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Wouldn't much of the perverse incentive be fixed if the assets were transferred to some other organization, such as the central state or federal budget.

handoflixue 3y ago
How would you stop that from being re-invested back into the police force? If a state knows that they get $50 million from assets seized by the police, there's a very strong incentive for them to approve that $25 million budget increase the police force requested. The article also suggests that the law is just inherently unjust: "Objects do not commit crimes: people do." Also: "Since civil forfeiture requires less evidence and offers fewer protections than criminal forfeiture, the former is more vulnerable to abuse than the latter."
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  As for your first paragraph, the feedback loop will be much longer both in time (state budgets) and in distance - the risk of the proceeds ever directly benefitting the sheriff, officer or precinct is very low. As for the second argument, I agree, it can be used to harass people.
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  Punitive fines, that is, those which are meant to create a change in behavior rather than compensate for a loss, should be destroyed. If an entity is fined $10 million, collect the money and "destroy" it. The money supply decreases by $10 million and everyone is ever so slightly wealthier at the expense of the offending party. Note that this is separate from fines meant to compensate a victim for their loss and suffering. It's only for the punitive function of a fine.
  - bloak 3y ago
    I'm not sure there's much difference, in theory or in practice, between destroying money and giving it to the government! That sounds a bit anti-government but really I just meant that the money raised from fines isn't a significant part of the government's total budget so it's unlikely to have much influence on policy. Voters would pay more attention to the fines themselves than to anything that could be achieved with the money raised from them.
    - onionisafruit 3y ago
      It might not be a significant portion of “the government’s” money, but it can be a significant portion of a local government’s money. Think of speed trap towns.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Speed trap fines should also definitely go to the state coffers, not to any one PD. Speed traps should discourage speeding in critical places, not be "financially gerrymandered" in mis-designed intersections to optimize revenue for a starved PD. IMHO it's weird that the police even has something to do with speed traps, those should be handled by Transportation Department or some such.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      Mm. On the other hand, governments get to print money if they want to, and they have reason to. This might work, but I suspect mostly it would be a complex way of doing nothing, thanks to the literal-money-printing option.
  - badcppdev 3y ago
    Just on a tangent here I'm just wondering about the accounting process and mental gymnastics required to "destroy" money in the modern world with digital transfers, etc. Can you have a process where a bank balance is decreased without transferring the money somewhere else? Do you have to buy cash and then burn it?
    - onionisafruit 3y ago
      Maybe this is a use case for crypto. You can buy bitcoin and destroy the key.
      - badcppdev 3y ago
        That would do it. Although your would be incrementally pushing up the value of the remaining crypto which would be considered a bad side effect by many people.
        hnbad 3y ago
        "Buying crypto" is not a step in literally destroying money because the dollars used to buy crypto don't vanish, you just give them to the person selling you the crypto. You would need to withdraw the dollars as cash and then set fire to the bills. That would destroy them by taking them out of circulation. If you exchange them for literally anything else you want to destroy, you're just changing ownerhsip of the money, not destroying it.
        ben_w 3y ago
        It depends if you count cryptocurrency as a currency; if you do, then it deflates that currency. Similarly, if I have some Euros, use them to buy USD banknotes, set fire to the USD banknotes, that deflates USD but not Euros. (Would that inflate Euros instead? Or deflate both?)
    - QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
      Cash and burn is the way to go, you want something locally verifiable but globally hard to track
  - amalcon 3y ago
    Destroying money is isomorphic to giving that money to the level of government controlling the central bank (with some extra busy-work). The central bank obviously has the option of simply creating an equal amount of money, and may in some rare cases be forced to do so in order to avoid deflation. Giving that money to the level of government that controls the central bank is probably an improvement for incentive alignment over letting local governments keep it. Destruction just may not be the best way to accomplish that.
  - atq2119 3y ago
    Punitive fines are fine, but they need to be scaled by income and wealth (to discourage picking only on the weak), and the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" needs to apply. My understanding of the US problem with civil asset forfeiture is that money can be guilty until proven innocent there (and by its nature it's obviously not a fine).
  - QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
