View Poll Results: Which is more important?

Voters
28. You may not vote on this poll
  • The Guilty Be Punished

    3 10.71%
  • The Innocent Not Be Punished

    25 89.29%
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Thread: Which is more important?

  1. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    My normative response is to abandon such systems precisely because they cannot guarantee justice.

    Positively speaking, abandonment is not going to happen because people are corrupt, wanting things that cannot be delivered. Therefore, the likely practical path is to reform what is a deeply flawed system of so-called "justice".
    Abandoning all attempts to punish the guilty will result in far more crime and damage than the few accidental prosecutions of innocents that would happen under a properly reformed system.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  3. #32
    [QUOTE=Swordsmyth;6691175]Whatever odds are created by doing everything humanly possible to avoid punishing the innocent without giving up all attempts to punish the guilty, I am willing to suffer those odds because they are better than the odds of me being seriously damaged in a society that makes no attempt to punish the guilty.

    And what if someone such as myself is not willing to suffer those odds? Are my rights to be forcibly suborned to your desire for "justice"?

    You seem to be arguing based on competing harms, your contention being that getting bad guys is more important than the evil perpetrated against the sovereign rights of all men. And make no mistake about it, you are clearly in support of the violation of all the rights of all the people for the sake of false senses of safety and justice. This is madness of the first order, pal.

    People, on the average, and for perhaps as many as two full sigmas to either side of the mean are corrupt. They are corrupted by FAIL - Fear, Avarice, Ignorance, and Lassitude. There are very few people not corrupted along one or more of these lines of human weakness. They want what they want and most often give no care the cost, so long as their sense of comfort is satisfied, whatever that may be. We have been fed a grand lie about "justice". Sure, it's a nice-to-have item, but one does not trade freedom and the attendant rights that derive therefrom for the sake of a "nice to have".

    Furthermore, to suggest as you have, however tacitly, that the land would fall into chaos without a "justice system", is utter falderal. When "the state" is not busying itself with "justice" wherein innocent men are putt o the hazards of lazy men, the rest of the population is faced with a choice to either remain corrupt and allow said chaos to descend upon their lives, or they step up and take seriously their rights in all ways and under all circumstances. Those lesser corrupted people take responsibility of their own safety, their own rights and so forth, and in the absence of "the state", take care of the business of justice. In the absence of "the state" and the false authority represented there, individual people are faced with the choice of being masters of their own lives or being victims of the vicissitudes of life. This is the central problem: people want all the benefits of freedom without having to bear the fatigues of maintaining it. Pure corruption that justifies itself with such foolish notions as "efficiencies gained through specialization in the division of labor." There is nothing wrong with the notion in pure theory and even in much practice, but where the conflicting interests of human rights versus political power are concerned, the notion is absurd on its face, that assessment justified by no less than six thousands of years of recorded human history.

    Further still, placing authority into the hands of disconnected third parties under the phony baloney rubric of "impartiality and faith to [presumably correct] law" is equally absurd, prima facie. Let those who have been wronged take their measures as responsible free men. Rather than chaos ensuing, you will find people becoming more polite and cautious around one another. That is a good thing, as much as the absence of cheap casualness may horrify the average and doltish man as being cold and unfriendly. There is nothing like deep and healthy respect to keep people on the straight and narrow.

    Put another way, life would certainly be no worse than it is now in the absence of the deeply flawed control structures with which we have been manacled. Chances are god to excellent, in fact, that life would become worlds better.

    Life is full of dangers and it is not possible to eliminate them all.
    And yet you would apparently sell your freedoms in exchange for the token sum of a lie. Forgive me, but that makes as much sense as two monkeys humping a football.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.



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  5. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    And what if someone such as myself is not willing to suffer those odds? Are my rights to be forcibly suborned to your desire for "justice"?

    You seem to be arguing based on competing harms, your contention being that getting bad guys is more important than the evil perpetrated against the sovereign rights of all men. And make no mistake about it, you are clearly in support of the violation of all the rights of all the people for the sake of false senses of safety and justice. This is madness of the first order, pal.

    People, on the average, and for perhaps as many as two full sigmas to either side of the mean are corrupt. They are corrupted by FAIL - Fear, Avarice, Ignorance, and Lassitude. There are very few people not corrupted along one or more of these lines of human weakness. They want what they want and most often give no care the cost, so long as their sense of comfort is satisfied, whatever that may be. We have been fed a grand lie about "justice". Sure, it's a nice-to-have item, but one does not trade freedom and the attendant rights that derive therefrom for the sake of a "nice to have".

    Furthermore, to suggest as you have, however tacitly, that the land would fall into chaos without a "justice system", is utter falderal. When "the state" is not busying itself with "justice" wherein innocent men are putt o the hazards of lazy men, the rest of the population is faced with a choice to either remain corrupt and allow said chaos to descend upon their lives, or they step up and take seriously their rights in all ways and under all circumstances. Those lesser corrupted people take responsibility of their own safety, their own rights and so forth, and in the absence of "the state", take care of the business of justice. In the absence of "the state" and the false authority represented there, individual people are faced with the choice of being masters of their own lives or being victims of the vicissitudes of life. This is the central problem: people want all the benefits of freedom without having to bear the fatigues of maintaining it. Pure corruption that justifies itself with such foolish notions as "efficiencies gained through specialization in the division of labor." There is nothing wrong with the notion in pure theory and even in much practice, but where the conflicting interests of human rights versus political power are concerned, the notion is absurd on its face, that assessment justified by no less than six thousands of years of recorded human history.

    Further still, placing authority into the hands of disconnected third parties under the phony baloney rubric of "impartiality and faith to [presumably correct] law" is equally absurd, prima facie. Let those who have been wronged take their measures as responsible free men. Rather than chaos ensuing, you will find people becoming more polite and cautious around one another. That is a good thing, as much as the absence of cheap casualness may horrify the average and doltish man as being cold and unfriendly. There is nothing like deep and healthy respect to keep people on the straight and narrow.

    Put another way, life would certainly be no worse than it is now in the absence of the deeply flawed control structures with which we have been manacled. Chances are god to excellent, in fact, that life would become worlds better.



    And yet you would apparently sell your freedoms in exchange for the token sum of a lie. Forgive me, but that makes as much sense as two monkeys humping a football.
    If you wish to resist if you are falsely convicted of something that is your right.

    Anarchy not only leads to more crime and damage because the strong prey upon the weak but it also always leads to a state imposed by the strongest or created by those with better intentions to reduce crime and violence, you will end up with a state so you might as well create it yourself to make sure it is as liberty oriented as possible.

    There are far too many people who are too weak for one reason or another and far too many that are corrupt and strong for anarchy to work.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  6. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Abandoning all attempts to punish the guilty will result in far more crime and damage than the few accidental prosecutions of innocents that would happen under a properly reformed system.
    Another false dichotomy. The absence of a "state" does not perforce result in abandoning accountability, which is in part what punishment is all about. Disallow the corruption that has lead to the world in which we now live, the presence of "government" notwithstanding, forcing the choice upon people to cowboy up or be consumed, and I believe you would surprised to see how many people would suddenly find religion.

    The average man behaves as an idiot not because he is one, but because the environment supports his idiotic choices, usually through the absence of commensurate consequences. Our lives are rotten with examples of how this is true. Eliminate those loopholes such that stupidity most likely earns its commensurate reward, and people would mostly stop acting as if they had brain lesions.

    Consider sk8ers, snowboarders, and other "extreme sports" types. I was once one of them, being founder and president of the "Ski To Die" club. I was admittedly and idiot, skiiing 60+ mph straight down double black diamond slopes as fast as gravity and friction would allow. Note how I left out "my skill", because when $#@! happens at those speeds and under those conditions, no amount of skill is likely to save your stupid ass from serious catastrophe. But today these young kids do what they do, it all being very impressive and very dangerous, precisely in part because they know that if they wreck themselves, the miracles of modern ER medicine will patch them back together.

    Back in a day where any opening of the skin was potentially lethal, not to mention more serious injuries such as broken bones, people moved with far greater caution. Our medical environment allows us to do things we were unlikely to risk just a short age ago.

    Back in a day where any show of disrespect to another could lead to a severe beating or even a duel, people behaved with far greater caution and formal manners around each other. Our demented, debased, and castrated interpersonal culture - the product of progressive muck-raking via... wait for it... GOVERNMENT - allows us to behave with beastly casualness and familiarity toward one another, which is why so many people regard their fellows with such deep contempt. The saddest part there is how few people recognize it as such, thinking it's all OK, which it really is not, judging by the overall result.

