and be reimbursed once access to Miss X’s money is granted.
We are now almost half way through 2024 and coming up to 2 years into this situation.
Is it really possible that legally these are my only two options?

• going to the UK courts at great expense in a process that has been called “risky and lengthy” by the barrister.
• Waiting for SP to sort out PoA with no guarantee that the judge will even grant permission for the deeds to be signed (again risky and lengthy)

I know I can try and sell my flat without the share if freehold and with a short lease, but this will affect its value and the short lease especially will be a problem with mortgage applications.
Any different ideas on how to approach this? Seems so absurd that currently I can’t sell something that is mine, due to a situation I didn’t create!
There are many more twists and turns to this story but I have left them out as this is long enough. Also I do not have a legal background or am a housing expert so apologies if some of the language I use is incorrect.
Thanks for reading!

TLDR: I own a share if freehold flat and the other freeholder lives abroad, is incapacitated and has no next of kin, just a legal representative appointed by a government organisation in the country she lives in. I need to sell my flat and extend the lease but two years in I have got nowhere in getting the deeds signed. What can I do?
Hi Housing UK readers,
I wanted to see if you had any fresh ideas on how to approach this situation I find myself in.
I purchased a flat in 2011. The flat is one of two in a Victorian conversion. Both flats are self-contained.
I am the sole registered leasehold proprietor of flat B and have been living in the flat since 2011.
Miss X is the sole registered leasehold proprietor of flat A, and has owned the flat since 2001. The flat is being rented as Miss X retired abroad in 2006.
Miss X and I also both own a share of the freehold, which is split 50/50.
I’m in contact with Miss X for a few years after I buy, but all admin relating to building management is dealt with by her estate agents and she defers any discussions to them.
Fast forward to September 2022. I need to sell my flat as I want to move to a different city, and have some debt I need to pay off. The flat is listed for sale in late October 2022.
There are 84 years left on the lease for both myself and Miss X. I reach out to Miss X to inform her of my plans and that I will need her signature for the various deeds, and that we should extend the lease. The email bounces back and her phone line is disconnected.
I contact the estate agents who manage flat A. They have also not heard from Miss X for a while, I can tell they know more, but they are unwilling to share any details. In a tactical move, I list my flat for sale with them too, to try and get their help with Miss X (a whole other hilarious side story). I am repeatedly assured by them that the situation with Miss X will not hinder the sale of the flat (a huge lie).
March 2023 I finally find some buyers (with another agent) and start the conveyancing process, including extending the lease and transferring the freehold.
May 2023. After chasing Miss X’s estate agents for weeks, I discover that Miss X is now incapacitated and hospitalised with dementia. Miss X has no partner or children, no next of kin and no legal representation in the UK. She is under the care of a government agency in the European country she resides in. A lawyer employed by the agency, let’s call him SP, has been appointed as her legal representative and is in contact with the UK estate agents. SP sends documents to verify his status to the agents, who confirm legitimacy via their lawyers. SP is very hard to reach, rarely answers emails or his phone.
I find a solicitor specialised in property law to help me navigate this situation. As Miss X is not deemed “absent”, the solicitor suggests that it’s best to try and resolve this with the appointed legal representative (SP), as any other legal routes available for absentee freeholders through UK courts wouldn’t apply (as we know where Miss X is). I explain the situation to SP, he talks to a judge and informs me he lacks capacity to make decisions about the leasehold and freehold matters without court / judicial approval in his country.
SP also asks for help with gaining access to Miss X’s UK bank account. All rental income from her flat in the UK is being transferred to a UK bank account via the estate agents. I share information on obtaining power of attorney in the UK and suggest it would be best to appoint a lawyer in the UK to help with all matters.
November 2023. After several months of backwards and forwards with SP to try and find out exactly what legal documents the judge wants to see in court, under his guidance my solicitor produces papers, documents and evidence, we get them translated, postilled and posted. SP is confident the judge will be happy and grant permission for signatures.
The documents make it clear that the authority being sought for SP to sign the leasehold extension and transfer of freehold are in no way prejudicial to Miss X and in fact extending the lease would add value to her property should she decide to sell in future.
A court date is set 3 months later. Sigh. More waiting.
I lose my buyers (understandably).
February 2024. The court date arrives. The judge rejects the request for permission for SP to sign papers on behalf of Miss X. It’s not fully clear why this is rejected. After speaking to SP it seems that the judge now wants SP to obtain access to Miss X’s bank account before moving forward. I am surprised that no progress has been made with that.
I go back to my solicitor. Now that we can show that steps have been taken to locate Miss X and get the deeds signed by her legal deputy without recourse, they suggest that we can apply to court in the UK to have another trustee appointed to sign the transfer and deed, and suggests appointing counsel to make the application to UK courts, which should be “run of the mill”. We choose a barrister, the situation is explained, documents shared, and I’m given a 3 week timeframe for papers to be produced for court.
In the meantime we connect SP to a solicitor in the UK who can help with obtaining PoA, as no progress has been made with that yet.
A few days later the barrister gets in touch, more bad news.
Under TLATA, there would be a breach of trust if all required consent from the current trustees was not obtained, so it is not sufficient to just add another trustee, Miss X would need to be replaced as outlined in the Trustee Act 36(1). However under the Trustee Act 36(9), where a trustee lacks the ability to perform their function, no new trustee can be appointed without consent from the Court of Protection. I am informed that making this application to the CoP is lengthy, costly and risky. The barrister says it would be faster and safer to wait for SP to obtain the relevant permissions.
We reach out to SP again to see what progress has been made. None. Some documents need to be translated and he is unwilling to pay for the translations (it seems their organisation has no money). We offer to pay now and be reimbursed once access to Miss X’s money is granted.
We are now almost half way through 2024 and coming up to 2 years into this situation.
Is it really possible that legally these are my only two options?

