An eye for an eye

Libertarian punishment theory is a muddy, sticky area that I don't much care to discuss.  However, in comparison to state punishment theory, the choice is black and white as to which is superior.  As Rothbard discusses in "The Ethics of Liberty", the state is concerned with retribution, seeing that the criminal is punished at any cost, even at the cost of the victim.  Here's the text from "The Ethics of Liberty" (Ch 13)

What happens nowadays is the following absurdity: A steals $15,000 from B. The government tracks down, tries, and convicts A, all at the expense of B, as one of the numerous taxpayers victimized in this process. Then, the government, instead of forcing A to repay B or to work at forced labor until that debt is paid, forces B, the victim, to pay taxes to support the criminal in prison for ten or twenty years’ time. Where in the world is the justice here? The victim not only loses his money, but pays more money besides for the dubious thrill of catching, convicting, and then supporting the criminal; and the criminal is still enslaved, but not to the good purpose of recompensing his victim.

Restitution is the focus of libertarian punishment theory.  The $15,000 ought to be paid back and so should the cost of capture and prosecution.  These latter costs are a difficult subject that I'm not attempting to tackle here -- economics gets a bit muddled when coercion is necessarily involved.  Whatever the market comes up with, true justice would be served only when the victim bears no cost of being made whole again.  When I hear statists proclaim how concerned they are about justice I wonder, "if justice is what we seek via the state, then why the hell does it cost so damn much?"  Justice should cost nothing to anyone who has not initiated force via fraud, theft, or violence.  And yet we're stuck paying taxes under the threat of violence to ensure "justice" is served; Orwell could not have written it better himself.

Restitution becomes more difficult to define when violence is involved because of the irreversible nature of violent actions.  Recently I heard Walter Block give a compelling explanation for the death penalty.  And before I paraphrase it, let me point out that in a market society it would be up to the victim or the victim's family to determine whether or not they want violent punishment.  There would be no district attorney making sure bad guys are hurt for the satisfaction of the state and at the cost of the people.

Block said that in the case of murder, the perfect restitution scheme would be a machine that could transfer life from one person to another.  If this machine could bring anyone back to life then death is kind of a moot point, but if it transferred life then the just thing to do would be to transfer life from the murderer to the victim.  Since we don't have such a machine, the murderer is still required to give up what he has taken, and thus restitution theory lies on the side of violent punishment.  If a violent criminal has tortured then it is permissible to torture the criminal in a similar fashion.  If he has raped then he also should be raped.  It gets a little gruesome and this is why dealing with violence in libertarian punishment theory is debatable and divisive.  But again, held up to the state, it is at least saner because it allows for the victim or victim's family determine whether or not punishment will be sought.

Proportionality is also central to restitution.  Critics say, "libertarianism is the idea that you can shoot someone for walking on your lawn."  This is one of the top 10 greatest signs of libertarian ignorance.  If the examples above don't illustrate it well enough, punishment that is extremely out of proportion to the crime is not restitution, it is retribution and vengeance.  Unproportional punishment is Achilles' desecration of Hector's body; it is not justice, and it is not libertarian.

For more on libertarian punishment theory, here's a round about reference.  Walter Block gives a good introduction starting at 1:17:48; this does not include the scifi machine discussed above.  The other hour is also great to watch where he makes a case for private roads and highways.

Now that I've outlined restitution and retribution, let's turn back to the title of this blog post: "An eye for an eye."  I chose this title to invoke a self-righteous attitude that conjures up the common extension "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."  If only we were concerned about victims of violent actions that sought restitution via violence.  Instead, we live in a society that proclaims, "I'm taking your eye because you have two of them, why are you being so greedy wanting both?"  We are quickly blinding our society, crippling human innovation, and squelching human flourishing.  It's not always through direct violence but through the threat of violence from the state.  It's economic blindness that we're promoting.  I'd draw an analogy here between blindness and the political dogs in Washington, but I feel that would be insulting to the incredibly helpful and well trained seeing eye dogs.

I want to end by drawing the continuum of violence.  The state and its supporters (Republican and Democrat) are the most willing to use violence to achieve their ends.  They initiate force and promote a type of barbarism in our world.  Libertarianism asks one question, "when is it justified to use violence?" And it returns one and only one answer "in the instance of a prior use of violence or threat thereof".  Pacifists refuse to use violent punishment and some refuse to use any physical resistance towards an aggressor.

It's clear to me that anyone calling themselves Christian must lie between libertarian and pacifist.  I conclude this because of the Christian's mandate to forgive and to seek reconciliation.  Therefore, any Christian promoting state policies such as welfarism, the war on drugs, bans on gay marriage, social security, medicare, the war on terror, even the U.S. justice system are hypocrites.  I do not consider them Christian, but rather some kind of modern crusader blinded by their own ego and self-righteousness.  No doubt they're sincere, which makes it all the more difficult to convince them of their error.  I've spent two Sundays now talking to Mennonites and have been encouraged by their consistency.  Although my sampling pool is quite small, the ones I've talked to don't believe in America's "just" wars, in state power, or its welfare system.  I still find pacifism a bit creepy, but I can at least respect it knowing they're on the same side of the non-aggression principle.