The Problem of Evil

[Thesemindz]

Reposted from www.ownyourfreedom.blogspot.com for explanatory purposes. Originally written November 8, 2008 by Rob Sandwell.



The Problem of Evil part I


Evil. It is pervasive. It has always existed. It has been a part of human existence since our very beginning. Regardless of your religious or spiritual belief system, or lack thereof, there are some generally agreed upon evils which good men and women fear. Rape. Assault. Murder. Theft. Fraud. Arson. What is this fear rooted in? How does government address the very real danger of evil men? How could a society without government address it? This discussion may at times become dark and challenging, but it is one we must have.

What is it about these crimes which makes them so fearful to us. I propose that it is the theft of the only thing which is ours by natural right. Our lives. We must gain through labor every other thing in our world. But our lives, our bodies, our manifest energies are ours from birth. They are given to us, free of charge, and all the days which follow from that are ours to create.

Certainly, they are not completely free. Our mothers must ingest a huge amount of energy in order for their bodies to create the tissue necessary for us to come into being. Our parents spend an enormous amount of their resources educating us, feeding and clothing us, sheltering and protecting us. But the body itself, it is ours. And every breath and every day we have to cherish as our first, and most true possession.

And when someone commits evil against us, they attempt to take that singular possession away from us. Either through tortuous action, such as rape, through deprivation of our future potential, in murder, or through confiscation of the physical embodiment of our energies, in property crimes. We must learn to understand the root of our fear, and why it is so wrong for these evils to be committed against us, if we are to truly understand how best to defend against them, and how to make ourselves whole once we have suffered them.

Humans fear their mortality. Much of human history has been an effort either to defeat death, or to be remembered after we die. Artists have filled museums, legions have conquered foreign lands, and statues have been erected in the honor of great men, all in an effort not to be forgotten after they were gone. It is the subject of every major religion, and has been addressed by poets, authors, and scientists throughout time. Some scientists believe that in the future we will be able to achieve some kind of immortality, but for now, many people live in fear of losing their life.

It is precisely that fear which drives this challenge to a stateless society. Without the state to protect me, what will keep evil men from taking either my life itself, or the symbolic representations of it? It is this fear that prevents fair, intelligent, open minded individuals from rationally considering and discussing any alternative to the state law enforcement apparatus as a viable means of protection and justice system. Passion rules reason, and so, they find themselves trapped by their fears. I will seek to address some of those fears, and show how a stateless society could not only prevent evil more effectively, but also address it more justly after it has occurred.

In my response to the bigger gun challenge, I laid out a case for the inability of the government to deter crimes before they are committed, protect you from crimes while they are being committed, or adequately resolve crimes after they have been committed. I have repeatedly pointed out that your self defense is your responsibility, and only yours, always. I know it may seem I belabor the point, but it is important to do so, because many people have chosen to abdicate that responsibility in the mistaken belief that others will take up the mantle for them. It simply will not happen.

No one else can ever be as concerned with your well being as you can. No one else is as personally invested, and everyone else has their own well being to address first. Even if you decide not to act in your own defensive self interest, that doesn't alleviate you of the responsibility to do so, or make it any one else's obligation. Even if you actively hire bodyguards and security personnel to protect you, it is still your responsibility to make yourself safe. Relying on any other force, private or public, to act in your defense, even if they are contractually obligated to do so, while refusing to act in your own defense is folly. You must rely on yourself.

So the first and most important thing that people living in any society, stateless or otherwise, must do is prepare for their own defense. This doesn't mean that everyone has to be a gun toting martial artist, although I strongly advocate both firearms ownership and self defense training. Instead it means that you must make decisions in your life which limit the dangerous situations you put yourself in, understand fully how your decisions impact your safety, and maximize your chances of surviving danger when you encounter it.