• going to the UK courts at great expense in a process that has been called “risky and lengthy” by the barrister.
• Waiting for SP to sort out PoA with no guarantee that the judge will even grant permission for the deeds to be signed (again risky and lengthy)

I know I can try and sell my flat without the share if freehold and with a short lease, but this will affect its value and the short lease especially will be a problem with mortgage applications.
Any different ideas on how to approach this? Seems so absurd to me that currently I can’t sell something that is mine, due to a situation I didn’t create!
There are many more twists and turns to this story but I have left them out as this is long enough. Also I do not have a legal background or am a housing expert so apologies if some of the language I use is incorrect.
Reddit, help!

Tsd Elevate is the best CA Foundation Coaching in Delhi.
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I am taking the July bar in NY. I need to sign up for Barbri or Themis. They are both the same price. I will also sign up for adaptibar and possibly critical pass if I need it up. But, I am debating if I should sign up for Babri or Themis. I know this question has been asked a million times, but am hoping someone can advise me what is best for someone who has been out of law school for the last 8 years.

1. Graduated law school in 2016
   
2. Signed up for Barbri twice. Took maybe 1/4 of it each time and never put really any time into it other than last two weeks. Failed both bar exams. July 24 is the first time I will be taking the bar since 2020.
   
3. I read that Themis’ lecturers are shorter, not as detailed, but give you black letter of the law. Where as if Barbri’s are more detailed. I remember a few Barbri lectures and yes they were very long and detailed. However, I did learn from them. But because of the length of the lectures, I struggled to spend time practicing MBE essays etc. Again I did not leave myself enough time
   
4. I will have 8 weeks to study. I fear because I have been out of school long, not practicing and not studied in years that these topics may take a while to come back. While I don’t want to have to listen to very detailed lectures and read very long outlines, I also don’t want to not be given good enough explanations or taught lectures that I can’t grasp the concept.
   

Based on this, do you advise Themis or Barbri? Hearing that Themis’ lectures are more just summaries of the black letter of the law concerned me because what if I don’t get that area or struggle? Are the themis lectures detailed enough to learn/grasp the topics if I’ve forgotten them? Does Themis include physical textbooks to work through like Barbri. I do better reading and with writing on paper. Also, how prone is Themis to crashing. That’s another concern I keep reading.
I’m happy to supplement Themis or Barbri with adaptibar and anything else. Obviously I would all love shorter lectures and not as detailed lectures but not if it doesn’t really teach you the subject. But I would love to know what’s recommended for people who have been out of school and not practicing for a while
Thanks!

