
Privately Enforced and Punished Crime - FeynmanThomas
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/01/privately-enforced-punished-crime.html
======
chasingthewind
A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my
first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was
essentially revulsion.

I get that the rationalist community is really trying very hard to figure out
novel ways to solve difficult problems and I am very supportive of that goal.
I love reading Marginal Revolution for one, and I'm highly susceptible to the
argument that there are likely to be surprising ways we might shift our
thinking about difficult issues.

However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I simply
would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it had been
proven to work for a long time _someplace else_ (color me a private crime
fighter NIMBY).

My view is that we need to improve our traditional government run justice and
law enforcement systems, not privatize them.

~~~
fao_
> A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my
> first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was
> essentially revulsion.

I'm not sure to what degree describing one's first impressions honestly
consists of snark.

> However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I
> simply would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it
> had been proven to work for a long time someplace else (color me a private
> crime fighter NIMBY).

And even then, you would have to have a deep understanding, and be able to
replicate the exact cultural quirks that allow such a system to "work" in the
first place.

~~~
RobinHanson
If an existing system works badly, one shouldn't be too eager to understand
and replicate all of its details.

------
atlantic
> I propose to instead privatize the detection, prosecution, and punishment of
> crime.

Yes, because privatization of the prison system worked out so well, didn't it?
So let's go the whole hog and privatize the entire justice system.

~~~
johndevor
Isn't it the justice system that fills the prisons?

~~~
rosser
Many private prison contracts have terms requiring a _minimum_ number of
prisoners. The state is thus _contractually obligated to convict people_.

How is this OK?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ooooor, move people from the public system to the private one, creating
inefficiencies. Let's not call conspiracy, this is getting silly.

------
umvi
My initial thought is that this would create a "wild west" type society where
bounty hunters go around and have shootouts with criminals, but without police
training.

Also, how are cash fines going to work against broke criminals? "Oh, you stole
a bunch of money because you have no money. Pay a fine"

~~~
Avery3R
As I understood it, the legal liability insurance pays. The criminal then has
to deal with whatever repercussions are laid out in their contract with the
insurance company.

~~~
saagarjha
So you're trading government-run prison for an insurance-run one?

~~~
Avery3R
Or increased premiums, or torture, or whatever. I think the idea is if you
don't like what the insurance company uses as a threat of punishment you can
just sign a contract with a different one.

~~~
fao_
This assumes that someone has the time to read full-length legal documents
_and_ comprehend them. A task that is difficult for a lawyer, someone who is
_not only trained, but paid to do such things_. It also assumes that the
market wouldn't stablize around an equilibrium that is good for the market and
the companies, but bad for the individual -- something that frequently happens
with regards to loan companies.

~~~
tlb
For that matter, the current legal system assumes that you have time to read
the criminal law.

Presumably, the insurance companies will be strongly motivated to teach their
clients how to stay out of trouble.

~~~
fao_
> Presumably, the insurance companies will be strongly motivated to teach
> their clients how to stay out of trouble.

Why? If your clients don't stay out of trouble, you get free indentured
servants. It seems to me there is incentive to make it harder to stay within
the confines of your contract.

~~~
tlb
In the framework proposed in the article, if an insurer's clients don't stay
out of trouble, the insurer has to pay fines on their behalf. If they can't
pay their insurance premiums, they become indentured servants until they can.

The indentured servants aren't free and probably aren't profitable. These are
people who can't make enough money on the open market to pay their premiums,
so it seems unlikely that the workhouse will be able to generate more profit
per worker than that. Given that insurance companies will lose money for
everyone that converts from paying premiums into a workhouse laborer, they'll
be highly motivated to get them back into the real world with a job, modulo
the risk of them getting into trouble and causing another fine. So I don't see
the incentive you mention to get them to break the contract.

------
crankylinuxuser
This is about as well thought out as my old professor's idea of "the roads
should be illuminated, and there's no need for headlights".

1\. Require insurance to live? Do you know how hard it is to even keep the
PPACA? And you want everybody insured with criminal liability insurance???

2\. Ah, I get it. So rich people can just pay to make it go away.

3\. What about poor people? Unless you're subsidizing that "insurance", they
ain't gonna get it. Cant afford it. You're just grinding people into more
poverty.

4\. And you think getting rid of jury trials is a good thing? The other main
system is "Judge or Professional Jurors" Nope, nope, and fuck no.

