How about you kept your examples straight? In your OP you claimed to say the words without ill intent, and now you said them because you want Smith dead? How is anybody to determine what are you asking when even you yourself don’t have a clue?
If two guys agree to rob me, and one drives the getaway car, then we should be ale to agree that I may legitimately have a dispute with both of them. well if I offer services, such as contract killing, on the open market, I am responsible for every act that I take, nothing changes, and someone might morally hire me to perform a justified killing (assuming for the purposes of discussion that there is such a thing). However, if I mistakenly kill the wrong person, I am responsible 100% and the client should bear responsibility in proportion for his contribution to the error (if he gave me the wrong address or something). Now suppose he hires me to kill someone wrongly, and I perform this act. Arent we both liable for the full penalty of the act? The hitman doesnt exist in a vaccuum, he lives on the earnings from these acts. Just as surely as taking money from a man’s wallet is taking food from his belly, paying a hitman is feeding him and making it possible for him to continue acting. If I break into a house, and my partner goes inside, grabs the jewelry, and we both leave, I am just as guilty as he. In that same way, a man who exchanges some form of consideration for immoral services (such as a murder) is liable due to his material contribution.
edited to add: good catch, Marko. Eugene is a known troll but in my opinion, one of the strengths of the Austrian Philosophy is that, properly applied, it is immune to trolls.
Well deduced. If so there is in fact a deal.
There is an offer of a deal (if somebody utters x I will kill y), and when uttered with intent to make sure Albert kills Smith there is a meeting of the minds. By uttering with intent the utterer proclaims the right of Albert to murder Smith, so he opens himself to being similarly treated in turn.
It is the same principle as with the Wild West “wanted dead or alive” posters (if somebody kills x I will pay them), only here it is the guy who sells the service who is offering a deal.
The difference between the guy who drives your getaway car and the guy who pays the hitman is that in the first case he physically partakes in the crime while the commissioner does not. This makes all the difference in the world to me. If you’re not part of the actual, physical act you do not count. Whether you otherwise influence the act, as by inciting it, paying for it, or even planning it, is to me immaterial. People are not things to be used by others, but have the choice to commit crimes (alone or in groups) or not. And let’s not even begin with the practical issues of understanding how much this or that guy ‘influenced’ some criminal act.
Driving a getaway car is simply not participation in a robbery. I think that is somethng we should be able to agree upon. And, by your logic, if I threaten to kill you if you do not pay me, but dont actually assault you (because you paid me) I have not actually committed a crime. Lets not muzzle my right to free speech or try to discuss how my words “influenced” you into handing over your wallet.
its hard for me to see how the transfer of material consideration in this respect would be beneath your regard. If someone hired a hitman to kill me, I would certainly have a grievance against him.
Sure you will have grievances against someone who hired a hitman to kill you. But most grievances in life are not solved in court, they are solved out of court, for example by ostracism. Besides you can always hire a hitman your self to kill that person.
So what about Terry Jones? Is he guilty for threatening to burn Quaran books? He knew damn well it will cause mayham and might actually get people killed.
Regarding the gateaway car - this is not a crime in my opinion. Only the actual physical act of hurting someone or their property is a crime.
…I am also not responsible for what a hitman whom I paid to kill someone did. That is I just uttered the words “kill him and I will pay you”. How is that different than uttering the word “Abracadabra” in my first scenario?
In the case of the former you clearly represent an action that is more akin to an involuntary reflex, one that is beyond free will. Thus, there is no incentive to kill, just a reaction. In the latter, action on the part of the hitman is voluntary and will only be committed under the pretense of an incentive.
Furthermore, Albert represents an undue restriction on the freedom of everyone else (in their inability to say a word so Albert will not kill John), whereas the hitman does not. In that sense Albert can legally be dealt with ex ante.
