crime and punishment

Even many who are relatively sympathetic to free market minarchist and mutualist ideals where as much as possible is done through voluntary rather than coercive statist mechanisms often have a problem envisaging a system in which no state apparatus exists.  Two of the most common objections are that we at least need a state to administer "justice" and to ensure "national defense".  Even intellectual heavyweights such as Robert Nozick felt that a de facto "state", at least at a local level, would emerge from private law enforcement agencies.

So I'm often on the lookout for literature that explains how a private law based society would work, indeed would vastly improve upon the current predominant state run model, and so I am delighted to point my reader to "Chaos Theory", a pair of short essays, one on "justice" and the other on "national defense" by Robert P Murphy.  It is available as a freely downloadable PDF at the Mises.org site.  You can also buy a dead tree version (though I find delivery costs too high at Mises.org to justify having these sent to the UK).

It also provides further illustration of the point I was making in my previous piece on how respect for private property and contracts frees us from the need for a state.

I have also prepared an MP3 audiobook version, which is attached to this post.  It's mainly just for me to listen to again on the way to work, but if you'd prefer to listen than to read, and can face my dulcet tones, feel free to use it, Robert Murphy has given his permission.  It's only an hour and a half long, so you can judge how long it will take you to read this very accessible introduction to some of the ideas involved.

Particularly on the "justice" side, I can see ways in which the Mutualist ideal of creating such institutions and mechanisms within the current system could be successful.  Since the non-aggression principle would not rely on the same ability conferred on state agents (i.e. the police) to arrest someone, there is no reason why such mechanisms could not operate successfully on private property at present.

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I received a little missive through the local community mailing list today reminding members of the notice they had received to the effect that Oxford City Council will no longer, as from 3rd August, collect any extra bin bags left with your wheelie bins or wheelie bins whose lids won't close because of the volume of the contents, and that you will receive an £80 fine for not complying, and reminding you of the "rules of collection" like that you bin must be in a specific place by 7am on bin day and not before 6pm the night before and so on and so forth. I am not subject to this little "customer service" regime since on site my rubbish is collected by the cleaners who service the flats and so on but I replied...

Time to open up waste collection to proper competition I'd say.

These people are your servants not your masters. You are their customers. You pay them. They take these excuses, such as land fill regulations or health and safety assessments, and turn them into rules that have the effect of new laws that can be enforceable with punishment fines and make your life inconvenient.

It seems to me there is plenty of room for a premium service for example

• One that will actually come onto your property, round to your kitchen door if necessary, to get your bin, wash it out when they've emptied it and put it back neatly.

• One that will give you a scale of charges so you know you will be billed by weight or volume (and not "fined" which by definition is a punishment) but will take whatever you leave for them.

• One that promises not to go through your rubbish bins in the dead of night categorizing you, not your rubbish, by some new socio-economic measure and treat you differently as a result.

• Ones that come on different days and you can open accounts with more than one of them so that if you have something particular you want rid of one day that isn't your main collection they will take it anyway and bill you a little.

• One which will pay you for any recyclable waste for which they get money upstream - indeed I know of one firm dealing in a plastic bottle crusher who does just that - sends you bags that you can send back full of crushed PET bottles and get money back off them, eventually paying back the cost of the crusher and then some.

All over the country council bureaucrats are being metamorphosized into "refuse tzars" (nice pun - for of course what they do is "refuse" to take your refuse except under ever stricter rules); and some day these pavlovian conditioned customers are going to bite back. You wait; after the "fines" will come the "SWAT" teams to haul you out and embarrass you, and maybe worse, in front of your neighbours - because monopolies, especially ones with statutory force, can do that sort of thing. "Public servants" - pah!

Ah well, we can but hope. Why *do* all of you who have to work to their rules just roll over and accept this escalation of hostilities, this change of role from servant to policeman? You just watch what happens when you don't pay these "fines" on the grounds that they are no longer giving the service your tax pays for!

Maybe, in future, someone will quip:

"First, they came for the extra bin bags, but I said nothing, because I didn't have extra bin bags"

Oh - by the way - be careful what you flush down the loo too - I was reading this week of some research in Oregon where they were testing equipment intended to check for drugs use by sampling sewer water. By the time they've got us all on their DNA database, they'll be able to match that with individuals and potentially use it for evidence (but don't assume it will stop at drugs - if there's too much sugar shown the diabetes SWAT team will land in your back garden and steal all your cakes no doubt).

It's no big secret that one of the things political Islam rails against the west for is what they consider to be its harram banking system based on debt/usury. Abu Hamza even said on a Newsnight one night (even Jeremy didn't really pick up on it at the time from memory) that attacks then being carried out against French banks were legitimate.

