Law & Justice: May 2004 Archives
David Bernstein asks rhetorically,
This seems like a good time to remind readers that, according to Newsweek Donald Rumsfeld argued for stripping Americans suspected of aiding Al Qaeda of their rights and holding them indefinitely as "enemy combatants." If the man can't be trusted with the rights of Americans, would you trust him with the rights of Iraqis?Even if the Newsweek story is true, it has no bearing on my trust in Secretary Rumsfeld's handling of civil liberties in Iraq. Why? Because Iraq is currently a protectorate of the United States, not a part of it. Iraqis aren't protected by the Constitution, and don't have the same rights we do. For one thing, they can own machine guns, and I sure can't. For another, they can't vote (yet).
And is it at all odd for Mr. Bernstein to then, in a subsequent post, call on the FBI to use torture on suspects in "ticking bomb" scenarios?
TM Lutas responds to my earlier post on the dangers of libertarianism with some examples... but honestly, I think they do more to undermine his position than to support it. They don't seem realistic to me at all. Further, he would strip power from legislators but then invest even more power in judges. Libertarians seem to have a strong distaste for "judicial activism" and imperfect judges, but their dreams for society appear to rely almost entirely on civil lawsuits.
Take the drunk driving laws. In a libertarian society, public roads would be replace by private ones. Private road owners would need to carry insurance and, if they were willing to endure the cost in excess premiums, could allow drunks to drive on their road. This is obviously a dumb choice to make but libertarians would permit the theoretical choice while ensuring that people don't consider actually doing it by pinching them in the pocketbook, hard. And the pinching would occur in multiple directions road owner and driver, as well as surrounding property insurance. Driving in an area that permitted drunk driving would raise the cost of automobile insurance as well so even if the road owner is a crazy loon willing to take the financial hit in his own pocket, his customers are not likely to be willing to do the same. Even living on a property next to a road where the cars are more likely to veer off and into your house would increase pressure for a more sensible resolution to the situation than laissez *hic* faire.But consider the implications of this example.
1. We'd need private insurance for everything.
2. How would drunk drivers get pinched hard? By lawsuits. If you think there are too many lawsuits now, just try to imagine how many there would be in a libertarian society. We'd need a huge number of additional judges, and in the end we'd have even more judicial legislation than we have now. Would these judges be elected? If so, how's that different from electing tyrants?
3. If the guy who owns the road near your house suddenly decides to allow drunk drivers, everyone who owns property nearby sees the values of their investments plummet. There might be financial incentives for him not to do it, but you know how crazy some people can be. Or, he might own adjoining property and be purposefully trying to hurt the value of his neighbors to increase interest in his own investment. The only recourse a homeowner would have would be to sue on some grounds... but how long would that take?
TM Lutas goes on to say,
What is attractive about libertarianism is that it would allow for superior alternatives to the current BAC test levels to emerge much more rapidly and spread quicker. That, and not some theoretical freedom to drive drunk, is what is appealing in the libertarian alternative to current drunk driving statutes.But is that really true? None of these solutions emerged even when there was little government regulation, not at the local, state, or federal level; since 1980 (and the founding of MADD (not my favorite group, by any means)) drunk driving deaths have been reduced by 40%, largely due to regulation and law enforcement. Prior to that, drunk drivers who caused injuries were subject to civil suits (as they still are), but it didn't do much to discourage them. Why? Because people are generally terrible judges of risks and rewards.
My libertarian sympathies spring from a love for freedom, and if TML were really eager to argue for a right to drive drunk, I could understand that (although I'd disagree). From a purely pragmatic standpoint, however, it's clear that government regulation has made progress in reducing the number of deaths that had previously occurred without regulation.
(And don't argue that no one owned the roads before regulation -- the states and local municipalities (representing their citizens) could have acted as owners and exercised the powers TML described.)
There are certainly many areas where more freedom and less regulation would be beneficial, but I don't think it's true for every situation. Anyway, replacing excessive legislative power with excessive judicial power doesn't seem like a winning move to me.
What libertarians don't seem to get is that consensual governments are the organizational structure people have chosen to set up to manage their affairs. Libertarians would probably be pleased to have a giant corporation oversee all the roads in the country, but that's basically what the government is. The structure is a bit different, but those differences have been implemented because people think they have utility. Our government is hugely inefficient, but guess what, so are large companies. And so forth.
Philisophically, I think there's a maximum level of efficiency that can be attained by any human organization -- dependent on size and technology -- no matter what the structure is. Increased size increases inefficiency, and improved technology reduces inefficiency through improved communication. The rest is just gravy.
Update:
TML responds again and backs down a bit (with regards to libertarianism "at the most extreme margins"), but doesn't address my criticism of tyranny by judges (and insurance companies).
He also says,
Government ownership of roads does not mean federalized road ownership. It means public road ownership and public roads have a very old history in the US. There are very few private roads around in the age of automobiles and what few exist do not form a critical mass sufficient to justify the creation of an alternative system of regulation. If private roads are a mere appendix, they will just save themselves the effort and just mimic government rules.But I fail to see how a small democratic municipality with sole authority over a road would act differently than a local private owner.
He also writes that government is slow to adopt new technology, but large corporations are the same in that regard. Technological retardation is, as with other things, largely a result of size, not structure.
Just saw a discussion about domestic violence over at Snooze Button Dreams (HT: Dean Esmay) and I'd like to thow in my $0.01 by pointing back to a post I wrote last October about Domestic Violence Month.
I just discovered that October is Domestic Violence Month, so I want to take this opportunity to mention a problem that isn't very widely recognized: in 40%-50% of domestic violence cases, men are the victims of violence committed by women. A great deal of attention is given (justifiably) to violence that men perpetrate against women, but the fact of the matter is that men are almost as likely to to be victims of domestic violence as women are.Some other interesting facts from the earlier post:I have some sources here to back up this claim, and they have interesting statistics (that mostly agree with each other). The most comprehensive data appears to come from a study performed by Straus & Gelles, which concludes that some degree of violence occurs at a rate of 113 man-against-woman incidents per 1000 couples per year, and 121 woman-against-man incidents per 1000 couples per year. As well, men and women are both about equally likely to strike the first blow. Overall, men and women were victims of violence at about the same rates, but the violence against men was 50% more likely to be "severe" -- a level that includes being attacked with an object (as opposed to fists), being "beat up", being threatened with a gun or knife, and being attacked with a gun or knife.
1. Women are three times more likely than men to use weapons in spousal violence.I generally agree with Mrs. Du Toit's comment:
2. Women initiate most incidents of spousal violence.
3. Women commit most child abuse and most elder abuse.
4. Women hit their male children more frequently and more severely than they hit their female children.
5. Women commit most child murders and 64% of their victims are male children.
6. When women murder adults the majority of their victims are men .
7. Women commit 52% of spousal killings and are convicted of 41% of spousal murders.
8. Eighty two percent of the general population had their first experience of violence at the hands of women.
Where is the woman's voice in any of this? NO WHERE. "Yes" means "yes" and "NO" means "no." If she stays, she is saying "yes" to all that the relationship includes--and that means "yes" to continued abuse. We may be offended by it, it may repulse us, but it is NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. It is HER business.Females who abuse their mates are a different matter. Men don't want to admit it for all sorts of reasons. Women are more likely to use weapons of some sort (stereotypical rolling pin comes to mind) to alter the size and strength dymanics. But the reaction of society should be the same. BUTT OUT unless the person chooses to press charges. If the guy stays in the relationship, doesn't press charges, then he has CHOSEN to remain abused. His choice.
