I do not believe that any quantity of money is equal to life, and setting a life equal to all the property presently in the criminal’s possession is, quite frankly, absurd. If a life is worth an infinite quantity of money, then the criminal should also owe all future earnings to the family of the victim; if it is worth a finite amount, that amount should be placed as a limit to what can be seized, and if a life cannot be expressed in monetary terms, justice rebels against paying for a life with money. You say that you oppose punishment, yet support an arbitrary grant of money from the criminal to the family of the victim. The family of the victim was not harmed beyond the loss of income, so any restitution in excess of that is just as much arbitrary punishment as if the court ordered a thief to repay one hundred times the amount stolen. I agree that we cannot know how much money is equal to a life; I just believe that that principle better supports my position (only a life is equal to a life, and justice must be served) than your position (a life is equal to the property then in the possession of the murderer, as I understand it).
If the murderer does not lose his rights, how do you justify taking away his property? Property is an inalienable right just as life is, and so if I can take your property I can take your life. I also believe that natural law does allow for retaliation. If I kill a man, I announce to the world that I do not believe that he has a right to his life. I cannot contradict that statement with words, as my actions have disproven any words spoken against them. Consequently, by announcing that I do not believe the right to life to be universal, I have voluntarily waived my right to my own life. And if we cannot waive our rights, no transactions would be possible, for in selling something to another man one waives one’s right to some portion of his property.
I do not see quite how you get the mixed with labor addition. If we only have a right to our labor, then the actual property is not ours, but only our improvements. I follow the alternative approach that property rights arise simply from the principle that each man has a right to where he then is and what he has taken possession (there was a Mises.org article on the subject recently, which I shall try to dig up). Additionally, a right to property not maintained against question ceases to exist, so questions regarding whether property held for a reasonable period was rightfully possessed become moot. I see no reason to give the Russians the North Pole because they have never tried to assert their right (and it should belong to the private explorers in any case, unless they agreed to give up property to the state in return for backing).
Please allow me to quote myself, because I think I was pretty much clear on this:
“…and as losing life is irreversible it is infinitely more valuable than any property, so whatever large the murderer’s property is, it isn’t even a near equivalent to the value of life he destroyed.”
So I never said equal, I said it is not even nearly equal. (…life and all the property of the murderer what ever large is it). I don’t believe that taken life for life is justice. Maybe, if we are following the Bible before Jesus Christ (Old Testament), but not if we follow the natural right philosophy.
Also your beliefs are not required to have a right to property and life, that’s why we call it “natural” because you can’t announce to the world anything about this, it is exist without your consent. I also explained in some of the previous post why you can take the property from a murderer and why you can’t take his life; because he’s property is a restitution for the family of he’s victim, and you can’t take he’s life because that isn’t serve any purpose to the victim or to the victims family and because taking life is an irreversible act.
This is not my theory; this is one of the fundamental principle of the natural right philosophy and a fundamental concept in the Austrian school of economy.
I rock or a land or a tree or anything in the nature is unowned in its original state. If you MIX your labor with a previously unowned resource (you make a house from a tree, or a brick from a rock or you cultivate a land…) it is become your property. You can’t come to North America in the year 1500 and say these 100000 acres is mine, unless those 100000 acres are unowned and you cultivate them (MIX with labor). Putting fence as far as you can reach isn’t make it your property. Of course when something become your property then you are free to do with it anything you wish, you can give it away, you can left to your children’s or anyone else you want, and you can even stop cultivating (using it), the very first act of doing some work with it made it your property forever. I don’t have time to find references to this, but you can read about this in the works of Jefferson, Rothbard, Spooner, Mises or even older, works of Locke and I believe you can find something about this even in the works of Grotius or/and (am not exactly sure which one but maybe even both).
About the North Pole… it is unowned, so who get there first and MIX his labor with it he would be able to call it “my property”. So a question of “giving” it or “not giving” it to the Russians is a nonsense, because you can’t give something you don’t own. And the North Pole is unowned. It can be owned but that would require MIXING labor with it… or if we denied this, I am afraid we must deny the whole classical liberal/libertarian philosophy and the cornerstone of it, known as Austrian school. The other possibility is that I’ve greatly misunderstand something… and I must admit if that’s the case I would be very surprised.
My contention is that any time an equation of justice returns an inequality, you should check your equation. I believe that stating that one is not allowed to take the life of a murderer and that no amount of money can atone for murder is a contradiction that must be resolved. I can see two means of resolving it: either stating that a life is worth a finite amount of money, or stating that one can take the life of a murderer.
