A voluntary police and court would be so open to corruption and power abuse, it would probably be more like a mafia.
Why would it be any more open than a private police or court system which is already like the mafia except that there's only one crime family in charge which you know as the state which has granted for itself a monopoly of the use of force which it uses for armed robbery every day in the form of taxation.
And how would these courts have any power if they had no basis for enforcement, if there's no gov't no one can make me listen to whatever the court says.
It would function mostly the same as a public court system, if you were guilty of a criminal type offense then the voluntary police force would arrest you and throw you into a privately owned prison or jail which we already have to a large extent. If it was a civil type offense I would portend that it would be handled the same as any other civil type case. You can't be arrested for refusing to pay a debt, you can't be arrested for failing to pay up in a lawsuit etc, in fact about the only thing you can be arrested for refusing to pay is taxes. The only difference here is there would only be one overarching law and that would be to not violate the non-aggression principle.
A court exists to judge people's actions against laws and force its will on others, thats called a government.
No it would be different from the state in that there wouldn't be a single source for this authority for the use of force which the state assumes it has. Moreover, payment for these services would be offered on strictly voluntary grounds.
While collective and individual self-defense would still be allowed, since there's no gov't obviously, but you'd have a hard time convincing me its more efficient to constantly be defending yourself from other people, not to mention other states, rather than have a police or military.
Oh I would say you're quite right it would be much less efficient, you would have no more people rotting in prison for 20+ years who have never in their life violated the non-aggression principal in that they have never harmed or violated the natural rights of anyone and as to the military we currently have an all volunteer army which due to it being controlled by state often finds itself in violation of the non-aggression principle.
Actually you do need a state to decide who has violated non-aggression principles, or has committed fraud, contract violation, etc.
No you could have a private court determine these things, we already have private arbitration in this country for just these type of situations.
If you have a system which punishes people for these actions, then you have laws against them, then you have a government, that is the exact definition of one.
You wouldn't need statutory law, all you would need is to bring the two parties in front of a private arbitrator who would determine if either was in violation of the non-aggression principle.
For example fraud would be a violation of that principle in that it would violate that persons right to property, under anarcho-capitalism one of the highest principle is self ownership so murder, battery, rape etc would likewise fall under a property crime. Sentences would be handed out based on reasonable guidelines set forth using community standards which would in time create precedent.
The definition of sovereignty is a monopoly on violence in a particular area and via this monopoly of violence the gov't can make and enforce laws, this is exactly what you are talking about here.
You are arguing that a gov't doesn't need to exist to monitor people because people can just form a gov't to monitor themselves.
Except that in the contractual society found in anarcho-capitalism, it is the individual and not the state which is the sovereign, under the anarcho-capitalist model each individual has the right of self ownership, the state has no right to force them to do anything. No other individual has the right one to force another to do anything unless they violate that persons property rights or a contractual agreement entered into voluntarily by both parties. The punishments for the latter would actually be found in the contracts themselves.