Simplify laws: No Victim, No Crime

in #philosophy7 years ago (edited)


We have a lot of laws in the United States. If you include the federal and state laws it is millions and growing at a rapid pace. The fact of the matter is each of them are primarily a way to limit freedom, not protect it.

In the U.S. we had a saying "Innocent until proven guilty"

This is still what the laws are supposed to be adhering to, but there are plenty of cases where they are not.

There are cases of innocent people doing long periods of time in a jail cell while they wait for their trial.

There are many cases of civil asset forfeiture where property, money, etc is seized by law enforcement because a crime may have been committed nearby. At least this type is primarily centered around the failed War on Drugs that they still are pursuing though it creates the black markets, and it fuels the crime, the asset forfeiture, etc.


Source: Rats in the Belfry

There is another sad thing. There are literally so many laws now that you are almost committing a crime by breathing. Yet, you wouldn't know this. Lack of knowledge about something being a crime in a court of law is not defense against prosecution. You are still considered a criminal. As to the breathing, had we gone along with the Paris Accords and pushed this Carbon Tax scheme on everyone then essentially you'd be getting fined and taxed regularly for breathing. If you didn't pay those then you would be committing a crime.

The laws are becoming so convoluted they naturally lay the groundwork for needing more and more lawyers and law makers. This means the people passing the massive amounts of laws are the ones insuring their job security. In other industries this would be considered a conflict of interest.

What if we could simplify this a lot?

What if we passed a bill that simply said "No victim, no crime?"

You would need to prove there was a victim before you could charge someone for a crime. This means you could smoke pot, heroin, or whatever. You could drive drunk. You could drink drano if you choose. A person cannot be considered a victim to themselves. That applies to other people. So what you do to your own body is up to you and you are also responsible for the consequences.

You may have been triggered by that "drunk driving" one in the middle there and I kind of threw that in there on purpose. You may be thinking how dangerous that is.


Source: Youtube

People do dangerous things on a regular basis. Until there is an actual victim we should not be using Pre-crime tactics and treating them as guilty of something they have not done. We should not be punishing them due to the actions of some other drunk driver.

Well how do you stop it?

There are already laws for property damage, murder, manslaughter, assault, etc.

Once there is a victim then apply the appropriate charge. There is no need to over complicate it by creating increasingly complex categorizations.

If you focus on the victim and what was done to them the actual laws required, and the reaction to them becomes a rather short list.

In fact it becomes simple enough that potentially anyone could know the laws. Uh oh, that might threaten the jobs of lawyers and law makers... We can't have that! (sarcasm)


Source: Soulation


Source: Justice for Jane Doe in Steubenville Rape Case

Now what is a victim?

That is worth defining. It should aim for simplicity. If simplicity is not the target then you provide another avenue for the law makers to start growing things like weeds again.



Let's take a weed whacker to the law... let's simplify it, make it something anyone can know and understand, and let's stop letting others dictate what you can and cannot do before there is a victim. If there are victims then we should be swift and just.

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it was a big surprise for me when I came to US what it something happened I would be guilty by default and it's my responsibility to hire a lawyer who would find evidences/alibey and defence me.

It's nonsense. In my country police investigated properly all things and only jury could make me guilty. I don't need to hire lawyer for investigation and collecting evidences. There is police responsibility to investigate the crime, but not a my lawyer

Yes in the U.S. though technically by our bill of rights and Constitution we are "Innocent until proven guilty" and we are required to be given "Due Process" those rights are frequently totally ignored. What is worse is attorneys being able to make these rules in the first place have made high demand for their services due to the legal maze they intentionally have completed, so many people cannot afford an attorney and the public defenders often can't do much of anything for you. It is highly corrupt, and a sham.

It's no longer "Innocent til proven guilty" It is now "Guilty until proven innocent" . The justice system is only to keep the crime competition lower than the main criminals so that only the Elite criminals can commit all the crimes they want. All politicians are criminals they all allow wars and killing innocent people around the world to say the least.

