13 ms·

Privately Enforced and Punished Crime

28 points by FeynmanThomas 8y ago

umvi 8y ago
My initial thought is that this would create a "wild west" type society where bounty hunters go around and have shootouts with criminals, but without police training. Also, how are cash fines going to work against broke criminals? "Oh, you stole a bunch of money because you have no money. Pay a fine"
- Avery3R 8y ago
  As I understood it, the legal liability insurance pays. The criminal then has to deal with whatever repercussions are laid out in their contract with the insurance company.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    So you're trading government-run prison for an insurance-run one?
    - Avery3R 8y ago
      Or increased premiums, or torture, or whatever. I think the idea is if you don't like what the insurance company uses as a threat of punishment you can just sign a contract with a different one.
      - pdonis 8y ago
        > I think the idea is if you don't like what the insurance company uses as a threat of punishment you can just sign a contract with a different one. It's more than that. The requirement to have such a contract with an insurance company gives people an incentive to not engage in behaviors that will make it more expensive for them to obtain such a contract, just as the requirement to have auto insurance in order to drive gives people an incentive to not engage in behaviors that will make it more expensive for them to obtain such insurance.
      - fao_ 8y ago
        This assumes that someone has the time to read full-length legal documents and comprehend them. A task that is difficult for a lawyer, someone who is not only trained, but paid to do such things. It also assumes that the market wouldn't stablize around an equilibrium that is good for the market and the companies, but bad for the individual -- something that frequently happens with regards to loan companies.
        tlb 8y ago
        For that matter, the current legal system assumes that you have time to read the criminal law. Presumably, the insurance companies will be strongly motivated to teach their clients how to stay out of trouble.
        fao_ 8y ago
        > Presumably, the insurance companies will be strongly motivated to teach their clients how to stay out of trouble. Why? If your clients don't stay out of trouble, you get free indentured servants. It seems to me there is incentive to make it harder to stay within the confines of your contract.
        tlb 8y ago
        In the framework proposed in the article, if an insurer's clients don't stay out of trouble, the insurer has to pay fines on their behalf. If they can't pay their insurance premiums, they become indentured servants until they can. The indentured servants aren't free and probably aren't profitable. These are people who can't make enough money on the open market to pay their premiums, so it seems unlikely that the workhouse will be able to generate more profit per worker than that. Given that insurance companies will lose money for everyone that converts from paying premiums into a workhouse laborer, they'll be highly motivated to get them back into the real world with a job, modulo the risk of them getting into trouble and causing another fine. So I don't see the incentive you mention to get them to break the contract.
    - __jal 8y ago
      More or less. There are other formulations in which the insurance-function is bundled with other things (membership in an HOA-like structure, other protective services, etc.), but this is a fairly common scheme supported by a lot of anarcho-capitalist types. You can find some academic economic treatment in _The Machinery of Freedom_, by Friedman, and Vernor Vinge (science fiction author) seemed taken with the notion, too. He experimented with it in the _Across Realtime_ stories. Edit: Also Neal Stephenson, sort-of in _Snowcrash_, explicitly in _Diamond Age_. I strongly dislike the notion because I believe access to justice is a bedrock function of society. But folks who think like me should also think long and hard about how much access "we" (in the US, not speaking for anyone else) have to justice without a big bank account now, and to what extent this would really change much.
      - RobinHanson 8y ago
        As you say "access to justice" costs lots of money today, it isn't obvious that this gives less such access.
    - nine_k 8y ago
      At least you have some choice when you choose your insurance! (Unless they outsource it.)
  - mjw1007 8y ago
    Then, presumably, if the criminal doesn't follow the contract the case ends up in civil court. And if the criminal refuses to submit to the judgement of the civil court, that's contempt of court which needs to somehow be enforceable. You could make the contempt of civil court a criminal matter, but then the same insurer ends up having to pay restitution to itself and this doesn't seem to end well. Or if the civil court has its own enforcement arm then we don't seem to have moved enforcement to the place he thinks we have.
    - RobinHanson 8y ago
      I did say explicitly that the one exception to fines as official punishment is failing to arrange for insurance. Your contract with an insurer can specify the court that judges disputes with it, and the forms of punishment available there.
- rosser 8y ago
  > Also, how are cash fines going to work against broke criminals? Sounds like a perfect opportunity to bring back debtor's prisons, where the interest on your debt and the fees for your keeping compound at a rate just higher than the rate you're "earning off" that debt... Et voilà, endless, legal slave labor.
- Someguywhatever 8y ago