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Complex-Wing7114
I have 2 weeks to get away from my husband
Originally posted to offmychest
Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU
TRIGGER WARNING: controlling behavior, threats, abusive behavior, stalking
Original Post Apr 27, 2024
Throwaway account as my husband and In-laws are follow my main. I, 29 F, have been married to my husband, 30 m, who I'll call Alex. Alex and I met in college during our freshman year. We started off as just friends, and got married seven months ago. I've gotten along with his family, but we aren't super close but we're friendly enough. The problem is that Alex has begun to make me incredibly uncomfortable.
Firstly, he's begun to ask me who I'm meeting with, where, what we plan on doing, how long every single time I leave the house without him. At first, I just thought he was being protective and a good partner just in case something happened, but then he started checking my phone after the visits, vetting and researching each of my friends as well.
He also has been pursuing me to link my bank account to his, as he's "in charge" of the finances when he was perfectly fine with keeping them separate before. We fight about it almost every day.
Finally, yesterday when he was preparing to go on a work trip for two weeks in California, he demanded I wear a tracker so he could keep and eye on me while he's gone. I can't do this anymore, I feel like I'm suffocating and his family who I've spoken to about his worrying behavior just said he's being careful and protective as a good husband should. I need to gather my things together and find a way to be gone before he gets home without tipping him off.
He's always threatened that if he ever found me cheating on him he'd turn in divorce papers the same day. He keeps a filled out copy in his desk. I'm going to submit those the day I leave. But there's so much to do, bergen finding a new place to live, seeing if my job has any transfers available, packing and moving in two weeks. His return flight May 11th, so I need to move quickly. I'm posting here because I don't have any close family, and I can't risk dragging my friends into this as we share the same friends.I just needed a place to vent, and ask if anyone has any advice on the easiest and safest way to do this?
Edit: oh my god you guys are amazing! I never even thought to not use his divorce papers. I'll check for cameras before I start any packing or prepping. I may also shred his divorce papers just in case and look into getting a lawyer for myself. I'm in a no fault divorce state, that much I so remember which will help. I'll update again when I know more. The tracker he wants me to use is a small clip to put on the belt or waistband. I'll wear it unless I'm going or doing something related to me leaving. No pets yet thankfully.
Update Apr 28, 2024
So I've gotten a lot of support and helpful advice along with questions I thought I should clarify before I proceed with the update. Some asked why I'd be 'hiding' things from Alex regarding going out and who I'm meeting with. I don't, and I have nothing to hide. However when he begins to then double check everything I tell him with the other people there right down to each person I talked to and what I said. Did I send any text msgs, did I order food, how much did I eat, that's when it started to feel like I was slowly being pushed into a corner. It didn't start that bad, but gradually grew worse overtime.
All of the Reddit subs my in-law's families are part of are related gardening and diy so I highly doubt they'll see this, if so by the time they do, I'll hopefully be gone. I talked to my job and explained things to my manager. And they promised to look into openings in other states to see if they could get me into one. They'll have an update on that in three days. I trust that my bank account us secured, considering he's tried to get into it before and failed. I found one camera in the kitchen, another in the living room and one in our bedroom. As such, I've left them in place for now and done all other planning, either in the bathroom pretending I'm taking a bath.
I'm honestly staying away from the domestic violence services as my sister-in-law is unfortunately higher up in those considering she volunteers there and I have a feeling if I did show up there, they would know in a heartbeat. I can't look for apartments until I get the update from my work, but either or i'm still gonna be leaving the state. The day before I do I will be changing my number carrier and wiping my laptop and all of his electronics before I do.
I've met with 2 lawyers so far and had them look over the paperwork. My husband had prepared and both said that it did it have some clauses in it. That could have caused me some trouble down the line. What alarmed all of us close the fact that several of those clauses dealt with future children, and not as a hypothetical. Like several hair suggested I have a feeling he fully intended on getting me pregnant to keep me trapped and tied to him.
There are 3 other locations. My job could send me to and I have. As a precaution Begun looking into all 3 cities and housing in the areas. Just in case one of those, this is the one they send me to. Even if they don't have an opening that they can push me into then I will just have to quit, move and figure things out on my own. I have enough money to live and survive for a few months until I can pick up another job.
Unfortunately all of our friends are mutuals and would likely be unaware of the consequences of saying or sharing anything I do or say with my husband. I don't have any surviving close family and obviously my in laws are not a good resource to rely on. I am on my own unfortunately, other than the wonderful bonds, i've begun to make here. I will update again if I get more information or something else happens. Otherwise all update when my work gets back to me. I do plan on leaving before he returns, though. Just to make sure that i'm not anywhere near here at that time.
Update 2 Apr 30, 2024
Good news! My work has an opening I qualify for that will not only shift me across the country, but also comes with a salary increase as well. I've started telling my in laws and friends that I'm planning a surprise outing for when my husband gets back for just the two of us. This way, people don't give me odd looks if they see me out and about. I've even gone as far as asking MIL to show me his favorite recipes.
Meanwhile, I've found a moving company that while small is willing to work in a storm. The reason is in five days, we're supposed to get hit with a large storm front. I plan to shut off the breaker and say we lost power if he asks just as several people here suggested and even send him a short clip of the storm.
I will have all of my stuff moved that afternoon, and I will be flying out once the weather has cleared enough to do so. I have a lawyer who will push my divorce through, and I've filled out the necessary paperwork so that I don't have to be here for it. I'm not suing for assets or alimony and I've shredded his divorce papers as well. I've set up a cheap payphone plan through cricket until this is all said and done at which point I will find a new carrier, number and phone. This one is being wiped and left behind.
My laptop is provided by my work, and the IT department inspected it thoroughly and it was clean thankfully. No other electronic aside from my laptop and new phone will be coming with me. If alex needs to talk to me, he can do it through my lawyer. Not sure if anything else will happen, my fingers are crossed that he doesn't think anythings amiss until after I leave - and I'm not turning the breaker back on when I do. He can when he gets home. My work is covering the plane ticket, so that at least is one expense I don't have to finagle in.
Update 3 May 7, 2024
Update 3: I have 2 weeks to get away from my husband.
It's been a busy week, but I've gotten so much done. Firstly, I am now out of the house and am currently in a hotel while I look for an apartment. It's a big city, bustling with people no matter where you look. We had a pretty bad storm system hit back home, that actually lasted two days. High winds, thunder, lightning and even hail everywhere. I didn't take much from the house, my documents, clothes and important sentimental items. I left all of the furniture and electronics behind. I cleaned the house top to bottom and took pictures on my phone so he couldn't claim I damaged anything when I left.
My lawyer has already started divorce proceedings, and my husband will be served on the 8th. His plane is due to land early morning, and the sheriff will be there at the house waiting for him. He is very much about public appearances and reputation. My lawyer will be calling him as well to inform him that I am more than willing to air out everything to the public about his actions if it means securing my freedom from him. I will go to court as long as I must to get this pushed through.
I haven't told our friends or his in-laws yet, I will do that while he is on the flight to prevent him from getting wind of it before he's handed the divorce papers. I will be calling around and explaining why we're getting divorced, to try and prevent him from twisting this into somehow being my fault. I don't want him trying to claim I had an affair or something so I want to get the truth out before he can twist this.
I'm... doing okay. I'm tired, but yet I feel almost jittery and off-kilter. I keep looking over my shoulder and monitoring what I say even when I don't really need to anymore. Hopefully that will fade soon. My work is covering the cost of the hotel, and I'm working on getting my other things in order. I also need to find a new GP as I want to get a full test just to make sure everything is okay. I don't know when my next update will be, probably when the divorce papers are filed or if we have to go to court to push them through. I will try to keep my head up, but it feels like I'm in a whirlwind or something with so many things to do and think about. I kinda thought it would be easier once I got out of the house but while the fear is smaller, somehow the number of tasks only seems to have grown.

