Thoughts on Punishment?

Economics Political Theory
1

Just wondering where people stand on this.

On one hand I find punishment to be at odds with the anarcho-capitalist ideal of upholding property rights. Even if someone violates the property rights of another person, does that necessarily give the offended party the right to violate the property rights of the criminal? Is that justified by anarcho-capitalist principles?

I do believe in punishment though out of pragmatism, and hope it can be justified in theory by someone here. If there’s no punishment for transgression, the economic incentive to break the law would result in chaos imo. I don’t believe the prison system is effective in any way.

I don’t have the confidence to take a definitive stance on this, but what makes the most sense to me lately is that the punishment should fit the crime as accurately as possible. However, this can be difficult to discern depending on the circumstances.

If you murder someone, you are put to death, in the same manner as you killed your victim if the victim’s family is so inclined. Also, the criminal must pay the victim’s family an amount to be determined (somehow?) to compensate them for the revenue the victim can no longer provide for their family.

If you steal from someone, you are to pay back twice the amount stolen. First amount is to restore the victim’s property to it’s original level, second amount is the punishment. I’m kind of uneasy on this one because it seems like this might be letting the perp off a bit easy given the inherent violence in theft, but I don’t know what would be better.

Now a tricky one.. rape. Do you just have someone who’s job is to rape convicted rapists? Seems odd, although I’m sure there are enough sick people out there willing to fill the position (badoom ching). On one hand I’m tempted to just say rapists should be put to death, but there are ambiguous cases where it’s not clear if the sex was consentual.

And it’s all muddy waters from here on in. What about attempted murder? I’m leaning toward death for anyone convicted of attempted murder. What about attempted theft? I think the same punishment applied to convicted thieves should be appliled to attempted theft as well, with a reasonable assessment made for how much the thief likely would’ve stolen, although there are obvious complications with this approach.

What about killing or injuring someone accidentally? Pay the victim or his family for time he is unable to work plus medical expenses?

2

a good pda/justice company should be able to provide good citiznery cojntracts, where customers in exchange for chearper rates, oblige themselves to face certain penalties if they breach part of a code of conduct that the pda asks them to abide by as part of the bargain.

so a good percentage of people will have in their defense contract a clause which states what punishment they will face if the justice system finds against them; the consequences to voiding the contract could be blacklisting by the majority of good value pda’s, and negative credit/conduct reports, that might make benefitting from the division of labour a trickier prospect to criminals who breach laws that they themselves promised they would not breach.

3

What about people who have not signed up with that particular PDA ?

(not to mention that I thought a libertarian legal system was more concerned with restitution than punishment).

4

I don’t think this should be up to PDA’s. I see punishment as an integral part of justice. In the same way that it’s not up to the PDA to decide just laws (i.e when property rights can be violated-- never), I think ‘fair punishment’ can be objectively concluded (at least in theory) for any individual case.

5

i wasnt making a statement about ‘who it should be up to’ , there are no positive obligation “so and so should do this” statements that can be made; aside from where people take obligations upon themselves, (or in the semantic context of investigating what they *should * do to achieve their ends.)

i was only offering one example of how punishment could arrive by contract.

to juan, libertarian legal codes, or behaviour codes, or whatever codes, concern the parties to the codes ,content wise. If they dont contradict 3rd parties natural rights, what is the big deal? i would agree that if you were to measure and weigh the law codes that i can imagine being popular i concede that in my imagination of said codes, restitution makes up a far more prominent bulk than penalties.

6

Well, yes. What I find a bit simplistic or naive is the idea that people will be signing a sort of ‘social contract’ which will somehow solve conflicts beforehand. While such a system is possible, I wonder how practical can it be. Just off the top of my head : At what age do children get to sign such a contract ? And as CaptainMurphy suggests there must be some basic understanding as to what justice is which doesn’t depend on previous explicit agreement ?

7

In your first post it sounds like you are saying that pdas or contracting parties should be the ones to determine punishment. Anyways this really isn’t the direction I was trying to take this thread, I’m asking what everyone here thinks is appropriate punishment for various criminal acts.

8

They’ll be deemed to have agreed to it by being born on the fee where the covenants are in effect. When they feel like it, they can leave.

People will naturally segregate themselves along these lines.

9

Byzantine, you’re in the wrong forum. Your mind can’t go beyond the statist principle of “love it or leave it”. But thanks for your trollish, sorry, helpful reply anyway.

10

Ah by the way, you should learn that ancap is about competing providers of security, or enforcement of individual rights. On the other hand, you’re talking about tribalist, monopolistic governments. It’s not the same thing…at all.

11

You are going to be in for a real shock when you find out that if you want to assert a right you are going to have to pay for it rather than offload the costs for enforcement on the central State and its taxpayers.

12

I guess you’re unable to understand libertarianism and get past “competing tribalism”. Well, one can lead a horse to water but…

13

And you’re talking from an ideological Petri dish with no conception of markets and human nature. Rights bear a cost that has to be paid. The market will determine whether they are worth protecting.

14

Again, libertarianism is a moral system. Call it an ideology if you will (marxist jargon, you know). Yours is a different ideology : conservatism and its silly appeals to human nature. Well, maybe statism is part of human nature too ? I suggest you get used to affirmative action and total wars because they are part of human nature. Also get used to the extinction of the WASP ‘race’. It will be exterminated by the multicultural state.

You are a parody of ‘market fundamentalism’. Boring.

15

Morality is important (nay, vital), but I find it lofty to equate libertarianism as explicitly being a moral system, due to the ‘is’ and ‘ough**t’ problem.

Should one libertarian force another libertarian to do something because it is morally justified, but deviates from libertarianism (i.e. is not voluntary) itself ?

I guess a better example of what I mean is that morally, one can or cannot be opposed to slavery/indentured servitude, and in both cases still be a libertarian, as long as the one morally against slavery does not violate legitimate slavery contracts (which, via libertarianism, would be voluntary contracts or arrangements of an individual becoming a slave for another individual, etc.)

It just seems that if both pro & con slavery are abiding by core libertarian concepts such as voluntaryism, then another person beyond those two, who is either pro or con, who then decides to inject morality into their libertarian stance, is artifically drawing a line in the sand & collectivley calling those that do not follow or abide by their morality as “incorrect”, or “not real libertarians”.

I apologize if what I wrote is messy, but I figured it would be more interesting to put instead of just asking rhetorical questions, lol…

16

I’m not sure I understand. Libertarianism is based on the fact that there IS aggression and the belief that aggression SHOULD/OUGHT TO not exist.

It’s a fact that there’s taxation. Libertarians think there ought to be no taxation. It’s a fact that there are wars, libertarians think there ought to be no wars, and so on and so forth…ad nauseam.

Saying that X should not exist (because it’s bad) is a moral/ethical claim.

I’m not sure what you mean. “Should one libertarian force another libertarian” is a contradiction in terms. You can only ‘force’ somebody in cases of self-defense if you’re to stick to libertarian principles.

You know there’s been a lengthy discussion on that, no ? Are you taking for granted that slave contracts are legitimate/libertarian ?

Maybe there’s some misunderstanding caused by my usage of the word moral. By ‘moral’ I mean concerned with what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’. I’m not making any distinction between morals and ethics. I could also have said “libertarianism is an ethical system” - a philosophical system dealing with what’s good, bad, just.

17

this thread has gone right off topic.

18

what a surprise.

19

To put it back on topic, I’d like to extend the OP’s question:

When is the intiation of coercion justified? For me, I’d go with never.

But then how can we ever force belligerents to accept rulings, or even self-defend?

20

we dont

self defense is not initiating coercion so why bring it up?