So, might I suggest that one way, if you really want to, to get back Sir Fred's pension and all those other bonuses would be to incarcerate them (and especially the politicians that egged them on in the "age of irresponsibility" as Brown christened his Chancellorship a few weeks ago) in Belmarsh and use recent suitable anti-terror laws to confiscate their assets.

After all, between them they have contrived to do more harm to our way of life (and for several decades to come even after ground zero is cleared up) than the Al Q'aeda big-wigs could probably have dreamed of.

We could even recycle GTMO for their exclusive pleasure - after all, it seems many of them like Caribbean hide-aways!

Of course, it's at least half-in-jest - but when we think of the damage that cock-up rather than conspiracy has wreaked on the global financial system and the billions so dependent on it, how much worse can it be? I remember Bjorn Lomberg once saying that providing a clean local water source for everyone on the planet currently without would have cost less than what we have put in to bail out these fuckers.

I'll bet it would change the entire popular view of "waterboarding" if it were Richard Fuld or today's favourite whipping boy Fred Goodwin undergoing it! Maybe "retired" bankers could even be the next group to get ID cards.

Why on earth did the someone not simply leave them on a train seat/back of a taxi/on a memory stick in the postal system somewhere, then everyone would have tut-tutted but believed that they had been irrecoverably lost...

Besides, I know what I would do if I were a Cabinet Office typing pool member who happened to have the minutes on a disk somewhere - it is surely a greater duty to the rest of us to be sure that Blair and Co hang for their transgressions than to keep one's job in the centre of the Beast's lair.

Professor David Nutt, who happens to chair the government's advisory council on drugs has apparently written that the risks associated with taking Ecstasy are no worse than those of riding a horse:

Ecstasy 'not worse than riding' The panel will review the latest evidence before making its decision Taking the drug ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse, a senior advisor has suggested. Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), outlined his view in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The council, which advises the government, is expected next week to recommend that ecstasy is downgraded from a class A drug to a class B one. [From BBC NEWS | UK | Ecstasy 'not worse than riding']

Of course some of his prohibitionist colleagues are outraged and suggest, obnoxiously, that he should "consider his position" as head of ACMD. Something similar happens to me recently on our local "eDemocracy forum":

I have to say that Jock is confused in his position on drugs, and considering what he does for a living I find his attitude totally irresponsible and maybe he ought to consider his position, and I hope Rex Knight finds out what Jock thinks on the subject. Headington and Marston Neighbourhood Forum

So you know, I am amongst other things a hall warden, responsible for the safety and discipline of 550 first year undergraduates in halls of residence, whom I know perfectly well (but can do little about), go out at night made more unsafe by prohibition, lack of knowledge and so on. Rex Knight is the deputy vice-chancellor - and in that piece was presumably expected to sack and evict me for my views according to the odious author.

It appears that most of the very small number of deaths (30 each year out of an estimated half million users per weekend) are caused by lack of information about what you should do about the side-effects - like Leah Betts, they hear that they need to take lots of water when they get hot and so flood their brains and other organs. Most of these deaths are probably in the age group I look after, who, perhaps first time users, have not the experience to challenge the "street wisdom".

Without prohibition, with quality controlled drugs (the other biggest danger is that the drugs are tainted - often even not containing any MDMA at all in fact), with appropriate warnings and proper instructions most if not all of these victims would be alive today. Prohibition has killed them and anyone, everyone who supports prohibition is complicit in their manslaughter.

I remember in the seventies there were scare stories that kippers, lots of black coffee, and burnt toast were all carcinogenic. They might have turned out that way, but didn't. Did we, as the government does now about Ecstasy, stick our collective fingers in ours ears and say "there is no safe kipper" as an excuse for banning them? There are all sorts of things that can be found, after decades or centuries of consumption, to have potentially serious adverse effects.

Further, while the government does interfere and  these young people die of ignorance and criminal adulteration, we know that in the US for example, they consider there to be a safe enough dose to be testing the use of MDMA amongst patients experiencing traumas they dare not talk about (and previously it has also been tested as a weight loss drug and a truth drug I understand). So either the US government or the UK government must be wrong!

Anyway - we also know, don't we, how to make a horse safe! Which is class C by the way - go figure!

...and one kills, so why not ban it, just like this:

A 15-year-old boy may have battered a man to death because his personality was changed by an antidepressant drug, a specialist doctor has told a court. The boy killed Gary Belben, 59, with a hammer and attempted to kill his wife, Tanya, in Essex after being prescribed Prozac, Chelmsford Crown Court heard. [From BBC NEWS | England | Essex | Drug 'could have led boy to kill']

...and find a set of blue lights chasing you up the motorway, at least they could do it in style, Italian style:

A recently discovered, by me at least, Lib Dem blogger, Jamie Saddler, comments on the apparent decision by government not to press for a lower blood alcohol limit:

Epolitix are reporting that the government have decided against lowering the drink-drive limit from 80mg to 50 mg... This is all well and good, but they are the ones who would do this regardless of the limit, and need to be the exception. It needs to be spelt out to people that if you are driving, even one drink is unacceptable. [From Jamie Saddler: Government Gets It Wrong on Drink Drive Limit]

I wonder. I do have an interest here - I was done for driving under the influence and banned for a year, sixteen years ago now. In my case, it was a timely reminder, even though it led to years of bad times for me - losing my job and so on. Had I been caught a few years earlier while I was working in Glasgow I think I would probably have done time and I am probably truly lucky not to have had an accident in that time.