    This is brilliant and I'm excited to see it- especially for small fines. The way to do it is to require the punished party to bring cash, for the payment to be verified and recorded, and then publicly destroyed. This could lead to not only local governments and police no longer having horrible incentives, but also people believing that they no longer have horrible incentives- the verifiability is simple but important, like paper ballots.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  What happens when they discover the forfeited assets are timeshare condos?
- ItsMonkk 3y ago
  Looks like a perfect opportunity for a citizen's dividend. Anything that is taken is put into a pot. After a certain time all of that is given back equal to all citizens.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    Which is a terrible idea if you consider it for more but a moment. Makes it very easy to abuse a minority population, because now not only does the majority just get to abuse them, they get to profit off it too. Sure, the minority group might get back some of what was taken, but it won't even be close to equitable compensation for what was actually taken.
phkahler 3y ago
No. Whomever benefits from it will find a way to incentives the people who actually do it.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
This already happens sometimes. The local PD will seize money, 'transfer' it to the the state or federal government, and then claim "Well, we can't give you the money back, we don't have it anymore. You'll have to sue the other guys instead." And of course frequently in such situations the state or the feds will say that you have no standing to sue them, since they didn't take your money, so you have to sue the PD. Enjoy being pulled over every other week by your local PD because you _dared_ to even challenge them legally. It doesn't really matter where the assets end up. The perverse incentive is that the assets can be trivially seized with no consequences at very little cost to the power structures doing the seizing. What is the incentive for a person or group to stop stealing when there is no possibility for any negative consequences to them? Morals, ethics? There are plenty of people in positions of power who would get a kick out of causing someone else pain and suffering because they're bored.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  TIs the decision of where to send the money made on a per-case basis by the local PD? If so, that sounds like just one more option to seize for profit or harass if the case is too weak. I still think if the only option is to transfer, the general incentive structure is improved. Stealing with profit motive plus harassment is worse than stealing just for harassment. I also think in general, to effect change, to campaign for a single thing, easily explained, is the most successful approach.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    > I also think in general, to effect change, to campaign for a single thing, easily explained, is the most successful approach. What part of 'You can't take people's stuff without first proving it should be taken, in a court of law' is hard to comprehend? There's no need to over-complicate the argument that this is blatant state-sanctioned robbery and deprivation of property without due process.
- patmorgan23 3y ago
  The funds usually go into a slush fund that benefits the PD while not being under its direct control. Removing the financial incentive for law enforcement to abuse CAF would be an improvement. You'd need to ban any bonus to individual officers for CAF, and make sure 0 funds make their way bank to the PD (i.e. no budget increases for CAF activities). But I think it would a better idea and more effective to eliminate Civil Asset forfeiture and only allow Criminal asset forfeiture. If you think the funds are illegal, charge someone and prove it.
AmericanChopper 3y ago
That just shifts the incentive up thee governance hierarchy a little bit. The only way to remove it would be to prevent the government from both benefitting from it in any way, or controlling who else benefits from it. Something like donating the proceeds to randomly chosen 501c3s. The same perverse incentive exists for all other government issued financial penalties as well, they're just seen as less unjust.
SkeuomorphicBee 3y ago
That upplays the financial incentives and downplays the psychological incentives. Cops seize stuff not only to have the money or shiny stuff, but also for the rare trill of punishing "bad people". In their job it is extremely rare to get the "job accomplished" endorphins, they see too many "bad people" (either real criminals or perceived as so by the cop) go free. So they create scenarios in their head about how the person is a criminal and then get the immediate endorphins for punishing the "criminal", restoring cosmic balance to their world. It is the old "do action -> get endorphins" mechanism, and if allowed cops will continue doing it even if you remove the direct monetary incentive.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
no. law of unintended consequences. the time this transfer is formalized, the powers that be will start reporting on it. And when something is reported on and makes someone promoted, you can bet it will be pursued aggresively

handoflixue 3y ago

How would you stop that from being re-invested back into the police force? If a state knows that they get $50 million from assets seized by the police, there's a very strong incentive for them to approve that $25 million budget increase the police force requested. The article also suggests that the law is just inherently unjust: "Objects do not commit crimes: people do." Also: "Since civil forfeiture requires less evidence and offers fewer protections than criminal forfeiture, the former is more vulnerable to abuse than the latter."