  I don't really understand their legal system, but from what i've heard, China has some kind of system like this. Where if you go to the police about something, they just sort of force the two parties to work it out and one of the parties pays the other a fine. If that were the case then this system seems ripe for abuse however, but I don't really know much about it. But seeing the headline and not actually RTFA my limited knowledge of China came to mind.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > but from what i've heard, China has some kind of system like this. Where if you go to the police about something, they just sort of force the two parties to work it out and one of the parties pays the other a fine. IIRC, if you accidentally run over someone with your car in China, it makes legal and financial sense to back up over them to make sure they're dead. The restitution payment for accidental death is much less than the lifelong restitution payments for the victim's medical care and disability. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... > In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more economical.
- nickik 8y ago
  The "wild west" was really not as wild as people think. A nice book that explores a little how problems were actually solved in the wild west is: > The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier > https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Wild-West-Economics/dp/0804748543 https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Wild-West-Economics/dp/0804748...
- makecheck 8y ago
  Punishments should focus a lot more on the situation of the person involved. For example, community service if you can’t pay a fine. If you don’t have time due to multiple jobs, kids, etc. then perhaps the state offers services to give you time (day care, food or travel credits, whatever). Sure, the state pays for that but is it really so bad to pay for these things when we pay to run jails anyway? Seems we’d have fewer desperate “criminals” if we just treated them like people. If you have little money and need to be working multiple jobs, etc. then of course bail, fines, and jail time will completely screw you and you’ll end up even more desperate and likely to (say) steal again. And since people aren’t just leaving stuff around to be stolen, you’d probably accomplish that through property damage (more charges! more jail!) or, unfortunately, weapons (despite best intentions, things go bad and you’re desperate and assault occurs: more charges! more jail!). This is an insane cycle.
- lliamander 8y ago
  > My initial thought is that this would create a "wild west" type society where bounty hunters go around and have shootouts with criminals, but without police training. As I understand it, the western frontier was actually relatively crime free (low rates of murder, robbery, etc.) With regards to training, it seems like something vocational schools could offer at reasonable rates.
- RobinHanson 8y ago
  Bounty hunters exist today, avoid shootouts, and are well enough trained when that happens. They would have no special powers, and thus be liable for any damages caused by a shootout.
bassman9000 8y ago
Yet we still suffer from a great deal of police corruption and mistreatment, because government employees can coordinate well to create a blue wall of silence. So, to fix one minor problem, we're getting rid of equality before law, and paving the way for feudalistic corporations, getting one step closer to Snow Crash? No, thanks.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Equality before law doesn't exist right now. Being rich carries with it connections and enhanced representation that gets one out of many crimes scot free that would be life-ruining to you or me.
  - enord 8y ago
    And replacing criminal proceedings with cash fines improves this how?
    - 394549 8y ago
      > And replacing criminal proceedings with cash fines improves this how? Because apparently the solution for not living in a utopia is to deliberately construct something that will obviously be a dystopia.
  - bassman9000 8y ago
    Argue how the proposed system would be any better, in this particular aspect you're pointing out, than the current one.
- fao_ 8y ago
  I'm not really sure why you're getting downvoted. You make a perfectly good point that is recognized in most intellectual circles -- anarcho-capitalism (which is basically the core proposal here) is strongly related to feudalism.
  - bassman9000 8y ago
fao_ 8y ago
This smells of slavery with extra steps
atlantic 8y ago
> I propose to instead privatize the detection, prosecution, and punishment of crime. Yes, because privatization of the prison system worked out so well, didn't it? So let's go the whole hog and privatize the entire justice system.
- nickik 8y ago
  These two things are very different and if you don't have any smart arguments then why post at all?
  - Retric 8y ago
    'are very different' How so? You are also making an argument, but I don't follow the reasoning.
    - nickik 8y ago
      Putting people into a house and stopping them from leaving the house is the same as 'detection, prosecution'. Pretty sure there are pretty different people who handle these things. And as the punishment proposed is about money, that is also incredibly different then 'stop people from leaving house'. So, other then that the functionality is now with the government and that one proposes to privatize it. What do they have in common from a functional perspective?
      - Retric 8y ago
        Ok, the argument about private prisons is not that they fail to detain people. It's a question of second order effects relating to different incentives of private institutions vs government organizations. Governments see prisoners and thus prisons as a net loss because they pay for them. Private companies see prisons and thus prisoners as a profit center because they are paid to detain them.
        nickik 8y ago
        If the people who put criminal in prison had to pay for it with their own money, there would not be as many people in prison as there would be far more efficient ways to deal with the situation in 70-90% of cases. That's the whole point of the argument about intensives. The very problem here is not the privatization but rather that the government wants to imprison so many people. The very reason the US has private prisons is because there were to many prisoners and many governments couldn't handle it. A ineffective legal system and bad laws created the problem. People focus to much on privatization. Government run prisons have many of the same intensives and are often equally as bad. Government prison guard unions for example are amounts the strongest supporters of harsher punishments including for things like weed. But honestly, so long as the laws are bad, no system will really improve anything systematically.
