Libertarian Thread #2: We Shall Never Die!

Equality 7-2521 wrote: Epignosis wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: Epignosis wrote: "Ask a black person over 170 if Americans keep slaves." God, Pat, come on.  You've been saying some inane things lately. Hell change my question to ask a person who has grown up in the inner city if police behave anything close to reasonably.  Since when do you care about the opinion of the inner city American? Evidence is not opinion...

Opinion is not evidence.

Epignosis wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: Epignosis wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: Ask a black person over the age of 40 if the police force is full of thugs.  Ask about half of America if corporations are made up of greedy people who should be taxed more. The situation I referenced was one based on direct observable evidence rather than popular opinion. Your analogy doesn't fit. No, you asked me to ask a black person over the age of 40.  I am fairly sure you are neither.  Thus it is not direct observable evidence.  You are not even asking me to discern popular opinion. You are asking me to discern only one person's opinion.  I'm not sure how helpful that is here.  If I ask a black person over 40 and he says "No," then am I off the hook?  Because I know two black men over forty who would unequivocally answer "No."  One of them has a son in the police force here.

Equality 7-2521 wrote: Epignosis wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: Epignosis wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: Ask a black person over the age of 40 if the police force is full of thugs.  Ask about half of America if corporations are made up of greedy people who should be taxed more. The situation I referenced was one based on direct observable evidence rather than popular opinion. Your analogy doesn't fit. No, you asked me to ask a black person over the age of 40.  I am fairly sure you are neither.  Thus it is not direct observable evidence.  You are not even asking me to discern popular opinion. You are asking me to discern only one person's opinion.  I'm not sure how helpful that is here.  If I ask a black person over 40 and he says "No," then am I off the hook?  Because I know two black men over forty who would unequivocally answer "No."  One of them has a son in the police force here. I'm pointing towards some groups which on the whole clearly suffered abuse at the hands of the police force. Of course the analysis doesn't apply to any individual with any certainty.  The fear of police built into black culture didn't arise due to some vacuum fluctuation.

Yet you defend corporations against fear from groups of people? 

Whatever objection you raise against police in this context (i.e., "people who have been wronged") can easily apply to corporations.

The T wrote: And a private justice system would work like the market, thus money will reign, not fairness.

 

Epignosis wrote: No need to go to bed Pat.  Why not forget theory?  Now is the time for praxis! John Doe gets drunk and kills his wife one night.  Neither of them have any living family.  What happens to John Doe under your scenario?

 

manofmystery wrote: Epignosis wrote: No need to go to bed Pat.  Why not forget theory?  Now is the time for praxis! John Doe gets drunk and kills his wife one night.  Neither of them have any living family.  What happens to John Doe under your scenario?     Funny you use that example because there is a local guy around here that runs a bus depot and continues to do so despite everyone knwoing that he killed his wife years ago.  Since the police can't locate her body big-government-legal is perfectly content to label it an unsolvable "disappearence" and move on.  Police, judges, magistrates, etc don't feel that they have any real obligation to pursue a case, like this, just because they supposedly work for the public.     Consider that it is the overall public attitudes (market force) towards things such as murder, rape, and robbery that make them punishable in the first place and that these attitudes would not change if the government had no hand in said punishment and you can easily reason that the public would meet their own need for protect and create their own, more representative, system of dispensing punishment.   You can't just trust that because the legal system is government run, instead of privately run, that justice will come to everyone who commits a violent crime.  It's foolish.  The only security you can even remotely trust is that which you provide for yourself.

Do you not believe in innocent until proven guilty?  Because people (i.e., public attitudes) will be quick to administer "justice" according to what the people want.

Also, you didn't even answer my question.  You could be a bureaucrat!

manofmystery wrote: Funny you use that example because there is a local guy around here that runs a bus depot and continues to do so despite everyone knwoing that he killed his wife years ago.  Since the police can't locate her body big-government-legal is perfectly content to label it an unsolvable "disappearence" and move on.  Police, judges, magistrates, etc don't feel that they have any real obligation to pursue a case, like this, just because they supposedly work for the public.

