testa-j@osu-20@ohio-state.arpa (08/27/86)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> >Much of crime is due to repeat criminals. If someone has served >two major felony sentences and is convicted of a third, he should >be put away for good. Finally :-), something we agree completely on. >[the justice system in a libertarian system] will cost less than, >say, the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. The latter was paid >for entirely by voluntary donations. And I think anyone willing to >pay for a statue representing our way of life would be willing to pay >at least as much to guarantee the way of life itself. I think that the success of the restoration of the Statue was mainly due to the hoopla and media attention given to the project. It was made to be *exciting*, an *event* that one "had" to participate in. I can't see such excitement being generated by a fund to pay to run a court; after all, courts make unpopular but constitutional decisions -- such as defending First Amendment rights. If a court has to rely on voluntary contributions, then might it not feel compelled to make popular but unjust decisions? I suppose that is my basic problem with libertarianism -- i don't share your confidence that people will volunteer funds to support vital government functions. Even though these functions benefit potentially everyone, people won't contribute unless it's for an "exciting" cause. And convincing people to contribute drains resources. A similar situation exists with the health-care industry today. In Ohio, we are flooded with commercials on TV showing us pictures of helicopters flying around particular hospitals. This is a waste of money; it doesn't cure a single disease; if they spent their time and money on health care, perhaps the cost wouldn't be so high. The same would go for a judicial system, only much worse. I want judges to be honest arbiters, not concerned with slick advertising techniques and public opinion polls. And from another message: > Opponents of libertarian philosophy often bring up stories in which >the population does not consist of rational adults, but of children, >feebleminded people, criminals, insane people, or people in a sinking >lifeboat. Do we really want a system which treats everyone as if >they were like that? Is that the most realistic view of the people >of this country? No, but SOME people ARE like that! Would the libertarian system ensure their protection? Or would they just get run over in the mad rush of everyone looking out for him/her self, ripe for exploitation by those who are more clever or intelligent or sane or rich than they are? -joe testa - [ Another point on the Statue of Liberty project is that it had a definite ending point. People have visible proof of their contribution. The courts go on and on, and there is no end of the cases they would have to hear. I suspect that the futility felt by not a few policemen would soon be felt by many potential contributors to Keith's proposed justice system. - CWM] -------
Miller.pa@XEROX.COM (09/04/86)
From: ~joe testa~ <TESTA-J%OSU-20@ohio-state.ARPA> >From: "Keith F. Lynch" <KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU> >[the justice system in a libertarian system] will cost less > than, say, the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. The >latter was paid for entirely by voluntary donations. And I >think anyone willing to pay for a statue representing our way >of life would be willing to pay at least as much to guarantee >the way of life itself. I think that the success of the restoration of the Statue was mainly due to the hoopla and media attention given to the project. It was made to be *exciting*, an *event* that one "had" to participate in. I can't see such excitement being generated by a fund to pay to run a court; after all, courts make unpopular but constitutional decisions -- such as defending First Amendment rights. If a court has to rely on voluntary contributions, then might it not feel compelled to make popular but unjust decisions? [...] The same would go for a judicial system, only much worse. I want judges to be honest arbiters, not concerned with slick advertising techniques and public opinion polls. Any judicial system made up of people is subject to a system of incentives largely determined by the political context it operates in. Well-meaning architects of any political system would try to make it such that the system of incentives in which judges operate provides feedback that (at least) does not frequently penalize honesty and justice. The current American judicial system provides judges feedback through the political process. This feedback is determined by the current majority opinion (modulo special interests). Under THIS system the courts might indeed "feel compelled to make popular but unjust decisions". Witness the current fight that Rose Bird(sp?) has to engage in to keep her job, despite making what she feels are just decisions. It is not an answer to shield the courts from any feedback: a) this is not possible, and b) would lead to tyrrany by the courts. Let us compare with a system based on voluntary contributions. If a judge makes an unpopular but just decision, the majority may disagree, but surely enough people will recognize the cause of true justice that there will still be some contributions. Witness the continued existence of the ACLU funded by voluntary contributions, despite defending First Amendment rights in an unpopular case (Skokie). Certainly the unpopularity caused them much hardship: their membership went down, etc.... However, had they been subject to the tyrrany of the majority they either would not have been able to take such an unpopular stand, or they wouldn't have survived it. [ Another point on the Statue of Liberty project is that it had a definite ending point. People have visible proof of their contribution. The courts go on and on, and there is no end of the cases they would have to hear. I suspect that the futility felt by not a few policemen would soon be felt by many potential contributors to Keith's proposed justice system. - CWM] I suspect that contributors to the ACLU are feeling pretty frustrated, especially now. Same goes for contributors to a thousand other causes that seem to make little progress. Some think that in a free-market, people in general would be driven by the "profit motive", and that in a non-market system, people would INSTEAD be driven by other motives; like the cause of justice or helping the poor or whatever. This is because free-market economics uniquely explains how individuals following a profit motive can result in a society that works. All other theories have to start out by postulating that people are motivated by other than personal profit in order to seem to work. Postulated motives have become confused with causation. Free-market economics does not (and does not need to) postulate that the set of human motivations change. It shows how a set of people with a diversity of motives can efficiently compose their actions in a way that generally satisfies them more than any other postulated way of organizing society. > Opponents of libertarian philosophy often bring up stories >in which the population does not consist of rational adults, >but of children, feebleminded people, criminals, insane >people, or people in a sinking lifeboat. Do we really want >a system which treats everyone as if they were like that? Is >that the most realistic view of the people of this country? No, but SOME people ARE like that! Would the libertarian system ensure their protection? Or would they just get run over in the mad rush of everyone looking out for him/her self, ripe for exploitation by those who are more clever or intelligent or sane or rich than they are? In a market, if there exists a substantial desire on the part of many people to see the poor helped, then they will be helped. In a political system, this is only true if this desire exists among a MAJORITY. Why do the oponents of the market always postulate that people will express "good" intentions (for justice of charity) if they get to express them politically, but not if they get to express them through the voluntary decentralized mechanisms of the market? I suspect that it is because it is clear that the market is a complex system that works through its own logic. The same is often not clear for political systems (though just as true). A market advocate cannot get away with postulating that the market will do some arbitrary thing (like feed the poor) without accounting for how the market would do this. Advocates of political systems frequently do engage in such arbitrary postulates, without accounting for how political incentives could bring this about in a society that wouldn't have done so voluntarily. MarkM -------