I also worry, because they start wars and kill innocent people on my money and they make me their partner in crime

I don't want buy weapon for, I don't want pay for those wars

That's a good idea. The only problem I see is with the implementation. The State's natural, most stable form is a big, high taxing, all regulating bureaucratic machine that forces some certain group's moral standards on everyone else. I think it is immoral, but is a highly stable form. They hold the force, the power, and can mess up with the incentives to keep things the way they want them to be. No amount of inside perturbation will take the State from this position. My belief is that the only way to fix it is to make a substitute from outside the State and enough people move to this new form of social organization, making the State unnecessary. Who knows, maybe bitcoin and steem are just the first steps towards this new thing that will take over the State :)

My belief is that the only way to fix it is to make a substitute from outside the State and enough people move to this new form of social organization, making the State unnecessary. Who knows, maybe bitcoin and steem are just the first steps towards this new thing that will take over the State :)

Exactly the plan I believe. One step at a time. Also need to make people wake up and see the truth and be willing to embrace freedom even with the dangers and risks that are a natural part of being free.

If by "Bitcoin" you mean it's technology then yes. The Blockchain and everything that can be done with it can decentralize many things and solve many problems. I may live to see a good change

It was @deadmosco that mentioned bitcoin. I do believe we can thanks to technology combined with blockchain and crowdsourcing initiatives handle and do a better job of the tasks currently "mishandled" by the government. It doesn't have to be bitcoin, in fact that one was simply first. I don't consider it the best by the long shot. It is just the most established. It currently is a currency only and we need to use the blockchain for a lot more things than currency if we are to replace government. It was a step in the right direction and it expanded the possibilities a great deal.

Over-criminalization is a huge problem and the topic in general ties in very well with your contribution on the prison-industrial complex and the use of prison (slave) labor in the U.S. For those who are interested, it can be found here.

An insidious aspect to this problem is that if someone in government with power wants somebody's life to be hell, there are countless ways to achieve that using laws or regulations, that is why it is called "throwing the book" at someone, because there is so much people don't know is illegal, it is possible to get anybody for something.

Nice to hear from you again. Thanks for linking to my post I did on prisons and slave labor. :)

Was traveling around for a few weeks and am catching up on my reading today and working on some posts I was jotting down in a notebook while I was away. Good to be back!

I see that you are knowledgeable about law from a voluntary perspective. I suppose you are familiar with the sovereign man/free man movement and the work of Dean Clifford? I recently stumbled upon an article about a man in Croatia who declared himself as a living man, and terminated the contract with the state of Croatia which in theory means that the law has no jurisdiction over him, but he is now experiencing problems and facing potential imprisonment for a traffic violation. I think he was done something wrong, but I don't know much about this topic, as I just know about the concept. Check it out, I would like to see your opinion.
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@drumsta/anarchist-from-croatia-unplugs-from-the-system-but-is-now-threaten-with-imprisonment-for-using-private-licence-plates-where-did

I've seen people TRY to do this in the U.S. too. The problem is the corrupt established system is still ACTIVE and all around us even if we say "No more". So we need to be smart about how we approach things and we can't realistically expect instantaneous change and acceptance.

Do you follow the work of Ken Cousins? In my mind he is the best when it comes to this. He established his own private society called Panterra D'oro.

No he does not sound familiar. I may have encountered him before, but I do not recognize him from the name.

I first saw the interview on Anarchast, and then watched all the clips on youtube. After that I checked out his gemstone university. Interesting stuff, and he sound like he knows his research. Check him out:

I will. Thanks. He might be someone new in these movements that I haven't encountered before.

Great video. Thanks, I had not encountered this guy before. I've encountered a lot of what he is speaking about before, and perhaps I was reading something he wrote years ago.

In my mind he is the one who went the furthest, but am not that conversant.

