I quote Friedman:
How much should we punish them? If all thieves were caught, a fine equal to the value of what is stolen would be sufficient; since stealing things is more trouble than buying them, theft would be the less attractive of the two alternatives. If only a fraction of thieves are caught, say one in ten, the same argument suggests that the punishment should be scaled up accordingly. If the fine for stealing an apple is ten times the price of buying one, then stealing costs the thief, on average, as much money as buying and more trouble.
In setting up a system of legal rules, one of the decisions to be made is whether to catch half the thieves and fine each of them twice what he stole, catch a tenth of the thieves and fine each ten times what he stole, or catch one thief in a thousand and shoot him.
Friedman's suggestion makes a lot of sense. However is it libertarian? Why should a person whose wallet was stolen care how many thieves are caught in general?
The issue seems to be that stealing, in an economy of division of labor, can never be economical on any decent scale, but will do only for asocial individuals (of course, the statist corrosion of the division of labor makes stealing more economical). If it where the other way around, there would be no human society, but a war of all against all. Hence, we may safely assume that stealing will never become widespread, and when it does folks will be too busy fighting to survive to mull over such question.
But if theft will always be small-scale stuff, than reparations will in time tends towards the cost of ‘production’ of repossession, costs which will depend on the type of repossession that will come in vogue in society.
PS: and more generally, even if you catch one thief every 1000, and only 1 unit is stolen every time, you could not affect a punishment of 1000 units if the costs of doing business are, say, 10. otherwise many more companies would flock to your business and drive prices down. Hence, even with widespread theft (assuming some sort of society is still holding), profits will drive the punishment, not some efficiency calculation.
The amount of reparations a thief must pay to the victim should only be depedant on how much damage they caused the victim.
It would make no sense for it to be dependant on how (in)efficient the police are at capturing criminals.
In an-cap, that's problem of lawmakers and not ours.
Please explain. Wouldn't the law makers be made up of the or some an-cap'ists'?
Okay, let's assume thieves acquired new technology, an invisibility cloak. The chance to catch a thief now has decreased to 1 for every 100,000 thieves. Thieves can be caught only when they remove the clock by mistake. Once this is done its very easy to catch the thief. However searching for thieves wearing an invsiibility cloak is completely futile.
In current society it is not very difficult to deal with this problem. You simply increase the punishment for thieves. For example you can execute all the thieves you've caught. That's also how it would work according to Friedman.
However if you suggest that thet punishment for these thieves should be a restitution fee for the stolen goods + the "repocession" fee, then thieves will continue to operate because an average thief could make billions of dollars with a very small chance of being caught.
Eugene: Okay, let's assume thieves acquired new technology, an invisibility cloak. The chance to catch a thief now has decreased to 1 for every 100,000 thieves. Thieves can be caught only when they remove the clock by mistake. Once this is done its very easy to catch the thief. However searching for thieves wearing an invsiibility cloak is completely futile. In current society it is not very difficult to deal with this problem. You simply increase the punishment for thieves. For example you can execute all the thieves you've caught. That's also how it would work according to Friedman. However if you suggest that thet punishment for these thieves should be a restitution fee for the stolen goods + the "repocession" fee, then thieves will continue to operate because an average thief could make billions of dollars with a very small chance of being caught.
Than the division of labor will break down, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Executing a guy who stole an apple (the fruit, not the piece of hardware) will just make everyone go for billions instead of apples. Or, as my microeconomics text put it, if you shoot parking offenders, than you create an incentive for them to shoot the cop beforehand for a minor parking infraction. In short, such punishment will accentuate the problem, not solve it.
Eugene:Okay, let's assume thieves acquired new technology, an invisibility cloak.
If you insist on practicing thought experiments at Hogwarts, can you at least stop trying to apply your conclusions to reality?
they said we would have an unfair fun advantage
The point I'm trying to make is that in some cases not only the victim is involved, but the entire society. For example if a woman doesn't press charges against her rapist because she is afraid that her name will come out in the press (after all the libertarian society no one can forbid a newspaper to print her name), then the rapist will go free and will rape another woman. How can society protect itself from thieves with invisiblity cloaks, rapists who were not charged, and from other dangerous elements?
