Laws Do Not Work

There will always be some form of law. I acknowledge the system we have does have problems. To completely dismiss it will take us back to a barbarian culture, a potential risk considering the situation we are in www.abovetopsecret.com...

You have highlighted many problems and issues that do need addressing. The basic tenant for a civilised society is 'If you cannot be honest about it, you should not do it'. There are times murder is justified, generally in self defence or defence of others in an immediate life threatening situation. They may even be time where lying is justified, but if at the end of the day you cannot stand up in front of your community and be honest about it there is a problem.

The way the court system is does present many difficulties and challenges in finding the truth and appropriate remedies. A strength of it is the peer review process. Also a long history with many mistakes has provided important lessons that we must not forget, but learn from. The issues of greed are big and many. Most police officers do not start their career with the motivation of big money, they care about their society. It is a tough job.

The question we must ask ourselves is this – is there a way to ensure people and property are protected that does not rely on destroying property rights in the process of offering this protection?

People make mistakes, people get hurt, people lie. While there is people there will be problems. Unless you have some technology that can look into the past to quickly and unmistakeably asses just what happened it does take time and effort to establish the facts.

Is there a voluntary way to ensure justice is administered, in a just fashion, that does not rely the victim being victimized twice?

Lengthy and repeated trials because a fact or two got missed or more money was thrown at it is a huge waste on the system. With today's technology there other ways to build up the facts, chain of evidence, statements and so on. To perform a judgment and course of action is a difficult role and many considerations do need to made.

As for the questions on drugs, I would prefer to listen to the medical community who work with it and understand the issues involved. As cultures are different, so is the effects that different drugs produce with many local considerations to be made. There is no one answer, but each community needs to find it's own balance.

I can understand your anger and frustration with so much grid lock. It is great that your are looking at this trying to understand and identify the problems. I do hold some reservations about market based justice system with money already providing conflicts of interest. This is going to be a long and ongoing debate. Please, don't give up just yet.

reply to post by KingDoey

If there were no laws I would be a drug toting pimp ridin dirty in an Aston Martin popping people out of the window. As it stands I would probably get life imprisonment for that...

Don't think so baby, you'll still be in that Jap hatch back.

It's your laws that give those evil drug dealers their Aston Martins. Without laws they would only be able to fetch a similar price for their goods as other things they could have grown on their land (like tomatoes) or made in their lab. You should reread the OP in regards to the black market your laws create. Your laws fund gangs, gang violence and their gold plated pimp stick lifestyles. It's no secret that drug dealers are in favor of prohibition.

It's also pretty sad that you're not intelligent enough to determine for yourself what is moral and what is immoral and must leave your thinking to the honest politicians. (If you think "popping people out the window" is morally justifiable that's even sadder.)

Gravity, is a law.

Water is wet, is a law.

When exerting a force, an opposite and equal reactionary force is exerted; is a law.

Crossing the street in the wrong place and getting a ticket for it, is NOT a law.

There is only one TRUE LAW when it comes to governance. Natural Law.

Do no harm to another and do not infringe on someone's Right to Life, Liberty or Property, THAT IS A LAW.

You have to have a victim when it comes to breaking a law. The STATE cannot be the victim. They are not harmed and the STATE has no rights to Life, Liberty or Property. The STATE is a non entity when discussing VICTIMHOOD or CRIME.

Let me see if I can find this essay on force. I will return if I can find it. I usually keep my favorite articles bookmarked but I have been reorganizing my computer, records and other info while creating my site. I may be back to post it.

I have a number of issues with the OP. Although I’ll preface this with the admission that I haven’t watched the video in the OP as I don’t have 1hr 30m to spare in addition to writing this!

First, you seem to be saying that if a law doesn’t eradicate a certain type of behaviour then it has failed. That is a very narrow view of what a law is meant to do; I would argue that the law exists to influence our behaviour by providing a number of incentives and disincentives for engaging in specific behaviours. If it succeeds in doing this then it has worked.