OOP Has made a new Update after the BoRU posted

Update 4 May 14, 2024
Update 4
Sorry I haven't updated for a while, things got hectic and a bit chaotic honestly. Firstly, I'm working on getting an apartment still and have applications in at three different places and will hopefully hear back from them soon. I'm still going into work here at the new location, so I don't have to worry about burning through my emergency savings completely. I've gotten a lot of emails from Alex, his family and our old friend group asking question after question. I have only sent one return email to Alex, explaining that I don't believe we are truly compatible, and it is best we separate now. That his treatment of me when I'd done nothing to deserve as such was just as much of a deal breaker as cheating was for him.
I ended the email with the statement that I would not be contacting him further and anything else he needed to pass on to me or vice versa would be done through my lawyer. For his family and friends, I just typed up one email outlining everything that had happened and why I left. I told them I wished them no ill will, but that such treatment of his wife and partner was not acceptable. That should Alex get remarried in the future, I wished they would help support both partners and not just Alex.
Alex, from what my lawyer told me, was livid when he was served. The sheriff actually ended up booking him for assault on an officer and menacing due to the threats he was shouting. His father bailed him out in a few hours, but with the testimony of the sheriff, my lawyer believes I have a very good chance at getting a restraining order. Alex, upon returning to the house, apparently lost his temper again, breaking the dining table into pieces as well as the tv, and putting several holes in the walls. At least that's what one of the emails from one of our friends reported as Alex called him to help him clean up the mess.
My lawyer already has pictures of the house I took, with timestamps as evidence nothing had been damaged by me. My friend reported that Alex tried to claim I'd been the one to trash the house but the holes in the wall were at head height - Alex is 6'3", and I'm 5'4" so he knew that was false. Either way, taking the pictures definitely will help me so again thank you everyone here for the advice because I never would have thought of that on my own. My work won't share details of where I am, as I do work with some higher end clientele who value security and that information won't be gossiped about and no, I'm not some stripper or escort. I deal with contracts, notary and business management. As such, even if Alex tried to use my work to find me, he wouldn't succeed.
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

