Lunch Money Surrendered
The Council of the District of Columbia approved legislation Tuesday that would pay residents in the nation’s capital for not committing crimes.
First reported by the Associated Press, the bill penned by Democratic Council-member Kenyan McDuffie gained unanimous approval from the D.C. Council. The legislation, called the “Neighbourhood Engagement Achieves Results Amendment Act of 2016 (NEAR Act),” would establish an office to identify as many as 200 residents annually who are at risk of committing violent crimes or becoming a victim of such crimes. The individuals would be instructed to participate in life planning, trauma informed therapy, and other programmes; if they comply and do not commit crimes, the individuals would receive a stipend. The legislation was based on a Richmond, California, programme that pays individuals who participate as much as $9,000 annually.
Mr McDuffie describes his bill as “bold and innovative,” “a step in the right direction,” and “working to prevent crime by treating its root causes.”
Update, via the comments:
The experiment in Richmond, on which the above is based, involved “sifting through police records to determine the 50 [or so] residents most likely to shoot someone.” And then “approaching them and [offering] a stipend [of up to $1000 a month] to turn their lives around, and a mentor to help.” After four years of being subsidised for not being caught committing any further violent crimes, 65 of the 68 “fellows” enrolled in the programme were “still alive,” although “one had survived a shooting and three had died.” This was deemed “promising.”
The city’s murder rate did in fact fall while the programme was running, though other, more obvious factors – from a new police chief’s dramatic overhaul of policing methods to the local housing crisis and the consequent relocation of many known criminals – may have been more relevant. Comparable experiments in other cities haven’t exactly been conclusive either, with many supporters losing their initial interest and withdrawing funding, both private and public. A scheme in Pittsburgh initially coincided with an increase in the murder rate; one in Chicago has been “overshadowed by escalating homicide numbers,” and a similar project in Boston is described as “ending disastrously.”
Still trying to make my way through this thread.
LOL. Is Riker making sweet love to his chair?
Is Riker making sweet love to his chair?
I think he’s softening the leather.
Some of the emissions above remind me of Pointman’s splendid Prat Principle.
Enjoying your coffee, David?
In the spirit of Friday Ephemera, also in the spirit of not wading right into the depths an apparently quite acrimonious debate, I will continue, as with the elegy for “justice”, offering semi-tangential remarks and links only somewhat related to the topic at hand. I hope you will forgive me being a day early about this.
Social Technology and Anarcho-Tyranny. Long story short, policing involves a tradeoff, but sometimes the “total amount” to be traded off can increase or decrease. One might think of it in terms of stable equilibria:
Steven Kaas once said: “The cost of antisocial behavior includes the value of all institutions that we don’t have because they would be ruined by such behavior; this quantity has no obvious upper bound.” But a lower bound can at least be estimated by those not so lucky as to live in places where market-bazaars of twenty-thirty unmanned stalls proffer a profusion of goods.
I have also encountered an interesting proposal that many prisons should be replaced with something more like monasteries: places of rigidly ordered lifestyle that can simultaneously impose penance, segregate an offender, and give practice at useful skills for non-criminal life such as keeping schedules and work ethic.
This assumes some degree of malleability of human nature, though, which may cause it to be a stillborn proposal.
Enjoying your coffee, David?
Oh yes, muchly.
The cost of antisocial behaviour includes the value of all institutions that we don’t have because they would be ruined by such behaviour; this quantity has no obvious upper bound.
Until I feel inspired and sufficiently wise, I’m happy to eavesdrop as you lot thrash this one out. I will, though, add that the indifference that’s often shown towards victims of supposedly unimportant crime, say, car crime and burglary – and the excuses made for the perpetrators in, for instance, the pages of the Guardian, where commentators fret about the poor quality of toothbrushes available in prison – is corrosive and demoralising. It seems to encourage the idea that insurance is a close-to-adequate solution and one should simply get used to being preyed upon, often repeatedly, and often by the same people.
A point illustrated some years ago by the now sadly defunct Inspector Gadget blog:
At a time when “we need to send a message” is a common political phrase, the above – and any number of similar incidents I could quote – seems an odd choice of message. As I’ve said before, it would be preferable if the perpetrators, who are generally serial perpetrators, were the ones who lived in fear, rather than their victims. Many of whom might be deemed as “disadvantaged” as those who prey on them, and who may struggle to pay for the insurance that’s supposed to offer comfort, and who may find the theft and destruction of what little they have particularly distressing, a particular violation.
Long story short, policing involves a tradeoff, but sometimes the “total amount” to be traded off can increase or decrease. One might think of it in terms of stable equilibria:
I want to reiterate what you said, because the idea that different conditions for a society might produce different stable social equilibria seems foreign to a lot of people on all sides in the political debate. Social rules that work in a primitive predominantly rural agrarian society may fail spectacularly when applied to a modern highly mobile post-industrial society. Then again, when dealing with a romanticized view of history, such one that sees Celtic society (largely dominated by a feudal warrior aristocracy, practicing slavery of debtors and war captives, subject to frequent tribal warfare and ultimately subdued by the more organized Romans) as one not based on force, it’s kind of understandable.