Edited by Henry Plainview - January 02 2011 at 23:11

Epignosis wrote: Do you not believe in innocent until proven guilty?  Because people (i.e., public attitudes) will be quick to administer "justice" according to what the people want.

 

Edited by manofmystery - January 03 2011 at 01:51

manofmystery wrote: Epignosis wrote: Do you not believe in innocent until proven guilty?  Because people (i.e., public attitudes) will be quick to administer "justice" according to what the people want.     You mean like a jury.  zing   Epignosis wrote: No need to go to bed Pat.  Why not forget theory?  Now is the time for praxis! John Doe gets drunk and kills his wife one night.  Neither of them have any living family.  What happens to John Doe under your scenario?   Same thing that would happen under our current system: John Doe takes refuge in another country long before anyone finds out about his wifes death (assuming he's not a complete moron). Wooo, reality meets hypothetical land.   Epignosis wrote: manofmystery wrote: Epignosis wrote: manofmystery wrote: The T wrote: And a private justice system would work like the market, thus money will reign, not fairness.     Seems to me that money reigns in our current, government run, justice system.   Shame is, Pat, this is one of those things government has controlled so long that people feel that'd they'd be helpless without them.   Untill people can break their assinine perception that unaccountable government bureaucrats can be trusted, and the free market (that makes up each and every one of us) can't, we aren't going to get anywhere.  People seem to believe that accountability exists within government and does not within the free market when, in fact, the exact opposite is true.  I support publicly-funded police.  Do you think I have this "assinine" (sic) perception?     Well, if you believe that they are somehow more capable than would be a private police force that you could directly have a stake in then yes.  Unless an officer happens to be in the proverbial right place at the right time than any local police force is simply a reactionary unit.  I, for one, would rather have someone that relies directly on my contribution, to operate, reacting to my call for assistace than someone who knows that they can always fall back on the government if they fail.  Call me crazy. Answer my question about John Doe.  You can't do that because you're talking about a bodyguard, not a police force. What about the police being a reactionary force don't you get?  Something happens, they get called, if they feel like it they go check it out.  A private force would do the same thing but would have what, I feel, is a more direct motivation to ACTUALLY do something.   Epignosis wrote: And since you bring this up, here's one for you: What if you steal something in the presence of your hired policeman?  Are you subject to arrest?     There are a lot of variables existing within the vagueness of your scenario.  You'll have to be more specific.   On a related sidenote: It never ceases to amaze me how strongly people defend the status quo.  Even if the results of a change wouldn't be all that noticable.

Yawn.

No direct answers.  I'm not surprised.  Just like a politician of the status quo.

On a related note: Do I defend the status quo?  Maybe I have this crazy, crazy idea that some of what we have is good and some of what we have isn't.

Epignosis wrote: No need to go to bed Pat.  Why not forget theory?  Now is the time for praxis! John Doe gets drunk and kills his wife one night.  Neither of them have any living family.  What happens to John Doe under your scenario?

That would depend on the specifics of the market. 

If protection worked as an insurance agency works, the act of aggression would be punished by the defense agency since it occurred against one of its clients. The reparations would then go to the company.

If the companies work a pay as your play kind of deal I could envision two scenarios:
1) People pay for the apprehension of the criminal through one of the defense agencies as a pro bono arrangement.
2) Unclaimed offenses are left open to the first claimant in such situations. I could imagine certain industries existing just to take up the prosecution of such cases, or since the market would probably too small to support it since this scenario is absurd, individual defense firms, or anybody who finds out about the situation, could prosecute the criminal hoping to collect the reparations and turn a profit.

Tell me in what society ever a murderer has just gone unpunished? Rogue killers have been brought to justice long before any governmental protection service began.