Nuremberg & Stanley Milgram–I didn’t know how else to phrase this, but I was thinking about this last night before I fell asleep.
Are world leaders (US presidents?) bad people? What I mean is, in an Ancap society, would we have grounds to charge them with a crime?
Ex: FDR issued executive order 1099–Japanese internment. I’m not sure if he himself could ever be criminally charged or held responsible. He only issued the order–I don’t think he pointed guns at his underlings and said “Do it!”. Or do you disagree? Essentially, can someone be charged with paying a “hit-man” to assault someone?
Where do we assign the fault? It seems by this, much of the government is enforced by subservients–local cops, soldiers. Politicians really have nothing to do with it, except in the spouting of senseless rhetoric.
And by this, would it be legitimate for GW Bush to have a warrant out for him in Switzerland for human rights violations (Guantanamo Bay)?
My answer is that in a free society someone paying or ordering someone else to commit a crime is a psychopath and would be treated the same way as other dangers to society.
Some long-established legal principles that can be considered here include: accessory, accomplice, common purpose, and joint liability. I see no reason why these principles would not essentially hold in an anarcho-capitalist society.
I won’t repeat the discussion in the other thread, but I’ll say that anyone in the position of a US President would act as a mass murderer. The statist system makes it sooo easy, and people are not built for that kind of pressure. Kings had a chance to be virtuous but the head of the massive administration in every modern state is just a figurehead. One goes along becouse he has no other option but resigning.
Are world leaders (US presidents?) bad people? What I mean is, in an Ancap society, would we have grounds to charge them with a crime?
While I think speculating about an actual an-cap society is worse than useless (as there really has never been such a thing), what can be discussed is the definitions of the nature of reality within the context of things.
People merely use and utilize the apparatus they have around them. There is precedent what the President of the US, the Queen of England, The warlord of Rawanda, or whatever can and can’t get away with. There is a social mechanic and a general homeostasis that we and they use to judge theie actions against. Moreover there is precedent and customs established for the rest of us to realize what we can and can not utilize to our advantage within our real and working societal and legal framework.
There really isn’t one in an an-cap society. What can be said though is the apparatus and the actions of said people simply won’t exist in an an-cap society by definition.
As far as the who is good and bad stuff don’t worry too much about that, it isn’t worth the time and will probably only lead to people yelling at each other.
The positions of power actually attract the worst kinds of people and the people that hire for certain powerful positions within the state, look for specific personality characteristics that can allow you to describe the person as criminal in nature. I think the figurehead politicians on the face of it have to be “nice people” because that is a large part on what they get elected on within a democracy. It definitely seems so in modern democracy that personal morel impurities counts more over ideological opinions. The case of a politician not getting elected because he visited a strip club for example. But that is within the public arena and the surface, some of the politicians appear to be more sincere that others. Bush junior seemed like such a faker, as in private he was probably a coke sniffing homosexual etc. But the likes of obama might be a little more sinsere although, I do doubt his whole family man image and see him more as a ruthless public relations business man. On the UK side we have cameron who seems sincere in his personal endeavours. While Brown and Blair looked like they were up for any criminal activity if it was going.
But the positions within the government that actually have a lot more power than the politician figureheads are most definitely not nice people. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney type of people, head of cia, mi5 etc. Not the type of people you want around your house for a meal and some wine.