The goal then is to both maximize the amount of liberty feasible under the social conditions, and change the social conditions to those more conductive of liberty, something which we’ve largely succeeded on at the international level since the end of World War II. When you’re offering to pay Danegeld to those likely to commit crimes, you’re changing dramatically the social conditions of society, and people will move from both the ‘actually committing crimes’ portion of society AND the ‘unlikely to commit crimes’ portion of society to the ‘likely to commit crimes’ portion.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Four of the six of those outline the role of the United States in the “protection of it’s citizens of deprival of rights (including those of property) by theft or fraud”. There are other interesting bits as to the ideals defined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights that relate to this discussion, such as “The Congress shall have power to […] grant letters of marque and reprisal […and…] To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;“.
Ten,
I read through most of your response. More than enough to come to the conclusion that I, and I presume others here, could argue with you until the cows come home and it would just be a tremendous waste of everyone’s time. You blather on and on with wordy BS in such an arrogant manner and when called on it simply project it back, re:
Of course this was quite apparent even before this thread, back on the Friday Ephemera in your “discussion” with Theophrastus regarding ancient monuments. Arrogance is pretty much all you’ve displayed here. Practically zero substance on the reality that people who commit violent and property crimes make the lives of those around them a living hell and thus must be dealt with in some practical and effective manner.
If you are interested in continuing this discussion, please limit your response to concrete points. I have a job and a life and lack the time to parse paragraphs and paragraphs of BS to find a tiny nugget of a point. The law is an ass. I agree. But not all of it. And justice is something that should not apply to just the perpetrator or the victim but to the community, i.e. potential future victims, as well. Not all implementations of justice are some knee jerk reaction or orgasm of schadenfreude.
Oh, and one other thing in general, more to others here…I first noticed this about 10 years ago and it’s increasing in prominence…wtf is with this convoluted line of reasoning that puts so many issues in the context of “fear”? It’s like the lefties need to dress themselves up in some false image of being strong by twisting every action taken to address real problems as a sign of “fear”. I actually worked with a delusional extreme vegan wisp of a man/boy who would argue that military people are really “fearful” underneath and thus it drives them to “project” being so macho. It was a never ending, tiresome thing with the guy. Trim your shrubs? Oh, you “fear” nature. Get a flu shot? Oh, you fear dying. I see this sh*t spreading, but perhaps I’ve just been sensitized to it from working with a loony for a couple years.
Until I feel inspired and sufficiently wise, I’m happy to eavesdrop as you lot thrash this one out. I will, though, add that the indifference that’s often shown towards victims of supposedly unimportant crime, say, car crime and burglary – and the excuses made for the perpetrators in, for instance, the pages of the Guardian, where commentators fret about the poor quality of toothbrushes available in prison – is corrosive and demoralising. It seems to encourage the idea that insurance is a close-to-adequate solution and one should simply get used to being preyed upon, often repeatedly, and often by the same people.
One of the reasons objective justice is impossible without relying on the existence of a higher power (be it God or karma) is that it is impossible to objectively value things, be they physical or intangible. Insurance can get you a new car with a similar market value, but can’t price in the possible sentimental value (it’s the car I took on my honeymoon or lost my virginity in, etc.), the inconvenience of not having a car, the fear of crime from being the victim, etc., because those vary from person to person. When we talk about mortal justice, it’s an approximation; the mutually agreed upon rules were followed, predetermined restitution to the victim has been provided and predetermined punishment has been assigned, therefore the system has worked and justice has been approximated.
It’s especially the case when what is lost is irreplaceable. How do you provide proper restitution to those that have permanently lost a loved one, much less the person who’s life has been lost?
Insurance… can’t price in… the fear of crime from being the victim,
It’s difficult to quantify the social and personal degradation caused by such people, whose numbers are small relative to their effect. Though that’s no excuse for Guardian columnists waving aside burglary – the violation of someone’s home – as “really quite inconsequential” and dismissing anger at that violation as plebeian and unsophisticated.
And sadly, I don’t have a Grand Unified Theory of Crime and Punishment. But it seems to me that for many crimes, and in particular for repeat offenders, we aren’t nearly punitive enough. And almost every poll taken suggests that a majority of the public shares this view. A three-strikes-and-we-put-you-out-to-sea-on-a-fucking-raft law would, I suspect, be very popular.
WTP, as alien as this probably is, if arrogance is what anyone wants, I propose your comments. It’s really kinda remarkable how you continually skate right by the very subject you keep demanding be addressed with so narrow a point of view that when it’s not used, you literally can’t accept the result except to edit it.
Strawmanning? Surely. Entrenched cognitive dissonance? Sounds like a predictable charge to make, but I can’t see what else to call it. And that’s before the personal remarks.
I can’t remember a more condescending, self-satisfied, and close-minded set of diversions in the last six months than yours. The fact someone doesn’t take well to the statist progressive rightist notion that they’re owed safety, and that questioning the justice system is wrong is silly. Try not to be a dick.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Four of the six of those outline the role of the United States in the “protection of it’s citizens of deprival of rights (including those of property) by theft or fraud”. There are other interesting bits as to the ideals defined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights that relate to this discussion, such as “The Congress shall have power to […] grant letters of marque and reprisal […and…] To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;”.
Oh for crying out loud; so now in and among all its safeguards of state’s rights and enumerated powers and the local enforcement that’s been operating independently of it until recently, federal constitutional govt really is a nanny. Next up: National prisons running convoyed SWAT into the surrounding streets to keep the order. The justice. The domestic tranquility.