Everyone has the right to engage in dangerous behavior. If you wish to walk around a dangerous part of town with large quantities of money while drunk, you certainly have that right. And just because you are engaging in dangerous behavior doesn't give anyone the right to victimize you. At the same time, when they do, you must accept the fact that you have put yourself into a situation which increases your chances of being victimized. It never excuses evil when innocent people make themselves easy targets, but making yourself a hard target can go along way towards limiting your encounters with evil men.

But sometimes evil things happen. Evil people break into homes where no one is doing anything to make themselves a target. Sometimes, even when a person is doing everything right, they can still become the victim of evil. So how would a stateless society address these instances of truly, unmitigated, random violence?

First, we must classify crimes as crimes of forethought and crimes of passion. Deliberate evil action requires planning, motive, opportunity, and means. Crimes of passion occur generally without prior preparation and are the result of a person improperly responding to stimulus they are unprepared for. Crimes of forethought are the result of evil, while crimes of passion are generally the result of an inability to cope.

Many of the crimes which occur are the result of government prohibition. Without government, there are no more vice laws. This means that all non-violent vice crimes evaporate immediately. Additionally, because the extremely high profits of vice crime are the result of prohibition, and these high profits fund a large number of related criminal activity, much related crime evaporates as well.

Take for example a drug dealer. He is able to sell his product with an extremely high profit margin because of the difficulty the customer has in acquiring it. Under the current system he is forced to resolve all business disputes extra-legally, because he is prohibited from appealing to the state law enforcement apparatus. Often, this results in violent action.

Under a stateless society, he is able to sell his product legally, which means others are too. Remember, in free market capitalism the goal isn't to make as much profit as possible, it is to make as little profit as possible, and make your fortune by increasing your volume. If you have too high a profit, then your competitors will undercut your prices and put you out of business. So now he's competing for customers with the general store and the pharmacy. Now when he has a business dispute, he is able to hire a private arbitrator to resolve the dispute. He needn't resort to violence, and if he does, his customers and competitors can pursue legal action against him, which they are unable to do under the rule of the state. Suddenly the cost of criminal activity surpasses the cost of honest business, and with his legally acquired profits, he can no longer afford to fund criminal behavior.

Many other crimes occur as the result of our depressed currency. When people are unable to afford basic services, they may turn to crime in desperation. It doesn't excuse their decision, but it is important to understand the factors which may motivate people to steal. Without government, their currency would have more value, and 70% or more of it wouldn't be going back to the government. Now affording basic services is no longer the burden it was before, and people are less likely to resort to theft when a few hours of work could produce better results, without the risk of legal repercussions.

But property and vice crimes aren't really what concern people. Rape, assault, and murder are what concern people.

So what factors contribute to rape, assault, and murder?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

 

[Thesemindz]

Originally written November 9, 2008 by Rob Sandwell.



The Problem of Evil part II


The first and most important thing to remember is that violent crime is far less common than many people fear. I've already shown in the bigger gun argument that the odds of being a victim of a violent crime are less than half of one percent. What many people don't know is that only 3% of all crime results in injury. Violent crime is not the constant bogeyman that many people imagine, but it does occur, and we must try to understand why, if we wish to understand how to prevent it.

There is no single explanation for rape, assault, and murder. Any specific instance could have one factor or many, and there is no single theory for why these crimes are committed. Some common theories are anger, fear, and sadism.

Crimes committed as a result of deep rooted anger tend to be explosive and compulsive in nature. They may be brutal and violent, and may occur sporadically. Such a criminal may lash out, choosing his victim seemingly at random, and then behave for some time thereafter. But eventually he will lash out again when his anger reaches its boiling point.

Crimes committed as a manifestation of fear are the result of feelings of inadequacy on the part of the perpetrator. He or she feels weak and incapable of making themselves important or noticed. In these cases, the goal of the attack is to feel power over the victim. Often the criminal will only use enough violence to control the victim, and will demand that the victim validate them emotionally. Since this is inevitably a fiction unsatisfying, the criminal will offend again and again, thinking that their next victim will make them complete, often resulting in habitual behavior.