powera 8y ago
TLDR: A sufficient amount of ignorance about how insurance works can solve all crime through magic.
nickik 8y ago
There is a long history of this kind of thing and many great economists have talked about different version to make the legal system more efficient. There are different ideas how to innovate and sometimes privatize certain aspects. Some interesting reads that people might enjoy. David Friedman (son of Milton) has been studying this for quite a while. For example in he had this talk about how criminal law should be abolished in favor of more use of civil law. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsMZbuGNj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsMZbuGNj8 He has a whole book about different legal systems of different societies. A lot of his talks are very interesting.
- UpshotKnothole 8y ago
  Maybe efficiency shouldn’t be the highest goal of the criminal justice system, and maybe innovation and profit shouldn’t be either. There is plenty of room for reform of the current system without destroying it in favor of some dystopian protostome, eating lives and shitting money. Instead of this insane and inhumane proposition I’d suggest an end to the war on drugs, and fundamentally rethinking matters such as bail, jailing people who are not a danger to society, and mental health issues. If all of thst is done and we still see a need for greater efficiencies in a much reduced system, then we can talk.
  - nickik 8y ago
    Many of these arguments have been made (and argued) between some of the best and most respected economists and judges over the years. But of course you are just so far above all this people that you can just 'predict a dystopian society' probably without studying any of the related subject at all. Efficiency is actually a very high goal because in the context of a legal system it means that more people get the service of justice and get it more effectively. Its sort of a meme of modern politics that efficiency can be thrown overboard and as long as everybody can feel good about it we can move on, but that is the wrong attitude to take. Also, these problem don't vanish if the government does something. Your proposal about ending the war on drugs for example, do you think profit has nothing to do with it continuing. I'm not saying its all about money, but stopping something that consumes billions will be opposed by many people. The same goes for many of these other things, like jailing people and so on. The economists and judges who look at these things systematically try to understand the intensives faced by different actors in the system and to change the legal system to get a better outcome. You might not agree with the person in the video, but you would learn something about Law&Economics at least. > If all of thst is done and we still see a need for greater efficiencies in a much reduced system, then we can talk. So any conceptual discussion about an ideal system should not be had because the current system is not ideal? Contrary to what you seem to imply the people who are having these arguments don't want to implement a new system tomorrow that changes everything. They are arguing about principles to inform the direction reform should take.
gmoore 8y ago
A ridiculous proposal......
- nickik 8y ago
  And your low effort comments are even worse
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
This is about as well thought out as my old professor's idea of "the roads should be illuminated, and there's no need for headlights". 1. Require insurance to live? Do you know how hard it is to even keep the PPACA? And you want everybody insured with criminal liability insurance??? 2. Ah, I get it. So rich people can just pay to make it go away. 3. What about poor people? Unless you're subsidizing that "insurance", they ain't gonna get it. Cant afford it. You're just grinding people into more poverty. 4. And you think getting rid of jury trials is a good thing? The other main system is "Judge or Professional Jurors" Nope, nope, and fuck no.
- RobinHanson 8y ago
  People have to get insurance to drive on roads today; are you outraged at that too?
chasingthewind 8y ago
A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion. I get that the rationalist community is really trying very hard to figure out novel ways to solve difficult problems and I am very supportive of that goal. I love reading Marginal Revolution for one, and I'm highly susceptible to the argument that there are likely to be surprising ways we might shift our thinking about difficult issues. However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I simply would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it had been proven to work for a long time someplace else (color me a private crime fighter NIMBY). My view is that we need to improve our traditional government run justice and law enforcement systems, not privatize them.
- fao_ 8y ago
  > A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion. I'm not sure to what degree describing one's first impressions honestly consists of snark. > However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I simply would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it had been proven to work for a long time someplace else (color me a private crime fighter NIMBY). And even then, you would have to have a deep understanding, and be able to replicate the exact cultural quirks that allow such a system to "work" in the first place.
  - RobinHanson 8y ago
    If an existing system works badly, one shouldn't be too eager to understand and replicate all of its details.
- tboyd47 8y ago
  Yeah. I upvoted the story just because I thought the fact that it was such a spectacularly awful idea made it worthy of discussion. But when I saw the snarky comments all downvoted, I upvoted the snarky comments too. You can only come up with truly innovative solutions to old problems once you've understood the history of the problems and reasons behind the old solutions. Otherwise you're just starting over again on the old problems while adding a few more problems of your own.