actionfromafar 3y ago
As for your first paragraph, the feedback loop will be much longer both in time (state budgets) and in distance - the risk of the proceeds ever directly benefitting the sheriff, officer or precinct is very low. As for the second argument, I agree, it can be used to harass people.
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Punitive fines, that is, those which are meant to create a change in behavior rather than compensate for a loss, should be destroyed. If an entity is fined $10 million, collect the money and "destroy" it. The money supply decreases by $10 million and everyone is ever so slightly wealthier at the expense of the offending party. Note that this is separate from fines meant to compensate a victim for their loss and suffering. It's only for the punitive function of a fine.
- bloak 3y ago
  I'm not sure there's much difference, in theory or in practice, between destroying money and giving it to the government! That sounds a bit anti-government but really I just meant that the money raised from fines isn't a significant part of the government's total budget so it's unlikely to have much influence on policy. Voters would pay more attention to the fines themselves than to anything that could be achieved with the money raised from them.
  - onionisafruit 3y ago
    It might not be a significant portion of “the government’s” money, but it can be a significant portion of a local government’s money. Think of speed trap towns.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Speed trap fines should also definitely go to the state coffers, not to any one PD. Speed traps should discourage speeding in critical places, not be "financially gerrymandered" in mis-designed intersections to optimize revenue for a starved PD. IMHO it's weird that the police even has something to do with speed traps, those should be handled by Transportation Department or some such.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Mm. On the other hand, governments get to print money if they want to, and they have reason to. This might work, but I suspect mostly it would be a complex way of doing nothing, thanks to the literal-money-printing option.
- badcppdev 3y ago
  Just on a tangent here I'm just wondering about the accounting process and mental gymnastics required to "destroy" money in the modern world with digital transfers, etc. Can you have a process where a bank balance is decreased without transferring the money somewhere else? Do you have to buy cash and then burn it?
  - onionisafruit 3y ago
    Maybe this is a use case for crypto. You can buy bitcoin and destroy the key.
    - badcppdev 3y ago
      That would do it. Although your would be incrementally pushing up the value of the remaining crypto which would be considered a bad side effect by many people.
      - hnbad 3y ago
        "Buying crypto" is not a step in literally destroying money because the dollars used to buy crypto don't vanish, you just give them to the person selling you the crypto. You would need to withdraw the dollars as cash and then set fire to the bills. That would destroy them by taking them out of circulation. If you exchange them for literally anything else you want to destroy, you're just changing ownerhsip of the money, not destroying it.
        ben_w 3y ago
        It depends if you count cryptocurrency as a currency; if you do, then it deflates that currency. Similarly, if I have some Euros, use them to buy USD banknotes, set fire to the USD banknotes, that deflates USD but not Euros. (Would that inflate Euros instead? Or deflate both?)
  - QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
    Cash and burn is the way to go, you want something locally verifiable but globally hard to track
- amalcon 3y ago
  Destroying money is isomorphic to giving that money to the level of government controlling the central bank (with some extra busy-work). The central bank obviously has the option of simply creating an equal amount of money, and may in some rare cases be forced to do so in order to avoid deflation. Giving that money to the level of government that controls the central bank is probably an improvement for incentive alignment over letting local governments keep it. Destruction just may not be the best way to accomplish that.
- atq2119 3y ago
  Punitive fines are fine, but they need to be scaled by income and wealth (to discourage picking only on the weak), and the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" needs to apply. My understanding of the US problem with civil asset forfeiture is that money can be guilty until proven innocent there (and by its nature it's obviously not a fine).
- QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
  This is brilliant and I'm excited to see it- especially for small fines. The way to do it is to require the punished party to bring cash, for the payment to be verified and recorded, and then publicly destroyed. This could lead to not only local governments and police no longer having horrible incentives, but also people believing that they no longer have horrible incentives- the verifiability is simple but important, like paper ballots.
tjpnz 3y ago
What happens when they discover the forfeited assets are timeshare condos?
ItsMonkk 3y ago
Looks like a perfect opportunity for a citizen's dividend. Anything that is taken is put into a pot. After a certain time all of that is given back equal to all citizens.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  Which is a terrible idea if you consider it for more but a moment. Makes it very easy to abuse a minority population, because now not only does the majority just get to abuse them, they get to profit off it too. Sure, the minority group might get back some of what was taken, but it won't even be close to equitable compensation for what was actually taken.