Why does being irreversible have to do with value if it is never given back?
A life for a life seems to be the only just standard that I can see. What happens, for example, when a man with no known relations is killed. Does the murderer go unpunished? Only an action against the murderer can provide justice in such a situation. Regarding restitution, a fine is restitution only so long as it compensates for damage in kind. Assigning “restitution” above the harm done is completely inconsistant with true restitution.
I agree that natural law is immutable, but I also happen to think that my position is a better description of natural law than yours is (just like you believe that your position is a better description than mine). Being unchangeable does not mean that it is self evident.
It isn’t easy to get rid of the collectivist mindset. One thing could help in this journey. If we consider that we are a form of energy and we are in constant war with other forms of energy in order to survive. Nature are a very “ugly” place, we get attacked by cold, heat, wild animals, thunderstorms, earthquakes, water, other human beings etc. In order to increase our chances to survive we must use other forms of energy as help, so we build houses to avoid cold and heat and wild animals, we take animals from the nature and make them domestic (horses, cows, pigs etc.), and whatever we can we do.
And we are almost unable to achieve all of these alone, so we must join our energy with other similar forms of energy (other human beings), and this leads us to a division of labor. So we invent the state or any other group because we want to have more efficiency. So we work but we specialize to certain areas and that way we can use our energy more efficiently and this improves our chances to survive. We can’t “delegate” something what we can’t do ourselves. This is the cornerstone of a limited government that we can give to the government only the powers we can also do. So if we don’t have the right to kill and to steal, we can’t give that right to the government either. Government is nothing else than a division of labor, we seek to have specialized persons (judge, policeman, etc.) who would protect our life and property more efficiently then if we do it alone. This is the only reason of government, to protect our life and property. Any government doing anything outside of this is not a limited government and it is a sure way to a collectivist society.
Can we achieve this division of labor without a state? Sure we do it all the time on the free market, but could we delegate the power to protect our life and property to a private organization? Yes we can, and we do this also on the open market (many people have personal guards etc.) so the police power could be delegated to private companies. Can we delegate the power to decide about justice to private organizations (private courts)? This is not so clear, because while we can delegate the power to protect us to the private police, we don’t lose the same power; we can still protect ourselves alone or even side by side with the police. But can we delegate the power to decide about justice to the private courts and not lose the same power as an individual? If a police don’t protect you, you can protect yourself and you even has the right to protect yourself against the police (if the police attack you), but if the court decision isn’t inline with your expectations, can you decide alone? I don’t think so.
The difference between private organizations and government (state) is that your relationship with a private organization is strictly voluntary and your relationship with the state is non-voluntary, it is a coercive power. Now the question is how can we delegate some power to a coercive organization? The answer is we can’t. 10, 2000, 50000 or some other definitive number of people can, but WE can’t (Spooner teach us that even if every living man delegate this power to the coercive state, it isn’t a mandatory condition for their children), so even if one group of people establish the state how can that state be the state of the children of those people many years after? So we live in a incredibly illogical society (world) and we take those things as granted.
I’m afraid I see no contradiction in this. You can’t take someone property unless you pay for it to the owner (and he agree to sell it). So what amount of money (or property) would lead to this kind of “transaction”? I believe an infinite amount, because nobody will “sell” his life for any definite amount of money (property). So if this is the case, then life is worth infinite property, and if you take all the property of the murderer and pay it to the family of the victim it will be still far less than infinite amount of money (property).
If a victim has no family, the murderer’s property became unowned and will return to the natural state, the next one who MIX his labor with it can call it “my property”. And of course the murderer won’t be punished, because punishment serve no purpose, he will lose he’s property and he will be banned from interaction and banned to be cohabitants with normal people (in a present world this is only achievable if you put him in a jail, but not the kind of jail we have – in this jail they (the murderers) would live free, the only restriction is that they can’t put their foot on the property of normal people, so they can’t left the jail, but inside the jail they must be free), just like we can’t left the planet Earth, but on this planet we are Free, the jail would be a “sub-planet” on Earth for murderers. (There are some Sci-Fi movies about this.)
For the most part I agree with Aludanyi, except on the matter of a life for a life, in which case I believe Webster is applying natural law more consistently. On the matter of privatization and property attained by means other than homesteading:
I believe one unsolvable problem in a “life for life” principle is that it is achievable only if in a fight the two “victims” kill each other. In other case it is unsolvable. Who will take the life of the murderer? So let forget for a moment that the death of the murderer serve no purpose (I am not a utilitarian, but I think in this case we would do some work for nothing, to execute the murderer and get nothing), and let forget that the only justifiable killing is self defense. Just try to answer this question: Who will take the life of the murderer? Who has the right, the responsibility to doing that? Especialy in a stateless society (anarchy), but even if we have a limited government, government has no rights other than we has, so who can grant this power to the government. Who will take the life of the murderer?