ohazi 8y ago
This is a terrible idea on its own, but I find it particularly unpalatable because the author is deliberately tickling the fancy of all the "My theories are so beautiful and internally consistent" libertarians who wouldn't be able to identify a negative externality if it punched them in the nose. I've had this discussion a million times in college. It's always a dumpster fire.
- 394549 8y ago
  > This is a terrible idea on its own, but I find it particularly unpalatable because the author is deliberately tickling the fancy of all the "My theories are so beautiful and internally consistent" libertarians who wouldn't be able to identify a negative externality if it punched them in the nose. > I've had this discussion a million times in college. It's always a dumpster fire. This, a thousand times. Simple theories can be beautiful, compelling, and wrong (both in the sense of correctness and morality). There's an vast minefield of "knowing just enough to be dangerous" between ignorance and wisdom, it seems like many fans of economics and its associated ideologies get stuck there.
- nickik 8y ago
  The idea that libertarians don't understand negative externalities is simple wrong. Maybe you talked to some people in collage who just don't know a lot of economics. But in actual economics people who one could describe as libertarian politically have been on the forefront of research on externalizes. In fact the most important work on that was done by Ronald Coase. And since then many people like that have worked in that space.
  - ohazi 8y ago
    No, the idea isn't wrong, it simply acknowledges the fact that there are a lot of libertarians who act like this: http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-mouth-libertarians-or-armchair.html http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-mouth-li... You're correct that there are many who are actually reasonable and pragmatic, but it's disingenuous to claim that the other kind of pseudo-intellectual libertarian doesn't exist. They do exist, and they give the reasonable ones else a bad rap.
java_script 8y ago
Reminds me of L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- grasshopperpurp 8y ago
  Sad to see this downvoted - very funny.
will_brown 8y ago
Intent is built into the very foundations of US criminal law (very rarely is any crime strict liability, where no intent is required). I’ve never seen a system of insurance that insures willful acts, seems like insurance reform would be step 2 after the proposed criminal reform. It seems very strange to suspend imprisonment for a system where everyone has to buy insurance for their own potential criminal conduct and allow the insurance companies to resolve the cases based on damages. I think criminals will be more than happy to buy their right to commit crimes.
- nine_k 8y ago
  An insurance is a "right to commit crime" as much as an insurance is a "right to crash your car into someone else's". If you have a car and an insurance, you can just try for yourself. The insurance would pay for your liabilities in that case, but they would likely not be happy to do so, and will efficiently communicate their unhappiness to you. Your next round of insurance will cost significantly more after that, and if they decide that it wasn't an accident but a deliberate act, it might as well cost s much as a new car.
  - will_brown 8y ago
    You’re actually reiterating my point. Typical insurance, as you note, is for risks (e.g. your example of an accident). In other words insurance won’t pay out if you willfully intentionally caused the accident. Criminal acts necessarily imply intentional conduct. The author wants to suspend imprionsment for this insurance based damages system. Between the difference in car insurance and this criminal conduct insurance I think it equals a right to commit crimes. We have a criminal and civil court system (think on OJ case acquitted in the criminal case and liable in the civil case). I think the proposal amounts to mandated “criminal insurance” which suspends then crimaljustice side of things and allows insurance companies resolve the damages from crimal acts.
- RobinHanson 8y ago
  The contract with the insurer could specify prison. The official courts no longer require prison, but the insurer that you've agreed to might.
drivingmenuts 8y ago
This reads like the premise of a bad movie. When I hit the part about requiring insurance, I heard the ghost audio of a record screech. Yes, he's trying to solve a real problem. This ain't the solution. Requiring insurance for drivers is one thing - being able to afford a car presumes some ability to afford insurance. However, his solution requires insurance just to exist. That's not workable.
- RobinHanson 8y ago
  If we've set the fine levels right, someone who can't or won't afford crime insurance is a net liability to the rest of us. The insurance premiums will vary greatly with the conditions one agrees to. Very few people would be unable to afford any such conditions.
  - drivingmenuts 8y ago
    Perhaps the author read Terry Pratchett because this whole thing smells a lot like Ankh-Morpork. You pay a certain amount to the Thieve's Guild and you're safe for a year. > someone who can't or won't afford crime insurance is a net liability to the rest of us. The insurance premiums will vary greatly with the conditions one agrees to. Very few people would be unable to afford any such conditions. Bypassing the "won't pay" for now - if someone can't pay, they're a liability? Then what? Let them rot? A very large number of people live in conditions where they are unable to affect the overall crime levels. Sure, they can keep them from going up by one, by not committing a crime themselves, but they don't have any control over externalities. All that aside, it's very easy step to the idea that if one doesn't have crime insurance, that, in and of itself, is a crime. This already happens with car insurance. This is a stupid idea that taxes a person just for existing and if they can't pay, could possibly wind up making them a criminal themselves. It's basically a cheap shot at the poor.