Whether it does do this is another matter but I don’t think you can prove it doesn’t just by pointing out that crime still happens. A better metric may be to compare behaviours in a given area before and after a law aiming at modifying that behaviour is produced.

Examining the effects on alcohol consumption during the period of prohibition in US a study in the American Economic Review found that

“Alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. The level of consumption remained virtually the same immediately after Prohibition as during the latter part of Prohibition, although consumption increased to approximately its pre-Prohibition level during the subsequent decade.”

www.jstor.org...

This single case might suggest that laws certainly do have an effect on behaviour; although it is of course not conclusive I think that the point is made that the OP is just as inconclusive.

Secondly the OP makes the claim that laws generally make the problems that they are intended to address larger. I just don’t see any evidence to support this; the OP moves on to ask whether victims are given the right to extract their own justice, or are given compensation etc however none of this demonstrates how the number of murders would be lower if this was the case. There is nothing in the OP that proves or suggests that such a state of affairs would reduce murder rates. To determine this evidence of such a system needs to be sought.

Iran does have a system that approximates this state of affairs, i.e. families are compensated and can have a say in the punishment of murderers; the class of crimes are called Qisas and cover murder. If it is the case that liberalised retribution would be better at decreasing the number of murders then nations that provide for such should have a lower murder rate than nations that do not. In the example, Iran has a murder rate of 2.93 per 100,000 and although the US has a murder rate of 5 per 100,000 other nations that have even less scope for retribution (i.e. no capital punishment) have even lower murder rates, e.g. the UK with 1.28 and Canada 1.81.

en.wikipedia.org...

Again this is not conclusive but it does cast massive doubt on the OP’s conclusions.

As an addendum to this, the questionability of the idea that vigilantism is preferable to a system of laws should be glaringly obvious considering we can’t eliminate miscarriages of justice even in carefully designed system of checks and balances. I think it’s valid to ask how many innocent people would die due to people’s passionate but incorrect belief that someone has done them wrong.

Third, the “cycle of violence” in the OP; first of all I think there are a lot of “facts” thrown about in this section that aren’t substantiated, I’d like to see evidence that most homicides are related to the prohibition of drugs or that selling drugs is the most common form of illegal income.

The main problem I have with this section, however, is that regardless of whether or not it is true it still only really applies to anti drug laws. This seems to be an argument against that specific system of laws and not laws in general. I’d like to see this argument applied to minor parking infringements or second degree murder; I’m sceptical of the success one would have.

Although I don’t want to get bogged down in this example I do want to make one point;

As perverse as it sounds, gangs and cartels are necessarily no different than police departments and criminal court systems in terms of the functions they serve.

Though this is true they are very different in the sense that they are totally unaccountable to anyone but themselves. This relates to another criticism I have of the OP but I won’t get into it as it may be answered in the video.

My fourth concern is with the idea that “Nature makes the definition of a crime quite simple.” I wholly disagree with this, I think nature is quite vague! Some people would tell you that homosexuality goes against natural law, some people disagree with them. In reality “natural law” is whatever the person invoking it says it is, it has always been so.

You say that nature makes it clear that harming others or stealing property is wrong but an economic Darwinist might say that might is right. Nothing makes you any more correct than this person.

You also say that a clearly defined victim is necessary before any crime can be said to have occurred. What about laws stopping people from obstructing roads? No one is harmed and no property is damaged or stolen if I decide to park in a narrow street; however if everyone does it then everything from trade to the movement of emergency vehicles are restricted. There’s no clearly defined victim but there is still a negative social impact.

I think I’ll stop there.

Overall I think the OP is too narrow in what it thinks a law should do, too caught up in a preconceived ideology and too light on evidence. Interesting, but flawed nonetheless.

reply to post by DINSTAAR


I would be more inclined to say that both systems are inadequate.

I will reiterate that I do not believe our current system is working, but I certainly have doubts about Hoppe's ideas.