The garage door shut with a groan behind us, closing us in the gloom of the single bulb hanging over the car.
Mother took a drag off her cigarette and sighed as she exhaled, the smoke filled the cabin of the Ford and stung my eyes.
“You really disappointed me today, Julianne," she tapped her cigarette in the ashtray below the dash, "you embarrassed me in front of the other mothers at the Ice Cream Social, shoveling down seconds and thirds like a pig. I thought I raised you better than that.”
She took another drag, daintily holding the cigarette between her perfectly manicured fingers.
“I'm going to have to tell your brother about this," she continued, “he'll have to come up with a punishment fit for a pig."
I felt my stomach drop. My kid brother, Thomas, was only six, but could be exceptionally cruel. Mother seemed to encourage him and was deferring to him more and more frequently for how the house was run, especially concerning my upbringing.
"Mother, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you. I'm sorry I was a pig and ate so much ice cream. I promise I won't do it again, I'll never eat any ice cream again," I was pleading with stone, unyielding.
“Hush your mouth. Go to your room and wait for Thomas," she put out the cigarette and got out of the car, I had no choice but to follow.
It felt like walking to the gallows as I stepped inside the house and headed towards the stairs to go to my room. Thomas had grown fond recently of physical punishment, he obviously delighted in Mother whipping me with a belt or, recently, Mother had allowed him to start beating me with a wooden spoon. He would squeal and giggle like a normal child watching bubbles in the wind while I screamed. I was dreading whatever was going to happen tonight, I chastised myself for eating that ice cream, I should have known she would show up. My sins were always laid bare.
Down the hall, I could hear Thomas watching television in the den. I only got to watch TV for half an hour on Saturday morning and new episodes of Happy Days with Mother and Thomas. Thomas got to watch all the TV he wanted. He could listen to the radio and turntable as much as he wanted, as loud as he wanted. Thomas had an entire room just for his toys.
I entered my bedroom, it was a space I occupied, but it didn't feel like mine. Mother kept it spartan, white walls and white bedspread. A crucifix over the bed and a painting of Jesus over the door. I had my desk and chair and a dresser with some of the porcelain dolls Daddy gave me before he died that Mother let me keep. That was it.
I placed my book bag down and sat on my bed, waiting for Thomas. It was a while, sitting there with nothing but my own thoughts and staring at the open door. I felt humiliated, I was almost thirteen and my entire life was dictated by my brother. Mother kept the house in constant lockdown to keep Thomas a secret. No outsiders were allowed in. I couldn't have friends because she was afraid I would mention him or sneak a friend in to gawk at my brother and tease him for being different.
I would never make fun of him, I was terrified of him. Terrified of what he was and what he was becoming.
Eventually I heard his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and I felt my heart start beating faster and my palms began to sweat. I kneaded my skirt in my hands, trying to calm myself and dry my palms. His slow arrhythmic footsteps came down the hall and I watched him as he entered the room.
I couldn't help but internally recoil at his appearance, even though I'd known him since he was born, I could never adjust to how unnatural he appeared. Thomas had been born at home and had never seen a doctor, but he was obviously unwell.
He was six years old and was barely over two feet tall, but very squat and wide. His skin was thick and gray, the whites of his beady eyes were yellow and his hair was wispy and white like an old man's, spreading out like a halo around his gargoyle face. A slight odor of decomposition hung about him, it reminded me faintly of garbage cans on a hot summer day. I hated when Mother made me help him with a bath, his skin felt like old brittle leather that flaked onto my clothes in gray flecks. His body was dense like concrete, I could barely lift him into the tub. Picking him up forced his hair into my face where that smell of rot would fill my nose, causing me to gag, silently, so as not to offend him and draw any ire from him or Mother.
Today, Thomas was wearing bib overalls with a red and green striped sweater underneath, reminding me of a grotesque doll.
“Mama says you acted like a piggy today at the ice cream social,” he spoke up to me in his unsettlingly high pitched, yet raspy voice, like a child that smoked as much as Mother, "you need to come down for dinner right now for your punishment for embarrassing Mama."
He turned and walked back down the stairs and I had no choice but to follow his toddling form downstairs to the dining table. We entered the kitchen and the table was placed with two settings. Mother was already seated and Thomas clambered up into his booster seat at his normal spot next to Mother. She took a drag off her cigarette and motioned vaguely to the floor without even looking at me.
Neatly situated on the linoleum was my dinner, not on a plate, but directly on the floor. A pork chop, scoop of mashed potatoes, and a small pile of peas. No utensils, either.
Thomas giggled with glee upon seeing my face.
“You have Mama's permission now to eat like a piggy, now. No hands! Piggies just use their face!” He stood up in his chair and reached out for Mother’s ash tray and flung it out over my meal, peppering my dinner with cigarette ash and butts.
"Oops! Piggies don't mind trash though, do they, Mama?” he giggled and the sound filled me with rage.
"No, they don't,” Mother replied coolly while maneuvering her ashtray back in place and carefully putting out her cigarette before saying prayer.
As angry as I was, I got down on my hands and knees and did my best at eating what I could without using my hands. I knew if I refused, it would be far worse. The whole meal, Thomas made pig noises and would reach down and poke me with his fork, making comments about what a fat piggy I was and how he wished he could roast and eat me. I doubted Mother would even object if he actually did kill me and eat me.
Gagging my way through another bite of ashy pork chop, I felt a warm splat over my head and heard Thomas giggling. I reached up and felt he had dumped mashed potatoes into my hair.
Choking down tears, I asked Mother if I could clean the floor and bathe. She rolled her eyes and excused me to clear the table for them as well while she changed Thomas into his pajamas. Picking him up, she walked out of the room and Thomas stuck his putrid little purple tongue out at me before they made it out the kitchen door.