    Remove the corrupting influence of "government", leaving people to deal with one another in what I will term a more natural and "organic" manner, and a new BALANCE - a RATIONAL one, vis-à-vis your apparent and vaguely defined sense of the term, will be established. People are NOT stupid when the price becomes life and limb. In the comparatively few cases where they are, they often reap the consequences. Nature's way is the right way. The way of the "progressive" - the way that has given us this mad world - is cancer that was sold to us based on lies that appeal to the weakness and bent to corruption that is part and parcel of every human being.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  7. #35
    In the interest of self-preservation, in a society where majority are not criminals, the obvious choice is not punishing the innocent as this is the most likely encounter with the law most of the members of such society will have. In a criminal society, on the other hand, you would definitely want guilty to be punished. I would like to believe our society is of the first kind.

  8. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    If you wish to resist if you are falsely convicted of something that is your right.
    This is either disingenuous, very evil, or impossibly mistaken. No man holds such authority. I defy you to name a single man and by what virtue he may wield such power over another as a master over a chattel slave. Just one.

    Anarchy not only leads to more crime and damage because the strong prey upon the weak but it also always leads to a state imposed by the strongest or created by those with better intentions to reduce crime and violence, you will end up with a state so you might as well create it yourself to make sure it is as liberty oriented as possible.
    History demonstrates that you are absolutely dead-wrong on this issue. Anarchic societies represent the majority of human societies in terms of numbers of them and years. They had been studied extensively in the nineteenth century and the literature is clear: they were generally FAR more orderly and mutually cooperative than have been the "higher" [chuckle] civilizations of centralized governance. If you do not believe me, I suggest you visit the library. It's all there.

    There were anarchic tribes that were warlike and who preyed upon the more peaceful, that is certainly true. They were, however, a distinct minority. That said, circumstances of technology are now such that now even the weak can take the strong. Firearms alone have done more to physically equalize individual humanity than any other technological development in the history of the race.

    There are far too many people who are too weak for one reason or another and far too many that are corrupt and strong for anarchy to work.
    This assumes that people are static. It also assumes that loss of the weak is some sort of tragedy. It isn't.

    Remove the enabling factors that encourage weakness and stupidity and people will become stronger and far less stupid. The rest will be consumed and that is quite OK. The presumption that the entire world should burn for the sake of even a single, willfully stupid individual, is sadly flawed. This is fundamentally different from neglecting the willful and criminal violation of that same individual pursuant to the nonsensical idea that "the state" is the only viable and valid avenue and instrument of "justice". Leave it to people and the world of men would straighten itself out. Why? Because people generally do not want to waste their lives by living in terror and warfare. There are far more profitable endeavors to be pursued. Those who are interested in mayhem will be culled by sheer virtue of numbers. Smart, clued-in freemen with the right attitude would counter the statistically far smaller and fewer bands of low-life scum by killing them off, as all good propriety would dictate.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  9. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    In the interest of self-preservation, in a society where majority are not criminals, the obvious choice is not punishing the innocent as this is the most likely encounter with the law most of the members of such society will have. In a criminal society, on the other hand, you would definitely want guilty to be punished. I would like to believe our society is of the first kind.
    We ARE of the first type. Were it otherwise, the "state" would be unable to contain us. We are too large and far too well armed.

    Our problem is that we are corrupted with some very ill-considered assumptions about life and human relations. They are appealing because they speak to our weaknesses, including our vanity.

    I maintain that if people were freed with no recourse to a corrupt and wildly evil/misguided "state", they would shape up in short order. Those who didn't would be consumed, most likely unto death and thereby cleansing what is now a deeply polluted gene pool. The weak, of course, will hate such a turn of events, but even they will have the opportunity to become strong enough, given today's technologies. Those choosing otherwise become fair game for Darwin. So be it.

    I would also point out that those who take the "weak" without just cause would eventually run out of luck by picking the wrong target and being themselves reduced to ash at the hands of strong and righteous freemen. The balance would be established in accord with the mean nature of the population. At that point it is all a matter of choice.

    We choose, even when we don't.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  10. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    This is either disingenuous, very evil, or impossibly mistaken. No man holds such authority. I defy you to name a single man and by what virtue he may wield such power over another as a master over a chattel slave. Just one.
    I don't believe you understood me correctly, you or any other innocent man has a right to resist if unjustly convicted.



    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    History demonstrates that you are absolutely dead-wrong on this issue. Anarchic societies represent the majority of human societies in terms of numbers of them and years. They had been studied extensively in the nineteenth century and the literature is clear: they were generally FAR more orderly and mutually cooperative than have been the "higher" [chuckle] civilizations of centralized governance. If you do not believe me, I suggest you visit the library. It's all there.

    There were anarchic tribes that were warlike and who preyed upon the more peaceful, that is certainly true. They were, however, a distinct minority. That said, circumstances of technology are now such that now even the weak can take the strong. Firearms alone have done more to physically equalize individual humanity than any other technological development in the history of the race.
    Those societies were not anarchic, they had their own versions of the state and the justice system and technology has done much to equalize the weak and the strong but it can't eliminate the difference, there are too many different factors that make one person stronger or weaker than another.



    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    This assumes that people are static. It also assumes that loss of the weak is some sort of tragedy. It isn't.

    Remove the enabling factors that encourage weakness and stupidity and people will become stronger and far less stupid. The rest will be consumed and that is quite OK. The presumption that the entire world should burn for the sake of even a single, willfully stupid individual, is sadly flawed. This is fundamentally different from neglecting the willful and criminal violation of that same individual pursuant to the nonsensical idea that "the state" is the only viable and valid avenue and instrument of "justice". Leave it to people and the world of men would straighten itself out. Why? Because people generally do not want to waste their lives by living in terror and warfare. There are far more profitable endeavors to be pursued. Those who are interested in mayhem will be culled by sheer virtue of numbers. Smart, clued-in freemen with the right attitude would counter the statistically far smaller and fewer bands of low-life scum by killing them off, as all good propriety would dictate.
    Your philosophy is built on evil, might makes right, survival of the fittest and devil take the hindmost is wrong, might is properly used in the service of right and the strong should protect the weak, that is what separates us from the animals.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  11. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    I don't believe you understood me correctly, you or any other innocent man has a right to resist if unjustly convicted.
    Perhaps I failed to make myself clear - the right to resist directly implies the crime of the "state". The "state" is far larger in terms of men with guns more than happy to kill you if you resist. Therefore, the right to resist becomes meaningless in the face of an organization of mobsters who will gleefully murder you for having the temerity not to go quietly into the maw of hell upon their whim. THAT is why the state should be eliminated. The nearly universal corruption of people is the primary reason the "state" will likely never be dismantled, barring a reset event.

    Those societies were not anarchic, they had their own versions of the state and the justice system and technology has done much to equalize the weak and the strong but it can't eliminate the difference, there are too many different factors that make one person stronger or weaker than another.
    I don't know to which societies you refer, but I assure you that the vast majority of human societies over the course of the last umpteen thousands of years were very much in fact and indeed anarchic. Let us be clear that such societies had leaders, but no rulers. Chiefs were not kings or rulers of any other sort, but rather trusted individuals who, the moment they violated that trust for any reason, were no longer chiefs. Anyone was free to act contrary to a chief's recommendations, and let us be clear that recommendation was all to which he was entitled. There were no edicts, no commands, imperatives, fiats, or any other brand of tyrannical acts tolerated because the people knew who they were, what they were, and were more than willing to banish or in extreme cases kill anyone showing the least disrespect for the rights of his fellows.