28 points by FeynmanThomas 8y ago

umvi 8y ago

My initial thought is that this would create a "wild west" type society where bounty hunters go around and have shootouts with criminals, but without police training. Also, how are cash fines going to work against broke criminals? "Oh, you stole a bunch of money because you have no money. Pay a fine"

Avery3R 8y ago
As I understood it, the legal liability insurance pays. The criminal then has to deal with whatever repercussions are laid out in their contract with the insurance company.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  So you're trading government-run prison for an insurance-run one?
  - Avery3R 8y ago
    Or increased premiums, or torture, or whatever. I think the idea is if you don't like what the insurance company uses as a threat of punishment you can just sign a contract with a different one.
    - pdonis 8y ago
      > I think the idea is if you don't like what the insurance company uses as a threat of punishment you can just sign a contract with a different one. It's more than that. The requirement to have such a contract with an insurance company gives people an incentive to not engage in behaviors that will make it more expensive for them to obtain such a contract, just as the requirement to have auto insurance in order to drive gives people an incentive to not engage in behaviors that will make it more expensive for them to obtain such insurance.
    - fao_ 8y ago
      This assumes that someone has the time to read full-length legal documents and comprehend them. A task that is difficult for a lawyer, someone who is not only trained, but paid to do such things. It also assumes that the market wouldn't stablize around an equilibrium that is good for the market and the companies, but bad for the individual -- something that frequently happens with regards to loan companies.
      - tlb 8y ago
        For that matter, the current legal system assumes that you have time to read the criminal law. Presumably, the insurance companies will be strongly motivated to teach their clients how to stay out of trouble.
        fao_ 8y ago
        > Presumably, the insurance companies will be strongly motivated to teach their clients how to stay out of trouble. Why? If your clients don't stay out of trouble, you get free indentured servants. It seems to me there is incentive to make it harder to stay within the confines of your contract.
        tlb 8y ago
        In the framework proposed in the article, if an insurer's clients don't stay out of trouble, the insurer has to pay fines on their behalf. If they can't pay their insurance premiums, they become indentured servants until they can. The indentured servants aren't free and probably aren't profitable. These are people who can't make enough money on the open market to pay their premiums, so it seems unlikely that the workhouse will be able to generate more profit per worker than that. Given that insurance companies will lose money for everyone that converts from paying premiums into a workhouse laborer, they'll be highly motivated to get them back into the real world with a job, modulo the risk of them getting into trouble and causing another fine. So I don't see the incentive you mention to get them to break the contract.
  - __jal 8y ago
    More or less. There are other formulations in which the insurance-function is bundled with other things (membership in an HOA-like structure, other protective services, etc.), but this is a fairly common scheme supported by a lot of anarcho-capitalist types. You can find some academic economic treatment in _The Machinery of Freedom_, by Friedman, and Vernor Vinge (science fiction author) seemed taken with the notion, too. He experimented with it in the _Across Realtime_ stories. Edit: Also Neal Stephenson, sort-of in _Snowcrash_, explicitly in _Diamond Age_. I strongly dislike the notion because I believe access to justice is a bedrock function of society. But folks who think like me should also think long and hard about how much access "we" (in the US, not speaking for anyone else) have to justice without a big bank account now, and to what extent this would really change much.
    - RobinHanson 8y ago
      As you say "access to justice" costs lots of money today, it isn't obvious that this gives less such access.
  - nine_k 8y ago
    At least you have some choice when you choose your insurance! (Unless they outsource it.)
- mjw1007 8y ago
  Then, presumably, if the criminal doesn't follow the contract the case ends up in civil court. And if the criminal refuses to submit to the judgement of the civil court, that's contempt of court which needs to somehow be enforceable. You could make the contempt of civil court a criminal matter, but then the same insurer ends up having to pay restitution to itself and this doesn't seem to end well. Or if the civil court has its own enforcement arm then we don't seem to have moved enforcement to the place he thinks we have.
  - RobinHanson 8y ago
    I did say explicitly that the one exception to fines as official punishment is failing to arrange for insurance. Your contract with an insurer can specify the court that judges disputes with it, and the forms of punishment available there.
rosser 8y ago
> Also, how are cash fines going to work against broke criminals? Sounds like a perfect opportunity to bring back debtor's prisons, where the interest on your debt and the fees for your keeping compound at a rate just higher than the rate you're "earning off" that debt... Et voilà, endless, legal slave labor.
Someguywhatever 8y ago
I don't really understand their legal system, but from what i've heard, China has some kind of system like this. Where if you go to the police about something, they just sort of force the two parties to work it out and one of the parties pays the other a fine. If that were the case then this system seems ripe for abuse however, but I don't really know much about it. But seeing the headline and not actually RTFA my limited knowledge of China came to mind.
- 394549 8y ago
  > but from what i've heard, China has some kind of system like this. Where if you go to the police about something, they just sort of force the two parties to work it out and one of the parties pays the other a fine. IIRC, if you accidentally run over someone with your car in China, it makes legal and financial sense to back up over them to make sure they're dead. The restitution payment for accidental death is much less than the lifelong restitution payments for the victim's medical care and disability. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... > In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more economical.
nickik 8y ago
The "wild west" was really not as wild as people think. A nice book that explores a little how problems were actually solved in the wild west is: > The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier > https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Wild-West-Economics/dp/0804748543 https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Wild-West-Economics/dp/0804748...
makecheck 8y ago
Punishments should focus a lot more on the situation of the person involved. For example, community service if you can’t pay a fine. If you don’t have time due to multiple jobs, kids, etc. then perhaps the state offers services to give you time (day care, food or travel credits, whatever). Sure, the state pays for that but is it really so bad to pay for these things when we pay to run jails anyway? Seems we’d have fewer desperate “criminals” if we just treated them like people. If you have little money and need to be working multiple jobs, etc. then of course bail, fines, and jail time will completely screw you and you’ll end up even more desperate and likely to (say) steal again. And since people aren’t just leaving stuff around to be stolen, you’d probably accomplish that through property damage (more charges! more jail!) or, unfortunately, weapons (despite best intentions, things go bad and you’re desperate and assault occurs: more charges! more jail!). This is an insane cycle.
lliamander 8y ago
> My initial thought is that this would create a "wild west" type society where bounty hunters go around and have shootouts with criminals, but without police training. As I understand it, the western frontier was actually relatively crime free (low rates of murder, robbery, etc.) With regards to training, it seems like something vocational schools could offer at reasonable rates.
RobinHanson 8y ago
Bounty hunters exist today, avoid shootouts, and are well enough trained when that happens. They would have no special powers, and thus be liable for any damages caused by a shootout.