No, obviously. Govt owes the populace protections from its own deprivations of life, liberty, and property, which is precisely why a national police mayn’t exist. For the rest – the rest being you and I – it is established to protect the enactment of just law, meaning remedial justice, not an Orwellian protection scheme. In fact, expressly opposed to protection schemes.
Let’s kindly not bend the founding principle into a pretzel.
Not surprisingly, true constitutional justice on your street starts with not infringing the Second, and, as is only now becoming vestigially trendy again, stand-your-ground rights under that prior, functional framework of justice.
Those principles, of course, incur some controversy from the leftist progressive statists who, like their rightist brothers – may see govt as a protection agency, soon with enormous industrialized farms inhabited by millions of wards of some Phillip K. Dick dystopia, one step from the protections of some pre-cognitive agency.
Correction: The left is significantly less inclined to this preposterous fallacy.
As I’ve said before, it would be preferable if the perpetrators, who are generally serial perpetrators, were the ones who lived in fear, rather than their victims.
The missing ingredient? The right to self-protection. That gone, onerousness – and even presumptions of guilt – become more palatable. Safer.
…it seems to me that for many crimes, and in particular for repeat offenders, we aren’t nearly punitive enough. And almost every poll taken suggests that a majority of the public shares this view. A three-strikes-and-we-put-you-out-to-sea-on-a-fucking-raft law would, I suspect, be very popular.
At some point we’re not discussing a functional justice system anymore, but in the growing vacuum of prior social responsibility, how to survive without either.
The prison island has, from time to time, been quite popular. It’s shame folks can’t configure a saner alternative before the fact, literally reforming social behavior individually before everybody’s a collective criminal.
I can’t remember a more condescending, self-satisfied, and close-minded set of diversions in the last six months than yours. The fact someone doesn’t take well to the statist progressive rightist notion that they’re owed safety, and that questioning the justice system is wrong is silly. Try not to be a dick.
The fact that we, despite our differences, aren’t seeing each others arguments as being close-minded, is indicative that your opinions may not be representative of the general tone of the discussion. Nobody has said that questioning the justice system is wrong, we argue that advocating throwing out the justice system entirely, as you have done, requires a lot of evidence in support to overcome Chesterton’s fence. I wonder if, in part, you’re operating from a different set of definitions from the rest of us?
Progressive can be defined neutrally as “favoring or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas.” Nowhere in there is ‘safety’ a progressive term. To take a more political definition, progressives are (according to the right) “envisioned an expansive government, a “living” and evolving Constitution, and the rule of “experts” in nationally centralized administrative agencies” or (according to the left) those who “focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules”.
Statist is usually defined as an advocate of statism, which gets defined as “the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty”. Nobody here is talking about economic or political controls. If you stretch the definition, it might apply, but let’s look at a related term: minarchist.
“Minarchism (also known as minimal statism) is a political philosophy and a form of libertarianism. It is variously defined by sources. In the strictest sense, it holds that states ought to exist (as opposed to anarchy), that their only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud, and that the only legitimate governmental institutions are the military, police, and courts. In the broadest sense, it also includes fire departments, prisons, the executive, and legislatures as legitimate government functions. Such states are generally called night-watchman states.”
If you’re going to define a minarchist as a statist, your definition may make sense to you, but you need to realize that your definition isn’t accepted by most people and that rational people can conclude that minarchists aren’t statists by any usable definition. Insisting your opponents are rightist, progressivist, and statist against the definitions held by most on this site requires you to state and defend your definitions as superior to the definitions held by the people here.
The missing ingredient? The right to self-protection.
Homeowners shooting burglars would be cheaper than housing and feeding them in our dungeons, assuming they were caught. Of course, in the name of savings, you’d have to shoot to kill.
The prison island has, from time to time, been quite popular.
Pity we don’t have Australia anymore. It’s time someone invented Phantom Zone technology.
All very fascinating, but I’m still left wondering about the practical effects of implementing Ten’s ideal system of non-incarcerative justice.
If I kick down Ten’s door, beat the shit out of him and take his iPad and The Wire DVD box set, what happens to me? Lawsuit? 50 hours of community service? Sternly worded letter from Loretta Lynch? Vendetta killing by Ten’s extended family?
How is a situation like that dealt with in Ten’s non-incarcerative utopia?
Shoot. HTML closure tag failure. 🙁
Shoot. HTML closure tag failure. 🙁
A hanging offence round these parts.
{Tugs forelock remorsefully}
While I very much like liberty, I have in recent years seen too many dropouts and too much anomie to remain convinced that liberty should be maximized. I think the ambition to maximize liberty came about under certain unspoken assumed cultural constraints, and as those drop off, you start to see welfare addicts, broken families, drifters, NEET, hikikomori, and numerous other failure modes in the style of being “liberated” from one’s brother and one’s neighbor. When a man only discovers five years on that his mother died five years ago (“so that’s why she stopped calling”) and his means of discovering this is a letter informing him that her body will be cremated for reuse of her burial plot unless he takes action to… something seems to me to have gone wrong.
I know there are abusive mothers, and sometimes it’s good to be able to cut ties even with what ought otherwise to be close family members. But I also hold that there’s nontrivial force to that “ought”, that certain kin should be kept close unless there is pressing reason otherwise, and liberty-maximization is raising the cost of doing so.