    Your philosophy is built on evil, might makes right, survival of the fittest and devil take the hindmost is wrong,
    You assert with no demonstration. My philosophy is not quite as you characterize it. I am a full believer in autodiathism - the right of all men to self-determination. This does not equate to might making right. Nor does the fact that I believe in the propriety of consequences where unwise choices are acted upon. I believe in the free nature of men and of the responsibility of each man to himself and possibly those around him not to behave as if he were stupid.

    might is properly used in the service of right and the strong should protect the weak,
    That is your opinion, but you have offered no objective proof of the assertion. I, OTOH, believe that the strong are entitled to protect the weak if they are so moved. They are equally entitled to turn their backs on them if that be the spirit in which they find themselves in any given case. Each man holds the sovereign authority to decide for himself whom he shall help. Any attempt to force a man to help another is bald-faced tyranny and any individual or group thereof attempting to institutionalize such force should be killed outright as the right and proper consequence of attempting to violate the rights of their fellows in so egregious a manner.

    that is what separates us from the animals.
    Nice sounding fantasy, but we are in fact animals as well. Your problem, which is a very common one, is that you do not find freedom agreeable and therefore wish to see it supplanted with your version of pretty slavery (or pretty tyranny, if you will) in order that you may reap benefits without having to pay. Well, you're in luck sir because the world is pretty much rotten with it from stem to stern, the only problem likely that the slavery in question is likely not to your aesthetic taste. But take heart in the fact that nearly any configuration of pretty slavery lies within human grasp, for so long as it exists in whatever form, some men, somewhere, will retain fundamental control over you no matter how "free" you might think you are. I suspect that true, actual, and proper human freedom likely scares you sheetwhite. Don't feel alone because the vast and overwhelming majority of humanity is in the same boat. You have no faith in the basic nature of men when it is uncorrupted by the stupidities vomited forth by those who are lousy with fear, greed, lassitude, and so forth. I would not know where to start in demonstrating to you the depth and breadth of the corruption that rampages in virtually every nook and cranny of the human world. You yourself are well basted in it, judging by what you have written here in this thread. Your assumptions are so deeply tacit that you may not even be aware of them such that you could even consider questioning their validity. That's a tough corner in which to find oneself as seen by one who's been at the bottom of that rabbit hole for most of his life and has become habituated to the practice of seeing that which is not readily apparent. All that, or perhaps you simply do not want to question any of it, having found your comfort in your vision of pretty slavery; the one that makes you think you are safe, secure, respected by your fellows in "government", when in fact you live at their whim.

    It's all good with me if that is your deal, even if I deeply disagree with the position. Does the prospect - nay, the spectre of proper freedom frighten me? It sure does, given what some humans are willing to do to others. I am, however, willing to brave those scary prospects because I am a truly free man. I take care of myself and am fully, wholly, and singly responsible for my safety, my sense of a worthwhile life, finances, and so forth. I am willing to risk dying under a bridge, impoverished, because I find the notion of taking from YOU that to which I am not entitled so repulsive that to do so would reduce me to such a status that life would be no longer with the living in any event. Better to die clean than to live in the filth of such corruption. I understand freedom well enough, and I daresay far and away better than 99.9999% of all humanity crawling the earth at this time. I am willing to live with the risks. You, apparently, are not. Fair enough, but for you to believe that it is within your prerogative to allow other men to force their tyrannies upon me cuts no muster for validity and truth.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  12. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Perhaps I failed to make myself clear - the right to resist directly implies the crime of the "state". The "state" is far larger in terms of men with guns more than happy to kill you if you resist. Therefore, the right to resist becomes meaningless in the face of an organization of mobsters who will gleefully murder you for having the temerity not to go quietly into the maw of hell upon their whim. THAT is why the state should be eliminated. The nearly universal corruption of people is the primary reason the "state" will likely never be dismantled, barring a reset event.



    I don't know to which societies you refer, but I assure you that the vast majority of human societies over the course of the last umpteen thousands of years were very much in fact and indeed anarchic. Let us be clear that such societies had leaders, but no rulers. Chiefs were not kings or rulers of any other sort, but rather trusted individuals who, the moment they violated that trust for any reason, were no longer chiefs. Anyone was free to act contrary to a chief's recommendations, and let us be clear that recommendation was all to which he was entitled. There were no edicts, no commands, imperatives, fiats, or any other brand of tyrannical acts tolerated because the people knew who they were, what they were, and were more than willing to banish or in extreme cases kill anyone showing the least disrespect for the rights of his fellows.
    Your idyllic fantasies are far from reality, tribal societies didn't function the way you describe, those with power acted just as the state does in our time, they ordered people punished and their thugs or the whole tribe carried out the punishment.




    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    You assert with no demonstration. My philosophy is not quite as you characterize it. I am a full believer in autodiathism - the right of all men to self-determination. This does not equate to might making right. Nor does the fact that I believe in the propriety of consequences where unwise choices are acted upon. I believe in the free nature of men and of the responsibility of each man to himself and possibly those around him not to behave as if he were stupid.



    That is your opinion, but you have offered no objective proof of the assertion. I, OTOH, believe that the strong are entitled to protect the weak if they are so moved. They are equally entitled to turn their backs on them if that be the spirit in which they find themselves in any given case. Each man holds the sovereign authority to decide for himself whom he shall help. Any attempt to force a man to help another is bald-faced tyranny and any individual or group thereof attempting to institutionalize such force should be killed outright as the right and proper consequence of attempting to violate the rights of their fellows in so egregious a manner.
    Even the concept of individualism has its limits, there are certain basic duties that we owe to GOD and our fellow men.



    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Nice sounding fantasy, but we are in fact animals as well. Your problem, which is a very common one, is that you do not find freedom agreeable and therefore wish to see it supplanted with your version of pretty slavery (or pretty tyranny, if you will) in order that you may reap benefits without having to pay.
    I am quite willing to pay for the benefits of civilization and civilization provides much more freedom to more people than anarchy ever could, you imagine yourself an alpha so you wish to live in a world where you get all of the benefits of your imagined strength and none of the responsibilities and you blithely dismiss the suffering and injustice that would take place against the weak and if the weak organize to defend their rights you call them tyrants.


    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Well, you're in luck sir because the world is pretty much rotten with it from stem to stern, the only problem likely that the slavery in question is likely not to your aesthetic taste. But take heart in the fact that nearly any configuration of pretty slavery lies within human grasp, for so long as it exists in whatever form, some men, somewhere, will retain fundamental control over you no matter how "free" you might think you are. I suspect that true, actual, and proper human freedom likely scares you sheetwhite.
    Not at all but I know that the world you desire would be filled with misery and injustice and would end up supplanted by a world like the one we have anyway.

    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Don't feel alone because the vast and overwhelming majority of humanity is in the same boat. You have no faith in the basic nature of men when it is uncorrupted by the stupidities vomited forth by those who are lousy with fear, greed, lassitude, and so forth. I would not know where to start in demonstrating to you the depth and breadth of the corruption that rampages in virtually every nook and cranny of the human world. You yourself are well basted in it, judging by what you have written here in this thread. Your assumptions are so deeply tacit that you may not even be aware of them such that you could even consider questioning their validity. That's a tough corner in which to find oneself as seen by one who's been at the bottom of that rabbit hole for most of his life and has become habituated to the practice of seeing that which is not readily apparent. All that, or perhaps you simply do not want to question any of it, having found your comfort in your vision of pretty slavery; the one that makes you think you are safe, secure, respected by your fellows in "government", when in fact you live at their whim.
    I know that people are corrupt, corruption doesn't come from the outside and infect humanity, it is a creation of humanity.
    That is why your world would be filled with it and would end up as bad or worse than the world as it is now and why I seek to create a system to limit and control corruption instead of imagining that it can be eliminated.

    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    It's all good with me if that is your deal, even if I deeply disagree with the position. Does the prospect - nay, the spectre of proper freedom frighten me? It sure does, given what some humans are willing to do to others. I am, however, willing to brave those scary prospects because I am a truly free man. I take care of myself and am fully, wholly, and singly responsible for my safety, my sense of a worthwhile life, finances, and so forth. I am willing to risk dying under a bridge, impoverished, because I find the notion of taking from YOU that to which I am not entitled so repulsive that to do so would reduce me to such a status that life would be no longer with the living in any event. Better to die clean than to live in the filth of such corruption. I understand freedom well enough, and I daresay far and away better than 99.9999% of all humanity crawling the earth at this time. I am willing to live with the risks. You, apparently, are not. Fair enough, but for you to believe that it is within your prerogative to allow other men to force their tyrannies upon me cuts no muster for validity and truth.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  14. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Your idyllic fantasies are far from reality, tribal societies didn't function the way you describe, those with power acted just as the state does in our time, they ordered people punished and their thugs or the whole tribe carried out the punishment.





    Even the concept of individualism has its limits, there are certain basic duties that we owe to GOD and our fellow men.




    I am quite willing to pay for the benefits of civilization and civilization provides much more freedom to more people than anarchy ever could, you imagine yourself an alpha so you wish to live in a world where you get all of the benefits of your imagined strength and none of the responsibilities and you blithely dismiss the suffering and injustice that would take place against the weak and if the weak organize to defend their rights you call them tyrants.



    Not at all but I know that the world you desire would be filled with misery and injustice and would end up supplanted by a world like the one we have anyway.