The final motivation is sadism. This criminal has so focused on their own aggression and violent tendencies that they have become sexualized. This criminal derives pleasure from the suffering of their victims and will often spend a significant amount of time planning the assault, which may become bizarre or ritualized. They will often attempt to extend the suffering of their victims so that they can take pleasure in their continued anguish, often culminating in the death of their victim.

All three of these motivations are the result of psychopathic behavior. Psychopathic behavior is the result of the interaction between genetic predisposition and environmental factors. While some genetic markers for psychopathic behavior will inevitably be passed from generation to generation, environmental factors, such as parental neglect, poverty, and a poor education can all be addressed by society, even in the absence of the state, thereby reducing incidences of psychopathy and by extension, violent crime.

A 1993 study found that nearly half of adult Americans are functionally illiterate. Another study by the Justice Department found that one fifth of high school graduates can't read their own diplomas. And while statistics show that slightly more than half of the of inmates in state prisons have a high school degree or its equivalent, only approximately 11% have any college education. And when a high school degree doesn't necessarily equate with literacy, it isn't exactly a sign of a good education.

A study performed by the Rand Corporation in 1996 showed that incentives to complete a high school education were among the most effective strategies to reduce crime rates, more than three times as successful as draconian “three strikes” laws. Even early education at the preschool level has proven effects on reducing adult and juvenile crime. In the Department of Justice's “Blueprints for Violence Prevention” they found significant evidence that training parents on proper parenting techniques, and encouraging the education of young people were important factors in preventing criminal behavior later in life.

But the government schools don't do a good job of either educating the young, or encouraging continued education. Studies have shown that private schools have almost twice the graduation rate as public schools when comparing students of similar income levels in the same area. Other studies have found that,

In the majority of cases, private schools are more effective than government schools, and more efficient as well given their lower expenditures. Academic achievement is usually significantly higher in private schools, holding student characteristics constant, and these gains are most often robust to controls for peer group effects when these are included. The earnings of private school graduates may be significantly higher as well, though the weight of evidence on this point is more limited.

Privately-managed schools tend to have better-maintained facilities and more orderly classrooms than government schools. This is true whether the private schools are government subsidized or not, but the difference appears to be largest between unsubsidized private schools and government schools.​

The evidence is overwhelming that privatization of the schools leads to better education and higher rates of graduation. Since we have shown that education is a key element in reducing adult crime, it is clear that once again, the private sector is better equipped to address this issue.

I have addressed in previous posts how poverty would be drastically reduced in a stateless society by virtue of the increased value of currency and the removal of the drain of government taxation. We have now also seen how the state fails to properly educate its citizens, and how the private sector does a much better job. The final important factor is proper parenting.

Mistreatment of children doubles the chances of those children committing crime later in life. Additionally, approximately 20% of abused children grow up to become abusers themselves, leading to a repeating cycle of abuse, crime, and victimization. Helping parents to learn proper parenting techniques can reduce child neglect and juvenile crime by 50 to 60%. In Britain, the courts have begun ordering parents of delinquent children to attend parenting classes in order to reduce juvenile crime. The British government has done studies on crime prevention which they say have shown that parental education is “the most cost effective way to reduce crime.”

Many different organizations offer parenting education. A simple google search for “parenting classes” returns over one million results. Hospitals, churches, online courses, people have a wealth of resources to assist them in becoming better parents. Parents who fail to educate themselves can not blame a lack of opportunities. Instead, those most in need of education are the ones most likely to resist assistance.

So how could a stateless society encourage those parents most in need of education, and most likely to raise future offenders, to improve their parenting? One way would be through social censure. In a society owned entirely by free people, those who mistreat their children could face denial of basic services. Parents known to be guilty of neglect could face higher insurance premiums unless they enrolled in and completed education courses designed to reduce their high risk behavior. Since there is a proven connection between poor parenting and criminal behavior, all of society would have a vested personal interest in offering and promoting continuing education for all parents, not just those with a demonstrated history of neglect.

