First off, Eugene, I agree with everything Clayton said. My comments below may add further insight and/or different perspectives.
Eugene:1. Repeat offenders I believe have to either be deported to some very remote place, or be punished more than the "just level". Why? Because they are dangerous and can repeat their offense and hurt others. A court that represents a lot of people will also act according to the intreset of these people, and that interest might even be the execution of the criminal, since it is not safe to have him freely walking around.
Let me extend your reasoning here: People I believe have to either be deported to some very remote place, or be punished more than the "just level". Why? Because they are dangerous and can commit offenses and hurt others.
I hope you see my point. The fundamental purpose of law in a free-market society is to provide justice, not to prevent people from becoming "criminals". Of course, you may have a different definition for the word "justice" than I do.
On another note, I do think that "repeat offenders" will ultimately find themselves uninsurable if they continue to commit crimes. I'm not sure if that would constitute punishment in your book - it doesn't in mine.
Eugene:2. I also believe that types of crimes that are hard to prove or crimes in which it is very hard to catch the criminals, should also be punished more severely. Otherwise these types of crimes will be very lucrative.
What types of crimes do you think are hard to prove or in which it's very hard to catch criminals?
Eugene:Besides I don't think this un-proportinate justice is so unjust or incompatiable with libertarianism. When the punishments are known to all, including the criminals, the criminals in fact enter an implict contract with the customers of those courts that published the punishments, in which they agree to receive upon them the punishment by that court in case they commit one of the specified crimes against the customers of the court.
How do you know whether the punishments would be known to all? Besides, I don't see how knowing the punishments necessarily means (if it ever does) entering into an implicit contract. That sounds like statism to me.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
By the way:
I have two friends who work as behavioral analysts. Each of them has told me (separately) that consistent reinforcement is the most effective way to promote or deter a given behavior. The magnitude of the reinforcement is much less important. Now, I believe that a free-market society would provide much more consistent enforcement of generally agreed-upon moral laws, such as laws against murder, rape, theft, etc. Why do I believe that? Because I think a free market in justice provision would lead to more of it, ceteris paribus. And if there's more justice provision, then justice provision as a whole is more consistent. The situation we see today, where punishments have grown increasingly draconian in the effort to "make examples" of people who are caught, is due to the lack of a free market in this area - the provision of justice is monopolized by the state.
When the punishments are known to all, including the criminals, the criminals in fact enter an implict contract with the customers of those courts that published the punishments, in which they agree to receive upon them the punishment by that court in case they commit one of the specified crimes against the customers of the court.
sounds like social contract to me. Bunk is bunk.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
I can't predict what's going to happen in an an-cap society, but in our current statist society, there are a lot of repeat offenders who freely walk on the streets and are a ticking bomb. I think this is inexcusible. Whether just or not, ticking bombs should not be allowed to explode. People should be protected from them. They should either sit in jail, or be deported, or somehow removed from society. I don't care about the method to do this, but it has to be done.
The second point. In current society, punishments are decided by certain consensus, not according to simple Kinsella/Rothbard retribution. I think it makes more sense, because simply doing to the criminal what he did to you is not enough. Thieves are rarely caught. If you are only allowed to take twice the money from the thief, or even thrice the money, it would still be a very lucrative profession. If only fourth of the thieves are caught, thiefery will be very lucrative. Thieves will most likely insure themselves against being caught, so they can continue stealing and make profit without ever worrying about compensation (this will be payed by their insurance company).
In short, my point is that the eye for an eye model of justice doesn't work. It has to be extended for different types of crimes and different types of criminals.
According to whom, and why does this matter in intersubjective studies?
WHo does eye for eye work for or against? This is a nonsense question that can not be answered with anything other than: It works for those it works for, and against those it works against. That is really all we can say about such things.
Eugene: I can't predict what's going to happen in an an-cap society, but in our current statist society, there are a lot of repeat offenders who freely walk on the streets and are a ticking bomb. I think this is inexcusible. Whether just or not, ticking bombs should not be allowed to explode. People should be protected from them. They should either sit in jail, or be deported, or somehow removed from society. I don't care about the method to do this, but it has to be done. The second point. In current society, punishments are decided by certain consensus, not according to simple Kinsella/Rothbard retribution. I think it makes more sense, because simply doing to the criminal what he did to you is not enough. Thieves are rarely caught. If you are only allowed to take twice the money from the thief, or even thrice the money, it would still be a very lucrative profession. If only fourth of the thieves are caught, thiefery will be very lucrative. Thieves will most likely insure themselves against being caught, so they can continue stealing and make profit without ever worrying about compensation (this will be payed by their insurance company). In short, my point is that the eye for an eye model of justice doesn't work. It has to be extended for different types of crimes and different types of criminals. [Emphasis added.] William's points aside, I strongly recommend you think hard about why thieves are so rarely caught today. The keyboard is mightier than the gun. Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem. Voluntaryism Forum | Post Points: 5
[Emphasis added.]
William's points aside, I strongly recommend you think hard about why thieves are so rarely caught today.
This stuff is way too abstract. This is not science, nor is there an objective value being dealt with. Furthermore it is pointless to speak of specific oughts in legal practice in an abstract way. I honestly don't think anything is actually being said. This is all trial and error stuff within the context of a community working within their local customs and jurisprudence.