    I know that people are corrupt, corruption doesn't come from the outside and infect humanity, it is a creation of humanity.
    That is why your world would be filled with it and would end up as bad or worse than the world as it is now and why I seek to create a system to limit and control corruption instead of imagining that it can be eliminated.


    It appears you have no argument against me, save your blindly unsupported assertions and differing assumptions.

    We will have to agree to disagree on this one.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  15. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post

    We will have to agree to disagree on this one.
    Agreed.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  16. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    It appears you have no argument against me, save your blindly unsupported assertions and differing assumptions.

    We will have to agree to disagree on this one.
    I see no 'disagreement'.

    I read your argument, logically constructed. I read his 'argument', which was no argument at all... it was a largely incoherent string of assertions, such that if Swordsmyth were on to something we ought to be going to him for lottery numbers and Derby winners.

    When I 'agree to disagree', I have not moved my interlocutor via the strength of my argument, nor has he moved me by his. But in this case, no counterargument was made.

    You're right. And that's that.

  17. #44
    These are not in conflict, but necessary for one another to really exist. If you have a society that cares nothing for the innocence of the accused, you're going to have a lot of guilty people going free while the wrong people rot in prison. You need to protect the innocent to go after the guilty. You also need to go after the guilty to protect the innocent. Allowing criminal degenerates roam free is hardly going to help the people whose communities they defile.
    NeoReactionary. American High Tory.

    The counter-revolution will not be televised.

  18. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by ThePaleoLibertarian View Post
    These are not in conflict, but necessary for one another to really exist. If you have a society that cares nothing for the innocence of the accused, you're going to have a lot of guilty people going free while the wrong people rot in prison. You need to protect the innocent to go after the guilty. You also need to go after the guilty to protect the innocent. Allowing criminal degenerates roam free is hardly going to help the people whose communities they defile.
    Once again I see the false dichotomy trap - if you're not falsely imprisoning innocents for the sake of making sure you get the guilty, then criminals will roam freely on the streets and there will be chaos.

    I do not believe this would be the case in a world that had readjusted itself to proper responsibilities for one's own wellbeing. In such a world, those committing crimes are more likely to get their just deserts at the hands of "civilians" who choose to defend themselves against predation and other violations.

    Bear this in mind: the vast majority of crimes are committed by those who count on the ready cooperation of their victims. This directly leads one to correctly infer that most of these rubes are not of a stomach for a real fight. The net is rife with video examples of the "oh $#@!" moments of low-rent criminals when their chosen targets give even mild fight. Being so threatened themselves, the crooks flee. That is the vast and overwhelming proportion of such events and the people who perpetrate the crimes in question. If the good people cease their corrupted reliance on cops and other groups to bail them out when the poo hits the fan and start learning how to care for themselves, the rates of crime would plummet from those petty, up to and including murder. What would be left are those who would be criminals in any event because they are the hardcores who are willing to assume the risks, perhaps due to brain lesions or whatever other hardware or software stupidity that managed to take root.

    If we are to be serious about freedom, and I find that most whom I encounter are not, then the sanctity of innocence must stand as a highest virtue for all men. The very thought of imprisoning a man who has committed no crime should fill one with the same revulsion as does the thought of a woman aborting her pregnancy in the eighth month or a child being brutally raped.

    I say tis better that every criminal escape the courts than so much as one innocent be caged without just cause. The criminal will get his eventually - that is a statistical certainty. The more crimes you commit, the greater the likelihood your wick is going to get snuffed.

    Now, as for the "Ooooo, but the criminals will get away..." nonsense, consider all the other crimes that some have committed prior to having been caught. The mindset in question, if taken to its reductio ad absurdum, would justify "pre-crime". After all, how unjust that criminals ever get away with so much as even a single crime! Let us take Ted Bundy as a prime example. Estimates of the number of women he murdered run as high as 300++, the believable number hovering around 100. Imagine that, one hundred lives taken without authority, yet he was punished for only a handful. Is that not unjust? How's about we go the Minority Report route? THAT'S THE TICKET!!!

    Not.

    The world is often not a just place. Think "entropy"; the very best one can do in life is to break even where justice is concerned, not to mention that the best case is probably never realized at any time. We all get screwed in one way and degree or another at some point in our lives. Do we go on rampaging campaigns about it? Well, sometimes, but mostly we eat the losses and move on.

    It is no different in the cases of real crime, and I reiterate my conviction that it is better that ever criminal escape the justice of the "state" than a single innocent man be held to pay for that which he has not committed. There are no "buts" or other exceptions to this.

    Now consider this: a man becomes a pillar of his community with generosity that defies credulity. He is a billionaire who has showered his community with very good paying jobs, built housing for the poor, developed animal rescue services, shelters for battered women, built three hospitals each operating as a non-profit, rendering the finest medical care on the planet at affordable cost such that nobody needs health "insurance". The list of his accomplishments and contributions is so long as to make the reader weary-bored. Then one day, in a fit of uncharacteristic anger, he murders his wife and confesses openly. What do we do? Is he to be held accountable? The answer to that must perforce be "yes", lest the basis for all other prosecutions and the holding of men to a standard of behavior be otherwise reduced to the status of a farce to which no man is then to be credibly held.

    The point here is that no matter how much good one does, it cuts little muster when one does even a single act of evil.

    Now apply this to "the state". If we assume the "state" otherwise does nothing but good, but has in a single case punished a man for a crime he did not commit, ought "the state", or more specifically, the individuals who perpetrated this injustice against one of their fellow human beings, not themselves be held to an equal standard as that to which they so enthusiastically held their victim? Are they somehow immune from the consequences of the sorts of act for which they themselves place others into concrete cages, sometimes for decades, or for which they even take lives?

    Is "justice" so much more valuable than freedom and respect for the rights of all men that we would dash the latter two on the rocks of our desire for the former? Are not those very rights and the freedom whence they spring the very reason for our concept of justice, thereby and perforce reducing justice as fully subordinate thereto? HERRO?

    We have raised "justice" as supreme, having suborned liberty and our rights to that which was created to serve them, replete with our weak-tea supplementations of "as we make the best efforts not to bring the innocent to harms". Those supplementations indicate that at the bottom of it all, we know that what we do in those cases is inexcusably evil. But we want what we want and will not allow righteousness to get in our way. NO SIR! By damn it, we WILL have justice! Rather, we will have the LIE and illusion of justice, for how can we be just on the balance when we who claim to be the arbiters of justice perpetrate such injustices against the innocent, however unintentionally?

    I defy anyone here or anywhere else to explain how this is acceptable. Lets see the proof of it. Demonstrate how this is an acceptable policy generating acceptable outcomes. I say it is pure tyranny; muck; shyte; falderal; evil.

    Methinks some folks need to think on this a bit more carefully than apparently they have to date.

    Just my plugged wooden nickel's worth.
    Last edited by osan; 10-14-2018 at 08:02 AM.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  19. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    I'm saying that somewhere between punishing everyone who might be guilty without caring to protect the innocent and punishing nobody for fear of ever accidentally punishing 1 innocent man out of 1,000,000 there is a correct balance point.
    Convicting innocent people involves aggression.

    Failing to convict guilty people causes aggression (by less effectively deterring criminals).

    The balance is then the point at which the total incidence of aggression (from wrongful convictions or crimes not deterred) is minimized.

    Exactly what kind of judicial system meets those criteria is a practical question.

    You'd want to research existing systems and compare the data.

  20. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    Convicting innocent people involves aggression.

    Failing to convict guilty people causes aggression (by less effectively deterring criminals).

    The balance is then the point at which the total incidence of aggression (from wrongful convictions or crimes not deterred) is minimized.

    Exactly what kind of judicial system meets those criteria is a practical question.

    You'd want to research existing systems and compare the data.
    So you are of the school of thought that feels there is some number of false convictions that is acceptable... the greater good and all that nonsense.

    Sad.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  21. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Once again I see the false dichotomy trap - if you're not falsely imprisoning innocents for the sake of making sure you get the guilty, then criminals will roam freely on the streets and there will be chaos.
    No, I said that you need to have a society that cares about innocence in order to properly police and punish the guilty

    I do not believe this would be the case in a world that had readjusted itself to proper responsibilities for one's own wellbeing. In such a world, those committing crimes are more likely to get their just deserts at the hands of "civilians" who choose to defend themselves against predation and other violations.