I see your logic, but contest, driving drunk does not kill people, but having control of a potentially deadly weapon without the proper faculties to wield it should not be acceptable. If someone is waving a loaded gun in a public square, unable to coherently define distances or cognitive motor skills, would you not rather they have there gun taken away then be given the opportunity to murder until the chamber empties. A driver who drifts into your lane at night, and ends your families life, or plows into a hydro pole and causes civic damages raising your taxes, These things, I believe, should be nipped in the bud, to make it unacceptable for people to endanger the life of others. If we all drove horse and buggies, I'd say hey, drive loaded. But no, we do 65mph in a ton of steel and fuel, passing within feet of other vehicles. There is not as much room for error as some would believe, and thousands of coroners and morticians would agree. I'm all for smoking pot casually when the work is done. If you can enjoy Heroin without it becoming an addiction which destroys you, you're welcome to it. But many (not all) laws are in place to serve and protect the people. And ones that are not following both of those objectives should be, and with reasonable governance would be, eradicated. Legalize pot and ban carrying weapons in public. The right to bear arms should be limited to how many you can safely lock up in one cabinet. The original rules were written so that the people would be armed against a despotic government, but unless America plans to set militias against its own highly trained and funded army, the reasons for them to store high powered automatic rifles. Cutting someone of in traffic should not result in a bullett through the head. But I'm off topic. Arrive alive, drive sober🖖🏽

This is a very valid concern I was going to voice as well, since It's not that simple, no victim or no potential victim. You cannot drive drunk because there is considerable danger to others, any drunk will tell you this.

I don't agree with bans though, or limitations. Speed limits don't work, traffic lights don't work, gun bans have one predominant purpose, to arm only criminals, and punishing people doesn't either. What the law should be interested in is restitution or making whole, not revenge or retribution. It should be for the victim to decide if revenge or restitution is what they want if anything, once the requirements have been meet about sufficient proof.

All of those are slippery slope conditions. If a person is waving a gun there is nothing stopping people from trying to stop him. If he kills someone, harms someone, then throw the book at him.

If you start trying to DETER dangers based upon what MIGHT happen you create a slippery slope condition and precedent. This is used to create laws that strip away rights and punish people for things that MIGHT have occurred.

We must instead realize that REALITY has risks. Life has dangers. We will encounter dangers with or without these RULES that are imposed to stop things that MIGHT happen. Yet in the process we will also punish people who didn't do anything because something MIGHT have happened.

Are bad things going to happen some times? Yes. Guess what? Those bad things even happen WITH these laws. At least when you simplify them and punish people only for things that actually happen you are not punishing and restricting people for things they didn't do.

Life is risk. Being free is risky. Living in a bubble house with padded clothing, and safe from all danger is not truly being free.

Do bad things happen? Yes.

The difference also is that if something bad happens you throw the book at them and they are a pretty good deterant. I've known many alcoholics and have seen many drunk drivers in my life. The current laws are not much of a deterent at all. Friends stopping them seems to be the most common deterent. When they are caught the punishments are generally pretty minor unless they've done it many times, so they generally shrug those off as well.

If a person is waving a gun there is nothing stopping people from trying to stop him

I think you two agree on that, he is saying that you should stop a person like that, and you're saying the same thing. The problem is that he believes that laws do anything besides blanket us in a false sense of security which endangers us much more than protects us, or than it could protect us.

That's why it's ok to stop someone from endangering others.

Plus the NAP is totally fine with self defense and defending others so yes it would permit that, no law necessary. :)

Reality is we have created dangers much greater then nature ever intended. If we were to strip of these luxuries, then it would be acceptable law that to each there own as long as it doesn't hurt someone else. But when you add the breadth of damage someone can do, do you want to wait till intentions are fulfilled before deterrents are enforced? If a person is shopping for materials to build a bomb, builds a bomb, plans a bombing, places the bomb, then detonates it, where along that line should the law step in and save the hundreds of lives killed by the bomb and the thousands, if not millions of life's affected by those deaths. Is the store clerk supposed to talk him out of it? A nosy neighbor? What your suggesting is the bomb needs to explode before you can accuse him of doing anything wrong.

Again. Those things happen anyway. Sometimes outrage at laws and restrictive environments lead to them.

Worrying about WHAT IF and then stripping rights is a slippery slope. You pick one, it leads to another, then you are where we are now where people can dictate what you are allowed to put into your body, whether you can sell your body voluntarily for sex, and any number of other things. The thing is the laws don't actually stop it from happening now.