In your post you bring a basically unrelated, scenario: a threat. If you threat to kill me, and the threat is credible, I may kill you in self-defense right there. I many not get you to court afterwards: a threat is not punishable afterwards, but immediately actionable, in my view. If the credible threat went unpunished when it was uttered, you can no longer cop the guy because he didn’t actually aggress upon you. Yet while the threat was being made, you had no way of knowing whether he would aggress. Now you know.
But hiring a guy to kill me is not a threat by you: what matters is who does the actual deed, not why he did it. The point of a threat is precisely that it can be immediately followed by actual aggression, to forestall which you may act: threatening to hire a hitman is not reasonably followed by you yourself killing me. So the hitman and threat scenarios have little in common.
Eugene puts the matter perfectly, to my mind,
Sure you will have grievances against someone who hired a hitman to kill you. But most grievances in life are not solved in court, they are solved out of court, for example by ostracism. Besides you can always hire a hitman your self to kill that person.
I may add: there are many things in life that hurt more than aggression. I’m hurt by someone insulting my girlfriend publicly or repelled by insults on an otherwise civil forum far more than I’d be by a friend hitting me in a moment of drunken rage. Yet the former cases are not aggression, and the latter is.
What I’m trying to say is that the degree of repellence than an act may have (hiring a hitman, in our case) is not necessarily a proof that the act is aggressive: an act is aggressive only if it is, not if it is objectionable.
That the two often coincide is all well, but these cannot be the same thing, if only because what may be very objectionable to a devout muslim is very different from what may be objectionable to a vegetarian. Objecitonability will not give us an overarching system where all can fit: only the NAP can.
That the two often coincide is all well, but these cannot be the same thing, if only because what may be very objectionable to a devout muslim is very different from what may be objectionable to a vegetarian. Objecitonability will not give us an overarching system where all can fit: only the NAP can.
Exactly
I really dont see what “most grievances in life” have to do with any single given grievance. If Cliff Claven hires a hitman to kill me, and therefore I have a grievance with him, observing a bunch of irrelevancies about other situations doesnt solve my grievance. Cliff Claven has to deal with the fact that I have a beef with him. “oh but when something similar happened to someone else” who cares?
whats your point? Reciprocation = justice? Of course I could do any number of things. But what I choose to do is what is important, and in our little hypothetical I choose to bring my grievance against both the hitman and the client in court.
guilty of what?
well then I guess you would be the one with the grievance and you would have to make your arguments in court or settle it using other means.
its not a crime. Its a grievance. I have a problem with people who facilitate the violation of my rights. I think I have a decent case against the getaway driver, therefore I bring my grievance to a court.
ok what about a doctor who breaks someone’s ribs giving them cpr to save their life? If they were unconscious and could not give consent, have the been assaulted?
if someone willingly facilitates aggression against me, I consider that to be aggression. You may or may not agree, but my opinion is relevant any time you consider helping someone else to aggress against me.
it is also hard for me to imagine a free market in justice where no court would countenance a claim against someone who commissions a murder or drives a getaway vehicle, likely as not people who agree with Eugene and Gero would live in Detroit and people who agree with me would live in Miami and professional arbitrators would handle the disputes.
Well, it seems we got to the point where our position are clear, and only the practical application in an arbitration market will show which rule will make the highest profit and drive out the other.
But so that we don’t misunderstand each other I think that the getaway driver is committing a crime, and the commissioner is not (not to confound the two scenarios).
Also, you may think that such a society where I could hire guys to kill people and be perfectly within the law would be a jungle, but I insist you reconsider: 1) if all hitmen are caught, who in his right mind, will insist on becoming one, so who will be there for you to hire? Killing mafia soldiers would decimate the mafia much more effectively than jailing Dons; 2) what makes you (the commissioner) think that after placing a hit you can live happily thereafter? No one would vouch for you. No one would insure you. No defense agaecy would take you as its client. You would be put outside the law, which means that anyone could kill you or steal form you with full impunity. Anyone could hire a hitman to cop you and the hitman himself would be committing no crime!