    Bear this in mind: the vast majority of crimes are committed by those who count on the ready cooperation of their victims. This directly leads one to correctly infer that most of these rubes are not of a stomach for a real fight. The net is rife with video examples of the "oh $#@!" moments of low-rent criminals when their chosen targets give even mild fight. Being so threatened themselves, the crooks flee. That is the vast and overwhelming proportion of such events and the people who perpetrate the crimes in question. If the good people cease their corrupted reliance on cops and other groups to bail them out when the poo hits the fan and start learning how to care for themselves, the rates of crime would plummet from those petty, up to and including murder. What would be left are those who would be criminals in any event because they are the hardcores who are willing to assume the risks, perhaps due to brain lesions or whatever other hardware or software stupidity that managed to take root.
    This is exceptionally short-sighted. Of course, individuals and communities should be allowed to deal with criminals when they so choose, but that can't be the totality of the criminal justice system. History is replete with riots, pogroms, lynchings, and other mob violence when the masses decide to right some perceived wrong. You can't put the task of punishing the guilty in the hands of random people who can be whipped into a frenzy. We've seen where that leads.

    Giving the ability to punish crime to a mob wouldn't keep people from being falsely punished. On the contrary, a mob has no standard of evidence, asks for no warrants and usually has little to no concern for guilt. Your "cure" worsens the disease.

    If we are to be serious about freedom, and I find that most that I encounter are not, then the sanctity of innocence must stand as a highest virtue for all men. The very thought of imprisoning a man who has committed no crime should fill one with the same revulsion as does the thought of a woman aborting her pregnancy in the eighth month or a child being brutally raped.

    I say tis better that every criminal escape the courts than so much as one innocent be caged without just cause. The criminal will get his eventually - that is a statistical certainty. The more crimes you commit, the greater the likelihood your wick is going to get snuffed.
    You seem to have a Rousseauian conception of freedom, where man is born free, but has it stripped from him by society everywhere he goes. I have the opposite conception. Liberty is a concept that evolved slowly in a specific context over millennia. It needs to be engineered and applied carefully. It has many prerequisites. One of those prerequisites is stability. A free society needs to pass the Civilization test, name, if you can walk around without being accosted by violent thugs. Order and liberty -- properly understood -- are sister virtues, not enemies.

    Now, as for the "Ooooo, but the criminals will get away..." nonsense, consider all the other crimes that some have committed prior to having been caught. The mindset in question, if taken to its reductio ad absurdum, would justify "pre-crime". After all, how unjust that criminals ever get away with so much as even a single crime! Let us take Ted Bundy as a prime example. Estimates of the number of women he murdered run as high as 300++, the believable number hovering around 100. Imagine that, one hundred lives taken without authority, yet he was punished for only a handful. Is that not unjust? How's about we go the Minority Report route? THAT'S THE TICKET!!!

    Not.
    It was just because that what could be proven in court and he was already given the death penalty.

    The world is often not a just place. Think "entropy"; the very best one can do in life is to break even where justice is concerned, not to mention that the best case is probably never realized at any time. We all get screwed in one way and degree or another at some point in our lives. Do we go on rampaging campaigns about it? Well, sometimes, but mostly we eat the losses and move on.
    I think we can do better than 50-50, but I mostly agree with this. It's all a tradeoff. You seem to be arguing against any sort of tradeoff, though.

    It is no different in the cases of real crime, and I reiterate my conviction that it is better that ever criminal escape the justice of the "state" than a single innocent man be held to pay for that which he has not committed. There are no "buts" or other exceptions to this.
    This is a standard that quickly lapses into absurdity. Let's say there was a functional, safe, relatively free civilization that was threatened by roving bands of criminals that the populace couldn't handle. Would it be better to watch this civilization descend into barbarism and chaos than to go after these criminals in a way that might punish an innocent person? You would let a society perish over this ideal?
    NeoReactionary. American High Tory.

    The counter-revolution will not be televised.



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  23. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    Failing to convict guilty people causes aggression (by less effectively deterring criminals).
    Bizarre notion of 'cause'...

  24. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by ThePaleoLibertarian View Post
    No, I said that you need to have a society that cares about innocence in order to properly police and punish the guilty
    And you also wrote:
    The balance is then the point at which the total incidence of aggression (from wrongful convictions or crimes not deterred) is minimized.

    The statement is clear. You believe it is acceptable to falsely imprison some people for the sake of getting the guilty. You subscribe to the typical weak-tea, feel-good supplementation "so long as false convictions are minimized", as if that makes things acceptable. I bet those who today rot in prison cells on false convictions, however few they may be, do not share your view. I'd love to see you face those people at less than arm's length and tell them to their faces how it's sad, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometimes. You might be lucky to walk away with all your teeth.

    Either what you wrote was an intentional lie, or you need to work on your sentence structure for semantics because the statement is quite clear in its meaning. I will assume you did not intend to lie.



    Then I wroted:

    I do not believe this would be the case in a world that had readjusted itself to proper responsibilities for one's own wellbeing. In such a world, those committing crimes are more likely to get their just deserts at the hands of "civilians" who choose to defend themselves against predation and other violations.

    Bear this in mind: the vast majority of crimes are committed by those who count on the ready cooperation of their victims. This directly leads one to correctly infer that most of these rubes are not of a stomach for a real fight. The net is rife with video examples of the "oh $#@!" moments of low-rent criminals when their chosen targets give even mild fight. Being so threatened themselves, the crooks flee. That is the vast and overwhelming proportion of such events and the people who perpetrate the crimes in question. If the good people cease their corrupted reliance on cops and other groups to bail them out when the poo hits the fan and start learning how to care for themselves, the rates of crime would plummet from those petty, up to and including murder. What would be left are those who would be criminals in any event because they are the hardcores who are willing to assume the risks, perhaps due to brain lesions or whatever other hardware or software stupidity that managed to take root.





    To which you responded:

    This is exceptionally short-sighted. Of course, individuals and communities should be allowed to deal with criminals when they so choose, but that can't be the totality of the criminal justice system. History is replete with riots, pogroms, lynchings, and other mob violence when the masses decide to right some perceived wrong. You can't put the task of punishing the guilty in the hands of random people who can be whipped into a frenzy. We've seen where that leads.

    Giving the ability to punish crime to a mob wouldn't keep people from being falsely punished. On the contrary, a mob has no standard of evidence, asks for no warrants and usually has little to no concern for guilt. Your "cure" worsens the disease.
    CAN'T be? Says who, exactly? In what unquestionable tome is it so written?

    You want something so badly, you are willing to sacrifice innocents for the sake of having it.

    FAIL^FAIL^FAIL - the dreaded FAIL-plex-plex... beyond all ultimate FAIL.

    It is reasonable to infer from what you have written thus far that you are a pragmatist, willing to turn his back on valid base principles for the sake of what you feel is the "greater good". It is precisely in that place where all the vast evils of the world have sprung. Your view on this leads inevitably to death, destruction, impoverishment, disease, and endless misery, all the while failing to see it because your base assumptions could not possibly be wrong. The world has operated on your assumptions for an age and then some. Consider the shape it's in. We have courts and they have meted out at least as much injustice as justice. Your faith in them is dangerously naive and very poorly considered.

    How about all those poor bastards who have gotten twenty and thirty year sentences for possession of a single joint? There's your price. And don't attempt to blame the legislators because at the end of the day it is the courts who ultimately enforce legislation. But who cares eh? Just so long as we get a handful of real bad guys.

    Sweet Jesus, man - broaden your vision a bit and try to see the larger picture.

    Then you further assume that justice is perforce handed to a "mob". More FAIL. It may happen in some cases... or not. There is nothing to suggest it would become systemic - not with a properly educated populace. Recall what either Franklin of Jefferson said about freedom and stupidity and bad attitudes being fundamentally incompatible. A nation in love with proper freedom doesn't devolve into mobs and when a mob forms and performs poorly, they are taken care of by the greater body of the people.

    Once again, you want something for nothing - you think you can have freedom and order with a population if immoral/amoral dumbasses with shyte attitudes. FAIL. A free people must be a moral people, willing to bear the fatigues of maintaining their liberties for not only themselves, but their fellows as well. Without critical mass, liberty dies, whether slowly or precipitously. That bit matters no whit.

    Then I scribbled:

    If we are to be serious about freedom, and I find that most that I encounter are not, then the sanctity of innocence must stand as a highest virtue for all men. The very thought of imprisoning a man who has committed no crime should fill one with the same revulsion as does the thought of a woman aborting her pregnancy in the eighth month or a child being brutally raped.

