[mikema63]

Its time to explore the differences between us and as a start I'll post his list of beliefs regarding criminal penalties in a market anarchist society.

1. As noted above, the purpose of the penalty is not to punish, but to compensate.
2. Monetary penalties are insurable, reverse-able and transferable.
3. Justice doesn't allow the penalty to be less than the damage. However, creating penalties much in excess of the damage introduces heightened cost to (inevitable) errors.
4. The system is consistent with the general spirit of a market anarchy. Force can only be used to protect or enforce property rights. NOT to express the moral sentiments of the community. In particular, force cannot be used beyond the point at which the victim has been compensated.
5. The community is free to express its moral views on the criminal using non-coercive tools. Some criminals will be viewed as particularly evil. The community may choose to boycott them altogether. Others will have extenuating circumstances, and the community may choose to forgive them. In extreme cases, the community may even help the criminal pay the penalty, and thus avoid punishment altogether.
6. The community (through land ownership) may defend itself by excluding likely criminals. The best mechanism for identifying criminals is through liability insurance.
7. Emphasis on monetary compensation will motivate convicted criminals to acquire a peaceful occupation which will greatly aid in their rehabilitation.

1. Only part of the purpose of a criminal penalty is to compensate, but even when the crime does not involve hurting other people directly simply compensation turns criminal justice into the buying and selling of crimes, criminal acts are those that are done without the consent of the other party. The purpose of the penalty is not just to compensate but to deter as well, a rich man should be no more able to commit heinous acts than a poor man, if we are talking about rape then a rich man should not be able to simply afford to pay it as if it was some mutual act, should we merely compensate the woman for the average price of prostitution? He must be punished for breaking the cardinal rule of voluntary action and non-aggression, to allow people to simply pay the people they victimize you remove the necessity of voluntary action and your society can no longer be called a voluntary society.

2. Agree

3. Any court system in a market anarchist society is also going to be liable to errors in allowing the guilty to go free if the evidence against them is inefficient. Being that the guilty are much more likely to go free than the innocent to be jailed then higher penalties are hardly going to be a problem.

4.In what way did you expect a polycentric legal order to not include the moral sentiments of its members? The courts will always reflect the beliefs of the members of the community that subscribe to their services, the courts reflecting their moral sentiments is unavoidable and perfectly acceptable as well.

5. Non-coercive tools will certainly be used but you cannot avoid the courts picking up on the moral sentiments of its customers.

6. Agree

7. Emphasis on compensation only will allow criminals to budget their income and preform crime as a affordable hobby.

[SecretSquirrel]

it seems I have had some influence on Eran.

Anyway, what is your stance on imprisonment and other punitive removals of civil rights?

[Daktoria]

For all the discussion about voluntaryism, you guys sure do have an obsession with punishment.

[mikema63]

Anyway, what is your stance on imprisonment and other punitive removals of civil rights?

It would depend on the morals of the community the crime was committed in, for me personally criminals should pay the penalty and repay the leftover through debt.

[SecretSquirrel]

For all the discussion about voluntaryism, you guys sure do have an obsession with punishment.

I said I had SOME influence. If I had swayed him completely he would not believe in punitive measures at all. I certainly don't ever justify removal of civil rights or forfeiture of property (unless the defendant prefers forfeiture of property to exile)

AFAIK I am the only voluntaryist on these boards

[Daktoria]

Everyone's a voluntaryist, SS. We all volunteer to participate.

Most people are just teasing because they're psychopaths who enjoy seeing others get in trouble and solve their problems.

The irony is that despite all the criticism against violating freedom of assembly, critics have very little to show for said freedom.

That's why critics are teased:

1) Critics are boring.
2) Teasers don't want critics to get ahead.
3) Teasers want critics to keep trying.
4) Teasers are addicted to taking pleasure in how critics try so hard.
5) Teasers are afraid that critics will overwhelm teasers in the future.
6) Teasers enjoy fighting, especially on skewed terms.

[SecretSquirrel]

crab bucket mentality?

[Daktoria]

crab bucket mentality?

That's part of it.

The other part is they do it on purpose.

[Eran]

mike, I think our differences, in part, are due to a misunderstanding.

The principles I listed (and you quoted above) only refer to the part of the criminal justice system which is authorised to use non-defensive force. This is the part that SecretSquirrel (who definitely had some influence on me) would want to completely do away with.

But as all of us here should know well, force is only one, rarely the most effective means for achieving goals.

For example, assume we are discussing a small and cohesive community (think an Amish village). Criminals are shunned by members of the community and are effectively forced into exile. The prospect of being forced into exile can be highly effective as a deterrence, but shunning doesn't require any use of force.

Elsewhere I have suggested a concrete, detailed and practical mechanism (wide-spread criminal liability insurance) that can achieve the same goal in a modern, large and mostly-anonymous society.

if we are talking about rape then a rich man should not be able to simply afford to pay it as if it was some mutual act, should we merely compensate the woman for the average price of prostitution? He must be punished for breaking the cardinal rule of voluntary action and non-aggression, to allow people to simply pay the people they victimize you remove the necessity of voluntary action and your society can no longer be called a voluntary society.

I understand your concern. But again, you are not looking far enough. Rape requires both parties to be present in the same place. No sensible woman would (given an option) frequent spaces into which serial rapists are freely allowed. A rapist, regardless of wealth, will be unwelcome throughout most of society. This will, in turn, serve both to protect other women from rape, and deter the rapist from raping again.