This isn’t really an argument. If your goal is just to maximize liberty, I can’t expect to persuade you otherwise. It’s more of a sigh at the side effects that I don’t like. I don’t have a plan to fix this. I don’t want to reorder people’s lives. But I have seen so many lives “derailed”, so to speak, usually after rejecting the concept of rails, that even without having a conception of specifically what’s right, I get a strong sense that something has gone avoidably wrong in those lives.
And on the societal rather than individual level, regardless of whether there is anything “wrong” about a culture that’s seen its TFR fall below replacement and continue downwards with no sign of stopping, it’s certain that such a culture is likely to be *replaced*, which is usually a good sign that something is wrong – or at least will be regarded as wrong by the replacers. Maximal liberty may be self-extinguishing. Apres moi, la deluge? Fiat libertatem, ruat coelum?
Not surprisingly, true constitutional justice on your street starts with not infringing the Second, and, as is only now becoming vestigially trendy again, stand-your-ground rights under that prior, functional framework of justice.
And here’s where being more precise in your definitions and being more open to charitable interpretations of your opponent’s arguments would have helped you in this debate. I can say the same for myself; I still find hard to believe a logical chain that spent so much time arguing prison was unconscionably cruel is in favor of self-defense against deprival of rights via second amendment; it’s internally logically valid, though so unexpected as to be almost unbelievable.
Let me get this straight: if someone steals my stuff, it’s preferable to have a society where it’s acceptable to recover it by personal force of arms (at the risk of killing the perpetrator) rather than one where a neutral third party trained in both investigation and dispute resolution look into the issue and perform the recovery?
You might want to look up the term ‘blood feud’ and the history of the Balkans for the likely consequences of leaving justice up to the individual (and more likely, watch the functional level of social organization become the clan/tribe/gang). You might want to spend time looking at ways in which your system can fail, and more specifically, how someone looking to abuse your system can do so, rather than trying to stretch examples of something that kinda fits without considering it may be an exception and by stretching it to fit you’re throwing out the ways in which it doesn’t fit.
A three-strikes-and-we-put-you-out-to-sea-on-a-fucking-raft law would, I suspect, be very popular.
😀
This isn’t really an argument. If your goal is just to maximize liberty, I can’t expect to persuade you otherwise. It’s more of a sigh at the side effects that I don’t like. I don’t have a plan to fix this. I don’t want to reorder people’s lives. But I have seen so many lives “derailed”, so to speak, usually after rejecting the concept of rails, that even without having a conception of specifically what’s right, I get a strong sense that something has gone avoidably wrong in those lives.
I’m using liberty in a sense of negative rights; positive rights aren’t rights, they can’t be (if there’s a right to food and not enough food to go around, it’s physically impossible to guarantee the right, therefore it can’t be one). I guess I would agree with you in the sense that I’m assuming a right to fail and to drop out of society as a cultural norm. Somebody is always going to get the short end of the stick, and though I don’t like it there’s nothing that can be done given current constraints.
And on the societal rather than individual level, regardless of whether there is anything “wrong” about a culture that’s seen its TFR fall below replacement and continue downwards with no sign of stopping, it’s certain that such a culture is likely to be *replaced*, which is usually a good sign that something is wrong – or at least will be regarded as wrong by the replacers. Maximal liberty may be self-extinguishing. Apres moi, la deluge? Fiat libertatem, ruat coelum?
I was careful to say ‘international level’, peacetime has left those looking to force their values on others because they are ‘better’ with a lot of internal power. We’ve gotten to a situation where large scale theft (war) is so costly as to be essentially impossible. While I tend to favor libertarian societies as better for all involved in the long run, my problem with theoretical libertarian arguments tends to be that they can’t handle the problems of neighboring societies with panzer divisions in the short runs.
Nobody raised a schtick.
Oh really? I note your only response to me was that, never mind the facts I put out.
I repeat – over the past year California has experienced a 20% rise in crime both property & violent. 20%
I don’t stand for people being jailed over stuff that should never be criminalized or under regulations that come from bureaucrats NOT from legislatures…
I’m specifically talking about crimes against property & people — burglary, assault, rape, murder, auto theft, et al.
There ARE plenty of career criminals out there (with rap sheets that cover years) and they are the ones that need to be separated from citizens. They see themselves as predators and see other people as prey.
I have learned something from the discussion here. Traditionally, when discussing theoretical politics, I’ve asked people that have proposed wholesale changes to the system to answer two questions: ‘how does your proposed society handle the problem of insufficient scarce resources such as food’ and ‘how does your proposed society handle outside threats such as neighbors with panzer divisions’. Libertarian societies do incredibly well at one, then tend to have more problems with two. I’ve needed to add a third question: ‘how does your proposed society handle internal disputes, such as ‘A said B stole something from him, but B says it’s rightfully his’?
I have also encountered an interesting proposal that many prisons should be replaced with something more like monasteries:
Actually, that’s why when the modern prison system was instituted in the US, they were/are called penitentiaries.
There ARE plenty of career criminals out there (with rap sheets that cover years) and they are the ones that need to be separated from citizens. They see themselves as predators and see other people as prey.
A few years ago, I caught someone breaking into my neighbour’s back yard via a passageway that runs behind the houses where I used to live. The youth was obviously ‘casing the joint’ and looking for opportunities. When the intruder looked up and realised he’d been spotted, his expression was priceless. I think I’d have to call it a mix of outrage and hatred. The youth turned and walked away and I assumed he’d be keen to flee pretty sharpish.
