What happens when someone kills someone? They use compensation instead of punishment, which I think is a good idea, but how do you compensate for murder while not punish? The person who was murdered is dead, so they can’t receive any compensation.
I looked this up on wikipedia, but couldn’t find an answer to this specific question.
I think the killer should have 95% of his wealth confiscated in case he have any. the murderer could also have part of his salary or whatever money he makes becoming a tribute to the victim’s family.
What’s the value of a human life? Is it even possible to calculate that (are we worth more than our aggrigate salaries)?
What’s the value of a human life? Is it even possible to calculate that (are we worth more than our aggrigate salaries)?
The value of a human life is whatever someone is willing to pay to keep his life. If that means giving away half of his income forever, he might go for it. If it means giving away a multi-generational inheritance that his children won’t have, and ruining his family, he might choose death.
Simple. The victim or his heir have the right to kill the perpetrator, either themselves or through a willing third party. The perpetrator will have to purchase that right if he wants to live. Whatever the price of that turns out to be, that’s you ‘blood price’. As simple as this.
Giving someone a “right” to kill someone else sounds like a rather slippery slope and smacks of “an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind,” “two wrongs don’t make a right,” etc. From the history I’ve read, the legitimization of blood feuds is just a bad idea, too. You end up with generations of people trying to kill each other for the foolish wrongs of their ancestors. Considering the modern economy with its emphasis on the division of labor and the necessity of trusting complete strangers for most transactions, I have a hard time envisioning any other system than an accepted rule of law that can nip the problem at the bud so that it doesn’t spill over into society at large.
Germanic laws had that covered: it was called weregild or wergeld (literally “payment for a person”) and it was compensation to be paid by the murderer or his/her heirs to the victims’ closest living relatives (siblings, sons, parents, spouse etc). In Saxon England a freeman with no title or not belonging to the Church was worth 200 solidi (gold coins), a low ranking cleric 300, an Earl 1200 and so on. Slaves and serfs were considered property and as such had to be repaid according to their value: a young healthy man was obviously worth more than a whizzened old woman. The Lombards, whose culture rotated around the horse, even had special weregild if a man was killed or wounded while riding a horse. Weregild largely evolved from the will to put an end to the ancient custom of blood feud, seen as incompatible with a more “civilized” society.
Whoever says that ‘an eye for an eye’ is not satisfactory can propose something better. I believe we agree that the current system is not better. Hence, if even only due to lack of alternative the eye-for-an-eye stuff never got old.
Now, its just not true that legit feuds destroy societies. I can testify than in northern areas of my country, feuds have been legit for millennia (and still are), and those folks still managed to get a cool society.
Now, I fully agree that legit feuds would not be the greatest thing to have in n advanced society but the point of ‘blood money’ is just that: avoid feuds, without forcing anyone to do anything. Find the price at which the feud dies, and pay it. Thus you get restitution but not at some arbitrary price, but at the market price, the only ‘just’ compensation.
I could go on to say how this system (and only this system) leaves the door wide open for insurance with some very interesting implications, and how its compatible with our instinctual idea of justice, so essentially this is it: the victim has been wronged and reserves the right to harm the violator. He can be bought away from this intent, but only voluntarily. Any other system would appear to add insult to injury.
Current system breeds criminals. Free-society should try to reduce criminality, not breed it with vengeance (killing the murderer). I doubt any punishment theory that directly harms the human (criminal or not).
I like Walter Block’s solution to murder, where if you kill someone, the family of the victim decides what to do with you… you can sell seats for a public execution, turn him into a slave, etc.
Another way of handling it is through life insurance. If you murder someone with a life-insurance policy, the life-insurance company will be obligated to pay it out to the designated survivors. Then it will have a financial incentive (at the very least) to collect from the person who forced it to pay out the policy.
Of course, this doesn’t account for murder cases where the victims didn’t have policies with any life-insurance company. They could be self-insured, but that might have to be made explicit somehow (such as through a notarized statement). I seriously doubt that such self-insurance would be commponplace.
I think there are other, and more important, questions about court procedure that apply here. For example, who should be considered a legitimate litigant? Also, should judges have any discretion in imposing restitution penalties? If so, which?
The reason I bring these up is that I’m having trouble envisioning a murder trial where the victim had no life insurance or designated heirs/survivors. Maybe some of you can offer additional thoughts here.