Originally posted by Mike_A
I would argue that the law exists to influence our behaviour by providing a number of incentives and disincentives for engaging in specific behaviours. If it succeeds in doing this then it has worked.

I would argue the government has no right to "influence" my behavior if what I am doing is not harming anyone else or damaging their property.

In a free society, government's role is to protect our rights, not destroy them.

My 'rights' encompass any action I decide to undertake that is not harming another person or damaging their property.

See the 9th amendment of the US Constitution for more details.

reply to post by Mike_A

Secondly the OP makes the claim that laws generally make the problems that they are intended to address larger. I just don’t see any evidence to support this;

You're joking right? You just brought up that big prohibition example. Go and find out about how many problems were brought about as a result of prohibition, then you might have some sort of insight into the problems created today by the silly victimless laws.

reply to post by mnemeth1

My 'rights' encompass any action I decide to undertake that is not harming another person or damaging their property.

But what about the rights of animals, the environment and other things we do not fully understand yet still hold purpose and meaning in life? It is a great start - self determination. But how our actions influence the environment does need consideration.

reply to post by mnemeth1


Of course laws don't actually "solve" anything. I'm not sure if you noticed this but human beings have free will and can make choices. Those choices may or may not be against the law. The law is there primarily to enact a penalty against the person AFTER they have made the choice. It cannot solve the problem as the problem is free will, the problem is choice.

Each individual human being can act toward solving the problem of something like murder by simply not making the choice to murder anyone.

So while you are right to assert that laws don't solve the problem I think you are confused about what they ARE meant to do. They were never meant to solve the problem in the first place.

I do take massive issue with the justice system as it seems dedicated to punishment entirely with very minimal attention paid to the more important issue of rehabilitation. If at all possible we should be offering criminals the help they need to have empathy and avoid violent behaviors and impulses rather than merely locking them up in general populations where they are likely to only become worse.

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

Of course laws don't actually "solve" anything

2 + 2 = 4. The law of addition solved that one. But we are more than just numbers and I agree with all the other points raised. The concept of 'rehabilitation' does not work and if anything is more detrimental to the human condition. Conflict resolution requires the parties involved to sit down and sort it out. Good results are generally achieved when each party is able to understand the other point of view. Something that is not going on with many ongoing conflicts.

If I had to condense the whole legal system into one sentence it would be: 'If you cannot be honest about it, you should not do it'. There are time where we have to kill, steal, cheat, lie and break every other law that has been made just to survive. But if at the end of the day you are unable to justify why you performed these actions to yourself and your peers then there are significant issues that need to be addressed. You are unable to clearly identify and know yourself.

reply to post by hawkiye


I did it all on my own inspired by the Holy Spirit my friend. I know english!!

reply to post by mnemeth1


Is that it? I wrote 900 words and four separate counterarguments and that is the extent of your reply? Were you really looking to discuss this topic or were you just looking for people to agree with you and stroke your ego?

reply to post by Azp420


No I’m not joking, the OP said that laws generally made the problem that they were intended to solve larger. Although you can find some examples of this I am arguing the “generally” aspect of the statement; do laws against murder increase the number of murders? Do local parking laws make parking worse? Do patent laws make protecting ideas more difficult? etc etc

It’s all well and good taking the big sexy things like anti-drug laws and find the problems with them but to justify this general argument you must take a closer and broader look. The OP didn’t do that and I remain sceptical that laws generally make the problems they are meant to address worse.

reply to post by Mike_A

I remain sceptical that laws generally make the problems they are meant to address worse.

I agree. There are just too many of them these days for anyone to really know if they are breaking a law or not and beyond the comprehension of the average person in some cases. Certainly, different roles have different requirements and procedure which does expand the collection. Religious texts provided stories for guidance in community relations, it was the law book, medical book, social guide and everything else in a manageable form. Communities would discuss various transgression and decide. These books where the basis of their culture. From here law and other social institutions grew to accommodate the growing population and social needs. With globalisation things kept growing and cultures started to collide.