But our friend took the time to return to my neighbour’s yard armed with a large branch ripped from a nearby tree, and which was then thrown at my window. There was no damage, but his gesture of contempt – and apparent fearlessness – was remarkable. Evidently, he felt in no immediate danger of being apprehended and thus felt free to assert his position in some predatory food chain. Had I been an old dear and easily cowed by such efforts to intimidate, perhaps I’d have agreed with his presumption.
And this is the thing. The kinds of people who indulge in such behaviour, repeatedly, are hardly worthy of the disingenuous sympathy expressed by Guardianistas, generally to elevate themselves in the eyes of their equally pretentious peers. The people who do these things – again and again, until forcibly stopped – don’t regard their neighbours, the people around them, as deserving of anything. They – we – are little more than furniture or scenery, props in their psychodrama. At best, we’re people from whom things can be taken. A kind of foodstuff.
, literally reforming social behavior individually
And if the individual refuses to be reformed because they value their criminal behavior more than being a ‘productive member of society’?
And do not try to say such people don’t exist.
And this is the thing. The kinds of people who indulge in such behaviour, repeatedly, are hardly worthy of the disingenuous sympathy expressed by Guardianistas, generally to elevate themselves in the eyes of their equally pretentious peers. The people who do these things – again and again, until forcibly stopped – don’t regard their neighbours, the people around them, as deserving of anything. They – we – are little more than furniture or scenery, props in their psychodrama. At best, we’re people from whom things can be taken. A kind of foodstuff.
Ten does have a point that shooting this kind of people would discourage this sort of behavior. However, rationally, we’re human, and the chance of mistakes makes encouraging that a risky business in and of itself (much less the opportunity for villainy of the sort “he was coming right for me with the hedge clippers, so I shot him six times in the back in self-defense”).
Look at how systems get abused. If I get paid for being likely to not commit crimes but not likely to commit them, it may be a viable strategy for me to put myself in a position where it looks like a crime. Also, if I’m someone committing crimes and since I don’t want to get caught anyways, it pays to take the money for not committing crimes and commit crimes anyways.
At best, we’re people from whom things can be taken. A kind of foodstuff.
I’m reminded of the Grade B (and sometimes lower) Horror films of the 50s that played as Saturday afternoon Creature Features on tv when I was a kid. Many variations on a plot where there was the Man of Science who, in the course of helping others to rid themselves of The Monster, soon started protecting The Monster, trying to convince others that The Monster was really cool but misunderstood…
Then The Monster ate him.
Civilis at 15:17, five paragraphs:
I didn’t purport to represent the general tone of the discussion, Civilis. I felt it relevant to propose that the incarceration state was incompatible with founding western principles, and I illustrated that prior functional civilizations – our own included, actually – didn’t operate them.
Obviously I also didn’t “throw out the entire justice system”. See above.
Chesterton’s fence can justify any majority force if it’s used against Chesterton’s broader general tone and substance, which as I recall, hadn’t any mob populism and fear for safety in it. I suspect the man might just have known human nature and the nature of existence as well as most, and that that awareness prevented him descending into experiments in preventative populism, basically calling it structural democratic liberalism.
Likewise at least the American constitutional notion of order: Hasn’t any provisions for restraint of the individual prior to any presumed action in it, yet apparently today it’s capable of protecting its dependents from the guy next door by throwing away the key on him because of what he might do a second time. The Minority Report-like conditionality and industrialized, statist, penetentialism of that could just conflict with GK’s – and Washington’s – aim because surely it conflicts their philosophies.
Progressivism absolutely has as one of its central pillars – I know, but bear with me – safety. (This blog deconstructs that myth daily.) I appreciate your bringing a dictionary, but a minor linguistic pause here is about as useful as other folks editing the proper contextual use of the word in this conversation: Yes, rightists are frequently quite progressive. Like Communism, Progressivism is a perfectly lovely thing until you use it. Here the right is these days ostensible at best, and progressive at the worst. In a lot of ways.
Per statism and its economic and political controls, that is the direct effect of systemic overreach by Justice. They and it are statist. That risk has ever been thus, which is where common law and its structuralism come in, as a contract and as, hopefully, a durable policy. You can walk back an intent, but you cannot then rationally – or honestly – defend the outcome, which many Safety Progressives are.
Minarchism. (And with it Anarcho-Capitalism.) There’s certainly no central and unique provider of preventative safety here either. Here we also find the core component of a functional system of democratic classical liberalism: The right to self-defense. In other words, finally burying the idiotic notion that law enforcement is just for the hired professionals from which to dispense safety in a violent world. Actually, it’s for the individual, including to reform civilizations that have given up on both individualism and responsibility. Hired professionals mostly don’t exist in 99% of any criminal intent, adding another conundrum for protectionists. As I’ve been saying, protectionist silliness is how you end up having to criminalize everything, sometimes preemptively.
I don’t associate minarchism with statism. Haven’t. I associate statism with the inevitable condition of a people that cannot or will not be free. Because liberty has responsible, difficult conditions for individuals who demand the right to continue to exercise them.
Ten’s ideal system
Non-starter, Jerry. I didn’t propose one, although I’ve used the word reform.
Note too, however, that the first defense – well, second, really – of establishmentarians confronted with the inevitable problems of their excesses almost universally resort to that argument. The argument that all other evils are worse.