I don’t think we can ever achieve a natural rights compatible property system, simple because we are a mature civilization, all of our living space is already someone’s property (mostly government property) and non of those who owns property because the state granted them would abandon “property” and most of them already mixed labor with a property which was originally a property of someone else (many states confiscate property and transferred it to other people), so we are simply living in a mess we’ve built for dozens of centuries, I don’t believe it can be corrected anymore.
If you destroy an object of mine to which I have a sentimental attachment and would not sell for any price, are you liable for infinite damages? I still believe that the answer to a life being worth more than any quantity of money is that we must look for something other than property in retaliation.
If the murderer’s property reverted to a state of nature, would it not either be possessed by him or his family? They are the people most able to add their labor to it. I also still fail to see how prisoners are free in that they are not allowed to enjoy their property which they do still own.
The murderer’s life is forfeit to anyone. Restitution must be made to the person wronged, but retaliation may be done by anyone, given that I justify retaliation under the doctrine that someone who violates the life of another has stated irrevocably that he does not accept that people have a right to their own life. I suspect that there would be no shortage of people willing to make the world safer by killing a murderer. In the case of a limited government, the answer is even simpler: those who participate in government give their right to exact punishment over to the government, and that designation persists after death.
We have an “elephant” on this road blocking our rout so we can’t go further. I agree that a person can value his destroyed property more than the “equally” valued property he gets as restitution, but the problem is and I don’t know why this is so hard to spot, that the life of the murderer can’t be restitution to the victim’s family, simply because you can’t transfer life. If you take the life of the murderer, the family of the victim gets nothing.
Let me quote the words of Clint Eastwood from Unforgivable – “It’s a hell of a thing, taking a man’s life. You take away everything he has, and everything he ever would have”. But you really don’t take a life, you destroy it, after you “take” someone life, you don’t gain another life. Also by killing someone, you don’t “take” everything he would have, because there is no way to take future property. As he’s existing property, as I said, you can take it from him and give it to the victim’s family. (the fact that the victim (if) don’t generate any income is irrelevant, because the victim’s property is also the property of the family, so if someone kill him, he must pay for the loss of that life to the family, and because he can’t pay with his life, I’m afraid the only other choice would be to pay with he’s property. And as life is indefinitely more valuable then property, because the scarcity of life (you have only one, and if lost, there is no way back), all the property of the murderer is only a poor attempt to make a restitution to the victim’s family. Therefore killing a murderer won’t change anything except that you will become a murderer. I don’t think it’s a price someone should pay, the price to become a murderer himself in order to get rid of another murderer. To my logic, that is nothing, but pure nonsense.
The “prisoners” are free, without their previous property, starting from scratch – so they can acquire property within their “isolated” world we can call prison if we want. But they can’t acquire any property from outside the “prison” because we don’t maintain any relationship with murderers; we don’t trade with them or anything. Remember we put them away, because they are dangerous. Consider this like we shipped them to another planet (because they are a danger to our property and life) and this route is a one way route. Of course we can’t ship them to another planet, so we build for them a “planet” an area inside our world and guard the boundaries, so they simply can’t get back to our “world”. We don’t punish them, we don’t want to live among them, because they are a danger to our life and property, remember they are convicted murderers. This is the only thing we have rights to do, keep then away from ourselves, our life and our property.
Also worth to mention that some old cultures actually practiced this in reality, they simply forced the criminal (murderer) to leave their village and it was forbidden to him to ever get back, but outside the village he was a free man.
Well, as I see it there are three essential (and often overlapping) goals to any system of justice: Restitution, prevention, and vengeance.
Restitution is of course when the criminal undoes whatever bad deed he’s done. As you pointed out, this is impossible with murder.
Prevention is the part of the justice system which keeps the criminal from repeating his offense. Restitution can aid in prevention, but for things like murder and rape, more punishment is likely needed. People don’t commit crimes when they think the cost is too high, so prevention of many crimes would likely include outright punishment. I don’t see why we should rule out the death penalty on positive grounds, as it could certainly aid in prevention. I love the idea of exile as punishment for many crimes, especially minor and victimless “crimes”.
Vengeance makes the victim, the victim’s family, or an angry mob happy. I’m not sure if it really accomplishes anything else, but fortunately acts of vengeance are often great for dissuading others to try the same crime.