This stuff is way too abstract. This is not science, nor is there an objective value being dealt with. Furthermore it is pointless to speak of specific oughts in legal practice in an abstract way. I honestly don't think anything is actually being said.
This is all trial and error stuff within the context of a community working within their local customs and jurisprudence.
No, justice is very much a science. And science often is abstract. What we are attempting to do is discover a set of universalizable principles which can be used to decide who is right and wrong in any given case of conflict.
And it is not just a matter of each community figuring out what works for it. Any communities standards can themselves be unjust, just as much as any nation-states.
Auto: Stephen:Since the criminal forced the victim to play a sort of vicious roulette with the odds heavily stacked against him, he is estopped from arguing against the victim doing likewise or its equivalent once he's caught. Does this estoppel occur before or after conviction? Regardless, how did the accused/convicted force the victim to do such a thing? This goes along with the whole notion of being a "danger to society". Eugene never answered my question there.
Stephen:Since the criminal forced the victim to play a sort of vicious roulette with the odds heavily stacked against him, he is estopped from arguing against the victim doing likewise or its equivalent once he's caught.
Does this estoppel occur before or after conviction? Regardless, how did the accused/convicted force the victim to do such a thing? This goes along with the whole notion of being a "danger to society". Eugene never answered my question there.
For clarification on the concept of estoppel see here. Kinsella takes it to another level here. I'm not quite sure what you mean by before or after the conviction.
The costs of the crime to the victim are reduced by the punishment of the criminal. If the criminal is less likely to be caught, and punishment is the same in all cases regardless of the likelihood of the criminal being caught and prosecuted, the victim is forced to bear a higher cost. That is, the victim is forced to bear the risk premium of low prosecution crimes. Once a compensation ratio is introduced however, the criminal, if caught, is forced to bear this risk premium rather than his victim. And he's not in a position to argue against this, because he has already demonstrated through his actions that he considers it acceptable to force others to bear such an uncertainty cost.
For example, if a criminal steals chickens from a farmer and chicken thieves overall are only caught 1 out of 10 times, it's fair if he is punished as if he stole 10 chickens. If he is only punished as if he stole 1 chicken, he may just go on and continue his criminal activity, because the revenue from his crime exceeds the costs. He can steal 10 chickens and only get caught once, and have to pay for one chicken. Under an eye for an eye legal system he is forcing the farmer to play a game of chance. If we introduce a punitive ratio, where the punishment for the crime is increased in proportion to the inverse of the likelihood of the criminal being caught, he is forced to bear the costs of his crime, and the punishment becomes proportional to the crime.
I don't come at this from a "danger to society" approach. And I can't speak for Eugene.
@ Eugene
Actually, Kinsella is with you on this point and Rothbard is not. See the link I posted earlier.
And what does consensus or the imaginary legal person, society, have to do with justice anyway? Every crime involves to parties, the criminal and the victim and it's nobody else's business.
What we are attempting to do is discover a set of universalizable principles which can be used to decide who is right and wrong in any given case of conflict.
This isn't even a scientific question. What you are doing is trying to create a dictionary of tautologies that you can go by for no good reason. This is grammer you are describing.
Law is a practiced art / philosophy that utilizes certain systematic approaches within itself to conduct it's affairs. It is nothing more or less.
Even more perplexing is if you are bringing up estopple as your position. Estopple is - by it's own claims - an ethic, which is not a science by any stretch of the imagination.
An ancap legal system would solve this easily. Assuming crime is handled through insurance companies (as Rothbard outlined), this would be the perfect solution for two reasons:
1. It would act as a disincentive against crime (and the insurance company that prevents crime the most will attract the most customers).
2. It would compensate the insurance company for all the times it had to payout victims of a similar crime but didn't catch the thief.
And while initially this might seem negative, i.e. people might think "so won't the insurance company just catch 1 out of a million criminals and then make them pay 1 million times the damages," you have to remember that there is a limit to the damages individuals can pay. So an insurance company would optimize it's anti-crime policy by figuring out the average compensation it can earn by catching a criminal of a particular crime and then policing accordingly.
Political Atheists Blog
@ William
Just to avoid semantics and be clear on what we are disagreeing about, can you tell me what you consider to be the difference between and art and a science, what justice is, what laws are, what norms are, what an ethic is, what morality is, or whatever terms you think it would be good to clarify for the sake of discussion?
What branches of philosophy are arts/sciences? Epistemology, ethics, mathematics, logic, political philosophy ect.
And if it is an art, by whom is it praxticed and to what end?
[Edit] We might as will start a new thread on the topic.
Laws, ethics, etc are value statements and outside the realm of scientific narrative, which can only describe the functions of the natural world. These things are also not naturalistic concepts (like some Platonistc Idea, or something) that can really be studied or talked about in any universal or naturalistic way, they are simply contextual terms that can be applied to local customs. These things can only function and make sense within their own internal logics. A broad universal logic can not be applied to such studies.
note: I can't really comment on mathematics as to whether or not it is a defacto science. Not really my thing, but I have heard arguments on both sides.