I’m reminded of the Grade B (and sometimes lower) Horror films of the 50s that played as Saturday afternoon Creature Features on tv when I was a kid. Many variations on a plot where there was the Man of Science who, in the course of helping others to rid themselves of The Monster, soon started protecting The Monster, trying to convince others that The Monster was really cool but misunderstood…
Then The Monster ate him.
Thank you for that apt description of runaway systems and the folks who believe in them.
And for powerful closing lines.
And if the individual refuses to be reformed because they value their criminal behavior more than being a ‘productive member of society’?
And do not try to say such people don’t exist.
Had I?
Try not to say systems don’t condition dependents toward dysfunction. Or that once the thing inevitably falls apart, individuals don’t return with radically higher views on survival and civilization they then codify. It’s almost like it’s a historically reoccurring theme…
I notice you did not answer the question. What happens to me after your reforms are enacted?
Try not to say systems don’t condition dependents toward dysfunction
Which systems? What dependents?
All crime (again, I’m specifically addressing criminal behavior against property & people) begins with the individual who has chosen to commit it. Intent, regardless of motivation, to deprive another person of their property, or physical well-being, or life, by force or fraud.
No ‘system’ forces one person to murder another. No ‘system’ forces one person to smash a window and burglarize a house.
If I am understanding, you are not talking about reforming prison systems, but getting rid of them entirely. Such a ‘system’ incentivizes predators because they will always be amidst their prey.
First priority is to separate these people out of society.
Then, and only then, can you start addressing the best methods of rehabilitation and how to handle those who are beyond any rehabilitation.
Civilis at 15:43, a few paragraphs, still somewhat condescendingly:
I don’t need to be more precise in my definitions, Civilis. Protectionists need to be more articulate framing their relativistic fallacies about order. The refrain but there are crimes out there! isn’t that thing. Kindly reconsider appealing to a projected convention – nobody should rise to proofs by subjective whim.
Let me get this straight: if someone steals my stuff, it’s preferable to have a society where it’s acceptable to recover it by personal force of arms (at the risk of killing the perpetrator) rather than one where a neutral third party trained in both investigation and dispute resolution look into the issue and perform the recovery?
What happened to preventing it?
If someone steals our stuff so commonly that we need to imprison millions of them because we fear taking responsibility for our own safety and property, and because we insist that an officialized, professional industry do it for us instead, we’ve probably misallocated our principles. We’ve probably inverted cause and effect.
We’ve given up on positive human nature. We dislike messy responsibility. We’ve forgotten to reconsider.
Yet gun carry is skyrocketing and defensive rights, including by terminal force, are being renewed. This is why crime is off, immediately, significantly, and directly in response to individualism and local order.
All the appeals to failing contemporary practices don’t rise to the level of proofing a newly viable, fair, just, and especially durable society. I mean, here we are complaining about order and defending its conflict with our first principles.
It has nothing to do with Balkan blood feuds – just like it has nothing to do with diverting into the dictionary – although very many Americans at least don’t look back on our west’s settlement justice negatively. It has to do with a lost structure and with it, a lost ideal. If you have to resort first to linguistic revisionism and then rhetorical extremism, I suspect you’re not terribly interested in real alternatives out in the real world.
And yes, apparently an armed society is a polite – and just – society. Ask Darleen, her Republican sensibilities notwithstanding.
Life is hard. Making it “safe” makes it harder.
I didn’t purport to represent the general tone of the discussion, Civilis. I felt it relevant to propose that the incarceration state was incompatible with founding western principles, and I illustrated that prior functional civilizations – our own included, actually – didn’t operate them.
Which founding Western Principles would those be? The Greeks and Romans (and Celts) practiced slavery, including for prisoners of war (and if slavery isn’t of a kind with imprisonment, it has no meaning). The Tower of London dates as a prison back nearly a millennia. The Magna Carta does remove prison for trivial offenses and debts, but leaves it obvious though unstated that it’s still on the table for more serious crimes. Certainly nobody since the founding of the US has taken imprisonment as a violation of the 8th Amendment. Unless these somehow don’t fit your definition of ‘incarceration’ (the state of being confined in prison; imprisonment), I see your statement as being contradictory to basic facts and definitions.
Obviously I also didn’t “throw out the entire justice system”. See above.
Thinking that throwing out the government’s ability to use force to compel people not to commit crime is a radical overhaul of the entire justice system should be recognized as a rational view even if you don’t agree.
Chesterton’s fence can justify any majority force if it’s used against Chesterton’s broader general tone and substance, which as I recall, hadn’t any mob populism and fear for safety in it. I suspect the man might just have known human nature and the nature of existence as well as most, and that that awareness prevented him descending into experiments in preventative populism, basically calling it structural democratic liberalism.
Chesterton’s Fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood, and is often taken as a root of traditional conservatism (as opposed to progressive thought). There’s a reason governments of all types (and groups acting in place of governments, such as clans and tribes) use force to enforce laws, because voluntary compliance is not possible in all cases. You’ve given nothing which has called this into question, and dodge the question every time it has been asked. Darleen asked a simple question much better than I could, “And if the individual refuses to be reformed because they value their criminal behavior more than being a ‘productive member of society’?“, which you have not provided an answer we can comprehend.
Likewise at least the American constitutional notion of order: Hasn’t any provisions for restraint of the individual prior to any presumed action in it, yet apparently today it’s capable of protecting its dependents from the guy next door by throwing away the key on him because of what he might do a second time. The Minority Report-like conditionality and industrialized, statist, penetentialism of that could just conflict with GK’s – and Washington’s – aim because surely it conflicts their philosophies.
