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Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

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Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#61

Post by dang »

nickik wrote: post #46
UpshotKnothole wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many of these arguments have been made (and argued) between some of the best and most respected economists and judges over the years. But of course you are just so far above all this people that you can just 'predict a dystopian society' probably without studying any of the related subject at all. Efficiency is actually a very high goal because in the context of a legal system it means that more people get the servic…

You've crossed repeatedly into incivility and personal swipes. We ban accounts that do this, especially when we've warned them before (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706226).

Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site only as intended? The idea goes like this: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#62

Post by ohazi »

nickik wrote: post #49
ohazi wrote: post #28

This 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.

The idea that libertarians don't understand negative externalities is simple wrong. Maybe you talked to some people in collage who just don't know a lot of economics. 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 i…

No, the idea isn't wrong, it simply acknowledges the fact that there are a lot of libertarians who act like this:

http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-mouth-li...

You're correct that there are many who are actually reasonable and pragmatic, but it's disingenuous to claim that the other kind of pseudo-intellectual libertarian doesn't exist. They do exist, and they give the reasonable ones else a bad rap.

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#63

Post by Retric »

nickik wrote: post #59
Retric wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, the argument about private prisons is not that they fail to detain people. It's a question of second order effects relating to different incentives of private institutions vs government organizations. Governments see prisoners and thus prisons as a net loss because they pay for them. Private companies see prisons and thus prisoners as a profit center because they are paid to detain them.

If the people who put criminal in prison had to pay for it with their own money, there would not be as many people in prison as there would be far more efficient ways to deal with the situation in 70-90% of cases. That's the whole point of the argument about intensives. The very problem here is not the privatization but rather that the government wants to imprison so many people. The very reason the US has private pr…

> and many governments couldn't handle it

Or, people lobbied to have private prisons so they could make money. There are incentives to making things private even if it's less efficient to do so because politicians are not spending their own money and companies profit from lobbing more than they profit from not doing so.

> so long as the laws are bad

Laws are an outgrowth of the incentives given to politicians. Breaking the system so people can benefit from fixing it is a very time tested strategy.

The core problem is privatization does not directly change the rules of the game. You still have everything wrong with government and increase it by everything wrong with companies instead of replacing those same problems.

Consider, the US has both a social security system (SS) AND multiple tax deductible private retirement accounts (Roth, 401K).

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#64

Post by will_brown »

nine_k wrote: post #58
will_brown wrote: post #44

Intent is built into the very foundations of US criminal law (very rarely is any crime strict liability, where no intent is required). I’ve never seen a system of insurance that insures willful acts, seems like insurance reform would be step 2 after the proposed criminal reform. It seems very strange to suspend imprisonment for a system where everyone has to buy insurance for their own potential criminal conduct and…

An insurance is a "right to commit crime" as much as an insurance is a "right to crash your car into someone else's". If you have a car and an insurance, you can just try for yourself. The insurance would pay for your liabilities in that case, but they would likely not be happy to do so, and will efficiently communicate their unhappiness to you. Your next round of insurance will cost significantly more after that, an…

You’re actually reiterating my point. Typical insurance, as you note, is for risks (e.g. your example of an accident). In other words insurance won’t pay out if you willfully intentionally caused the accident. Criminal acts necessarily imply intentional conduct.

The author wants to suspend imprionsment for this insurance based damages system. Between the difference in car insurance and this criminal conduct insurance I think it equals a right to commit crimes. We have a criminal and civil court system (think on OJ case acquitted in the criminal case and liable in the civil case). I think the proposal amounts to mandated “criminal insurance” which suspends then crimaljustice side of things and allows insurance companies resolve the damages from crimal acts.

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#65

Post by RobinHanson »

chasingthewind wrote: post #26

A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion. I get that the rationalist community is really trying very hard to figure out novel ways to solve difficult problems and I am very supportive of that goal. I love reading Marginal Revolution for one, and I'm highly susceptible to the argument that there…

Public enterprise also has many unpredictabl incentives. And many of the more predictable ones are pretty harmful.

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#66

Post by RobinHanson »

fao_ wrote: post #32
chasingthewind wrote: post #26

A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion. I get that the rationalist community is really trying very hard to figure out novel ways to solve difficult problems and I am very supportive of that goal. I love reading Marginal Revolution for one, and I'm highly susceptible to the argument that there…

> A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion. I'm not sure to what degree describing one's first impressions honestly consists of snark. > However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I simply would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it had been prov…

If an existing system works badly, one shouldn't be too eager to understand and replicate all of its details.

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#67

Post by RobinHanson »

umvi wrote: post #2

My 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"

Bounty hunters exist today, avoid shootouts, and are well enough trained when that happens. They would have no special powers, and thus be liable for any damages caused by a shootout.

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#68

Post by RobinHanson »

__jal wrote: post #19
saagarjha wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're trading government-run prison for an insurance-run one?

More or less. There are other formulations in which the insurance-function is bundled with other things (membership in an HOA-like structure, other protective services, etc.), but this is a fairly common scheme supported by a lot of anarcho-capitalist types. You can find some academic economic treatment in _The Machinery of Freedom_, by Friedman, and Vernor Vinge (science fiction author) seemed taken with the notion,…

As you say "access to justice" costs lots of money today, it isn't obvious that this gives less such access.

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#69

Post by RobinHanson »

mjw1007 wrote: post #51
Avery3R wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understood it, the legal liability insurance pays. The criminal then has to deal with whatever repercussions are laid out in their contract with the insurance company.

Then, presumably, if the criminal doesn't follow the contract the case ends up in civil court. And if the criminal refuses to submit to the judgement of the civil court, that's contempt of court which needs to somehow be enforceable. You could make the contempt of civil court a criminal matter, but then the same insurer ends up having to pay restitution to itself and this doesn't seem to end well. Or if the civil cou…

I did say explicitly that the one exception to fines as official punishment is failing to arrange for insurance. Your contract with an insurer can specify the court that judges disputes with it, and the forms of punishment available there.

Re: Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

#70

Post by RobinHanson »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #22

This is about as well thought out as my old professor's idea of "the roads should be illuminated, and there's no need for headlights". 1. Require insurance to live? Do you know how hard it is to even keep the PPACA? And you want everybody insured with criminal liability insurance??? 2. Ah, I get it. So rich people can just pay to make it go away. 3. What about poor people? Unless you're subsidizing that "insurance",…

People have to get insurance to drive on roads today; are you outraged at that too?
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