Regarding the rapist, it’s easy to imagine that the girl’s insurer (or the rapist’s insurer) would value anonymity above all else. So, ‘prosecuting’ would not be the same as publicising one’s case.
But, more generally, if for whatever reason the victim decides not to prosecute at all, than we can say that there has been no victim at all! Hence, the guy is not criminal and society need not protect itself from him. After all, who are we to say what constitutes aggression by the victim’s standards?
But would you want to live in a neighborhood in which a rapist is on the lose because the victim was either too shy, or mentally ill, or too afraid to charge him? I doubt that.
I assume that in this case the owners of the territory will simply banish the rapist. But since no one will accept him in his own territory, I assume he'll have to move to some isolated islands with other criminals. In fact I believe in an-cap society such exile islands will be common.
Eugene: But would you want to live in a neighborhood in which a rapist is on the lose because the victim was either too shy, or mentally ill, or too afraid to charge him? I doubt that. I assume that in this case the owners of the territory will simply banish the rapist. But since no one will accept him in his own territory, I assume he'll have to move to some isolated islands with other criminals. In fact I believe in an-cap society such exile islands will be common.
Of course they will. But I was assuming that no one comes to know abort it. In that case, we can’t know a rapist is on the loose anymore than we can know that the guy walking by is a rapist.
Probably. I just wanted to point out that in stateless society internet philosophers aren't only ones who are thinking which laws would work, paid fulltime people would be doing it too. So if there is some minor "BUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF X OCCURS, An-Cap won't apparently work!"-stuff, I usualy got feeling that people don't remember it all the time.
Eugene:I quote Friedman: How much should we punish them? If all thieves were caught, a fine equal to the value of what is stolen would be sufficient; since stealing things is more trouble than buying them, theft would be the less attractive of the two alternatives. If only a fraction of thieves are caught, say one in ten, the same argument suggests that the punishment should be scaled up accordingly. If the fine for stealing an apple is ten times the price of buying one, then stealing costs the thief, on average, as much money as buying and more trouble. In setting up a system of legal rules, one of the decisions to be made is whether to catch half the thieves and fine each of them twice what he stole, catch a tenth of the thieves and fine each ten times what he stole, or catch one thief in a thousand and shoot him. Friedman's suggestion makes a lot of sense. However is it libertarian? Why should a person whose wallet was stolen care how many thieves are caught in general? How does it make sense to hold a thief responsible for something he didn't do? The keyboard is mightier than the gun. Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem. Voluntaryism Forum | Post Points: 20
How does it make sense to hold a thief responsible for something he didn't do?
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
You could say that by becoming a thief he became a great danger to society, because theives (in my example) are extremely difficult to catch.
Eugene:You could say that by becoming a thief he became a great danger to society, because theives (in my example) are extremely difficult to catch.
There is no such thing as damage "to society," only damage to multiple individuals' property. Who else was damaged by a thief stealing gum? No one besides the owner of the gum.
Let us say 1 in 10000 gum thieves are caught, and gum costs $1. The police catch a gum thief... why does the owner of the business then get $10000 for slightly more than $1 in damages?
There is no reason to take into account the incompetency of the police to catch criminals, but only how much damage was caused by that thief.
"Who else was injured by the theif stealing gum."
Perhaps the one stolen from was going to buy a soda, but since his gum was stolen, he has to buy more gum.
The soda manufacturer was hurt by the theif.
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
What would prevent this invisibility cloak from getting into the hands of non-thieves? Regardless, I was responding to your OP, which didn't have that added context. As Tex2002ans wrote, how can "society" be hurt or even threatened?
I quote Friedman: How much should we punish them? If all thieves were caught, a fine equal to the value of what is stolen would be sufficient; since stealing things is more trouble than buying them, theft would be the less attractive of the two alternatives. If only a fraction of thieves are caught, say one in ten, the same argument suggests that the punishment should be scaled up accordingly. If the fine for stealing an apple is ten times the price of buying one, then stealing costs the thief, on average, as much money as buying and more trouble. In setting up a system of legal rules, one of the decisions to be made is whether to catch half the thieves and fine each of them twice what he stole, catch a tenth of the thieves and fine each ten times what he stole, or catch one thief in a thousand and shoot him. Friedman's suggestion makes a lot of sense. However is it libertarian? Why should a person whose wallet was stolen care how many thieves are caught in general?