bassman9000 8y ago

Yet we still suffer from a great deal of police corruption and mistreatment, because government employees can coordinate well to create a blue wall of silence. So, to fix one minor problem, we're getting rid of equality before law, and paving the way for feudalistic corporations, getting one step closer to Snow Crash? No, thanks.

Karunamon 8y ago
Equality before law doesn't exist right now. Being rich carries with it connections and enhanced representation that gets one out of many crimes scot free that would be life-ruining to you or me.
- enord 8y ago
  And replacing criminal proceedings with cash fines improves this how?
  - 394549 8y ago
    > And replacing criminal proceedings with cash fines improves this how? Because apparently the solution for not living in a utopia is to deliberately construct something that will obviously be a dystopia.
- bassman9000 8y ago
  Argue how the proposed system would be any better, in this particular aspect you're pointing out, than the current one.
fao_ 8y ago
I'm not really sure why you're getting downvoted. You make a perfectly good point that is recognized in most intellectual circles -- anarcho-capitalism (which is basically the core proposal here) is strongly related to feudalism.
- bassman9000 8y ago

fao_ 8y ago

This smells of slavery with extra steps

atlantic 8y ago

> I propose to instead privatize the detection, prosecution, and punishment of crime. Yes, because privatization of the prison system worked out so well, didn't it? So let's go the whole hog and privatize the entire justice system.

nickik 8y ago
These two things are very different and if you don't have any smart arguments then why post at all?
- Retric 8y ago
  'are very different' How so? You are also making an argument, but I don't follow the reasoning.
  - nickik 8y ago
    Putting people into a house and stopping them from leaving the house is the same as 'detection, prosecution'. Pretty sure there are pretty different people who handle these things. And as the punishment proposed is about money, that is also incredibly different then 'stop people from leaving house'. So, other then that the functionality is now with the government and that one proposes to privatize it. What do they have in common from a functional perspective?
    - Retric 8y ago
      Ok, the argument about private prisons is not that they fail to detain people. It's a question of second order effects relating to different incentives of private institutions vs government organizations. Governments see prisoners and thus prisons as a net loss because they pay for them. Private companies see prisons and thus prisoners as a profit center because they are paid to detain them.
      - nickik 8y ago
        If the people who put criminal in prison had to pay for it with their own money, there would not be as many people in prison as there would be far more efficient ways to deal with the situation in 70-90% of cases. That's the whole point of the argument about intensives. The very problem here is not the privatization but rather that the government wants to imprison so many people. The very reason the US has private prisons is because there were to many prisoners and many governments couldn't handle it. A ineffective legal system and bad laws created the problem. People focus to much on privatization. Government run prisons have many of the same intensives and are often equally as bad. Government prison guard unions for example are amounts the strongest supporters of harsher punishments including for things like weed. But honestly, so long as the laws are bad, no system will really improve anything systematically.

