Libertarian Thread #2: We Shall Never Die!

Epignosis wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: Epignosis wrote: Equality 7-2521 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? 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. So...what burden of proof is needed in either scenario? Funny that you call my scenario absurd.  What exactly is absurd about it? (Or do you prefer to just throw around adjectives without backing them up?  Kind of like what your goon patrols would do with accusations). You would end up having turf wars.  That's it.  My neighborhood's police force vs. someone else's police force.  Rogue innocents have been brought to injustice long before any governmental protection service began. So we're going to talk about a justice system now? That's really a separate issue. If we're keeping the same governmental judicial and corrections system the burden of proof would be no different. I'm calling it absurd because it's exceedingly rare that someone has no living family or friends and gets murdered. Why doesn't that happen with state police forces? Or countries police forces? When we have cross national legal disputes they're settled peacefully without conflict. Why would police forces go to war? You do realize how expensive that is right. They also can't draft and tax to support the conflict. It's in the best interest to work things out peacefully. And rogue innocents still get brought to justice. I didn't say the system would be perfect. It would only be better is my contention. The point is that your scenario hardly strikes down a private police force since people throughout history have shown a dislike for murderers even if they had no connection whatsoever to the person murdered. Let me rephrase- police cannot arrest you without a reason to arrest you.  I can't just call the cops and say my neighbor murdered someone and they'll come and cart him off.  That's what I was referring to. Absurd =/= exceedingly rare.  What I'm pointing out is that private police forces would be no different than private bodyguard companies.  This is where it gets hairy- your idea of a private police force would set the nasty precedent that private (i.e., non-neutral) companies would have the right to suspend the rights of citizens.  This is undesirable. The primary role of the government is to protect the rights of the citizens, including the right to life.  Police are a neutral part of that.  You claiming that they're not neutral, corrupt, racist, etc. doesn't change what it is supposed to be.  As we agree, no system will be perfect.  Much of what you claim about private police forces is based on pure conjecture- nothing more.  I have no need to conjecture because I see what a generally great job our police do here, and our rights are universally protected from those who would do us evil.

I'm not sure why the burden of proof would swing like that. I would think that it would require a higher burden of proof since unlawful arrest or detainment charges could be brought against the arresting office, something very hard to do against a cop. The police do routinely do things with the lack of evidence you described, but not for extreme things like murder. Tickets for passing a school bus are apparently handled like you described.

Change my wording then. An exceedingly rare scenario as a critique seems absurd to me.

I don't believe they would act like bodyguards. The function of a body guard is a small subset of the function of a police officer. I have much more a problem with government suspending the rights of citizens. I don't see what that has to do with law enforcement though. We haven't talked about changing the court system so government would still be deciding guilt and innocence.

The primary role of government as we conceived it is to protect the rights of citizens. However, those in power in government have unfortunately not accepted this mission statement. We can tell ourselves as much as we may want what the goal of government is, but governments have shown a complete inability to live up to these lofty ideals. I care little for what a police force is supposed to be and how it is supposed to act. It doesn't happen that way. There's no incentives for the force to act that way.

What I'm saying is somewhat conjecture. It's also somewhat tested, although not in modern environments. The theory is perfectly sound though. You have not suggested any reason that market forces would not act in this industry the same way that they do in every industry. Private companies reduce cost and raise effectiveness. I don't see why this will be any different. At the very least, the system I described would deteriorate into another governmental system. At the best, we would see a great improvement.

The police force preys on our rights as much as it provides us with safety (violence at the hands of government excluded). I will say they do a better job than the federal government and the military at protecting us.

Epignosis wrote: Equality 7-2521 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? 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. So...what burden of proof is needed in either scenario? Funny that you call my scenario absurd.  What exactly is absurd about it? (Or do you prefer to just throw around adjectives without backing them up?  Kind of like what your goon patrols would do with accusations). You would end up having turf wars.  That's it.  My neighborhood's police force vs. someone else's police force.  Rogue innocents have been brought to injustice long before any governmental protection service began.

So we're going to talk about a justice system now? That's really a separate issue. If we're keeping the same governmental judicial and corrections system the burden of proof would be no different.

I'm calling it absurd because it's exceedingly rare that someone has no living family or friends and gets murdered.

Why doesn't that happen with state police forces? Or countries police forces? When we have cross national legal disputes they're settled peacefully without conflict. Why would police forces go to war? You do realize how expensive that is right. They also can't draft and tax to support the conflict. It's in the best interest to work things out peacefully.

And rogue innocents still get brought to justice. I didn't say the system would be perfect. It would only be better is my contention. The point is that your scenario hardly strikes down a private police force since people throughout history have shown a dislike for murderers even if they had no connection whatsoever to the person murdered.

Henry Plainview wrote: 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.   I find your attitude in this paragraph absolutely terrifying. I hope you'll forgive me if I would prefer government police over your private vigilantes who apparently would act without any proof or evidence. People (even you and I!) are quite irrational and stupid, and the problem is that our irrationality prevents us from seeing how little we actually know, just like people's incompetence prevents them from seeing how incompetent they are. And this isn't just abstract internet smugness wharblegarble. The emotional nonsense that your community has been caught up in gets people killed. This is really long and I didn't read it closely enough to understand it, but it apparently it disproves libertarianism so I'm posting it anyway!

I don't think he's talking about vigilante justice.

If a cop wrongly prosecutes you, beats you, tasers your heart to mush, or runs you over with his squad car, you're SoL.

If a private policeman or vigilante did any of these things they'd be subject to the repercussions of the law.

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.

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: 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: 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

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!

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?

 

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