Yet we still suffer from a great deal of police corruption and mistreatment, because government employees can coordinate well to create a blue wall of silence. So, to fix one minor problem, we're getting rid of equality before law, and paving the way for feudalistic corporations, getting one step closer to Snow Crash? No, thanks.
Equality before law doesn't exist right now. Being rich carries with it connections and enhanced representation that gets one out of many crimes scot free that would be life-ruining to you or me.
Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
41–50 of 75 posts
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#42Yet we still suffer from a great deal of police corruption and mistreatment, because government employees can coordinate well to create a blue wall of silence. So, to fix one minor problem, we're getting rid of equality before law, and paving the way for feudalistic corporations, getting one step closer to Snow Crash? No, thanks.
I'm not really sure why you're getting downvoted. You make a perfectly good point that is recognized in most intellectual circles -- anarcho-capitalism (which is basically the core proposal here) is strongly related to feudalism.
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#43> I propose to instead privatize the detection, prosecution, and punishment of crime. Yes, because privatization of the prison system worked out so well, didn't it? So let's go the whole hog and privatize the entire justice system.
Isn't it the justice system that fills the prisons?
How is this OK?
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#44It seems very strange to suspend imprisonment for a system where everyone has to buy insurance for their own potential criminal conduct and allow the insurance companies to resolve the cases based on damages.
I think criminals will be more than happy to buy their right to commit crimes.
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#45My initial thought is that this would create a "wild west" type society where bounty hunters go around and have shootouts with criminals, but without police training. Also, how are cash fines going to work against broke criminals? "Oh, you stole a bunch of money because you have no money. Pay a fine"
I don't really understand their legal system, but from what i've heard, China has some kind of system like this. Where if you go to the police about something, they just sort of force the two parties to work it out and one of the parties pays the other a fine. If that were the case then this system seems ripe for abuse however, but I don't really know much about it. But seeing the headline and not actually RTFA my li…
IIRC, if you accidentally run over someone with your car in China, it makes legal and financial sense to back up over them to make sure they're dead. The restitution payment for accidental death is much less than the lifelong restitution payments for the victim's medical care and disability.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...
> In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more economical.
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#46There is a long history of this kind of thing and many great economists have talked about different version to make the legal system more efficient. There are different ideas how to innovate and sometimes privatize certain aspects. Some interesting reads that people might enjoy. David Friedman (son of Milton) has been studying this for quite a while. For example in he had this talk about how criminal law should be ab…
Maybe efficiency shouldn’t be the highest goal of the criminal justice system, and maybe innovation and profit shouldn’t be either. There is plenty of room for reform of the current system without destroying it in favor of some dystopian protostome, eating lives and shitting money. Instead of this insane and inhumane proposition I’d suggest an end to the war on drugs, and fundamentally rethinking matters such as bail…
Efficiency is actually a very high goal because in the context of a legal system it means that more people get the service of justice and get it more effectively. Its sort of a meme of modern politics that efficiency can be thrown overboard and as long as everybody can feel good about it we can move on, but that is the wrong attitude to take.
Also, these problem don't vanish if the government does something. Your proposal about ending the war on drugs for example, do you think profit has nothing to do with it continuing. I'm not saying its all about money, but stopping something that consumes billions will be opposed by many people. The same goes for many of these other things, like jailing people and so on.
The economists and judges who look at these things systematically try to understand the intensives faced by different actors in the system and to change the legal system to get a better outcome.
You might not agree with the person in the video, but you would learn something about Law&Economics at least.
> If all of thst is done and we still see a need for greater efficiencies in a much reduced system, then we can talk.
So any conceptual discussion about an ideal system should not be had because the current system is not ideal? Contrary to what you seem to imply the people who are having these arguments don't want to implement a new system tomorrow that changes everything. They are arguing about principles to inform the direction reform should take.
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Equality before law doesn't exist right now. Being rich carries with it connections and enhanced representation that gets one out of many crimes scot free that would be life-ruining to you or me.
And replacing criminal proceedings with cash fines improves this how ?
Because apparently the solution for not living in a utopia is to deliberately construct something that will obviously be a dystopia.
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it the justice system that fills the prisons?
Many private prison contracts have terms requiring a minimum number of prisoners. The state is thus contractually obligated to convict people . How is this OK?
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#49This is a terrible idea on its own, but I find it particularly unpalatable because the author is deliberately tickling the fancy of all the "My theories are so beautiful and internally consistent" libertarians who wouldn't be able to identify a negative externality if it punched them in the nose. I've had this discussion a million times in college. It's always a dumpster fire.
But in actual economics people who one could describe as libertarian politically have been on the forefront of research on externalizes. In fact the most important work on that was done by Ronald Coase. And since then many people like that have worked in that space.
Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime
#50Reminds me of L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...