4 ms·

It’s interesting to me that private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them but can also reliably expect the

It’s interesting to me that private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them but can also reliably expect the law to prosecute them if they defended themselves with the force that the law does. I think this illustrates that the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence, otherwise people will see the state as having abdicated its fundamental duty.

blacksmith_tb 4y ago
That seems to suggest that folks who have goods stolen from their stores would be justified in using violence to stop the thieves? Though the police doing it for them would be better? I don't see property crimes like shoplifting as justifying violence (armed robbery, sure, but not five-fingering stuff). Does it raise insurance rates for retailers? Sure. Does that raise prices for honest shoppers, yes also. So it's crappy, but attacking the thieves doesn't pass a proportionate response sniff test for me.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  Violence is an absolute requirement for the existence of law. If you have a law saying “you can’t do X” there needs to be some system that enforces the law. Law enforcement cannot exist without actual violence or the threat of violence. I believe what you’re really asking is if law is justified, since it requires violence against people breaking it. Edit: fwiw there is a somewhat extreme libertarian ideology that holds exactly this so you wouldn’t be alone
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  What is your proposed mechanism of enforcement of laws against robbery?
- analyte123 4y ago
  What if someone was stealing your property? Let’s say a week or two of income worth. You would just let them walk away with it?
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    And then imagine that it happens week after week after week. “It’s just money”, some people say, but it’s the money that person is trading hours, days, years of their life for. It keeps them away from their family. It pays for their kids’ medical expenses. It pays for the meager savings they save up by skipping meals so they can take their family on a small vacation once per year.
  - blacksmith_tb 4y ago
    Well, in the case of personal property, I would, yes - it's insured? It'd have to be something pretty important for me to feel like attacking the thief, unless they were threatening me or my family. I sympathize with retailers getting robbed repeatedly, and obviously that'd make you angry, potentially desperate, (and I expect judges might be more sympathetic if they resorted to violence), but what I'm sensing in this thread is a "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" approach to rule-breaking, which I can't get on board with. Self-defense can be proportionate, or not - shooting someone who shoved you is not going to pass that test in most courts.
- Unklejoe 4y ago
  > That seems to suggest that folks who have goods stolen from their stores would be justified in using violence to stop the thieves? I’d be happy with a store owner not being liable for injuries if they tackle someone who is trying to steal from their store and the thief ends up getting hurt. I don’t think they should be able to start blasting thieves with a gun but you should be able to use some reasonable amount of force. Let a judge decide whether it was reasonable or not.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    If you were a shop owner, would you be willing to risk a fight with a homeless person over a few 10's of dollars of goods? How much do you think an ER visit would cost? A gun takes away that risk, but brings others.
- valdiorn 4y ago
  This is an incredibly naive view of the world. Violence is, whether you like it or not, the absolute apex power, from which all other power is derived. Laws only hold power because if you break them, someone will forcefully put you in jail, and hurt you if you try to escape. If your punishment is a fine rather than jail time, someone will forcefully remove money from your bank account or valuable items from your house, and they will use force and potentially hurt you if you don't comply. I might not agree with shooting shoplifters in the back but if the police won't investigate and stop even organized shoplifting (they're boasting about doing this just very recently, hence the article) at some point you have to be allowed to open up some level of enforcement and use of violence to the public, because otherwise bad behaviour is rewarded. Maybe you beat them up or publicly humiliate them, which is often seen in less developed countries. But I'd much prefer the police just enforce the law, and retain their monopoly on violence.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
Also interesting to note that all the major retail chains commit wage theft at least comparable to their losses to retail theft, and workers can reliably expect that the law won't protect them from that. You got a take on that one? What has the state abdicated there and what should their or our response be?
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  There, the state is failing in their responsibility to prevent wage theft and people should be mad about that too!
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I notice the 'violence' disappeared from this response. Vigilante justice only for the homeless, not people in nice suits? > the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence
    - nradov 4y ago
      Protecting one's own property is not vigilante justice.
    - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
      It is unclear to me what vigilante justice against wage theft would look like, that wouldn’t be just like “shooting into a crowd”, hitting some number of bystanders who are blameless- but I encourage you to figure out what a moral form of it would look like!
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        It was your suggestion that people be allowed to use violence if the state didn't use it. Why do I need to think of moral ways for that violence to be applied?
mikem170 4y ago
> It’s interesting to me that private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them The courts have ruled that there's no obligation for the police to protect and serve [0]. The police have always shown up after a crime is committed, they weren't designed to be everywhere all the time. It is legal for someone to protect themselves, with violence if necessary, isn't it? There are many laws allowing self-defense, castle doctrine, etc. Someone defending themselves may have to prove themselves in court, especially if they killed someone, but that seems fair enough. Lots of people legally defend themselves and their property every day. What do you think we need to change? Should we expect the government to prevent violence? Should we have more police, cameras, drones, minority report, etc so that hopefully the police can prevent everybody from stealing from big stores? EDIT: Walgreens could have security guards on hand and direct them to detain shoplifters, basically a citizens arrest, but they choose not to do so. [0] https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-you-federal-court-affirms-yet-again https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...
jancsika 4y ago
> I think this illustrates that the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence, otherwise people will see the state as having abdicated its fundamental duty. That part after the 'or' is quite sloppy as written. It's unclear if you are merely warning that vigilante justice may follow if the police don't do their job-- a truism; arguing for citizen's arrest that follows the same (or more stringent) basic procedures as police use; or whether you are attempting to rationalize expansion of violence to everyday citizens as those citizens see fit to protect their property.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
>> private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them but can also reliably expect the law to prosecute them if they defended themselves with the force that the law does "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