powera 8y ago

TLDR: A sufficient amount of ignorance about how insurance works can solve all crime through magic.

nickik 8y ago

There is a long history of this kind of thing and many great economists have talked about different version to make the legal system more efficient. There are different ideas how to innovate and sometimes privatize certain aspects. Some interesting reads that people might enjoy. David Friedman (son of Milton) has been studying this for quite a while. For example in he had this talk about how criminal law should be abolished in favor of more use of civil law. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsMZbuGNj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsMZbuGNj8 He has a whole book about different legal systems of different societies. A lot of his talks are very interesting.

UpshotKnothole 8y ago
Maybe efficiency shouldn’t be the highest goal of the criminal justice system, and maybe innovation and profit shouldn’t be either. There is plenty of room for reform of the current system without destroying it in favor of some dystopian protostome, eating lives and shitting money. Instead of this insane and inhumane proposition I’d suggest an end to the war on drugs, and fundamentally rethinking matters such as bail, jailing people who are not a danger to society, and mental health issues. If all of thst is done and we still see a need for greater efficiencies in a much reduced system, then we can talk.
- nickik 8y ago
  Many of these arguments have been made (and argued) between some of the best and most respected economists and judges over the years. But of course you are just so far above all this people that you can just 'predict a dystopian society' probably without studying any of the related subject at all. Efficiency is actually a very high goal because in the context of a legal system it means that more people get the service of justice and get it more effectively. Its sort of a meme of modern politics that efficiency can be thrown overboard and as long as everybody can feel good about it we can move on, but that is the wrong attitude to take. Also, these problem don't vanish if the government does something. Your proposal about ending the war on drugs for example, do you think profit has nothing to do with it continuing. I'm not saying its all about money, but stopping something that consumes billions will be opposed by many people. The same goes for many of these other things, like jailing people and so on. The economists and judges who look at these things systematically try to understand the intensives faced by different actors in the system and to change the legal system to get a better outcome. You might not agree with the person in the video, but you would learn something about Law&Economics at least. > If all of thst is done and we still see a need for greater efficiencies in a much reduced system, then we can talk. So any conceptual discussion about an ideal system should not be had because the current system is not ideal? Contrary to what you seem to imply the people who are having these arguments don't want to implement a new system tomorrow that changes everything. They are arguing about principles to inform the direction reform should take.

gmoore 8y ago

A ridiculous proposal......

nickik 8y ago
And your low effort comments are even worse

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

This is about as well thought out as my old professor's idea of "the roads should be illuminated, and there's no need for headlights". 1. Require insurance to live? Do you know how hard it is to even keep the PPACA? And you want everybody insured with criminal liability insurance??? 2. Ah, I get it. So rich people can just pay to make it go away. 3. What about poor people? Unless you're subsidizing that "insurance", they ain't gonna get it. Cant afford it. You're just grinding people into more poverty. 4. And you think getting rid of jury trials is a good thing? The other main system is "Judge or Professional Jurors" Nope, nope, and fuck no.

RobinHanson 8y ago
People have to get insurance to drive on roads today; are you outraged at that too?

chasingthewind 8y ago

A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion. I get that the rationalist community is really trying very hard to figure out novel ways to solve difficult problems and I am very supportive of that goal. I love reading Marginal Revolution for one, and I'm highly susceptible to the argument that there are likely to be surprising ways we might shift our thinking about difficult issues. However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I simply would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it had been proven to work for a long time someplace else (color me a private crime fighter NIMBY). My view is that we need to improve our traditional government run justice and law enforcement systems, not privatize them.

fao_ 8y ago
> A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion. I'm not sure to what degree describing one's first impressions honestly consists of snark. > However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I simply would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it had been proven to work for a long time someplace else (color me a private crime fighter NIMBY). And even then, you would have to have a deep understanding, and be able to replicate the exact cultural quirks that allow such a system to "work" in the first place.
- RobinHanson 8y ago
  If an existing system works badly, one shouldn't be too eager to understand and replicate all of its details.
tboyd47 8y ago
Yeah. I upvoted the story just because I thought the fact that it was such a spectacularly awful idea made it worthy of discussion. But when I saw the snarky comments all downvoted, I upvoted the snarky comments too. You can only come up with truly innovative solutions to old problems once you've understood the history of the problems and reasons behind the old solutions. Otherwise you're just starting over again on the old problems while adding a few more problems of your own.

ohazi 8y ago

This is a terrible idea on its own, but I find it particularly unpalatable because the author is deliberately tickling the fancy of all the "My theories are so beautiful and internally consistent" libertarians who wouldn't be able to identify a negative externality if it punched them in the nose. I've had this discussion a million times in college. It's always a dumpster fire.