    I say tis better that every criminal escape the courts than so much as one innocent be caged without just cause. The criminal will get his eventually - that is a statistical certainty. The more crimes you commit, the greater the likelihood your wick is going to get snuffed.




    To which you reacted:

    You seem to have a Rousseauian conception of freedom, where man is born free, but has it stripped from him by society everywhere he goes. I have the opposite conception. Liberty is a concept that evolved slowly in a specific context over millennia. It needs to be engineered and applied carefully. It has many prerequisites. One of those prerequisites is stability. A free society needs to pass the Civilization test, name, if you can walk around without being accosted by violent thugs. Order and liberty -- properly understood -- are sister virtues, not enemies.
    Not that up on Rousseau.

    We ARE born as free beings. Demonstrate that we are not. The case is prima facie. Otherwise, your assertion is that one is born as chattel to another. Which other? By what authority? What valid moral standard justifies one man lording over another? Please demonstrate these.

    Liberty did NOT "evolve". $#@!'s sake man, get a grip on yourself. Men lived for many millennia in tribal units prior to some men becoming "civilized". If we assume that the walled city of Sumer was indeed our first jaunt into civilization, then prior to that men lived in small filial units, what we commonly call "tribes". Nineteenth century scholars studied the remaining tribal people very extensively and documented their studies well. Nearly all were anarchic. There were warlike tribes that were anarchic. There were a very few that were warlike tyrannies with a king who ruled by typical violence. All this is very much to be expected as part of the Gaussian for human characteristics. The big, fat middle of the curve was composed of comparatively peaceable anarchies where the social structure most often consisted of a chief (NOT a ruler, but a trusted leader), a shaman, and the rest of the commonly found distribution of hunters, gatherers, possibly warriors, housekeepers, and so forth. The chief remained as such only so long as the tribe accepted him as such. Anyone was free not to do as a chief recommended. Any chief commanding another usually lost his status forthwith. "Justice" was often settled between individuals, and sometimes by community action. Punishment was often exile from the group. There's more but this is the agoristic gist of things. The books are available to anyone for reading at university libraries. I'm sure some of it is available for free online as well.

    And once again you fall for the trap of the false dichotomy - if you don't have a "state" enforcing order, there will BE no order, but only chaos. Much-0 FAIL-0.

    Necessity is the mother of correction. People, generally, behave as idiots these days. Why? Because the diseased environment not only allows it, but encourages. Remove the disease and return people to their proper state and they would either wise up quickly, or be consumed in the flames of the initial trouble of the period of adjustment. I have absolutely NO problem with people being killed as the result of their intransigence toward intelligence. If you insist on living as an imbecile, then by all means do so. When your ass goes from frying pan to fire, I will toss a few more shovelfuls of coal on just to make sure you don't escape the consequences of your very poor choices. And just to be clear, I would expect the rest of the world to do the same in the event I also pooched in such stubbornly willful fashion.



    It was just because that what could be proven in court and he was already given the death penalty.
    It appears you missed the salient point.

    I think we can do better than 50-50, but I mostly agree with this. It's all a tradeoff. You seem to be arguing against any sort of tradeoff, though.
    No. I am arguing against a very SPECIFIC tradeoff that says it is acceptable to punish some innocents for the sake of the "greater good" of getting the bad guys. That is NEVER acceptable. To accept this is to accept the most deeply heinous form of felony ever. It is precisely the same as executing an abortion on a woman late in her third trimester: the destruction of INNOCENCE. Jesus man, how can anyone not see this?

    Let me put it this way: imagine you had before you 100 men, 99 of whom were guilty of abducting, raping, torturing, flaying small children alive and leaving the skinned victims to die in horrifying agony and shock and one of whom was a wholly innocent and good man. If you were given the choice of being able to send all those evil bastards to their justice, but only if you do so to all 100 men, or letting everyone go, how would you choose? You KNOW that letting the vermin go may result in more murders of small children.

    How would you choose and why?

    This is a standard that quickly lapses into absurdity. Let's say there was a functional, safe, relatively free civilization that was threatened by roving bands of criminals that the populace couldn't handle. Would it be better to watch this civilization descend into barbarism and chaos than to go after these criminals in a way that might punish an innocent person? You would let a society perish over this ideal?
    What is your proof of this lapse?

    "Relatively free"? One is either free, or is something else. There are NO degrees of freedom. There are only degrees of servitude. The imposition of ANY unwelcome obligation by one man upon another is tyranny, regardless of how innocuous, how insignificant, how "just" it may appear to naive or careless eyes. You CANNOT escape this simple fact: no man is born to lord over another and no man is born subservient to a lord. Try as you may with all the usual phony baloney justifications, you cannot validly get around that most simple truth. All the rest is pure bull$#@!.

    You are damned right I would allow a civilization to perish over the principle. Why? Because any people corrupt enough to descend into chaos merits destruction.

    The validity of ANY civilization turns on the quality and character of its people. "Civilization" is nothing in itself - a mere idea. PEOPLE make it real and if they are of so shabby a moral fabric, then yes, let them perish as a civilization. There are always those who will survive as individuals to rebuild. And if not, them's the breaks. There is nothing quite so special about humanity that it should be sacrosanct and thereby immune from evaporation if men choose to live as evil vermin. Each of us are faced with choices every second of every day as to what kind of men we shall be. We choose. We are responsible; accountable. If we fail to cut muster, then let us die for we are become unworthy of the gift of life.

    For me, freedom is far and away more important than justice. Justice is "nice to have", if and when it can be honestly and validly achieved. To destroy the innocent in pursuit of justice tells me people are unworthy of both freedom and justice, and worthy only of destruction, for their corruption has lapsed into deep evil.

    No sir, you will have to do a formal proof to demonstrate to me how the acceptance of one evil in exchange for justice is itself just. Good luck with that because I already know that it is not possible, having considered the basic underlying patterns which show me that dog don't hunt.
    Last edited by osan; 10-14-2018 at 09:22 AM.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  25. #51
    The poll rephrased, "Which is more important...justice or order?"
    All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
    -Albert Camus

  26. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by A Son of Liberty View Post
    Bizarre notion of 'cause'...
    How so?

  27. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    And you also wrote:
    The statement is clear. You believe it is acceptable to falsely imprison some people for the sake of getting the guilty. You subscribe to the typical weak-tea, feel-good supplementation "so long as false convictions are minimized", as if that makes things acceptable. I bet those who today rot in prison cells on false convictions, however few they may be, do not share your view. I'd love to see you face those people at less than arm's length and tell them to their faces how it's sad, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometimes. You might be lucky to walk away with all your teeth.

    Either what you wrote was an intentional lie, or you need to work on your sentence structure for semantics because the statement is quite clear in its meaning. I will assume you did not intend to lie.
    I did not write that. That was r3v. You either confused us or believe I'm his alt, which is not true.



    Then I wroted:
    To which you responded:



    CAN'T be? Says who, exactly? In what unquestionable tome is it so written?

    You want something so badly, you are willing to sacrifice innocents for the sake of having it.

    FAIL^FAIL^FAIL - the dreaded FAIL-plex-plex... beyond all ultimate FAIL.
    We know this because we can look at history. Which, again, is replete with mobs committing acts of violence against groups of people they consider to have done some sort of wrong. This mob inclination is eternal within humanity and institutions do not change human nature.


    [qupte]It is reasonable to infer from what you have written thus far that you are a pragmatist, willing to turn his back on valid base principles for the sake of what you feel is the "greater good".[/quote]
    Pragmatism is the wrong word. I just realize that when it comes to statecraft that all you have are tradeoffs. Perfection is not for this world.


    It is precisely in that place where all the vast evils of the world have sprung. Your view on this leads inevitably to death, destruction, impoverishment, disease, and endless misery, all the while failing to see it because your base assumptions could not possibly be wrong. The world has operated on your assumptions for an age and then some.
    I'm not sure what this even means. What do you think my assumptions are and how does the world run on them?

    Consider the shape it's in. We have courts and they have meted out at least as much injustice as justice. Your faith in them is dangerously naive and very poorly considered.
    Your ideal of mobs of easily angered people policing themselves has never lead to anything but savagery, but somehow I have to take the blame for the failings of the criminal justice system, while you only take credit for some amazing ideal where no innocent is hurt and everyone takes care of criminals themselves. Nice standard you have there.

    How about all those poor bastards who have gotten twenty and thirty year sentences for possession of a single joint? There's your price. And don't attempt to blame the legislators because at the end of the day it is the courts who ultimately enforce legislation. But who cares eh? Just so long as we get a handful of real bad guys.