I don't think any coherent argument can be made for why the perpetrator should be 'made an example of.' Such thinking is inherently statist (I'm not saying Friedman is a statist - he clearly is not - but even Friedman occasionally lapses into collectivist language - "we" and "us" thinking). I think a perfectly clear argument can be made for restitution. However, I don't know if there's ever been a human society that was strictly restitutional. This leaves the question... whence lawful retaliation (punishment)? I don't think lawful retaliation arises from the greater good, at least, not in the direct way which Friedman's above argument would suggest. Rather, punishment arises from the victim's demand for vengeance. If you kill my son, there really is no restitution that can be made. Any fine imposed on the perpetrator is inherently punitive. Yet victims strenuously demand such punishment even when they do not benefit from it (such as corporal or capital punishment).
The only explanation for this lies in human nature itself. Humans have an evolved retaliatory passion. If I had to guess, I would say this probably arose as a way for nature to get us to internalize the costs of violence onto the violent. In other words, if you kill my son and I kill you, your son is less likely to survive and pass on your homicidal genes where they can do further damage to our descendants. If the intra-species deadliness of homicidals is greater than the intra-species deadliness of vengeful relatives of homicide victims, we can expect the retaliatory trait to improve survival even though it involves one member of the species killing another.
This argument applies indirectly to the problem Friedman considers here. The evolved demand for vengeance is what motivates victims of theft to demand restitution and punishment of the perpetrator. It is my view that one of the roles of law is to limit the vindictive impulse. At some point, vengeance becomes its own crime and, intuitively, we sense that this point varies with the severity of the crime. "The punishment should be proportional to the crime." If you steal bubble gum from my grocery store and I decapitate you (I think this is one of Friedman's examples) who would say I have not committed murder? The original purpose of this vindictive impulse was to internalize the costs of very grave offenses (such as homicide, cuckoldry, etc.) and I think it has been repurposed to internalize the costs of torts onto the wrong-doer, which accomplishes the same purpose but in a much more discriminating way. Before law, Nature could only cull the population through vindictive homicide which means that only the most grave offenses could be punished. With law, we have a way to limit vengeance in a way that internalizes the costs of torts onto the wrong-doer without culling them from the population completely, meaning that much smaller offenses can be internalized, which rationalizes decision-making to take into account costs imposed on others in a much higher-resolution than can be attained with a vindictive-homicide system.
So, the purpose of lawful punishment is to satiate the victim's demand for punishment as well as to limit the victim's vindictive impulse. The wrong-doer agrees to pay such-and-such a fine above and beyond the amount of damage done in order to put the issue to rest (receive an agreement from the victim that any further retaliation constitutes its own tort). I also believe that the long-run equilibrium of this system is a punishment-free society. However, I disagree with Longites that we can jump straight from here to there. A punishment-free society is a little like a profit-free capitalist society in perfect equilibrium. It's a well-known result of economics that the tendency of capitalism is to drive profit margins down over time and, in equilibrium, to zero. In the real world, of course, they are never completely zero and I think that punishment in the real world would never be zero although the tendency of a morally coherent legal system will be to drive punishments to smaller and smaller levels over time.
Clayton -
@ the OP
Some libertarians certainly think this principle is sound. See here.
I read the blog and the comments, very interesting. However they didn't comment on what in my opinion is a crucial issue of repeat offenders. It is common for certain people today to have a record of 50 or even 100 offenses. I think that's ridiculous. If a person is that dangerous to society, he should not be on the lose. So obviously putting repeat offenders in jail for a long long time makes a lot of sense. Now how can this be solved in an an-cap society in which the history of the criminal is supposed to be irrelevant?
Let me tell you how I’d solve it: if you’ve cost me, as an insurer, this much in the past, and you’re very likely to cost me much in the future too, you either pay an indecent premium, or you’ll have to go by without liability insurance. Now, folk can let you into their property without such insurance but in doing so: 1) they assume the risk that you’ll cause damages and 2) they let is someone whose trustworthiness or indeed sanity is insecure. Could you be a serial killer? If not, why no one is isnuring you?