phkahler 3y ago

No. Whomever benefits from it will find a way to incentives the people who actually do it.

genocidicbunny 3y ago

This already happens sometimes. The local PD will seize money, 'transfer' it to the the state or federal government, and then claim "Well, we can't give you the money back, we don't have it anymore. You'll have to sue the other guys instead." And of course frequently in such situations the state or the feds will say that you have no standing to sue them, since they didn't take your money, so you have to sue the PD. Enjoy being pulled over every other week by your local PD because you _dared_ to even challenge them legally. It doesn't really matter where the assets end up. The perverse incentive is that the assets can be trivially seized with no consequences at very little cost to the power structures doing the seizing. What is the incentive for a person or group to stop stealing when there is no possibility for any negative consequences to them? Morals, ethics? There are plenty of people in positions of power who would get a kick out of causing someone else pain and suffering because they're bored.

actionfromafar 3y ago
TIs the decision of where to send the money made on a per-case basis by the local PD? If so, that sounds like just one more option to seize for profit or harass if the case is too weak. I still think if the only option is to transfer, the general incentive structure is improved. Stealing with profit motive plus harassment is worse than stealing just for harassment. I also think in general, to effect change, to campaign for a single thing, easily explained, is the most successful approach.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  > I also think in general, to effect change, to campaign for a single thing, easily explained, is the most successful approach. What part of 'You can't take people's stuff without first proving it should be taken, in a court of law' is hard to comprehend? There's no need to over-complicate the argument that this is blatant state-sanctioned robbery and deprivation of property without due process.
patmorgan23 3y ago
The funds usually go into a slush fund that benefits the PD while not being under its direct control. Removing the financial incentive for law enforcement to abuse CAF would be an improvement. You'd need to ban any bonus to individual officers for CAF, and make sure 0 funds make their way bank to the PD (i.e. no budget increases for CAF activities). But I think it would a better idea and more effective to eliminate Civil Asset forfeiture and only allow Criminal asset forfeiture. If you think the funds are illegal, charge someone and prove it.

AmericanChopper 3y ago

That just shifts the incentive up thee governance hierarchy a little bit. The only way to remove it would be to prevent the government from both benefitting from it in any way, or controlling who else benefits from it. Something like donating the proceeds to randomly chosen 501c3s. The same perverse incentive exists for all other government issued financial penalties as well, they're just seen as less unjust.

SkeuomorphicBee 3y ago

That upplays the financial incentives and downplays the psychological incentives. Cops seize stuff not only to have the money or shiny stuff, but also for the rare trill of punishing "bad people". In their job it is extremely rare to get the "job accomplished" endorphins, they see too many "bad people" (either real criminals or perceived as so by the cop) go free. So they create scenarios in their head about how the person is a criminal and then get the immediate endorphins for punishing the "criminal", restoring cosmic balance to their world. It is the old "do action -> get endorphins" mechanism, and if allowed cops will continue doing it even if you remove the direct monetary incentive.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

no. law of unintended consequences. the time this transfer is formalized, the powers that be will start reporting on it. And when something is reported on and makes someone promoted, you can bet it will be pursued aggresively