Diversity is ever present. In our purely analogue world there is no such thing as 1 + 1 = 2. It is very, very close but each entity is different. We face this same problem in how the civil guild lines (laws) are interpreted and resolved.

Ok, to sort this mess out one recommendation is that the UN starts a minimum civil guideline. The military and money are already heading in this direction. Some laws are pretty universal, murder, rape, thief, ect. Most countries should be able to integrate this into there current system fairly easy. Just start with the stuff everyone agrees on, the disagreements and cultural debates can get a bit more teeth once there is some foundation to it. Keep it simple.

Originally posted by mnemeth1

Originally posted by Xiamara
Not this guy again, with the anarchy. If you want anarchy fine, I say it lasts not even a week laws are in place as a preventative. It causes fear and fear keeps people in line, anarchy creates chaos and disorganization. I'm not going to argue further since its pointless.

Anarchy is peace.

The State is chaos.

May I ask in general what part of Somalia you are posting from? I would also like to know if you have ever been to the United States for any period of time.

reply to post by Mike_A


You are arguing over inconsequential points that have no bearing on what I am saying.

You dispute that the selling of drugs is the most common form of illegal income - the number of people locked up for non-violent drug offenses in this country make this point for me.

You say I advocate vigilantism, which I never advocated. I simply pointed out that our idea of justice is not very just in my opinion.

You ignored the moral arguments I made in the OP about victims being forced to pay for the punishment of the victimizer.

You didn't watch the video and pretty much dismissed Hoppe's arguments without any logical merit to back your opinions.

Thus, you get a reply to the only portion of your post that I felt needed to be responded to.

reply to post by mnemeth1


I argued, among other things, that there is evidence that laws do work; the title of your thread is “Laws do not work”. I’m fairly sure that the merit of that argument has significant consequences on your own!

The dispute over whether selling drugs is the largest illegal form of income and the comment on vigilantism were minor aspects of my post that took up just 118 words out of 998.

So don’t bullsh*t me or the forum about why you’re not replying because it’s obvious to all that you are just trying to weasel your way out of having to confront genuine criticism. Yours are the actions of an intellectual coward and nothing more; and it is now crystal clear that you never had any intention of discussing anything and posted this for no better reason than to receive an ego boost from like minded people who you thought would no doubt come to congratulate you on your enlightened insight.

Well done, you’ve got the stars but lost the credibility.

Laws are only as effective as the enforcement behind them. Sadly, laws are twisted, interpreted, selectively applied and ignored everyday. Ignore them long enough until the problem originally addressed surfaces once again. Then, magically, new laws are created right on top of the old laws.

Layer after layer just like an archeological dig into the legal structure of our nation.

Originally posted by Mike_A
reply to post by mnemeth1

 

I argued, among other things, that there is evidence that laws do work; the title of your thread is “Laws do not work”. I’m fairly sure that the merit of that argument has significant consequences on your own!

The dispute over whether selling drugs is the largest illegal form of income and the comment on vigilantism were minor aspects of my post that took up just 118 words out of 998.

So don’t bullsh*t me or the forum about why you’re not replying because it’s obvious to all that you are just trying to weasel your way out of having to confront genuine criticism. Yours are the actions of an intellectual coward and nothing more; and it is now crystal clear that you never had any intention of discussing anything and posted this for no better reason than to receive an ego boost from like minded people who you thought would no doubt come to congratulate you on your enlightened insight.

Well done, you’ve got the stars but lost the credibility.

I argued that laws do not work at solving problems. I did not argue that all laws are unnecessary.

By the number of people in US prisons for non-crimes, we can clearly see that the laws currently on the books have not eliminated the problems they were created to address.

reply to post by mnemeth1


Please stop this desperate attempt to save face, I know what you were arguing and I made a criticism of the underlying premise; that’s the one bit of my post you actually did reply to. However you also said of laws;

By and large, most laws don’t even reduce the problems they were created to address

A claim I also addressed, among a number of others.