Do you think he’ll be able to walk anywhere once out of his house? Anywhere at all? Thus, he’d be, de facto, under house arrest for the rest of his days.
Keep in mind some thieves steal for pleasure, regardless of the value of the product.
1. I agree that repeat criminals should rarely be allowed into private territories. However if they stil enter, they should be punished severely, not only for trespassing, but also for endangering the land owner.
2. I agree with people who wrote in the Kinsella blog that if you put signs announcing that thieves will be shot or dealt with in certain specific ways, and those signs are plainly visible, then thieves will have to abide by them.
3. In general I think thieves should restitute the victim + the effort the catch the thief and try him in court.
4. However if there is a significant problem of catching thieves, I expect a lot of people to post signs threatening thieves with very serious punishments. In that case it might make sense for the courts to start producing more severe punishments for every thief caught, not only for those thieves who stole from people who posted the signs, but for all caught thieves. I expect then restitutions to become X2 or X3 of the value of the stolen property.
5. I think thieves should restitute the victim not only for the market value of the stolen property, but also for the subjective value of the property (for example family heirlom).
6. I think all thieves should bear the same punishment in the community regardless of their intent, their economic situation, the "goodness" of their character, how much they needed the stolen property, and how they spent it.
1. I agree that repeat criminals should rarely be allowed into private territories. However if they stil enter, they should be punished severely, not only for trespassing, but also for endangering the land owner. 2. I agree with people who wrote in the Kinsella blog that if you put signs announcing that thieves will be shot or dealt with in certain specific ways, and those signs are plainly visible, then thieves will have to abide by them. 3. In general I think thieves should restitute the victim + the effort the catch the thief and try him in court. 4. However if there is a significant problem of catching thieves, I expect a lot of people to post signs threatening thieves with very serious punishments. In that case it might make sense for the courts to start producing more severe punishments for every thief caught, not only for those thieves who stole from people who posted the signs, but for all caught thieves. I expect then restitutions to become X2 or X3 of the value of the stolen property. 5. I think thieves should restitute the victim not only for the market value of the stolen property, but also for the subjective value of the property (for example family heirlom). 6. I think all thieves should bear the same punishment in the community regardless of their intent, their economic situation, the "goodness" of their character, how much they needed the stolen property, and how they spent it.
These are all arbitrary pronouncements, no better than the central-planning of law that comes out of Washington DC. We don't need to set any specific a priori outcomes, we simply need a free market in the production of law services.
Clayton: These are all arbitrary pronouncements, no better than the central-planning of law that comes out of Washington DC. We don't need to set any specific a priori outcomes, we simply need a free market in the production of law services. Clayton -
Not at all, for now every owner sets the rules for his own land, which he is fully entitled to do. This has nothing to do with central planning.
Clayton: 1. I agree that repeat criminals should rarely be allowed into private territories. However if they stil enter, they should be punished severely, not only for trespassing, but also for endangering the land owner. 2. I agree with people who wrote in the Kinsella blog that if you put signs announcing that thieves will be shot or dealt with in certain specific ways, and those signs are plainly visible, then thieves will have to abide by them. 3. In general I think thieves should restitute the victim + the effort the catch the thief and try him in court. 4. However if there is a significant problem of catching thieves, I expect a lot of people to post signs threatening thieves with very serious punishments. In that case it might make sense for the courts to start producing more severe punishments for every thief caught, not only for those thieves who stole from people who posted the signs, but for all caught thieves. I expect then restitutions to become X2 or X3 of the value of the stolen property. 5. I think thieves should restitute the victim not only for the market value of the stolen property, but also for the subjective value of the property (for example family heirlom). 6. I think all thieves should bear the same punishment in the community regardless of their intent, their economic situation, the "goodness" of their character, how much they needed the stolen property, and how they spent it. These are all arbitrary pronouncements, no better than the central-planning of law that comes out of Washington DC. We don't need to set any specific a priori outcomes, we simply need a free market in the production of law services. Clayton -
What if a free market in the production of law services produced such outcomes? After all, many consumers of such servicesmay very well feel the same way that Eugene does.