I silently cried while I cleared the table and washed the dinner dishes. Tears splashed down as I mopped up the mess from my food on the floor. I hated how awful Thomas was. I hated how they treated me. Ever since Daddy died and Thomas showed up, I was their punching bag. I missed Daddy so much.
Mother was kinder then, too. She was still severe, but Dad kept her tempered. After he died, there was a change that came over her. I was only six, so I didn't remember her too much from before, but I did remember her gushing on and on when she was pregnant with Thomas. How the baby was a gift from Our Heavenly Father, that it was going to complete our broken family.
My sixth birthday happened right after Daddy died and I remember sitting on the patio crying while the house was full of people after the funeral, normally he would have gotten me a new doll and a chocolate bar, instead I was forgotten. No doll. No chocolate. Just funeral potatoes and a house full of cigarette smoke from the adults.
Nobody remembered. The closest thing I got was my dad's sister, Aunt Judy, sitting next to me on the patio step for a few minutes of comfortable silence before giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. I don't think she knew her brother was memorialized on my birthday. Next year, Thomas was born the day before my birthday, so it was completely eclipsed as Mother had just birthed her new love into the world…
I stopped mid mop as a lightbulb finally went off. I had never put much thought into the dates before.
Thomas was born a full year after Daddy died. He couldn't be his dad. Who was Thomas’ actual father?
Washing mashed potatoes out of my hair that evening, I ran over and over the timeline. No matter how I parsed it out, Thomas was only my half brother. Going to bed that night, I kept myself awake, going over and over again to make sure. I couldn't remember any men being around at that time, but that didn't mean much. Adults can easily hide things from children. Tension began throbbing through my head and I felt queasy. Mother had always known all of my secrets, able to sniff them out like a bloodhound out or using Thomas to spy. Now I had one of Mother's secrets and I didn't know what to do with it.
First I wanted to confirm it, but it would mean snooping, which was difficult in a house that was rarely left empty. I would have to try finding Mother's calendar book or journal to see if she mentioned any dates or men.
But when could I attempt such a daring maneuver? Thomas hardly left the house. As proud as Mother was of him, she was very cognizant and protective of his differences and didn't want to draw attention to herself or Thomas like that. Mother herself had few social engagements throughout the week and mostly stayed home to watch her golden child.
I finally decided I would take the risk and fake sick on Tuesday, grocery day, so I could stay home from school while she went shopping. All Thomas did all day was watch TV downstairs, so that should give me about an hour to look through her room for clues. I decided to tuck my head down, try to behave as best as I could to avoid their wrath, and wait for Tuesday.
That weekend limped along agonizingly slow. Thomas was in a fine mood and was constantly seeking out a reason to poke me, punch me, slap me… he'd laugh while calling me a piggy with his off-putting wide mouth. I tried to mostly stay in my room and it seemed like neither of them cared.
School on Monday was a relief, but my anxiety ramped up. The consequences would be dire if Mother caught on that I was faking sick to stay home. I didn't even want to imagine how off the leash she'd let my half-brother become in his punishment for that level of insubordination.
I stayed up all night, my stomach was in knots, but I was committed to my plan. Throughout the night, I screamed as hard as I could into my pillow. Screamed until my throat was raw and I could barely talk. It felt cathartic in a way. When it was close to school time, I put on my heaviest flannel pajamas and began doing jumping jacks until my face was flushed and my scalp was soaked with sweat.
Looking in the bathroom mirror before heading down to talk to Mother, I thought I looked pretty convincing, my skin was flushed and sweaty, my eyes had circles under them from lack of sleep, and my voice croaked like a frog.
Heading downstairs, Mother was already feeding Thomas breakfast. I hesitantly stepped into the kitchen and stood there awkwardly for a second, pawing with my pajamas to keep my nerves steady until she noticed my presence and looked up.
“Why aren't you dressed, Julianne?"
"I don't feel well. My throat hurts and my tummy hurts.” My voice graveled out more than I was expecting, I really had hurt my throat.
She strode over to me and placed a cool hand on my sweaty brow.
"You do feel warm. Take an aspirin from the medicine cabinet and go lay back down. I'll check on you later," with that she turned back and walked over to Thomas, who was frozen in place, glaring at me over a forkful of scrambled eggs. The sharp glint of malice in his beady eyes made me shiver before I shuffled out of the kitchen.
I laid in bed, trying my best to look miserable until I eventually heard the faint sound of the television playing in the den as Thomas settled in for his normal daytime routine and the garage door opened as Mother headed to the grocery store. I bounded out of bed and watched the car back out of our driveway and head up the street.
My heart began to pound as I tiptoed down the hall to Mother's bedroom, a place I rarely even caught a glimpse of, let alone entered. I very slowly opened the door, taking great care to not make any noise to alert Thomas downstairs that I was out of bed.
Creeping into the butter yellow room, I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my skull, this was the naughtiest thing I had ever done by far. I stepped onto the rug to help disguise my footsteps and slowly made my way past the brass bed and towards her desk. My hands shook as I opened the top drawer, I pawed through rapidly and found nothing. I checked the next drawer down and again found nothing of interest, just stationary and envelopes.
Finally, the bottom drawer was what I was looking for, a stack of journals from the past decade. I flipped through, trying to find entries relevant to when Daddy died and who Mother slept with afterwards.
I've never fully recovered from what I read.
July 6, 1968
Edgar died today. Car accident. I cannot believe this is real. My light, my life, my anchor... Dr. Benson gave me a sedative at the hospital and I feel so tired. So very, very tired. Why has my Lord forsaken me so?
July 9, 1968
I feel like I am in a very bad dream, I feel numb and disconnected. All the consolation and pity from everyone makes me feel sick. After the memorial, it took everything in me to not break dishes and to scream at everyone to get out of my house. Julianne was moping about crying and I wanted to throw her out, too.