    Sweet Jesus, man - broaden your vision a bit and try to see the larger picture.
    You have this feminine dramatic streak in your posts, but of course, I have never argued for the drug war or endorsed our current justice system, Not remotely. Any justice system I designed would not look anything like what we have today.

    Then you further assume that justice is perforce handed to a "mob". More FAIL. It may happen in some cases... or not. There is nothing to suggest it would become systemic - not with a properly educated populace. Recall what either Franklin of Jefferson said about freedom and stupidity and bad attitudes being fundamentally incompatible. A nation in love with proper freedom doesn't devolve into mobs and when a mob forms and performs poorly, they are taken care of by the greater body of the people.
    Ah yes, and there it is. The quasi-Marxism of utopian libertarians. What suggests it will become systemic is the history of humanity and just how willing people are to join mobs when they feel there's some sort of threat - whether there actually is or not. Let me make this clear; a system does not change human nature. And the mob inclination is part of human nature, a part that needs to be guarded against. It has fed the worst brutalities in human history and you do not -- under any circumstances -- give a baying mob power with no check.


    Once again, you want something for nothing - you think you can have freedom and order with a population if immoral/amoral dumbasses with shyte attitudes. FAIL. A free people must be a moral people, willing to bear the fatigues of maintaining their liberties for not only themselves, but their fellows as well. Without critical mass, liberty dies, whether slowly or precipitously. That bit matters no whit.
    Yes, immoral people will always exist and stupid people are the majority. If liberty can't weather that fact then it can't exist at all.






    Not that up on Rousseau.

    We ARE born as free beings. Demonstrate that we are not. The case is prima facie. Otherwise, your assertion is that one is born as chattel to another. Which other? By what authority? What valid moral standard justifies one man lording over another? Please demonstrate these.

    Liberty did NOT "evolve". $#@!'s sake man, get a grip on yourself. Men lived for many millennia in tribal units prior to some men becoming "civilized". If we assume that the walled city of Sumer was indeed our first jaunt into civilization, then prior to that men lived in small filial units, what we commonly call "tribes". Nineteenth century scholars studied the remaining tribal people very extensively and documented their studies well. Nearly all were anarchic. There were warlike tribes that were anarchic. There were a very few that were warlike tyrannies with a king who ruled by typical violence. All this is very much to be expected as part of the Gaussian for human characteristics. The big, fat middle of the curve was composed of comparatively peaceable anarchies where the social structure most often consisted of a chief (NOT a ruler, but a trusted leader), a shaman, and the rest of the commonly found distribution of hunters, gatherers, possibly warriors, housekeepers, and so forth. The chief remained as such only so long as the tribe accepted him as such. Anyone was free not to do as a chief recommended. Any chief commanding another usually lost his status forthwith. "Justice" was often settled between individuals, and sometimes by community action. Punishment was often exile from the group. There's more but this is the agoristic gist of things. The books are available to anyone for reading at university libraries. I'm sure some of it is available for free online as well.
    Yes, exactly like Rousseau, including his childlike belief that the State of Nature is some uncorrupted bastion of morality and freedom. There's been lots of anthropological research on tribal warfare, from Africa to the Amazon, and it was extremely bloody. Estimates from the Amazon for example, are that upwards of a quarter of all deaths were from tribal warfare, before European contact.

    And once again you fall for the trap of the false dichotomy - if you don't have a "state" enforcing order, there will BE no order, but only chaos. Much-0 FAIL-0.

    Necessity is the mother of correction. People, generally, behave as idiots these days. Why? Because the diseased environment not only allows it, but encourages. Remove the disease and return people to their proper state and they would either wise up quickly, or be consumed in the flames of the initial trouble of the period of adjustment. I have absolutely NO problem with people being killed as the result of their intransigence toward intelligence. If you insist on living as an imbecile, then by all means do so. When your ass goes from frying pan to fire, I will toss a few more shovelfuls of coal on just to make sure you don't escape the consequences of your very poor choices. And just to be clear, I would expect the rest of the world to do the same in the event I also pooched in such stubbornly willful fashion.
    People have always been stupid, but we used to have social norms and institutions that guided us away from these behaviors. We also used to have the good sense not to subsidize it. Stop subsidizing degenerate behavior and a whole lot of it will clear up on its own.


    No. I am arguing against a very SPECIFIC tradeoff that says it is acceptable to punish some innocents for the sake of the "greater good" of getting the bad guys. That is NEVER acceptable. To accept this is to accept the most deeply heinous form of felony ever. It is precisely the same as executing an abortion on a woman late in her third trimester: the destruction of INNOCENCE. Jesus man, how can anyone not see this?

    Let me put it this way: imagine you had before you 100 men, 99 of whom were guilty of abducting, raping, torturing, flaying small children alive and leaving the skinned victims to die in horrifying agony and shock and one of whom was a wholly innocent and good man. If you were given the choice of being able to send all those evil bastards to their justice, but only if you do so to all 100 men, or letting everyone go, how would you choose? You KNOW that letting the vermin go may result in more murders of small children.

    How would you choose and why?
    I'm not entirely sure how I would decide, and I may very well let them go. But, neither choice is a remotely optimal way to deal with criminals. A just system would:

    A) In as rigorous a way as possible, try to determine who among the 100 men was actually guilty
    B) Figure out whether the burden of proof has been met to punish the perpetrators even if they are guilty.

    You need strong and capable institutions to do such things. And to be clear, I am not saying that the modern US court system are strong or capable. Most of what it breeds these days is anarcho-tyranny.


    What is your proof of this lapse?
    The lapse is that you're willing to let a functional and free society be taken and destroyed by roving barbarians because you are fundamentally unwilling to have an institutional response to crimes against person or property, just because it might hurt an innocent.

    "Relatively free"? One is either free, or is something else. There are NO degrees of freedom. There are only degrees of servitude. The imposition of ANY unwelcome obligation by one man upon another is tyranny, regardless of how innocuous, how insignificant, how "just" it may appear to naive or careless eyes. You CANNOT escape this simple fact: no man is born to lord over another and no man is born subservient to a lord. Try as you may with all the usual phony baloney justifications, you cannot validly get around that most simple truth. All the rest is pure bull$#@!.
    This is ridiculous. Switzerland is relatively free compared to North Korea. In fact, it's exactly backward; freedom only exists on a spectrum. Nothing can ever be compared favorably to some ideal you have in your head. You have to compare systems to history and to contemporaries, not fanciful utopias that exist only in your mind.

    You are damned right I would allow a civilization to perish over the principle. Why? Because any people corrupt enough to descend into chaos merits destruction.
    All people are corrupt enough to descend into chaos. Civilizational entropy applies to all systems, everywhere, for all time. History comes in cycles and eventually, the greatest societies fade. What you can do is build institutions strong enough to slow the process down, with statecraft advanced enough to optimize human flourishing.


    The validity of ANY civilization turns on the quality and character of its people. "Civilization" is nothing in itself - a mere idea. PEOPLE make it real and if they are of so shabby a moral fabric, then yes, let them perish as a civilization. There are always those who will survive as individuals to rebuild. And if not, them's the breaks. There is nothing quite so special about humanity that it should be sacrosanct and thereby immune from evaporation if men choose to live as evil vermin. Each of us are faced with choices every second of every day as to what kind of men we shall be. We choose. We are responsible; accountable. If we fail to cut muster, then let us die for we are become unworthy of the gift of life.
    But I wasn't talking about civilization falling due to its own turpitude, but outsiders coming in and brutalizing a functional society to the point of destruction, or at least extreme degradation.

    For me, freedom is far and away more important than justice. Justice is "nice to have", if and when it can be honestly and validly achieved. To destroy the innocent in pursuit of justice tells me people are unworthy of both freedom and justice, and worthy only of destruction, for their corruption has lapsed into deep evil.

    No sir, you will have to do a formal proof to demonstrate to me how the acceptance of one evil in exchange for justice is itself just. Good luck with that because I already know that it is not possible, having considered the basic underlying patterns which show me that dog don't hunt.
    To have liberty without order or justice is just the rule of the mob. They are sisters, not enemy combatants. A free society not only should have both, it needs to. Modern America lacks liberty, order and justice in seemingly equal measure.
    NeoReactionary. American High Tory.

    The counter-revolution will not be televised.

  28. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by ThePaleoLibertarian View Post
    I did not write that. That was r3v. You either confused us or believe I'm his alt, which is not true.
    You are correct - my apologies. My eyes pooched.