Eugene: I read the blog and the comments, very interesting. However they didn't comment on what in my opinion is a crucial issue of repeat offenders. It is common for certain people today to have a record of 50 or even 100 offenses. I think that's ridiculous. If a person is that dangerous to society, he should not be on the lose. So obviously putting repeat offenders in jail for a long long time makes a lot of sense. Now how can this be solved in an an-cap society in which the history of the criminal is supposed to be irrelevant?
Interesting question. I think certain forms of proportionate punishment can be used as obvious means to prevent future crimes. For example, castration for rapists, death penalty for murderers, maiming for batterers who cause permanent damage to their victims, ect.
For thieves, I think forced labour as a means of paying back their victims is pretty good.
Eugene:6. I think all thieves should bear the same punishment in the community regardless of their intent, their economic situation, the "goodness" of their character, how much they needed the stolen property, and how they spent it.
Nothing can count as a crime without intent. See Kinsella and Tinsley here.
If it where the other way around, there would be no human society, but a war of all against all.
That is not too far from what we have.
Tex2002ans: Eugene:You could say that by becoming a thief he became a great danger to society, because theives (in my example) are extremely difficult to catch. There is no such thing as damage "to society," only damage to multiple individuals' property. Who else was damaged by a thief stealing gum? No one besides the owner of the gum. Let us say 1 in 10000 gum thieves are caught, and gum costs $1. The police catch a gum thief... why does the owner of the business then get $10000 for slightly more than $1 in damages? There is no reason to take into account the incompetency of the police to catch criminals, but only how much damage was caused by that thief.
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.
Apparently having the thief also pay for the probability to catch him is a popular notion in the libertarian circle.
I quote Bruce Benson.
Appropriately set fines can also provide a significant deterrent. Suppose fines are set equal to the full cost to the victim plus the full cost of bringing the offender to justice, all divided by the probability that the offender will be brought to justice, as suggested by Becker and Stigler.
Awesome. Can u provide a link?
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_2.pdf
I think I do agree that proportionate justice (that is an eye for an eye) is the most just form. However in some cases justice is not enough. For instance:
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.
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.
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.
Eugene: I think I do agree that proportionate justice (that is an eye for an eye) is the most just form. However in some cases justice is not enough. For instance: 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.
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.
That is not a valid argument in a voluntary arbitration system... why should I accept punishment "beyond what is just" in order to be made an example of? Why is it my job to be the whipping boy to "send a message" to others? Any system of "deterrence" is necessarily unjust.
A court that represents a lot of people
Courts don't represent people. Even the State's courts - which do represent the State - bend over backwards to divest themselves of all appearance of "representing" anyone since they understand that a court is supposed to be impartial.
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.
I hate to be a sour grape but you really need to tighten up your thinking. You make lots of assertions but you offer little insight.
In a moral social order - that is, a society where systemic double-standards tend to be minimized - punishments emerge from "case history", that is, from the customary punishments that have been found to work in settling disputes.
Pure gobbledy-gook.
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.
Eugene:Repeat offenders I believe have to either be deported to some very remote place, or be punished more than the "just level".
I would say this is not libertarian. Not because of any rights issue, but because you are largely discounting the viability of non-designed, 'spontaneous' solutions. I do think communities will be more peaceful if repeat lawbreakers are not freely walking around, but I also think this problem would resolve itself. As far as I know, countries did not have to deport pirates; rather, pirates formed their own communities to congregate and carry out their piracy, so as to avoid the costs of ducking local authorities and all that. It is conceivable that outlaws would respond to various incentives by voluntarily leaving/avoiding more civilized communities.
And if they don't, then we can talk about deportation or more severe punishments. Course, our talking won't do much good, since these alternatives will be tried by those actually involved with real-life cases.
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.
The more difficult the investigation, the more costly it is, and so the more damages the offender must pay if he is found guilty. This is a pretty common ancap point.
William: This is all trial and error stuff within the context of a community working within their local customs and jurisprudence. Well said. The Regression theorem is a memetic equivalent of the Theory of Evolution. To say that the former precludes the free emergence of fiat currencies makes no more sense that to hold that the latter precludes the natural emergence of multicellular organisms. | Post Points: 5
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.