Where did that part in bold come from? Again, I can’t keep your arguments straight, possibly because your argument keeps evolving. I know I sometimes type faster than I think. It seems to be that you are arguing against a package deal of things, without seeing if the ideas can be separated and addressed individually. That sentence without the bold part seems to fit your prior arguments, yet doesn’t fit your citing of Minority Report. My opinion on the subject changes depending on whether or not that clause is included.
Progressivism absolutely has as one of its central pillars – I know, but bear with me – safety. (This blog deconstructs that myth daily.) I appreciate your bringing a dictionary, but a minor linguistic pause here is about as useful as other folks editing the proper contextual use of the word in this conversation: Yes, rightists are frequently quite progressive. Like Communism, Progressivism is a perfectly lovely thing until you use it. Here the right is these days ostensible at best, and progressive at the worst. In a lot of ways.
Assertion without evidence. I suspect you are much more Progressive (under the ‘favoring or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas’ definition) than any of us, in that you believe you can enact wholesale social change without respect for human nature. One of the reasons it took so long to understand what your arguments were is that you’ve wholesale signed on to the Progressive logic that crime is the fault of society, and society needs to be punished, not the person that chose to violate the law. The fact that you otherwise mimic anarcho-capitalist logic is what makes it very hard to understand what you want.
I don’t associate minarchism with statism. Haven’t. I associate statism with the inevitable condition of a people that cannot or will not be free. Because liberty has responsible, difficult conditions for individuals who demand the right to continue to exercise them.
You can resolve this by providing an alternate definition of minarchism. Considering that the definition I provided explicitly references military, police, and courts (and, optionally, prisons), you’re going to be hard pressed to convince us that your definition meets both current usage and supports your version of society.
I notice you did not answer the question.
You didn’t notice that you’d posed a fallacy.
What happens to me after your reforms are enacted?
You’re freer and safer.
But are we that conditional? That subjectively, progressively, relativistic? Because what happens to us, for example, after we progress to configuring a means to paid by our fellows, via govt, to relocate to the much safer south seas with a nice retirement and a yacht and an island?
Would that alter our principles on rights and liberty?
Darleen at 17:17 explains criminality.
No, I’m not talking about eliminating prison. Never have. I’m asking about dysfunctional systems, their conflict with first and founding principles, why ostensible conservatives defend them, and now apparently, how any of this could be so damn hard to explain after being written probably half a dozen times. (I’m sure Civilis won’t fail to pounce on that last bit, but s/he’s been shown to not have much interest in the core issue when there’s a good argument to deflect us away from our shared reality.)
First principle is not to separate these people out of society, quite obviously. First principle is just law, then due process, and then – and quite distinct from those – to recreate a society that de-incentivizes crime wisely and reliably.
Only then do we remove people from society. For those reasons and because by the tacit admission of protectionists, ceaseless incarceration hasn’t been that thing.
You don’t get to demand that anyone address only rehabilitation. We all must address society, and with it, how it’s corrupted its systems out of our own arrogance and sloth.
I can’t remember a more condescending, self-satisfied, and close-minded set of diversions in the last six months than yours.
Under the circumstances, I’ll just say thank you and leave it at that.
Handwaving and irrelevancy from Civilis at 17:25, all of which was challenged, addressed, and explained.
When we normalize thought to only include the present time, in and on its permutations, levels, manifestations, and standards, then obviously we can’t grasp the alternative. Don’t see how or where an alternative could arise? How it could be principled? What its philosophy comprised? What reforms it would entail? Go look again, because when it has to be spelled out more than half a dozen times obviously it’s only relevant to an ulterior motive.
The system is broken. Rightists are therein statists. There’s no neo-principled, legitimate defense of this statism in original structuralism. History is a guide. Philosophy matters. And appeals to the lesser of evils as an opponents sole alternative are naturally moot.
I don’t need to be more precise in my definitions, Civilis. Protectionists need to be more articulate framing their relativistic fallacies about order. The refrain but there are crimes out there! isn’t that thing. Kindly reconsider appealing to a projected convention – nobody should rise to proofs by subjective whim.
I assume you are here to persuade us that your point of view is correct.
You’re speaking a foreign language. The rest of us can all understand each other, so we have a tongue in common. If you can’t speak our language, perhaps you can meet us halfway by defining words and terms you use in simpler language so we can understand what you are saying. You’ll note that I have taken the effort to define the important terms I have used. If you disagree with my definitions, you need to provide me with an objective definition I can use in it’s place before I can speak your language. Yes, I’m increasingly condescending, because I’ve attempted to meet in the middle and have not seen any reciprocity.
I hate to mess up David’s excellent blog anymore than I already have, but let’s start at the new beginning:
You say ‘the system is broken’. I presume the system is the modern American / Western justice system; is this assumption correct? What is the prime piece of evidence that the system is not functioning? What differences would we see in a properly functioning justice system?
You didn’t notice that you’d posed a fallacy.
Not a fallacy, a hypothetical. One that occurs hundreds if not thousands of times every day, by the way.
In the current system, if Person A breaks into Person B’s house, beats up Person B and steals Person B’s stuff, men with guns will come and put Person A in prison.
Under your reformed justice system, what happens to Person A in this scenario?
