One of the things that surprise me about people and politics is how little time they spend thinking about an issue. Actually thinking. Like you would think of a work problem, let’s say. Not that many people think about work problems, too many incompetents for that. But many a time I had a debate with someone on an issue, and a week later, when I asked again about it I got blank stare. They did not spend one more minute dwelling on it, thinking. I did, because I wanted to clear it in my head.
So that being said, it reminded me of some of the things that gave me thought when I started really thinking about politics. I wanted to see the general opinion of the Glibertariat about a couple of issues. Both times I started out pretty sure of myself, but actually thinking about it got me to at least be less certain. This is what made me realize that I actually have to think about these things seriously before forming an opinion, and changed the way I view issues of politics, economics etc. In this particular case both are issues of justice.
One of them can be tied to the whole common law versus roman or codified law debate. How much of law should be codified, what is the relationship between The Law as a philosophical concept and legislation, how strict or flexible should a piece of legislation be and how much leeway should courts have. How many laws should there exist codified, on the book? And how strict can these laws be?
How much can you trust a pure common law? Misbehavior by judges happens. How much can you trust a strict codified system? Misbehavior by politicians is just as often at least, and there can be a difference between theory and actual cases. See mandatory minimums.
One of the things about laws is that the need to be to a certain point clear and predictable. You must be able to expect an outcome, so you can behave appropriately. This makes it difficult to have no codified laws and leave everything up to courts – whatever these may be. In customary law, of course locals know the local custom, but laws can be more than custom of the particular area.
Strict laws can be inflexible but flexible laws unpredictable. Laws can start strict and become lax with exceptions and loopholes; this makes the system poorly performing, excessively complex and unfair, as exceptions tend to favor interest groups. My general idea is if a law requires an exception, it is badly made and it should not exist until crafted not to contain one.
My original position was that circumstances vary and as such laws should be flexible. This is countered by the notion that the law should be predictable and not too much subjected to the whims of judges. My conclusion at the time was that laws on the books should be simple, clear and few – only the absolutely essential ones. Only make them about absolutely necessary things. Keep them manageable and knowable. You can’t expect people to respect laws they do not understand. Not knowing the law is not an excuse is bullshit given the complex law code we have.
Where the courts come in is in having some flexibility on punishment – deciding guilt (was it murder or self defense? did the accused do it?), fault, mens rea and circumstances and the like. And covering conflicts that are not covered by codified law, but these should be less critical situations.
A second dilemma was about corrective, preventive, retributive justice. What is the goal? Rehabilitate the criminals? Discourage others? Punish the crime, irrespective of the first two? Or a combination of all three?
Originally I was completely against the idea of retributive justice, for several reasons. I thought that the main goal of justice would be to minimize crime and number of people in jail. Help criminals reintegrate in society. Retributive justice felt a little too much like revenge and prone to cruel and unusual punishment, and I did not believe it to be good to have the government in the revenge business.
Doubt crept into my mind when I read a defense of retributive justice by C S Lewis. The idea was that just justice is somewhat akin to “let the punishment fit the crime”. You did something wrong, you pay the price for what you did and that is it. You do not depend on judgments whether you are rehabilitated enough, or whether your punishing is enough to deter others sufficiently. The argument was that thinking mainly at prevention or rehabilitation moves the punishment from what is just to what the Government decides is useful for the previous stated goals.
The idea of retributive justice still makes me uncomfortable, but I cannot say it does not at least have a point. And I still mostly lean towards prevention, rehabilitation. As, while the punishment fits the crime sounds good and all, how do you determine an accurate punishment for a crime? Why 5 years in jail and not 3? Why a 500 dollar fine and not a 1000 dollar fine? What is fair?
Also worth noting is the point he’d made earlier about employees being replaced by automation if they get too expensive to employ. This is a very valid point that most minimum wage workers and people who advocate for them don’t seem to understand. Again, people own businesses to make themselves money. If they can’t make enough money, something’s got to give. And when there’s no more non-employee overhead to cut, they need to start cutting people. As a general rule of thumb, it costs about twice an employee’s gross pay to employ them (given employer shares of FICA, certain states’ income tax, worker’s comp, benefits, etc.)… so that $10k/yr employee actually costs the business owner around $20k. I’d imagine Obamacare penalties and/or post-obamacare insurance premiums have upped that 2:1 ratio. So if it costs less than $20k/yr to set up an automated ordering kiosk and a burger flipping robot, guess what a business owner is going to do?
In this country, like most countries in the world, we have a fiat currency; that is, a currency whose value is not linked to a commodity (like gold, silver, or salt), but is based on the trust that the country issuing the currency can pay its bills. By its nature, fiat currencies are subject to almost constant inflation through devaluation of the currency. Especially when the country in question is engaging in… let’s say non-optimal monetary and economic practices. In our case, budget deficits, a high national debt, and things like quantitative easing. It’s part of the reason everyone’s parents have stories of “I remember when gas was $0.35!” (for my generation’s parents) or “I remember when gas was $0.98!” (the story I get to tell if/when I have kids and they’re old enough to be regaled with tales of ‘the good old days’). Another factor in inflation is artificially raising wages– you’ve arbitrarily decided that the dollar is worth less than it is, so people need more of them. And by deciding that one segment of the population needs more, less valuable dollars, everyone else needs to have and spend more, less valuable dollars to keep up with the sudden devaluation of a dollar for a certain segment of the population.