The woman that was raped will be compensated. Obviously, the compensation will take into account physical and psychological damage, pain and suffering, plus any cost, direct and indirect, including lost wages, etc. The point of the compensation is to make the victim as "whole" as possible. Not, in and by itself, to serve as a form of punishment or deterrence (though in most cases it will be both).

Being that the guilty are much more likely to go free than the innocent to be jailed then higher penalties are hardly going to be a problem.

That depends on the penalty. False positives (convicted innocents) are always going to be present. We want to minimise injustice associated with punishing them.

In what way did you expect a polycentric legal order to not include the moral sentiments of its members? The courts will always reflect the beliefs of the members of the community that subscribe to their services, the courts reflecting their moral sentiments is unavoidable and perfectly acceptable as well.

My expectation is for the force-wielding institutions within society to restrict themselves to enforcement of property rights. To the extent that enforcement of property rights form part of the moral sentiment of the community, those institutions will reflect those sentiments. But moral sentiments extend beyond mere property right enforcement. They include, for example, righteous anger at rule violators, compassion for the innocent, etc.

I understand that not any polycentric legal order will follow my ideas, but the society I am calling for will restrict the use of force to defence and restoration of property rights.

Retributive punishment is, by its very nature, arbitrary (setting aside Block's idea of "two eyes for an eye"). I am reluctant to empower force-wielding institutions with such power. To the extent that such retribution is popular, we will see the same abuse mechanism familiar from the world of democratic governments - when people are free to express their moral sentiments without bearing their costs, distorted decisions emerge.

Non-coercive tools will certainly be used but you cannot avoid the courts picking up on the moral sentiments of its customers.

I can and we must. Today, you see judges who feel compassion for the poor lady on whom coffee was spilled, and are therefore happy to assess high damages on a large, faceless corporation. That is what you get when courts pick up the moral sentiment of the community, rather than stick to the principles of objective justice.

In practice you are, of course, correct. In any given society, courts will pick up the moral sentiments of the community. But in the context of PoFo discussions, we are free to advocate not just concrete institutions, but also moral sentiments. For example, a market anarchy could never rise (or remain stable) given the pool of moral sentiments currently to be found everywhere around the world. The vast majority of people believe it is legitimate to use force to take property from the rich and give to the poor. For a market anarchy to come about, this (and similar) moral sentiments would first have to change. I am hoping (and trying to persuade people) for the change to reach the point in which courts will restrict their judgement to an estimate of appropriate restitution, and leave any additional expressions of moral indignation to individual, non-violent choice.

Emphasis on compensation only will allow criminals to budget their income and preform crime as a affordable hobby.

No. You are ignoring easy, reasonable steps society can (and therefore will) take to defend itself.

When you had a minor accident, you often think twice before claiming on your insurance because you worry about your premium going up. Your premium is likely to go up even though the insurance company doesn't suspect you caused the accident on purpose. Rather, having had an accident is a statistical predictor that you are more likely to have another accident than otherwise.

Having committed a volitional crime makes you much more likely to offend again. That's why many places require a criminal background check. Having offended even once, your ability to secure insurance will be greatly compromised. Do it twice, and you are probably toast, at least for several years.

So no, I don't agree that any criminal would be able to engage in a criminal career as a hobby.

If anything, I would be more concerned about one-off criminals being punished too harshly (in terms of closed access and opportunity) rather than too little. Career criminals have no hope.

[nucklepunche]

When I was a market anarchist my general theory was that there would be one central codified set of laws similar to the way GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) work in accounting. Private police forces and courts would abide by these laws or else be declared anathema and their work would not be recognized by other police and courts abiding by the laws. Those who held prisoners in violation would be treated as criminal entities. All law would be non-coercive and based on compensation. Obviously this works with property crime but murder is a tougher matter. A person could insure their life theoretically and if they were murdered the murderer would be enslaved to their survivors based on a will until they paid off the debt. The one thing I never could work around is how to compensate rape victims. Could there have been rape insurance? Either way I abandoned market anarchism long ago.

[Eran]

Non-property crime can never be accurately compensated for. When you buy life insurance, your family doesn't get compensated for your death through the payment. But the payment does serve an important goal of relieving their economic distress and partially compensating them for the trouble.

The very same principle would hold with respect to restitution extracted from criminals guilty of injuring, raping or killing others.

Such restitution wouldn't necessarily be the primary deterrent, though. In a free society, people have much more power to influence their circumstances. Since people don't like the risk of being exposed to violent criminals, they will look for and entrepreneurs will help them find ways of keeping such criminals away.

If violent crime is a serious problem, a simple mechanism would be to exclude known, suspected, likely or potential violent criminals from the roads, offices, schools, residential, recreational and commercial areas in which law-abiding citizens typically find themselves.

[SecretSquirrel]

Value is subjective, Eran. It is very possible that monetary insurance can actually compensate for death, depending on the circumstance. Why else would people commit suicide for life insurance fraud? What about the gangsters that take capital punishment or a life sentence for someone else in their crew in exchange for their family being looked after for life by the boss?

[Eran]

Yes - it is possible. Even more so in the case of non-lethal bodily injury. However, being subjective, it is impossible to verify that the victim is made "whole", which would be the ideal solution to a past crime.

In the case of physical possessions, it is also possible to think of situations in which being made whole is impossible (e.g. when there is "sentimental value" associated with irreplaceable objects).

[SecretSquirrel]

You are correct. I misread your last post. I thought you were ruling out the possibility of monetary payment compensating for subjective damages, where you were actually just emphasizing that they may not always provide suitable compensation