Well we could, but then we won’t be a society based on natural rights philosophy, we won’t be an anarcho-capitalist society, and certainly we would not live in liberty. We would be in our current collectivist and increasingly totalitarian society.
Restitution:
Restitution IS Justice.
Vengeance:
There is no place for vengeance in a free society. The pursuit of Happiness do not mean that we can violate someone rights in order to be happy. So the family of the victim can’t be made happy in this way.
Prevention:
Exactly, that is why we send the murderer away, outside of our society, but we still don’t have the right to execute him, because in that case we become a new murderer and someone will need to prevent us from repeat the crime, and so on without end.
Most people commit crime (murder) living in an expectation that he won’t be caught. Anyway knowing that in a case of murder he (the murderer) will lose all of he’s property and he will be sent away for life to isolation where he can live only among other murderers, I believe it is probable a reasonable “brake” for him to restrain himself from criminal acts.
Also it is worth to know that natural rights philosophy and anarchy (Spooner work is great in this field) does not recognize victimless “crimes”. So I don’t know what you meant when you say that you like an idea of exile for minor crime and victimless “crime”. What is a minor crime? What is a victimless “crime”? Both of these concepts require arbitrary classification or “order of value” and Austrian school teaches us that value is subjective. Who has the right to decide which a minor crime is yet to call crime something where no victim exists?
… I’d add a more social one. A punishment can serve as a means of justifying, why not to do certain things. The absence of punishment weakens that justification and would reduce it to more abstract moral grounds.
For example what, if Peter steels the car from John - he simply gives back the car. Bear in mind that this would include different scenarios.
Peter realizes the wrongdoing of stealing the car, hence gives it back.
Peter gets caught and after a trial/arbitration gives back the car.
An insurance on the car restitutes an amount to John for the loss of the car - They’d have a claim against John now.
… To some extent prevention would lie outside any justice system as well. Examples for this are education and access control. An argument against the the death penalty is that it is “barbaric” and that it doesn’t serve as a deterrent.
… Anger in people can be the result of many crimes that are busy occuring withing an area or society. Of course their can be other reasons, too. In my oppinion crimes don’t only affect the perpetrators and victims relating to it. It also has a negative effect on society in general. For one it lessons the confidence in security, but it also damages the general trust between people that may have existed beforehand. So stealing the car does more damage then preventing John from using it. It creates ill feelings and suspicion.
“Justice” is a moral concept, and in my opinion often pretty far removed (depending on the person’s interpretation of justice) from the practical matters of fixing what a criminal did and getting him not to do it again. I agree that vengeance is useless, and has no part in a civilized society.
So they can murder someone else? Heh. Prison colonies don’t sound terribly workable in the modern world, but of course different systems of justice in market anarchism would try different means of prevention. I’d say execution is justifiable in defense, and if its pretty clear some nutcase is going to murder again if he gets the chance to, its best to execute him. I think its also justifiable if the death penalty is clearly shown to prevent other murders, although I don’t think thats the case in today’s world.
I think if you are waiting everyone to be come a libertarian in order for market anarchism to work, you’re not being realistic at all. There is no way you’re going to get most of the population to agree to a specific natural rights philosophy, or anything like that. I don’t think its ever happened. People find utility in living among people whom they know will follow certain rules.
Under market anarchism, property owners can enforce victimless “crimes”. A community, for example, might decide they do not want any heroin addicts among their ranks, and agree via contract to not allow the sale of heroin. A few years down the road, someone may start selling heroin, and be caught. This of course is a breach of contract, and not a crime. There are plenty of examples of contracts which would be created that would effectively enforce victimless crimes; in my opinion the major advantage of market anarchism is that this enforcement doesn’t touch the people who don’t consider those things crimes.
I don’t wait for that, first Praxeology tell us that people acts according to their expectations that they will be better off after a particular action, second Freedom don’t mandate any principle or philosophy. Nevertheless, we are talking about an anarcho-capitalist society, and I believe anarchy is defined is a somewhat limited framework. So not all people should be libertarian but the foundations of that kind of society aren’t possible in a world which isn’t working by the natural rights principle. My first post in this forum if I remember correctly was that Mises was a “strictly limited government” supporter because he did not believed that anarchy is possible, I don’t believe either and I told the reasons already. But I believe in freedom and in natural rights, and I believe that a government limited only to protect our life and property (remember the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation it was a pretty close blueprint for a free society), but the current US constitution is also a good starting point, it is a shame that it is mostly violated by the same people who takes an oath to protect it. We cant live in a perfect world that’s a fact, but we can live in a world where we can have the best possible answers, and that world is a world where a man are free to live as he wish with only one “restriction” to leave other people to live as they wish also. We need something to protect our life and property; this is why needs a limited state, not for more than that and not for less than that. In a very moment when the state does something more than that (more than protect our life and property), freedom is just a word and inexistent in reality, the state runs our life and collectivism is the name of the game.