blacksmith_tb 4y ago

That seems to suggest that folks who have goods stolen from their stores would be justified in using violence to stop the thieves? Though the police doing it for them would be better? I don't see property crimes like shoplifting as justifying violence (armed robbery, sure, but not five-fingering stuff). Does it raise insurance rates for retailers? Sure. Does that raise prices for honest shoppers, yes also. So it's crappy, but attacking the thieves doesn't pass a proportionate response sniff test for me.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
Violence is an absolute requirement for the existence of law. If you have a law saying “you can’t do X” there needs to be some system that enforces the law. Law enforcement cannot exist without actual violence or the threat of violence. I believe what you’re really asking is if law is justified, since it requires violence against people breaking it. Edit: fwiw there is a somewhat extreme libertarian ideology that holds exactly this so you wouldn’t be alone
DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
What is your proposed mechanism of enforcement of laws against robbery?
analyte123 4y ago
What if someone was stealing your property? Let’s say a week or two of income worth. You would just let them walk away with it?
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  And then imagine that it happens week after week after week. “It’s just money”, some people say, but it’s the money that person is trading hours, days, years of their life for. It keeps them away from their family. It pays for their kids’ medical expenses. It pays for the meager savings they save up by skipping meals so they can take their family on a small vacation once per year.
- blacksmith_tb 4y ago
  Well, in the case of personal property, I would, yes - it's insured? It'd have to be something pretty important for me to feel like attacking the thief, unless they were threatening me or my family. I sympathize with retailers getting robbed repeatedly, and obviously that'd make you angry, potentially desperate, (and I expect judges might be more sympathetic if they resorted to violence), but what I'm sensing in this thread is a "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" approach to rule-breaking, which I can't get on board with. Self-defense can be proportionate, or not - shooting someone who shoved you is not going to pass that test in most courts.
Unklejoe 4y ago
> That seems to suggest that folks who have goods stolen from their stores would be justified in using violence to stop the thieves? I’d be happy with a store owner not being liable for injuries if they tackle someone who is trying to steal from their store and the thief ends up getting hurt. I don’t think they should be able to start blasting thieves with a gun but you should be able to use some reasonable amount of force. Let a judge decide whether it was reasonable or not.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  If you were a shop owner, would you be willing to risk a fight with a homeless person over a few 10's of dollars of goods? How much do you think an ER visit would cost? A gun takes away that risk, but brings others.
valdiorn 4y ago
This is an incredibly naive view of the world. Violence is, whether you like it or not, the absolute apex power, from which all other power is derived. Laws only hold power because if you break them, someone will forcefully put you in jail, and hurt you if you try to escape. If your punishment is a fine rather than jail time, someone will forcefully remove money from your bank account or valuable items from your house, and they will use force and potentially hurt you if you don't comply. I might not agree with shooting shoplifters in the back but if the police won't investigate and stop even organized shoplifting (they're boasting about doing this just very recently, hence the article) at some point you have to be allowed to open up some level of enforcement and use of violence to the public, because otherwise bad behaviour is rewarded. Maybe you beat them up or publicly humiliate them, which is often seen in less developed countries. But I'd much prefer the police just enforce the law, and retain their monopoly on violence.

giraffe_lady 4y ago

Also interesting to note that all the major retail chains commit wage theft at least comparable to their losses to retail theft, and workers can reliably expect that the law won't protect them from that. You got a take on that one? What has the state abdicated there and what should their or our response be?

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
There, the state is failing in their responsibility to prevent wage theft and people should be mad about that too!
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I notice the 'violence' disappeared from this response. Vigilante justice only for the homeless, not people in nice suits? > the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence
  - nradov 4y ago
    Protecting one's own property is not vigilante justice.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    It is unclear to me what vigilante justice against wage theft would look like, that wouldn’t be just like “shooting into a crowd”, hitting some number of bystanders who are blameless- but I encourage you to figure out what a moral form of it would look like!
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      It was your suggestion that people be allowed to use violence if the state didn't use it. Why do I need to think of moral ways for that violence to be applied?

mikem170 4y ago

> It’s interesting to me that private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them The courts have ruled that there's no obligation for the police to protect and serve [0]. The police have always shown up after a crime is committed, they weren't designed to be everywhere all the time. It is legal for someone to protect themselves, with violence if necessary, isn't it? There are many laws allowing self-defense, castle doctrine, etc. Someone defending themselves may have to prove themselves in court, especially if they killed someone, but that seems fair enough. Lots of people legally defend themselves and their property every day. What do you think we need to change? Should we expect the government to prevent violence? Should we have more police, cameras, drones, minority report, etc so that hopefully the police can prevent everybody from stealing from big stores? EDIT: Walgreens could have security guards on hand and direct them to detain shoplifters, basically a citizens arrest, but they choose not to do so. [0] https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-you-federal-court-affirms-yet-again https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...

jancsika 4y ago

> I think this illustrates that the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence, otherwise people will see the state as having abdicated its fundamental duty. That part after the 'or' is quite sloppy as written. It's unclear if you are merely warning that vigilante justice may follow if the police don't do their job-- a truism; arguing for citizen's arrest that follows the same (or more stringent) basic procedures as police use; or whether you are attempting to rationalize expansion of violence to everyday citizens as those citizens see fit to protect their property.

rufus_foreman 4y ago

>> private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them but can also reliably expect the law to prosecute them if they defended themselves with the force that the law does "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."