394549 8y ago
> This is a terrible idea on its own, but I find it particularly unpalatable because the author is deliberately tickling the fancy of all the "My theories are so beautiful and internally consistent" libertarians who wouldn't be able to identify a negative externality if it punched them in the nose. > I've had this discussion a million times in college. It's always a dumpster fire. This, a thousand times. Simple theories can be beautiful, compelling, and wrong (both in the sense of correctness and morality). There's an vast minefield of "knowing just enough to be dangerous" between ignorance and wisdom, it seems like many fans of economics and its associated ideologies get stuck there.
nickik 8y ago
The idea that libertarians don't understand negative externalities is simple wrong. Maybe you talked to some people in collage who just don't know a lot of economics. But in actual economics people who one could describe as libertarian politically have been on the forefront of research on externalizes. In fact the most important work on that was done by Ronald Coase. And since then many people like that have worked in that space.
- ohazi 8y ago
  No, the idea isn't wrong, it simply acknowledges the fact that there are a lot of libertarians who act like this: http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-mouth-libertarians-or-armchair.html http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-mouth-li... You're correct that there are many who are actually reasonable and pragmatic, but it's disingenuous to claim that the other kind of pseudo-intellectual libertarian doesn't exist. They do exist, and they give the reasonable ones else a bad rap.

java_script 8y ago

Reminds me of L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
grasshopperpurp 8y ago
Sad to see this downvoted - very funny.

will_brown 8y ago

Intent is built into the very foundations of US criminal law (very rarely is any crime strict liability, where no intent is required). I’ve never seen a system of insurance that insures willful acts, seems like insurance reform would be step 2 after the proposed criminal reform. It seems very strange to suspend imprisonment for a system where everyone has to buy insurance for their own potential criminal conduct and allow the insurance companies to resolve the cases based on damages. I think criminals will be more than happy to buy their right to commit crimes.

nine_k 8y ago
An insurance is a "right to commit crime" as much as an insurance is a "right to crash your car into someone else's". If you have a car and an insurance, you can just try for yourself. The insurance would pay for your liabilities in that case, but they would likely not be happy to do so, and will efficiently communicate their unhappiness to you. Your next round of insurance will cost significantly more after that, and if they decide that it wasn't an accident but a deliberate act, it might as well cost s much as a new car.
- will_brown 8y ago
  You’re actually reiterating my point. Typical insurance, as you note, is for risks (e.g. your example of an accident). In other words insurance won’t pay out if you willfully intentionally caused the accident. Criminal acts necessarily imply intentional conduct. The author wants to suspend imprionsment for this insurance based damages system. Between the difference in car insurance and this criminal conduct insurance I think it equals a right to commit crimes. We have a criminal and civil court system (think on OJ case acquitted in the criminal case and liable in the civil case). I think the proposal amounts to mandated “criminal insurance” which suspends then crimaljustice side of things and allows insurance companies resolve the damages from crimal acts.
RobinHanson 8y ago
The contract with the insurer could specify prison. The official courts no longer require prison, but the insurer that you've agreed to might.

drivingmenuts 8y ago

This reads like the premise of a bad movie. When I hit the part about requiring insurance, I heard the ghost audio of a record screech. Yes, he's trying to solve a real problem. This ain't the solution. Requiring insurance for drivers is one thing - being able to afford a car presumes some ability to afford insurance. However, his solution requires insurance just to exist. That's not workable.

RobinHanson 8y ago
If we've set the fine levels right, someone who can't or won't afford crime insurance is a net liability to the rest of us. The insurance premiums will vary greatly with the conditions one agrees to. Very few people would be unable to afford any such conditions.
- drivingmenuts 8y ago
  Perhaps the author read Terry Pratchett because this whole thing smells a lot like Ankh-Morpork. You pay a certain amount to the Thieve's Guild and you're safe for a year. > someone who can't or won't afford crime insurance is a net liability to the rest of us. The insurance premiums will vary greatly with the conditions one agrees to. Very few people would be unable to afford any such conditions. Bypassing the "won't pay" for now - if someone can't pay, they're a liability? Then what? Let them rot? A very large number of people live in conditions where they are unable to affect the overall crime levels. Sure, they can keep them from going up by one, by not committing a crime themselves, but they don't have any control over externalities. All that aside, it's very easy step to the idea that if one doesn't have crime insurance, that, in and of itself, is a crime. This already happens with car insurance. This is a stupid idea that taxes a person just for existing and if they can't pay, could possibly wind up making them a criminal themselves. It's basically a cheap shot at the poor.