This doesn’t make any sense at all for dealing with violent crime.
It could work like this for civil cases and accidents.
But a violent criminal won’t give a shit about being let in in the first place. He is there to commit violent crime, ohh but the guard told him he needs insurance to come in an beat people up so that solved everything…
Society have to fight a constant war against violent crime and we have to pay for this ourselves. It is just the way things are in any society. The market being more efficient will however be able to reduce the costs and place a somewhat larger portion of the cost on the criminals it catches then the state can.
If I do business with you the only thing I will care about is what type of insurance the contract will have. I don’t see why I would have any reason to care about your personal insurance policies.
I guess there are a few special cases where you could use the mandatory traffic insurance argument. However in most cases enforcing mandatory insurance will probably cost more then everyone having insurance that covers damages caused by non-insured people.
Especially if we take the example of a road and you have some safety standards on vehicles instead. No one is going to want to go in anything that isn’t insured if it can’t be a wreck anyhow…
True, violent crime will be handled either by property insurance patrols, or simply by my PX4. LI can only help with “passion crimes”, those committed at a moments rage fit (the majority of violent crimes in a decent, i.e. weapons-free, society). Serial killers, robbers, rapists, abductors etc., will most probably be dealt with the good old way: shoot them where they stand.
Still, one should be much more concerned about economic crime as it is statistically much more frequent. Even if we were left to deal with such crimes ourselves while the State dealt (with its impeccable efficiency) with violent crime, it would still be a very, very good society. Example: how many violent crimes do the military-grade armed Swiss face in a year?
I am not sure what you mean with economic crime here…
Wikipeida: A violent crime or crime of violence is a crime in which the offender uses or threatens to use violent force upon the victim. This entails both crimes in which the violent act is the objective, such as murder, as well as crimes in which violence is the means to an end, such as robbery. Violent crimes include crimes committed with and without weapons.
that is what i meant with violent crime if there was some confusion. Really what I mean in this particular context should include all kinds of theft though.
I am not sure making sure everyone that could potentially commit a crime of passion is insured is sensible in any way. It would be ridiculously expensive and how often do such crimes happen on the spot in a place where you have a right to force insurance?
People get stopped at the club, they go home and get a gun then go back and shoot at the club entrance. How would checking insurance solve that?
Most of these crimes are either like this, happen in the home or happen in various down-town public areas where it would be very difficult to control insurance.
For the nightclub say it is a much better solution to have some guards then check everyone’s insurance. They will need guards either way and guards are enough to keep order in a club.
It doesn’t seem sensible to check insurance in malls and such either cause maybe there is a one in a million chance someone will go berzerk, they will also need a few guards either way.
I mostly think of fraud and generally tort. But again, some violent crime, specifically those committed under the influence of some substance, out of rage, out of despair, accidents and basically all such crimes that are unlikely to be repeated, do fall under the LI sphere of interest, and indeed can be effectively tackled by ostracism (the whole point of a LI insurer is to coordinate ostracism).
Take away those and you get…serial killers, psychos, gangsters and all those guys. But what a percentage of crimes is committed by such individuals (assume away narc-related crime: those wouldn’t exist at all)? Negligible, I’d say, my own gun should do the trick.
Almost 100% of all robberies. Granted few non drug related robbers are organised, but these are generally planned or at least intended crimes. Every first-degree murder is also (by definition) not a crime of the moment. Theft can be booth, but you will never catch the unintentional thief anyhow so they don’t matter here and we are left with theft as almost 100% planned crime too.
The intent is what is important, someone intending to commit a crime will be in just the same situation to be able to circumvent the “insurance check” as any professional criminal.
LI insurance is not supposed to prevent the crime itself (property insurance does that), rather its repetition.
Now imagine that you’ve committed some crime: you’ll either thing of doing that again or not. If you plan to commit other crimes, than you’ll never get insurance again, since you still have to pay massive premium rates form you first crime, and there’s no point in paying those (it would take 20 years of hard work for bodily injuries) if you know that an even more massive premium will be loaded within months. But there’s the entire point of LI: rate individual into “risky” (no LI coverage) and “far less risky“ (LI coverage). Uncovered individual will be well known in the community and perhaps LI companies will provide confidential lists to property insurers, for them to keep an eye on these guys. It is easy to see that having a good rating of risky individual would be very helpful in preventing “planned” crimes.
But perhaps more importantly, the incentive to commit a gain-related crime is almost null. You mentioned robberies and theft. Now, what is the point of stealing when no one will sell you anything ever again or at the very least you’ll always be confined to your house (if you have any)? Does one seek money only to enjoy the view of money? Would people be ready to risk being shot be superbly trained private patrolmen in order to gain that? Iit seems pretty counter-productive to me.
So again, taking away unplanned crime, those committed by people that don’t plan to commit others and every crime aimed at getting some monetary benefit, only a small fraction of crimes is left for Property insurers to tackle. But of course these crimes will happen nevertheless, otherwise there would be no property insurance or indeed guns!
Merlin is way off base on this and Bob T is correct.