If your more enlightened criminal justice philosophy can’t answer this simple and commonplace hypothetical, it isn’t worth a damn. No amount of hyper-intellectual theorizing can change that.
I assume you are here to persuade us that your point of view is correct.
I’m here to do what I said I was here to do: See where the common right limits itself.
Time for a do-over? Civilis, few resurface to incur another broadside – the nearly wholesale editing of other’s remarks – like revising their stated intent – tends to put them off.
Condescension about definitions doesn’t help. It’s a ploy to demean opposing terms by undermining them without good cause. It aims to deflect intent and smear points, also revising what was said. Who expects joint definitions when they became so narrow and exclusive to one ideology? Appeals to the crowd can’t help.
The question isn’t what I want. It’s what are you protecting and why.
First principle is not to separate these people out of society, quite obviously. […] create a society that de-incentivizes crime wisely and reliably.
Of course! We should allow the Ted Bundys, Nidal Hasans, and John Wayne Gacys to live their quiet lives as they see fit until bad old society changes to accomodate their chosen peccadillos …
wisely ..
Time for a do-over? Civilis, few resurface to incur another broadside – the nearly wholesale editing of other’s remarks – like revising their stated intent – tends to put them off.
I don’t hold your editing of my remarks against you.
I’m really trying to understand what your argument is; if you don’t care that I understand it (because your goal is to understand my arguments), that’s fine, but criticizing my clumsy attempts to parse your argument when you didn’t care whether or not I understood it is uncalled for. I took a restart, by asking you a few open and simple questions which I put as few preconceived ideas into as possible, as being the best way I could get your argument in good faith. If you don’t care that I don’t understand you, don’t waste your time answering them.
Condescension about definitions doesn’t help. It’s a ploy to demean opposing terms by undermining them without good cause. It aims to deflect intent and smear points, also revising what was said. Who expects joint definitions when they became so narrow and exclusive to one ideology? Appeals to the crowd can’t help.
I’ve tried multiple methods to understand what you want. Since I now know you don’t want to be understood, I’ll stop asking.
The question isn’t what I want. It’s what are you protecting and why.
You’ve answered what you want: to See where the common right limits itself.
I can’t speak for the right, but I have conservative tendencies. The system is obviously not perfect, in that people that should not be in prison are in prison and people that should be removed from society in some way (and I really see no better feasible option than imprisonment) are still able to prey on society. I don’t know which numbers are greater. There is no easy fix (there never is), so I’m skeptical of people that claim there is one, and I’m unable to commit to change without knowing that the outcome has a good chance of being better (Chesterton’s Fence).
I also have libertarian tendencies. I had never googled the definition of ‘minarchist’ before I posted it, but it’s a pretty good starting place for dealing with my views on economics. While it’s possible to visualize a stable anarcho-capitalist system, I see no reliable way of setting one up given current social and technological conditions, so I’m content with ‘as close to minarchist as possible to maximize economic goods’ as a starting point for society (dealing with the scarcity problem), yet recognize that I have to sacrifice some of that freedom to deal with outside threats (the neighbors with panzers problem); the goal is to move the social and technological conditions to maximize the amount of liberty. Industrial era warfare society required a large degree of coercion for society to survive, we’ve moved past that, and in fact, we’ve moved up the slippery slope in many respects from the era of industrial warfare, so I’m not convinced the ratchet only goes one direction as long as we keep pushing up the slope.
Society isn’t perfect, but perfection is a process, not an endpoint.
“Condescension about definitions doesn’t help.”
Seen elsewhere: “I will not enact the labor to explain”.
“if you don’t care that I understand it (because your goal is to understand my arguments)”
A person who makes only vague and confusing statements about his own positions, which naturally hampers those he is arguing with, is not actually interested in understanding their arguments but rather is engaged in a particularly slimy kind of trolling.
Not a fallacy, a hypothetical.
No, a fallacy: you edited in an intent and then demanded its new model of reality. None was offered. Do you know why?
What occurs “hundreds if not thousands of times every day, by the way,” is that folks make demands on systems. When those systems eventually collapse, together with their inevitable effects on their supporting societies, people expect protection.
I’m no more here to guarantee your protection, Jerry, then any regime is here to solve all your problems for you because you left your comfy flat to venture to the polls. I’m here to see how far you’ll go looking for one, and how long you’ll endure a dystopian London or a Gotham, or even a frontier Detroit before you realize the answer is going to have to be you and people like you.
Under your reformed justice system, what happens to [criminals]?
Wrong question, and another fallacy. What happens when society has no choice but to reform so that exponentially fewer and not more are created to be walled up by socially normalizing criminality and justice as a self-interested industry, calling it civil safety, the State’s sacred role? Then, obviously, criminals as you use the term has a whole new context. You tell me how that society deals with its criminals.
You can’t? Precisely.
But with the dim acceptance of our dismal present failure, what happens to me, Jerry? How is presumptive apathy not aggressing by force against a bunch of levels of civil society, my guaranteed lawful pursuits among them? How is it not another failure of scope projected onto all possible alternatives by the tyranny of a foolish majority?
If your more enlightened criminal justice philosophy can’t answer this simple and commonplace hypothetical, it isn’t worth a damn. No amount of hyper-intellectual theorizing can change that.
If your enlightened progressive welfare state can’t answer how I’m gonna get me a 65″ plasma teevee, it’s not worth a damn either.
And around we go. With conservatives.