If I hadn't seen my dear Edgar's body in the hospital and held his urn in my own hands, I wouldn't believe he was really gone. I still don't entirely believe it.
I have prayed to God every night asking him to show me why he took my husband from me and I have gotten no answer.
I skimmed over the next few months, as it was more or less similar sentiments repeated night after night. I finally got to an entry that caught my eye.
September 17, 1968
My battle with my faith has been fraught the past few months, but Hallelujah! I feel I can see the Lord again in all his glory and might, for he has given me a way to reconnect to my Edgar!
I was thinking about the night Julianne was born, right in this very home, it was a difficult birth and she struggled to breathe at first. Ingrid, my midwife, made a comment to me that if the baby had failed to wake up on her own, that Ingrid had ways to make sure she would have made it.
I remember asking if it was a medical methodology and she made it clear to me that in certain circumstances, it was a mystical property she used to bring the air of life into a struggling baby's lungs. She gently alluded to being a practicing member of the dark arts. At the time, I felt quite scandalized to have someone like that in my God fearing home. Now I see her as the answer to my prayers! My angel!
On a whim, I called her and asked if she still practiced such techniques. She hesitantly confirmed that she did. I asked, if she could turn breath into the lungs of a child without, could she turn breath into a child that did not exist? Could she magick into existence another child of my beloved Edgar? She told me she had to do some research and she'd be back in touch.
Ingrid just called back after a few hours and said there was a spell she found, but it was dangerous and might have unpleasant results. I said, yes, of course! I trust my Lord and I believe he sent this woman of blessed magick to me for this purpose.
She says we will have to do it soon, in a few days during the new moon. She has a potion to brew, but it is happening! Praise God!
September 23, 1968
The ceremony was last night, and Ingrid believes it was a success, but we will have to wait. It did not take long, only an hour or two. Ingrid lit my bedroom with many beeswax candles and she had me drink a thick and bitter tea that caused me to become quite relaxed and foggy.
From my inner thigh, she cut me and collected my blood in a chalice, with which she mixed quite a lot of Edgar's ashes and other ingredients which I could not glean from my supine position and groggy wits. Ingrid began to chant, calling upon a higher power, as I pleaded with my Lord to let this work. To give me any piece of my Edgar back. She came to the bed and worked the paste between my legs into my womanly chamber, which was very uncomfortable, but manageable with the numbing effects of the tea.
She continued to sit with me and chant, her hand placed over my womb, until she decided at which time it was complete. She left and I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up this morning, I felt quite uncomfortable, my body ached and when I used the restroom, a yellow fluid like pus poured out of me, but no sign of any ashes or blood, which gives me hope it was absorbed into my womb.
November 3, 1968
Praise be to our Lord, Ingrid just confirmed for me that I am with child, I had been hoping so, I had not gotten my cycle in October, but I wasn't sure if that was because of the discharge like pus that was still coming. She told me that was common with this spell and a side effect that would stop after the baby came.
I feel like I am floating on air, for the first time since Edgar left, I feel-
I suddenly became very aware of the feeling of eyes on the back of my head. I had become too engrossed in what was written before me and I had lost track of my surroundings. Very slowly, I turned around and my heart began pounding again as I saw Thomas standing in the doorway holding his wooden spoon in one hand. How had I not heard him?
He pointed at me with his empty hand and screamed, just a pure guttural screech from somewhere deep inside his disgusting little body. He charged at me from across the room, his horrible feet thumping solidly along the rug. He began beating my legs ruthlessly with the spoon, causing my legs to buckle. I crashed down to my knees in front of him, and he began lashing at my face, pulling my hair with one hand while wailing away at my head with the spoon.
I had dropped the journal I was holding and was desperately trying to get a hand on the spoon or push him away. All I could hear was him screaming. My arms flailed and I reached around on Mother's desk and grabbed onto the first thing I found and sank it into Thomas’ neck.
The end of Mother's gold letter opener protruded under his jaw. He went silent and he looked at me with utter shock. He dropped the spoon and collapsed on the ground, clutching at his neck as his thick black blood oozed out from his wound, letting out a stupendous odor of rot that filled the room. He didn't really say anything or make any noise. He just twitched for a moment and I saw his eyes glaze over.
In shock, I stood over his little body for a moment and I watched as he seemed to mummify in just a few minutes, like an ash person from Pompeii dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Even his blood that looked like shiny oil a second ago became like potting soil on Mother's rug. Reaching out to touch his hand, it crumbled away like sand.
Panic ran through me like a rabbit caught in a snare. Not knowing what to do, I ran. I ran down the hall, changed my clothes, put an extra change of clothes in my backpack and the last doll Daddy had ever given me and I ran. Mother would absolutely never forgive me and I was genuinely afraid she would kill me in retaliation for taking her beloved Thomas away from her. Her precious gift from God. My feet flew over the pavement and took me away from that house.
I called my Aunt Judy from a payphone outside the five & dime, and told her Mother had kicked me out and asked if I could stay with her. She had always had a strained relationship with my mother and it didn't take much convincing that she had kicked out her “only” child. Only Mother, Ingrid, and I ever knew about Thomas.
She gave me a home and took care of me. She never beat me or humiliated me. Even with her love, I was far from okay. For years I would close my eyes and hear Thomas scream, then the sudden silence. I'd see him fumbling at his neck and turning to ash. But I would also remember all the ways he would hurt me and how bad he was becoming. I could never talk to anyone about it, especially not the silent relief I felt I refused to admit to myself. Over time, however, Thomas' screams became a whisper and his silence faded into dust in my mind.