    We know this because we can look at history. Which, again, is replete with mobs committing acts of violence against groups of people they consider to have done some sort of wrong. This mob inclination is eternal within humanity and institutions do not change human nature.
    And precisely because it is "eternal within humanity", you will never eliminate it, at least as things now stand. I will also point out that in the grander scheme of human history, such occurrences do not appear to have been any more frequent than what we find today, which should be instructive.

    Central control is always injurious of individual rights. That too, is eternal within humanity. At least when non-government injures you, you are left with some recourse short of lighting off a civil war. That is virtually never the case with "government", which is the biggest, meanest, most heartlessly corrupt of all mobs. Seriously pal, which would you prefer, a huge "government" mob or smaller local ones that may be "corrected" far more readily?


    It is reasonable to infer from what you have written thus far that you are a pragmatist, willing to turn his back on valid base principles for the sake of what you feel is the "greater good".
    Pragmatism is the wrong word. I just realize that when it comes to statecraft that all you have are tradeoffs. Perfection is not for this world.
    That's the age old excuse to justify tolerance of the intolerable. "Trade off" is a vile term where the fundamentals of human liberty are concerned. One does not compromise on basic rights. To do so is to effectively quitclaim those rights. No thanks.


    I'm not sure what this even means. What do you think my assumptions are and how does the world run on them?
    Not relevant since I accidentally misquoted you.

    Your ideal of mobs of easily angered people policing themselves has never lead to anything but savagery, but somehow I have to take the blame for the failings of the criminal justice system, while you only take credit for some amazing ideal where no innocent is hurt and everyone takes care of criminals themselves. Nice standard you have there.
    Nowhere have I stated or even vaguely implied that no innocents are injured. That's how the world goes much of the time. That a "state", which cannot be perforce held accountable for its actions, causes such harm with impunity - THAT is a penultimate evil. Consider all those men who have been sprung from death row due to DNA evidence, in some cases decades after having been falsely convicted. There are now several hundreds of them.

    You have this feminine dramatic streak in your posts,
    Some odd attempt at insult? I don't get it. There's no drama in what I wrote. You either believe the reality is travesty intolerable, or you don't

    Ah yes, and there it is. The quasi-Marxism of utopian libertarians.
    I cannot tell whether you're serious because this is just silly. You are reading my words through your bias and prejudice. That's fine, even if very deeply mistaken.

    What suggests it will become systemic is the history of humanity and just how willing people are to join mobs when they feel there's some sort of threat - whether there actually is or not. Let me make this clear; a system does not change human nature. And the mob inclination is part of human nature, a part that needs to be guarded against. It has fed the worst brutalities in human history and you do not -- under any circumstances -- give a baying mob power with no check.
    And yet you appear to argue in favor of the biggest, most vicious mob of all: "the state".


    Yes, immoral people will always exist and stupid people are the majority. If liberty can't weather that fact then it can't exist at all.

    And the more the "state" is left to command, the more stupid the people become. It is to the tyrant's advantage to lord over a population of corrupt dullards.



    Yes, exactly like Rousseau, including his childlike belief that the State of Nature is some uncorrupted bastion of morality and freedom. There's been lots of anthropological research on tribal warfare, from Africa to the Amazon, and it was extremely bloody. Estimates from the Amazon for example, are that upwards of a quarter of all deaths were from tribal warfare, before European contact.
    You extrapolate incorrectly. I have no illusions about nature, but I accept its occasional brutalities as part and parcel of living in a state of freedom. I have no problem with properly formulated guidelines and rules. I have lots of problems with tyranny.

    You yourself wrote that mobs tend to be wild. So then upon what basis do you invest your support for "government"? Once again, they are the biggest and most fully evil of all mobs, yet you appear to advocate for them over smaller, more readily treatable ones. Care to explain this?

    People have always been stupid, but we used to have social norms and institutions that guided us away from these behaviors. We also used to have the good sense not to subsidize it. Stop subsidizing degenerate behavior and a whole lot of it will clear up on its own.
    We fully agree.

    I'm not entirely sure how I would decide, and I may very well let them go. But, neither choice is a remotely optimal way to deal with criminals.
    But letting the criminals loose for the sake of the innocent is the RIGHT way. Otherwise, you are no better than those you presume to convict and punish.

    A just system would:

    A) In as rigorous a way as possible, try to determine who among the 100 men was actually guilty
    B) Figure out whether the burden of proof has been met to punish the perpetrators even if they are guilty.


    "Rigorous as possible..."
    Weasel words, my pal, that once again suggests to me that you are willing to put a few innocents to the sword for the sake of "justice". Doing so is the greatest injustice of all.
    You need strong and capable institutions to do such things. And to be clear, I am not saying that the modern US court system are strong or capable. Most of what it breeds these days is anarcho-tyranny.
    "Institutions"... OOF... that word can be pretty frightening. It so very often maps closely with your dreaded "mob".

    The lapse is that you're willing to let a functional and free society be taken and destroyed by roving barbarians because you are fundamentally unwilling to have an institutional response to crimes against person or property, just because it might hurt an innocent.
    They routinely DO hurt innocents. Or are you of the opinion that this is a rarity?


    This is ridiculous. Switzerland is relatively free compared to North Korea. In fact, it's exactly backward; freedom only exists on a spectrum. Nothing can ever be compared favorably to some ideal you have in your head. You have to compare systems to history and to contemporaries, not fanciful utopias that exist only in your mind.
    You and I operate from VERY differing fundamental assumptions. I see freedom as all or nothing. So long as you are controlled by another, LORDED OVER BY THEM, no matter how slightly, you are a SUBJECT by definition because in some manner and degree you ARE subject to their will. It matters no whit to what degree it is true. If you cannot light a spliff on the courthouse steps without fear of imprisonment, then you are perforce a slave, however generously leashed in all other ways - you are still on a leash. It seems that this does not bother you much - certainly not enough to so much as speak out against it, much less to act in defense of freedom and the rights that issue therefrom.

    All people are corrupt enough to descend into chaos. Civilizational entropy applies to all systems, everywhere, for all time. History comes in cycles and eventually, the greatest societies fade. What you can do is build institutions strong enough to slow the process down, with statecraft advanced enough to optimize human flourishing.
    We once again find ourselves in agreement. But what has this to do with punishing the innocent for the sake of the questionable notion of "justice"?

    But I wasn't talking about civilization falling due to its own turpitude, but outsiders coming in and brutalizing a functional society to the point of destruction, or at least extreme degradation.
    And how, pray thee tell, is that likely when as you put it the society is "functional"? Perhaps we also define that sort of society differently, but for me it is peopled by smart humans who comport themselves with proper attitudes toward all the fundamentals. They are, as a result of those proper attitudes, heavily armed and well-trained in their use. They represent a very risky proposition to those who might otherwise deem to pluck that rose.

    Your vision appears to me to be very one-sided and that you have not paid proper attention to my qualifiers. I wrote of people with smarts and correct attitudes in critical quantities. I went through some effort to point out that corrupt nitwits do not a free people make. Smart, clued-in, respectful, intolerant, well-armed and willing people are what's needed to have a free land. Anything less will indeed devolve as your hand-wringing suggests and I have basically acknowledged that.

    And once again I repeat: Yes, I would allow an entire civilization to be destroyed from within if the people there are so corrupted that they will not pursue a course of proper human relations. Such people merit no consideration so far as I am concerned. I like mine smart, tough, and respectful of themselves and their fellows. But that's just me.

    To have liberty without order or justice is just the rule of the mob.
    You cannot, by definition, have liberty without order. The one requires the other. Mob rule cannot be liberty.

    QED.


    They are sisters, not enemy combatants. A free society not only should have both, it needs to. Modern America lacks liberty, order and justice in seemingly equal measure.

    Agree on points liberty and justice, but must disagree about order. We have plenty of order. Soviets had order. Red Chinese have order by the $#@!-ton. Khmet Rouge had order. NAZIs had über-order - sieg HEIL! <goosestep!> <goosestep!> <goosestep!>, as did the Romans, Greeks, and so forth down the dreary list of human tyrannies. Order is also difficult to define here and so I say that as stated requirement the term is really of nearly zero utility. But I will say that a properly free land gives rise to a proper order as a natural byproduct. That doesn't mean there is no crime because... well, people. But I'd bet money I do not have that it would be far better than that which we have now.

    Freedom is the best preventative for corruption and tyranny.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

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