Nonetheless, when I was stopped, I will always remember the first words the officer said to me: "Good evening, sir, you haven't done anything wrong, but we were following you for a while and we felt you took that last roundabout a little carelessly so we wanted to stop you and have a word; first, I'd like you to provide a sample of breath to testing for alcohol content."

They had been following me for some time, on otherwise empty roads mid-evening in Birmingham and approaching an empty roundabout I had taken a straighter line - inside-outside-inside - that someone a little more perfect would have done perhaps. I had done nothing wrong. They said.

Nothwithstanding all this though, I still wonder if drink limits are the right, or at least the most liberal, way of dealing with this nasty social problem of people who drink, drive and then injure or kill others or property. And I certainly question the common message that Jamie repeats that "even one drink is unacceptable". I rarely drink at all nowadays. I have a good relationship with alcohol. I regard it as one of the worst drugs available, even though legal, and take it generally with caution (okay, I had a few large whiskies on Saturday night but was taking a taxi, but was perfectly lucid).

But recently I was out in the car meeting someone and had two pints and drove home. They were nice pints and next time I visit I will take the bus because I would have enjoyed more. But over three and a half hours I drank two pints of ale, and "the alcohol in one pint of ordinary strength lager will take two hours to pass out of your body" [Bupa guidance]. So I'm probably right in saying that there may have been the equivalent of less than half a pint in my system when I drove away.

The problem with having a law that specifies a uniform amount for everyone and above that is a crime regardless of whether you are behaving dangerously or not, or even using a mobile phone, or driving whilst exhausted, or smoking, or eating, at the wheel, or on drugs, and so on is that you just have to keep adding extra clauses, extra laws to deal with new situations.

The problem with having a more general law of "dangerous driving" is that it appears to introduce some subjectiveness into the legal process. You are no longer asking whether a person was simply, objectively, over a certain limit, but whether the "man on the Clapham omnibus" would consider that you were acting dangerously.

The former also, almost by definition, involves trawling for offenders and in the process interfering with the perfectly legal comings and goings of law abiding citizens. And it really doesn't respect a notion of causing danger. Just breaching a numerical limit. Whilst the latter is how we expect for British law to be dealt with more generally - involving intention, capacity, culpability, danger and the subjective decisions of a jury or bench.

Now, that's not to say that I want to see more people drink driving, or a rise in death and injury as a result. As a libertarian minded person though I do want people to have to take responsibility for their own actions. And therefore consider for themselves whether what they are thinking of doing may be dangerous to themselves or others. The arbitrary, numerical limit takes away that responsibility in a way.

In the case Jamie mentioned:

I do not understand why this is dealt with under "causing death through dangerous driving" and not manslaughter. Manslaughter of course allows for a life sentence. A few life sentences and people would start thinking a bit more about whether it's worth testing their alcohol fuelled infallibility. If people are prevented from drink driving simply for fear of breaking a limit that will result in the loss of their license if they are unlucky enough to get caught by police, how much more so by the possibility that their journey might end in a prison cell for life if they take a gamble and lose?

I have no problem with using any of the impairment inducing activities - taking drugs, eating, phoning someone, smoking, driving too tired and so on - as aggravating the culpability and pushing more towards higher sentences. But is this not a case where "tough liberalism" punishing the consequences and not creating arbitrary laws that simply apply to everyone, dangerous or not, could once again reduce the burden of legislation and the arbitrariness of laws to deal with different substances and activities, whilst focussing peoples' minds on the real consequences of their actions?

Around 7.5% only of "KSIs" (killed and seriously injured) in road traffic accidents are causally linked to alcohol, and I believe this figure includes when the drunk is the pedestrian that staggers out in front of a perfectly legal driver and is killed or injured.  Which suggests to me that the greater rewards will now be found dealing with other forms of anti-social driving.  I nominate middle-lane-itis and misuse of the acceleration lane for starters.

Yes, I'm still meant to be on internet silence, but Linux and various bits of software have me stumped for a while until I get some help from the mailing lists, so I thought I'd cast my mind over the implications of the court case this week that resulted in a jury deciding that it was okay to commit a crime in order to prevent what the perpetrators believed would be a greater harm in the future. The case in point was that they had committed (and admitted) criminal damage by climbing a chimney at a Kent power station with the intent of scrawling graffiti on it in protest at its pollution record and plans to expand the facility, which, their oh so clever advocate declared would cause more and more widespread damage to people and property through the global warming it would contribute to.

