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For me the law is to bring fairness. This includes the fact that if someone is disproportionately stronger than me, they should be ready to face the consequence

For me the law is to bring fairness. This includes the fact that if someone is disproportionately stronger than me, they should be ready to face the consequences. In other words the court should not be only there to fix harm, but also to teach a lesson.

dnautics 6y ago
That's particularly dangerous as the "lessons to be taught" are quite subjective and someday may skew towards behaviours that you may not like coming from a state, and eventually converge to self-serving and self-perpetuating "lessons". After all, it's already bad under the more restrictive standard of "reasonable damages"
- im3w1l 6y ago
  > That's particularly dangerous as the "lessons to be taught" are quite subjective and someday may skew towards behaviours that you may not like coming from a state Sorry what.. are you arguing against the concept of criminal law?
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    We're talking about civil law here.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      I brought up criminal law to make a point: That we already trust the state to "teach people lessons" so the fears of what would happen if we gave the state the power to "teach people lessons", is kind of.... we already know the answer.
      - ikeboy 6y ago
        I honestly don't know if your point is that it's fine to give the state this power, or if that widespread abuse shows that it's not fine.
      - dnautics 6y ago
        I don't think we trust the state to "teach people lessons" (ok we're not talking about public schools here). We trust the state to deter people from causing physical harm to others. For example, the united states constitution (not that that's followed anymore) doesn't explicitly charter the government to "teach people lessons" it charters the government to act in the interest of the "general welfare". Because western states have happened to have chosen over the centuries to protect the general welfare by justifying its methods as "teaching people lessons" is neither explicitly permitted in any charter so far as I know (admittedly a small subset) nor necessarily desirable. I think it's not a n unfair argument that over the few centuries of modern history you can point to several incidents, sampled across many different nation-states, where particularly disgusting injustice has been promulgated under the cover of "teaching lessons", as if the general cover of "greater good" weren't bad enough. As CS lewis quipped, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
ikeboy 6y ago
See, I get scared when people want to use the courts to "teach a lesson." That's not what they're intended for. If all harms are efficiently deterred and compensated, it's only our base animal instincts that suggest there's something more that needs to happen. Civilisation, of which the legal system is a subset, is there precisely to tame our baser instincts. Just to head off a foreseen objection: the correct amount of deterrence isn't to prevent a harm from ever happening (trivial, just bankrupt everyone who does any harm), but to provide a negative incentive on the perpetrator equal to the harm they will cause by doing some act. If the chances of someone being caught are low, then it's proper to multiply the eventual fine by the inverse of the probability, which creates the required incentive. If someone showed malice, then that's evidence that the incentives were insufficient, and a reason to increase the fine. But none of that, from a legal theory perspective, is to punish them or bring fairness - it's to create the appropriate economic incentives. Read up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach for an example of this kind of thinking.
- pulisse 6y ago
  > See, I get scared when people want to use the courts to "teach a lesson." That's not what they're intended for. Punitive damages are a longstanding feature of civil law.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    And if you'd read the rest of my comment, you'll notice two different rationales behind punitive damages that have nothing to do with teaching lessons. It's all about deterrence.
    - Jordrok 6y ago
      I don't see the distinction. The "lesson" to be taught is that large entities should not use the legal system as a bludgeon to suppress smaller entities - i.e. to deter this kind of behavior. This happens all the time, not just with copyright law, so doesn't that seem to imply that the penalty for the larger party is insufficient?

dnautics 6y ago

That's particularly dangerous as the "lessons to be taught" are quite subjective and someday may skew towards behaviours that you may not like coming from a state, and eventually converge to self-serving and self-perpetuating "lessons". After all, it's already bad under the more restrictive standard of "reasonable damages"

im3w1l 6y ago
> That's particularly dangerous as the "lessons to be taught" are quite subjective and someday may skew towards behaviours that you may not like coming from a state Sorry what.. are you arguing against the concept of criminal law?
- ikeboy 6y ago
  We're talking about civil law here.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    I brought up criminal law to make a point: That we already trust the state to "teach people lessons" so the fears of what would happen if we gave the state the power to "teach people lessons", is kind of.... we already know the answer.
    - ikeboy 6y ago
      I honestly don't know if your point is that it's fine to give the state this power, or if that widespread abuse shows that it's not fine.
    - dnautics 6y ago
      I don't think we trust the state to "teach people lessons" (ok we're not talking about public schools here). We trust the state to deter people from causing physical harm to others. For example, the united states constitution (not that that's followed anymore) doesn't explicitly charter the government to "teach people lessons" it charters the government to act in the interest of the "general welfare". Because western states have happened to have chosen over the centuries to protect the general welfare by justifying its methods as "teaching people lessons" is neither explicitly permitted in any charter so far as I know (admittedly a small subset) nor necessarily desirable. I think it's not a n unfair argument that over the few centuries of modern history you can point to several incidents, sampled across many different nation-states, where particularly disgusting injustice has been promulgated under the cover of "teaching lessons", as if the general cover of "greater good" weren't bad enough. As CS lewis quipped, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

ikeboy 6y ago

See, I get scared when people want to use the courts to "teach a lesson." That's not what they're intended for. If all harms are efficiently deterred and compensated, it's only our base animal instincts that suggest there's something more that needs to happen. Civilisation, of which the legal system is a subset, is there precisely to tame our baser instincts. Just to head off a foreseen objection: the correct amount of deterrence isn't to prevent a harm from ever happening (trivial, just bankrupt everyone who does any harm), but to provide a negative incentive on the perpetrator equal to the harm they will cause by doing some act. If the chances of someone being caught are low, then it's proper to multiply the eventual fine by the inverse of the probability, which creates the required incentive. If someone showed malice, then that's evidence that the incentives were insufficient, and a reason to increase the fine. But none of that, from a legal theory perspective, is to punish them or bring fairness - it's to create the appropriate economic incentives. Read up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach for an example of this kind of thinking.

pulisse 6y ago
> See, I get scared when people want to use the courts to "teach a lesson." That's not what they're intended for. Punitive damages are a longstanding feature of civil law.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  And if you'd read the rest of my comment, you'll notice two different rationales behind punitive damages that have nothing to do with teaching lessons. It's all about deterrence.
  - Jordrok 6y ago
    I don't see the distinction. The "lesson" to be taught is that large entities should not use the legal system as a bludgeon to suppress smaller entities - i.e. to deter this kind of behavior. This happens all the time, not just with copyright law, so doesn't that seem to imply that the penalty for the larger party is insufficient?