First off…Nobody buys liability insurance right now yet people are still allowed on private property. There is a chance I will commit a crime when on private property… of course, but then I get sued civilly and am personally held liable. There isn’t one person buying this type of criminal liability insurance at present, yet people still traverse other people’s property. It will remain the same in anarchy as it is now. You wont need to show proof of insurance to be admitted anywhere. Your entire framework of people not being allowed out of their houses after having committed a crime is way off base.
Second, Crimes are not “accidental” as you claim. A crime by definition is intentional. If it isn’t intentional it isn’t a crime. There may be damages that I owe civilly but not jail time unless it is intentional. Since the purpose of your “keep me out of jail insurance” is to keep someone who is guilty of a crime from serving jail time…people who don’t plan on committing a crime will not buy it. The only people who would buy it are people who plan to commit crimes, at which point its no longer insurance and any firm offering that service would go bankrupt. Bob T is right.
While I believe in AC you might see a sentencing procedure that allows the guilty to negotiate down the jail time with the victim in exchange for money, the guilty would have to pay that amount out of pocket not insurance. Most people probably would not have enough money to pay meaning they would do jail time, and not be let out of jail like you suppose.
I believe that I’ve made my point against these arguments in my previous posts.
I strongly believe that LI will come to be universally used, just as VISA ratings are used today (and we do not even know that). But of course there’s little point in purchasing LI when settling criminal acts outside courts is illegal just as is retaliation (the very core of LI theory) (and when LI intelsf is highly regulated, and allowed to cover only a few risks). Give people the right to punish themselves all crimes, allow for strictly private courts and abolish Prosecution offices altogether and LI will spring up from nowhere. The alternative is endless feuds. I really see no problem here. (as a side note, this means that LI is most viable in those countries where the ‘rule of law’ is laxest)
Still, these ideas shall ultimately be proved on the marketplace. Let us wait and see.
I don’t get it. This seem to assume that you people would be willing to protect criminals making prosecution difficult in a non-monopoly situation.
No one will protect criminals, there just isn’t any profit it in. Thus LI will be just as useless as it is today, I can prosecute any criminal as much as I want with no one defending them and no feud happing either way.
The criminal would probably be protected until he is proven guilty. But the party protecting him only have an interest in finding out the truth here so if he is guilty that shouldn’t be very difficult. When he is proven guilty there contract with the criminal is null and void, no one will start feuds over him after that…
Land lords, shooting ranges and airlines might want to assess “criminal risk” for there clients. But for everyone else it is just a waste of money to care about it…
This could very easily be true. After all LI is a service like all others: it provides some utility against some price. It could come to be used, or it could not. There is no way to tell. What I believe we’re discussing here, is just whether it could possibly work, i.e. whether a business could function on that basis.
Thus, when you say that once found guilty no one would protect the wrongdoer, that is not strictly true. I have a contract with the wrongdoer, to do my best to convince the wronged party to forgive him. Now, let us not illude ourselves, if A kills you son, you wont forgive him, no mater how many millions offer you. You’ll just shoot him and be off with it.
But what if A broke you leg? Will you break his, as you have a right to? You could, but your leg wont heal. Wouldn’t it be better if I just gave you some good money, and you forgive the chap (who’ll be confined to his house for a long time anyways)?
Or what about the all-present fear of: “how can I be sure that the wrongdoer will have the means to compensate any loss he caused me?” No problem, the company will pay for him (that is, if you’ve had the good sense of allowing only insured persons in). So, if he burned your house accidentally (and the company agrees that this is indeed wrong, as I believe it is), he might well have no many to compensate you (suppose he lives in decrepit rented condo). How do you punish him? Kill him? Chop of a leg? What if LI just pays your home back? Would you agree? Would you at least be tempted?
Finally its not true that if A is found guilty, no one would avenge him if you punish him. But who guarantees you that As relatives have your own cannons of what is just? if they don’t (as it happens often in the real world) they will see you punishing A as an aggression. Feuds can easily spring up here. LI steps on and voluntarily setlles the thing, avoiding such calamities. Trust me, I know practical anarchy since it exists to this day in northern Albania: blood feuds are precisely its most fearsome issue. Every time you allow people to act on they personal conceptions of justice, such problem will arise. Avoiding them is by far LIs greatest potential.
You see, as son as we leave the immediate concern of violent, non-monetary crimes and see the vast majority of accidents, frauds, monetary-oriented crimes and small body injuries going on around us, we can see that LI would indeed seem very alluring.
So, what I’m saying is that such services are viable. Whether they come to be required, that of course remains to be seen (I myself have staked my future career on that).
PS: I highly recommend reading ChaosTheory here at the site, for I cannot explain the whole book in these already too long posts. I’m sure you’ll see the beauty of the thing after you read it.
They would if the Prosecutor General would allow the victim to forgive you (the whole point).
And they pay you court defence even today.
If you what you mean was that “moral hazard” prevents crime insurance (i.e. if I have control over it, than it cannot be insured), that’s a myth: insurers regularly cover Bankrutpcy! Crime is nothing compared to that. (Game Theory explains why moral hazard in not a problem in real life)