Now, some of the more unthinking environmentalists might see this as a great victory. A court recognized that global warming was such an imminent threat to life and property that it was justifiable to commit brazen thuggery leading to criminal damage on anything that allegedly contributed to that global warming. Yay!?

Nay! I have two problems with this.

First is the acceptance, apparently by both judge and jury (and so, you may think, all "reasonable people"), not just that anthropogenic climate change is a fact but also such a grave threat that it justifies individuals taking the law into their own hands. To my mind this is still a matter in the political arena. Not only are there still, and perhaps growing, voices of dissent on the very premise of the debate; that mankind is responsible for such a change that it is a threat to the planet's very future. But also about what to do about it and when. A power station after all merely supplies a demand. Is the power generator guilty or the consumer making those demands? It is more dangerous to disrupt existing dwindling supplies before we have worked out how to replace them with cleaner affordable technologies? If the threat from global warming is real, so presumably is the threat of harm through disrupted power supplies.

Second is how this operates as a precedent in other, possibly more serious cases - although I heard someone saying that this decision will not be treated as forming a precedent, I'm not clear how that can be prevented. It is okay to murder an abortionist in order to stop the immediate harm to others he or she will cause? That threat, after all, is far more immediate and traceable to an individual than the effects of a single coal power station amongst all the coal fired power stations and other "climate vandals". We're starting to get not only into the realms of Philip K Dick's pre-crime but vigilante prevention of what individuals claim may be a pre-crime. This is hardly the basis for the rule of law.

Oh, you can say that no court is going to acquit a murderer because they thought they were preventing a bigger crime, but actually we already do. The "reasonable force" defense can be used to justify a death in the process of preventing an immediate threat to others' life. This decision seems to extend the boundaries of "immediate threat" let alone accurate identification of the person causing that immediate threat.  One could, and many do, fight abortion on the basis that the most immediate threat t future generations of humanity is eradicating them before they are born.  If we're going to adopt a principle (and I do) that we have a responsibility of stewardship not to harm future generations' survival on the planet then it would be legitimate for others to argue more forcefully that we have a responsibility to see those future generations actually survive as far as birth!

Anyway, two odd sounding sources provide what I believe are better alternative "precedents" to work from. First, there is a Catholic maxim that it is not legitimate to cause one moral bad, or an act that could foreseeably lead to morally bad consequences in order to prevent another, even near certain, specific bad. It is used mostly about abortion again. It is used to argue that it is not even permissible to abort a new life in order to prevent the death of the mother - often in the circumstances of an ectopic pregnancy for example.

Of course the world's aggressors, including the US and UK, routinely ignore this. They argue that foreseeable "collateral damage" is permissable to remove a dictator, for example. It is not. Terrorising and killing the people of Bagdad in "Shock and Awe", even as "collateral", was morally repugnant, notwithstanding our general agreement that the regime they were trying to punish or remove was also morally repugnant. The results of ignoring of this basic principle are there for us all to see - there can be little doubt now that more people in Iraq have suffered for longer under the oversight of the western occupying forces than it is likely would have happened at the hands of the previous repugnant regime. At least there could have been alternatives that held less potential for further suffering.

But on the environment, the libertarians' respect for the rule of law provides a better alternative to various bearded crusties climbing a chimney and committing vigilante criminal damage. Locke's proviso can be used, for example, to tackle pollution. If you, a power generator or anyone else - a pig farm even, pollute the atmosphere we both have to share, we have the right to legal remedy. Just as much as if you came along and started digging a hole in my prize rose border. Indeed this ought to work better than any political "solution". Protectionism is a political strategy, and even Green politicians will forcibly protect their favourite, in this case, power generation mechanism against legitimate complaint of harm. If planning permission were truly privatised, those affected most would almost certainly do better out of it than they will once the government has removed most of their rights in order to force their political idea of strategic energy infrastructure through.

Yes, we all need power, but left to ourselves we would probably not choose to have a nuclear reactor at the bottom of our garden. But, as they say, everyone has their price. If, collectively, my neighbourhood decided that the compensation on offer was enough when weighed against the costs of electricity or the convenience of not having a long transmission route or any potential danger they'd accept that nuclear reactor. If nobody accepts any price for nuclear, they have to weigh that decision against the potential alternatives. If nobody wants a giant power station, then we perhaps have to accept that we will have to help our neighbours fund micro-generation.

Given that it was the courts that ordered that even roadside GATSOs had to be painted yellow so they were visible from afar, how do Essex police think this will be ruled legal:

At £1000 an hour, as the Taxpayers' Alliance points out, this is an extremely expensive speed camera!