Having shown how a stateless society could holistically address crime prevention, we must finally address how it would handle those unavoidable instances of criminal behavior which would on occasion occur. How could a society, lacking the massive law enforcement apparatus of the state, protect the good from the bad and remove the true monsters from amongst the innocent?

How could it make you safe?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

 

[Thesemindz]

Originally written November 10, 2008 by Rob Sandwell.




The Problem of Evil part III


David D. Friedman wrote a poem called “Anarchy is not Chaos,” the final verse of which reads,

Now law and order, on the other hand
The state provides us for the public good;
That's why there's instant justice on demand
And safety in every neighborhood.​

Even removed from its context, the absurdity of this verse is obvious to every person living in this country now. A study done in 1999 by the Hearst Corporation showed that,

81% agree that politics influences court decisions; 56% feel that most juries are not representative of the community; 68% do not agree that it is affordable to bring a case to court and 87% feel that having a lawyer contributes a lot to the cost of going to court; only 10% felt that courts in their communities handled cases in an excellent manner with 20% feeling that criminal and family cases are handled in a poor manner and 30% feeling that juvenile cases are handled in a poor manner; and 44% felt that judges were out of touch with what was going on in their community.​

Obviously, citizens of this great nation feel little faith in the system of justice they are presented with now. They feel that the system of “blind” justice which we are currently being afforded by our leaders is politically corrupt, out of touch, and ineffective. Under a stateless society, justice would be purchased on the open market, just like anything else. Systems of justice which were viewed as corrupt and ineffective would soon find themselves out of business. Judges whose decisions were seen by the public as unfair or innapropriate would no longer be hired to arbitrate. There are already examples of this kind of justice system elsewhere in the world.

Another solution to this kind of problem would be Dispute Resolution Organizations. Dispute Resolution Organizations, or DROs, would oversee contract agreements between parties and arbitrate any disputes over those contracts. For instance, if one person contracts to provide labor for another, they would submit their contract to a DRO for ratification. Implicit in the terms of the contract may be clauses dealing with early termination of the employment, such as forfeiture of monies or property.

What's more, the DRO needn't resort to violence to enforce the terms of the contract, they could simply record the offenders failure to abide by his contractually agreed upon obligations, making it impossible for him to engage in future contract action until and unless he abides by any outstanding arbitration. Ebay already uses a similar system of reporting on their website. Users who do business in an honest and positive manner increase their reputation, and by extension their business, while those who are dishonest or fail to meet customer expectations get a lower reputation and lose customers as a result. A more detailed explanation of how DROs can handle civil disputes can be read here.

But DROs can also be used to resolve criminal action. Individuals could insure themselves against criminal action with their own DROs. Anyone who became the victim of criminal behavior would appeal to their DRO for satisfaction. Having done so, their DRO would contract with private investigation in order to determine the identity of the perpetrator. Once they identified the criminal, they would contact his DRO and inform them that he was suspected of criminal activity and that they would be pursuing prosecution.

If the prosecution was successful, his DRO would immediately contact the offender's banking institution and recommend freezing any assets held by the offender in order to pay for the prosecution as well as compensate his victim.

You see, our current criminal justice system is retributive in nature. At some point, we began to equate evil action with time out. Certain crimes call for a specified amount of time locked in a box. No effort is made to compensate the victim, or to return him to the state he was in prior to the crime. Instead, the criminal is punished for what he did to society as a whole, and the victim must find some measure of satisfaction in the suffering inflicted on the offender. Under a compensatory system of justice, the criminal is required to make reparations for his behavior directly to the offended parties, the victim is made whole again, and the criminal is made responsible instead of made to suffer.

If the crime were of a non-violent nature, and satisfaction could be achieved through financial reparations, then monetary compensation may be sufficient. The offender would be considered a high future risk, resulting in higher insurance fees and fewer opportunities to contract with others, but even these costs may be mitigated over time if he shows a real intention to reform his behavior.

