Violating speed limits (say 70 mph when the limit is 50)
Blind violence (e. g.knocking someone down in a bar)
Abortion
I think abortion is justified until the fetus has developed a functioning nerval , and brain. Do libertarians agree, or do they following the Christians, claiming that their potential to become conscious human beings, gives them rights?
And I hope you don’t approve of capital punishment? Or do you think that should be up to each state to decide?
On a serious note, I don’t think that societies, and legal punishments are created in such a manner that men will sit down, and decide punishments for crimes as they see fit; rather, punishments will be set through precidents, and legal trial, and error.
I can also certainly say how these crimes would not be punished: Putting the offender in jail to sit around for 30 years and rot, doing nothing productive.
I can’t, but I can say that it would not be the standard way of doing things. It wouldn’t be the default. In fact, it would have to be some kind of bizarre circumstance in which that would happen.
I’m ignoring the rest of your post and addressing this specifically because it’s likely to be the most contentious part of it. I agree with capital punishment on principle - someone who commits murder is effectively saying that the victim has no right to live, and thus it’s fitting if the murderer were deprived of the same right. That said, human beings are incredibly fallible, and, no matter what standard of evidence is used in a murder trial, there is always the possibility of error. I don’t believe that the justice system should allow for the possibility of an innocent person to be killed as some sort of collateral damage. At least with a life sentence (or similar punishment), there is always the chance for some small redemption if a convict is later found to be innocent.
In a system of private law and arbitration, and where restitution to the victim is the primary focus of legal action, locking a guy up in prison is not an effective way to do that. It is difficult to pay a victim back when you’re in prison doing nothing. It is, on the face of it, completely uneconomical. This is not to say that it would never happen. However, under a system of private law, I do not think it is a likely scenario.
What is the answer when critics claim that libertarians are brainwashed non-pragmatic non-consequentialist crackpots who only want freedom for themselves and those who follow their own semi-religious system, where the property right is God?
This is another in a long line of “what about roads!!!” threads but I can’t help myself:
In a free society, all punishment would be corporal, capital or financial. For most crimes, the focus would be on restitution and it would be a matter of subrogation between insurers. Sociopathic individuals would not be insurable and, in effect, outside the protection of the law. There would be very few of the gruesome “stranger-murder” cases by pure human predators since a free society would not be burdened with welfare and anti-discrimination laws; sociopaths would be driven into exile or shot summarily. Since nobody would be willing to pay the costs of adjudicating the issue of a sociopath’s murder, it would be ignored.
Manslaughter would largely be a matter of restitution to the victim’s family, who may simply be satisfied with a genuine act of contrition. Most crimes would be handled this way.
Most ‘crimes’ today are either not crimes in any ethical sense or they are de minimis incidents that used to be handled with a lecture and maybe a kick in the butt by a beat cop. Bar fights, domestic disputes, petty theft, disorderly conduct, etc. can all be dealt with in other ways.
Surely you are forgetting the legions of progressivists who would be willing to keep criminals safe and well-fed in their own homes rather than exposed to retribution from victims’ families.
Sorry we’re too busy with the legions of conservatives who are making ‘criminals’ out of people who commit vicitimless crime like drugs, pornography, prostitution and talking about the the human reproductive organs in public…ok I made the last one up but someone’s probably thought about it.
Having to pay the freight for implementation of progressivist viewpoints generally cures one of them so, as with sociopaths, there would be very few progressivists in a free society. BTW, prohibition is a progressivist idea. When there were red light districts and people drank beer with breakfast and bought opium, society was much more conservative.
Also, in a free society rude talk would be punished by a punch in the face, and there would be no state around to protect your precious ‘freedom of speech.’