My only true concern in this was the possibility that the property might not be insured, so I notified my cousin, asking him if he had taken care of this detail. But first, I called the debt collecting agency to get the details. The woman who took my call had a tense voice, clearly stressed from constantly having to deal with people who refuse to pay. But I didn't make a point out of this. I just wanted to get the details of the problem, and I quickly learned that the only real issue was the possible lack of insurance on the property.
Why I should pay for an insurance that I had no use for remained unclear. My only error, If one can call this an error, was that I had not properly informed the insurance company of the transfer. But why should this involve a third party? Why not just terminate the contract and be done with it? Insurances are after all paid for in advance. There was no loss to the insurance company.
The situation seemed odd to me, and I quickly realized why. It violated natural law. In a truly free society, there can be no debt collectors, because debt collection involves the initiation of force. The episode I've just experienced, which was vaguely unpleasant to me, and clearly very unpleasant for the woman I talked to, would never happen in the 5th Empire. Having failed to pay my insurance premium, the insurance company would simply terminate the contract. This would be the case for all contracts. If the customer fails to pay up front for a service, no service is provided. Some customers may build up credit with companies, in which the customers can postpone their payments, but this would be entirely up to the companies themselves.
Without a state to mandate laws pertaining to credit, no-one would be in the position to deliberately or accidentally fail to pay their dues. Failure to pay would merely result in a failure to deliver. Conversely, if a service provider fails to deliver on their promises, customers can sue for libel. If the company nevertheless fails to deliver, they will be shunned and go out of business.
As for properties bought with credit, the property will be registered as owned by the bank, rather than the private person who remains a renter of the property until the property is fully paid for. Here too, there's no need for debt collectors. The bank can simply expel a delinquent borrower from the property that remains legally the property of the bank. The way to deal with debt and delinquencies is through collateral. Any abuse of such an arrangement by the bank will quickly result in a loss of business, so there's no need to give special protection, neither to banks nor borrowers.
The 5th Empire have no room nor need for debt collectors, and most people know this intuitively. The woman I talked to was in pain due to the fact that she was constantly braking natural law. On the one hand, she's told that the business she's working for is operating within the law, and therefore an honorable business. But on the other hand, she is constantly reminded of the aggressive nature of her work. The pain she was experiencing was due to the impossibility of bridging the gap between her heart, which wants her to live in peace with her fellow men, and her mind that tells her that she is doing the right thing, despite her constant need to be aggressive.
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