I have a criticism and a suggestion. I like a lot of what you’ve said in this thread and I think that, not only are you right, but that you are not giving your intuition as much credit as it deserves. First the criticism:
To institute a State, no matter how limited, is to institute collectivism. The defining characteristic of collectivism is - ‘to each according to his need, from each according to his ability’. This entails a transfer of wealth from the able to the disabled. Within a collectivist legal order, the able will always seek to escape the wealth limiting clutches of the disabled. But, collectivism does not allow this by axiom. To escape this transfer is to deny collectivism. So, a State, which is collective by definition, cannot allow this act. But even a limited State can’t but fail to be collective in nature because it is not possible to equitably redistribute the wealth confiscated through taxation - even if the distribution is in the form of security. The only equitable way to redistribute wealth is through a system of non-coercive exchange, where private property is transferred based upon choice (Human Action) not need. Taxes by their nature violate this truth. A non-equitable redistribution, which Mises showed is the inevitable result of the calculation problem of socialism, is collectivism because the disabled by definition are allowed to receive the benefits of collective security despite the fact that they cannot provide the resources necessary to contribute their share. And Hoppe would add to Mises’ proposition - that within a framework of collectivism, the violation of private property rights, the sine qua non of the State and contradictorily the act States are entrusted to stop, is unavoidable and so is decivilization (the break down of social cooperation). In essence, to argue that we need a State to protect private property, is to argue that we must surrender our freedom to preserve our freedom - a bald faced contradiction.
To give an example: To argue that we need a State only for defense, is to argue that we need a State to build roads and maintain ports and run schools and regulate commerce and institute central banks and… Without public roads and ports, how will the military move men and equipment? Without schools, how will it train bureaucrats and generals and propagandize (gain the support of) the masses? Without trade restrictions, how will it stop sedition and espionage. Without central banks , how will it maintain solvency? And this doesn’t even address the question about what should the government provide security from - security from disease? poverty? drugs? terror? racism? inequality? ourselves? The reason why there is no such thing, in principle, as a limited State is that even if we only maintain a State to provide security, there is no principled way to define how much of the societies wealth may be confiscated to produce this defense. Theoretically, we may assign a police officer to every citizen, a house to every body, a health care plan to every family, an education to every child, a retirement to every geriatric…
To live in a world where the guiding law is centered around “leaving other people to live as they wish” is to live in an anarchical world. Its corollary is “leave other people how they are” because it is not possible to be sure that people are not acting to provide for themselves (or failing to provide for themselves) according to their own choice. As a praxeologist, you must agree with that. But anarchy does not require that we give up the use of force to defend ourselves. It is not every man for himself. In anarchy, men are free to set up institutions that are collectivist in nature. In fact, it is the natural way of man, who relies on, at the very least, the socialism of the family for his very survival as an infant. So, an anarchist need not deny the institution of government. But there are no reasons why this government need be a coercive monopoly on jurisdiction, violence, and taxation instead of a contractual government based upon choice. In fact, this is one of the guiding principles of the Declaration of Independence -
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
The Declaration of Independence is a declaration of the right to secede (to stop cooperating with a collectivist legal order). But Abraham Lincoln and some of his crony Republicans and Whigs, attempted to destroy this fundamental principle of anarchy during the Civil War, and the 14th Amendment was instituted illegally, in order to bind us to this collective State. But, I argue, regardless of the attempts to destroy this principle, it can never be destroyed because the rights outlined in this document are inalienable. That is, we do live in a state of anarchy, because nobody can stop anyone from acting to secure his Life, Liberty, and Happiness; and nobody can stop a man from consenting or failing to consent. Even if he is killed, man still retains the fundamental right to act toward the end of securing his goals (Human Action). So, you can be an anarchist and not kiss off government, but you are incorrect if you believe that the State (collectivism) is the only form of government that can povide security. It just happens to be the form to which we are accustomed.
so we can’t go further. I agree that a person can value his destroyed property more than the “equally” valued property he gets as restitution, but the problem is and I don’t know why this is so hard to spot, that the life of the murderer can’t be restitution to the victim’s family, simply because you can’t transfer life. If you take the life of the murderer, the family of the victim gets nothing.