I moved on with my life. I went to college and became a photojournalist, getting to travel the world and watch history unfold. By choice, I never married, but was quite blessed with many beautiful friendships for companionship over the decades. I found balance in my life and a sense of happiness, if not peace. I never could quite stomach mashed potatoes again, though, they always taste ashy to me.
Mother never made any attempts to reach out to me or find me, at least that I'm aware of. Ten years ago, I was contacted by a hospital and they said my mother had been admitted earlier after falling and was about to pass, so she must have kept some tabs on me to know my phone number for her emergency contacts. Apparently she had collapsed in the driveway and a neighbor called an ambulance. I got there and her only words to me were, “take care of him," as she placed a locket in my hand. I opened the locket, Jesus was on one side, Thomas on the other. I didn't say anything to her, just held her frail old hand with nicotine stained nails until she passed in the night. My mother was gone and I felt nothing except a vague sense of relief.
When I got to her house, it was like a time capsule. Other than a newer television, it was just like it was when I'd fled so many years ago. The smell of tobacco smoke hung like incense in the air. It felt oppressive, like a tomb.
I wandered the house in a bit of a daze. The one place I didn't want to go was upstairs. I didn't want to see my old room, or Thomas' room, or Mother's. Putting it off, I went to fix myself some supper, realizing I hadn't eaten in almost a day. I took a pause when I opened the fridge and saw a baby bottle on a shelf. Silently praying she had been babysitting for a neighbor, I fixed myself some toast with sardines and sat eating in the den watching TV. It had been almost forty years and it still felt rebellious not eating at the table and watching TV without permission.
My eyes grew heavy and I finally mustered up the gumption to head upstairs to go to bed. The stairs creaked in a familiar way under my feet and I was taken back to the feeling of dread hearing either Mother or Thomas climbing up. My old room was at the top of the stairs, I saw the door was nailed shut and had rambling quotes about Judas copied from the Bible in my mother's handwriting taped to the door. I sighed gently and turned from the door to head down the hallway, deciding Mother's room was probably the best place to sleep.
I passed by Thomas’ toy room and I heard a murmur from the room. I stopped, curiosity got the best of me and I entered. In Thomas' old toy room was a crib with joyful clown sheets. Dread swelled up inside me as I heard more murmurs and saw the sheets move. Approaching slowly, I peaked under the sheet and gasped.
Tucked inside was what looked like a baby gargoyle, gray and papery looking. Pus leaked out of its milky, bulbous eyes. I pulled back the blanket and saw it had no legs and its arms bent back, like wings on a bird. It was wearing just a cloth diaper, overflowing with tarry looking stool that took my breath away with its pungency, it smelled like Thomas’ blood, but somehow worse. My heart broke for this poor creature, Lord only knows how many years it has been in this crib suffering from its unholy existence.
So this is who Mother had wanted me to take care of…
Not knowing what else to do, I gently scooped him up. Like Thomas, he was shockingly heavy for how small his body was. Placing him on the changing table, I cleaned him and rewrapped his bottom in a clean diaper cloth. It was difficult, he fussed tremendously, crying and flopping around as much as his flipper-like arms would allow. I tried wiping off his oozing eyes and he snapped his mouth, which I saw was full of disturbingly square yellow teeth, trying to bite me. I carried him to the kitchen and rocked him while I heated up his bottle and he became furious with me, almost barking like a dog when my hand would get near his face.
He settled a bit as he fed, but he would still sometimes suddenly spit out the bottle and attempt to bite me. I laid him back in his crib, this abomination in a clown sheet, and I walked down the hall to Mother's room letting out a long sigh.
Combing through my mother's journals in the early hours of the morning, it looked like she tried the ceremony again shortly after Thomas died, but she either lacked Ingrid’s help or didn't have enough of my father's ashes left. Something went terribly wrong. She was vaguer than she had been about Thomas’ conception, but I suspect she had used some of Thomas' remains. The resulting birth she named Isaac.
Mother's journals told a sad tale of her and Isaac's suffering. She never mentioned me, but lamented the loss of Thomas and Dad relentlessly. She was hyper protective of Isaac, as that was all she had left. If her world had been small before, it became microscopic after he entered her life, requiring nearly constant care. According to Mother, he was blind and colicky, sometimes going years at a time without sleeping through the night. She had breast fed him for years, but she had to stop after he grew teeth and began biting her intentionally and feeding on her blood.
I spent a lot of time over the next few days pondering what to do. I had to get her estate in order, she had left me the house, in an obvious attempt to get me to continue caretaking for Isaac, but I didn't want it. I had my own cozy home an hour away from here, filled with happy memories and my possessions acquired traveling the world. Mother's home had a heavy energy I couldn't shake. Her and Thomas were both gone, but the memories of the scoldings and beatings hung in every corner, like cobwebs that would never sweep away.
So, I fed Isaac and kept him clean and tried to keep him company, although he seemed to hate me passionately. I took care of him, all the while thinking about what I was going to do. After a week, I felt resolute in what had to be done.
Gathering up all of Mother's journals in a tote, I made my way to Isaac and picked him up and carried everything to the living room.
The ancient logs in the fireplace meant for display ignited instantly. One by one, I fed the journals into the fire, burning away years of my mother's consuming sorrow. Isaac fussed and moaned next to me the entire time. When the last pages shimmered away into lacy ash, I took a throw pillow off the couch and gently cradled Isaac in my other arm. It didn't take long before he stopped struggling and I felt his little body relax after decades of suffering.
I gently wrapped up a bundle in a clown sheet and placed it in the fire. It burned furiously, like the paper in my mother's journals, and was soon gone. Nothing but ashes and embers.
“Don't worry, Mother,” I said purely for my own sake, "I took care of Isaac for you."
And finally, I felt at peace.