If however, the crime was of a violent nature, and financial reparations were insufficient to make satisfaction, then his DRO could give him two alternatives. Either he could agree to a period of therapy and education while he worked to support the costs of his own rehabilitation, after which time he could return to society, or he could be blacklisted. No one would contract with him. He could be denied all services, including energy and water. Since the roads would be privately owned, he couldn't even leave his own home because people would deny him access to their property. If anyone chose to do business with him, they would be aiding a convicted and unrepentant offender and could be similarly blacklisted. With no food, water, or energy, and no way to leave to get resources, the offender wouldn't last long on his own.

But what of false accusations? A false accusation can be as damaging as the crime it alleges. Under a compensatory system of justice, false accusations would be resolved by the DRO of the accused counter suing the accuser. Once adjudicated, the falsely accused party would be compensated by the seized assets of the accuser. You can learn more about how DROs can address criminal behavior by reading Caging The Devils: The Stateless Society and Violent Crime.

It can be seen that the voluntary society has the ability to address civil and criminal justice in a far fairer and more reasonable fashion than our current system. It can help to prevent crime before it is committed by educating the youth more effectively, and decreasing the environmental factors which can contribute to psychopathic behavior. It can reduce poverty and increase opportunity. It allows for non violent arbitration of disputes and eliminates violent activity related to vice crimes. The small amount of remaining crimes which may occur can be effectively investigated, prosecuted, and resolved.

In the beginning, we established that the fear of crime was rooted in our fear of mortality. We are still mortal. But we can face it as free people. We need not let our fear prevent us from acting in our best interest. The state is oppressive and cruel. Behind its every action is the specter of the very violence we fear. We must allow reason to rule our passions. We must be willing to explore freedom as an alternative to subjugation. We must still face death, but we need not fear it. Seasons don't fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain.

We can be like they are.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

 

[Touch Of Death]

Rather than evil, think iniquity. Do your actions have an adverse effect on your family? or rather the concept of family.
Sean

 

[Thesemindz]

I'm not sure I understand your point. Please elaborate.


-Rob

 

[Touch Of Death]

Its a problem, of course, that people engage in criminal behavior. Freedom is highly valued, but with this freedom we pay a price. People are free to neglect themselves and there children; so, we must pay a price for that. We seek to control others by disciplining them, but we failed to instill discipline in the first place; hence, we lose more and more control as we seek more and more drastic measures to stay in control. However, If you start with the family and nurture the family unit with some freedom restricting laws in that direction, we will in the end be allowed more freedom.
Sean

 

[Thesemindz]

Ok, now I see where you are coming from, and I completely agree.

I see the family unit as the single most important building block of a free society. Much of what we view as social ills can be addressed by raising our children to respect themselves and others, to use rationality instead of violence to resolve conflict, and to make their decisions from loving perspective. Drug abuse, bigotry, promiscuous sex, violent crime, I see all of these and others as being issues which need to be addressed first in the home. That doesn't mean that every problem child is the fault of his parents, certainly there are many influences on the youths of our country, but I would say that most children reflect the attitudes they were raised with, at least to some degree, and we should all be mindful of that within our own family affairs.

Having said that, the traditional family unit is a false relationship. Children don't voluntarily associate with their parents, they are simply forced to submit to the authority of the people who brought them into the world. This can be very positive, as it was in my family, if the parents are knowledgable and loving and care about the well being of their children. But it can also be terrible and lead to a great deal of suffering if instead the parents are selfish and cruel. I believe the truest test of family occurs when the children are finally able to leave or stay as they see fit based on their own rational decisions. I have chosen to stay associated with my parents and sibling, because they are people I would be honored to know regardless of our blood relationship.

So yes, the family unit is crucial to true societal freedom. But it can be perverted for the purposes of evil. I see this also as a problem that we can combat on a macro scale, by taking the micro approach of raising our children to be a good influence on others.


-Rob