That would be only a marginally better treatment than the hitman himself would receive (perhaps an ever worse one, since at least the hitman’s property will not become un-owned if he is convicted), and yet you will never be formally charged of anything. You will just be legally turned into a stray dog, which can be murdered at one’s convenience. You still think that not holding commissioners liable would be that much of a change?
one of the benefits of markets is that one option doesnt have to “drive out” the other. We can live side by side with our own beliefs. If I have a grievance with the man who hired the hitman, its not like you have to agree with me or move away.
that would only be relevant to the scenario if you were a jurist and I were considering hiring you to handle my dispute. However, thanks for the clarification
not at all, I dont think you understand law. If one person hires a hitman and no one has a problem with that, why do you think I would have a problem? My whole point is that in a free society law arises from settling disputes. Where is the dispute?
not quite sure what you mean. Plenty of room for entry-level employment in that field, I guess.
probably because there simply arent enough dons to decimate the mafia, even if you killed all of them. I suppose if you killed them, and they kept replacing the dons from within, without replenishing their numbers through recruitment, you could hit 10%. thats decimation, reduction by one tenth. The romans (iirc) used it as a punishment for units that had displeased the emperor or some shit.
well you did just say I acted within the law…who has a problem with me now?
so now commissioning a murder is a crime punishable by outlawry? I am confused.
ummm, no. My family would take issue with that and settle the grievance SOMEHOW. thats private law for you.
I think youre confused. You just described a scenario where the comissioner of the hit was, in fact, held liable. Why else was he shunned and outlawed?
You’ll forgive me if I only respond to the point that is still of interest to me (and for a longish post below).
You say,
Which makes me see that sometimes I ought to explain what I mean by one being held liable, as it clearly is by no means implied.
I imagine people would be inured, or ‘vouched for’ in a private law society (Murphy’s, Molineux’s and Friedman’s concept). I imagine for you to be able to step anywhere at all, someone of great integrity (a specialized company, most probably) would have to assure the owner that whatever damage you may do to him, his guests or their property will be made good. And when I say that you ‘commit a crime’ I mean that your voucher agrees that you acted in defiance of libertarian cannon, which I expect to revolve around he NAP. Thus, he acknowledges his ‘vicarious’ duty to recompense the victims or their estates. On the other hand, I also except such voucher organization to defend their client, perhaps by negotiating with fellow voucher for crimes that might be committed against - not by – the client.
Now, if you turned out to be such an asshole that no one will vouch for you, even if you formally never committed a crime, what will happen is that 1) no one will be able to safely deal with you, doing so at his own risk and 2) no one will stand up for you*.* You show up on no-one’s P&L statement, and in practice you mean nothing. You are no different from a stray dog: people deal with stray dogs at their own risk. Stray dong apeera on no one’s P&L, they welfare doesn’t mean anything to anyone’s material wellbeing.
I hope I have made the difference clear now: to commit a crime is to breach some pre-existing accord which will automatically give rise to monetary compensation. We can consider it a crime since it is specifically foreseen in a contract that you have, at some point, agreed to.
To be denied cover, is to be erased from the system. Being erased for the system is not a punishment, since that would imply that people owe you insurance, and by denying it to you they met out punishment. That is not the case.
You can be innocent of a legal offense, but somehow guilty of gross moral violations to the point where people prefer to avoid you as if you where the plague itself. What further becomes of you (what you seem to imply by ‘private law’ above) is immaterial to the justice system. That is the great beauty of what I imagine would emerge as the ‘legal system’ in a free society.
Now, I imagine many will think of a free-market society as a sort of evolved common law system. I disagree. Common law is all well and good for now, but it cannot monetize key aspects of the legal procedure, to my mind. It is a fundamentally irrational system of justice, since it cannot rationally calculate. I do not think it would stand competition for long in the face of the emergence of voucher originations.
Anyway, I have discussed this scenario assuming a system such as this. I always do. I do not know how the hitman issue would be judged on common law grounds, and I do not care a bit. Perhaps, as you say, I do not ‘know the law’, but I couldn’t care less.