Can you cite this? Molyneux is terribly wrong on a number of issues. There is no reason for a person to be required to hold a “subscriber card” to any security provider. See this thread for instance.
Many people prefer the known premiums of a life insurance policy to accumulating capital on their own in case they die. Many people would agree to certain terms in order to have an agreement in place with police who patrol their streets before something happens. Still, there is nothing stopping a victim of a crime from forging a new agreement with a provider after the fact.
What if the 10oz. you stole were to repay my loan that had my house as collateral. Since your theft caused my default on the loan, I lost my house. Do I also get to torch your house, or claim ownership of it? What if the loan-shark killed my sister because I didn’t repay the 10oz I owed him? Do I get to kill your sister + two aunts for good measure?
For a picture of how serious dispute resolutions could and actually are resolved in certain parts of the world, please see the following lecture I had the pleasure of attending at Grove City College, by Michelle Carrera from the Universidad Francisco Marroquin:
However cultural advancement, which often comes hand in hand with economic advancement I feel is just as paramount to human progress(e.g. with the abolition of slavery), and is something that is missing a certain factor of dynamism in a lot of these types of societies. I suppose it’s what one can expect, when the only existing forms of private law are found in comparatively backward countries.
What if the 10oz. you stole were to repay my loan that had my house as collateral. Since your theft caused my default on the loan, I lost my house. Do I also get to torch your house, or claim ownership of it?
If “house” is a homogenous good (unlikely), you could claim ownership of the thief’s house as part of the cost of REcapturing what was taken from you. Nobody firebombed your house, so you have no right to retaliate as such.
What if the loan-shark killed my sister because I didn’t repay the 10oz I owed him?
Now we have a more complex legal problem of the loan shark murdering people who owe him money.
Do I get to kill your sister + two aunts for good measure?
This is hysterical nonsense. Try reading the article and making a sensible response once you grasp the rather commonsense theory.
Um, no. We have a perfect example of how value (of 10oz, in this case) is BOTH subjective and variable with time. How do you reconcile your legal theory of punishment with the subjectivity and variability of value across agent-space and time?
It hasn’t been overlooked. Kids are free to run away. It would be criminal for parents to imprison the child. The solution to dometic abuse is the child’s freedom as a human to leave. A free society would have agencies that would pair unwated kids with families.
I seem to be missing your theory of punishment. All I see is histrionics on your part. I kept to the case of theft of objectively homogenous goods for the sake of simplicity. That subject does not give you license to introduce the third party, a murderous loan shark, then whisk it away from the chain of causation. Your “problem” is addressed in the published work on proportionality. I’m not going to try to spoon-feed indigent and hostile intellectuals though.
and an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind…
No amount of tired leftist slogans removes proportionality from its firm grounding in Misesean praxeology.
I haven’t seen a libertarian theory of justice yet which can compensate for lost time/opportunity. I’m not sure it is possible to come up with such a system.
All compensation is subjective, which is why I think ideas like estoppel and proportionality leave a lot to be desired. They are similar to a labor theory of justice in my opinion.
Same here. If most people feel that stoning to death is just “punishment” for adultery (or for painting your house pink), most adulterers (or pink lovers) would get stoned to death. No amount of “a priori deduced”, “logically derived” legal theory of justice/punishment will convince them otherwise.
Excuse me, but what does that have to do with proportionality?
Proportionality means - unless we’re redefining the English dictionary now - pretty literally an eye for an eye, or the right to beat up the person who beat you up, or kill the person who murdered your spouse or relative. According to the principles of proportionality, the only thing the “crime” of adultery would conceivably entitle the “injured party” is sleeping around in turn.
That’s a bit further than I would go. That’s outside of property rights when you stone someone for doing anything with their person or property.
I am simply saying that “proportion” is subjective. We can come up with cultural norms for compensation, but those are not logically deduced. They can be derived from convention, experimentation and precedent. To dispute this, would be to dispute that exchange (since restitution is an exchange to restore value) is subjective. Where the legal system comes in, as a function of establishing social norms and conventions, is to keep someone from demanding everything from an individual who has committed the most trivial of property rights violations, as this would paralyze an economy, because property rights violations (both accidental and of mal-intent) are inevitable.
Who says it should have anything to do with it? Even if it could bridge the gaping hole of subjective and variable valuation across agents and time, what does proportionality have to do with extreme anti-adultery or anti-pinkery as competing theories of justice/punishment?