People think of those things because of examples of them happening and people being appalled by them. Being appalled would be no different if the laws did not exist.

You cannot FORCE morality on people. You can make them not feel free and make people who otherwise might not do such things embrace things like bombs.

It is just like guns. Making them illegal doesn't stop someone who intends to use them to kill or commit a crime from getting them. It is no deterant. It does restrict those who have no intentions of doing such things, and they also can't have one to now defend themselves from the criminal.

The laws don't prevent shit. In some cases they instigate it.

If you said no seat belts, I'd say fine, it's your life until you are thrown through the windshield as projectile into the other car, but mortality rates from car crashes are ever dwindling. Consensual sex with a eighteen year old, how about 17...16?...15?...14?... Laws draw lines, and people still disobey them, and some are enforced much more lax then others. In Canada, smoking weed may result in the cop asking you to but it out. Driving 120 km/h on the 100km/h road is the norm, but at 131, they will pull you over and can use the fact that you were 30 over to demerit your license and charge you, at 150 they will automatically impound your car and suspend your license. Things like driving are a privilege, not a right. You are using public infrastructure and thus are bound by public law. If you have your own property, a ranch, and you want to get shitfaced and drive 95, I think no one should be allowed to stop you, however if you leave your property, you are entering society, and society has rules in place to protect everyone's rights. Not everyone can handle a car at high speeds or avoid them, traffic lights are in place to keep an orderly flow of traffic, though are much better substituted with roundabouts. To say laws cause crime may work in cases of drugs, I have no problem saying the way pharmaceutical and other drugs are distributed in our society is a system that fails to deal with addiction instead opting to punish consumption. One of the hurdles we are facing with the upcoming legalization of marijuana in Canada is the ability to properly check for impairment to keep people who are not of capacity to operate a vehicle to be putting every passing car in danger that they become the victim of a misjudgement. I'm a very liberal person, but this is a little too left for me. I view as the difference between a conservative and a far right Orwellian society. But hey, whatever floats your boat as long as it doesn't sink mine.

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Great post and I agree with your premise. Our "Justice System" is nothing more than a big business that extorts money from everyday citizens. When you factor in bond money, lawyer fees, court costs, mandatory court programs, and mandatory court appearances that take you away from your job it is beyond a disgrace. But as we all know, someone has to pay for all of these state and county employees.

It's not true, you can challenge the claim of jurisdiction in court, at arraignment, making their whole show come to an abrupt halt.

http://marcstevensadventuresinlegalland.wikispaces.com/home

good man . i like you

thank you sir for vote :)

I almost didn't but, you got me. In general if anyone says anything other than simply "nice post" I try to give an up vote to encourage discussion. You didn't say "nice post" so I gave you an up vote. I do like the nice post comments, but I reserve up votes for something that doesn't feel like a template response. :)

Great post. See you soon in Ancapistan! 👌✌🏼

Well you'll see me on the path walking there... I suspect I'll be dead before it is completely built. The journey is worth it though.

I wonder what prompted this post? =)

On a side note, we just launched a community that I think you might be interested in joining (although at the moment we probably need you more than you need us). Please check this announcement for more information. I hope you can join and help us grow. =)

I wonder what prompted this post? =)

I don't remember. I've written posts on the topic before. I don't remember what inspired that post yesterday though. :) Just a lot of thinking.

I can relate with that law "No victim, no crime." Though in some occasions like the drunk driving, I rather have it prevented from happening. I mean by logical sense, someone that would drive on a highway while being drunk would just ask for a victim(s). That being said, as for something like drugs, I don't care what people do as long as they leave others alone.

Though in some occasions like the drunk driving, I rather have it prevented from happening.

Though it isn't prevented. People still do it. In fact the LAW never seems to be why they don't do it. They don't do it due to conscience or someone stopping them, convincing them, etc. They get caught doing it by the LAW and punished but the LAW does not actually prevent them from doing it. The fear of the law doesn't appear to either.