~~~
RobinHanson
People have to get insurance to drive on roads today; are you outraged at that
too?

------
nickik
There is a long history of this kind of thing and many great economists have
talked about different version to make the legal system more efficient.

There are different ideas how to innovate and sometimes privatize certain
aspects.

Some interesting reads that people might enjoy. David Friedman (son of Milton)
has been studying this for quite a while. For example in he had this talk
about how criminal law should be abolished in favor of more use of civil law.

>
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsMZbuGNj8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KsMZbuGNj8)

He has a whole book about different legal systems of different societies. A
lot of his talks are very interesting.

~~~
UpshotKnothole
Maybe efficiency shouldn’t be the highest goal of the criminal justice system,
and maybe innovation and profit shouldn’t be either. There is plenty of room
for reform of the current system without destroying it in favor of some
dystopian protostome, eating lives and shitting money. Instead of this insane
and inhumane proposition I’d suggest an end to the war on drugs, and
fundamentally rethinking matters such as bail, jailing people who are not a
danger to society, and mental health issues.

If all of thst is done and we still see a need for greater efficiencies in a
much reduced system, then we can talk.

~~~
nickik
Many of these arguments have been made (and argued) between some of the best
and most respected economists and judges over the years. But of course you are
just so far above all this people that you can just 'predict a dystopian
society' probably without studying any of the related subject at all.

Efficiency is actually a very high goal because in the context of a legal
system it means that more people get the service of justice and get it more
effectively. Its sort of a meme of modern politics that efficiency can be
thrown overboard and as long as everybody can feel good about it we can move
on, but that is the wrong attitude to take.

Also, these problem don't vanish if the government does something. Your
proposal about ending the war on drugs for example, do you think profit has
nothing to do with it continuing. I'm not saying its all about money, but
stopping something that consumes billions will be opposed by many people. The
same goes for many of these other things, like jailing people and so on.

The economists and judges who look at these things systematically try to
understand the intensives faced by different actors in the system and to
change the legal system to get a better outcome.

You might not agree with the person in the video, but you would learn
something about Law&Economics at least.

> If all of thst is done and we still see a need for greater efficiencies in a
> much reduced system, then we can talk.

So any conceptual discussion about an ideal system should not be had because
the current system is not ideal? Contrary to what you seem to imply the people
who are having these arguments don't want to implement a new system tomorrow
that changes everything. They are arguing about principles to inform the
direction reform should take.

~~~
dang
You've crossed repeatedly into incivility and personal swipes. We ban accounts
that do this, especially when we've warned them before (e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706226)).

Would you please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and use this site only as intended? The idea goes like this: if you have a
substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't
comment until you do.

~~~
RobinHanson
Maybe this poster does that elsewhere, but this comment seems pretty mild to
me.

------
will_brown
Intent is built into the very foundations of US criminal law (very rarely is
any crime strict liability, where no intent is required). I’ve never seen a
system of insurance that insures willful acts, seems like insurance reform
would be step 2 after the proposed criminal reform.

It seems very strange to suspend imprisonment for a system where everyone has
to buy insurance for their own potential criminal conduct and allow the
insurance companies to resolve the cases based on damages.

I think criminals will be more than happy to buy their right to commit crimes.

~~~
nine_k
An insurance is a "right to commit crime" as much as an insurance is a "right
to crash your car into someone else's". If you have a car and an insurance,
you can just try for yourself. The insurance would pay for your liabilities in
that case, but they would likely not be happy to do so, and will efficiently
communicate their unhappiness to you.

Your next round of insurance will cost significantly more after that, and if
they decide that it wasn't an accident but a deliberate act, it might as well
cost s much as a new car.

~~~
will_brown
You’re actually reiterating my point. Typical insurance, as you note, is for
risks (e.g. your example of an accident). In other words insurance won’t pay
out if you willfully intentionally caused the accident. Criminal acts
necessarily imply intentional conduct.

The author wants to suspend imprionsment for this insurance based damages
system. Between the difference in car insurance and this criminal conduct
insurance I think it equals a right to commit crimes. We have a criminal and
civil court system (think on OJ case acquitted in the criminal case and liable
in the civil case). I think the proposal amounts to mandated “criminal
insurance” which suspends then crimaljustice side of things and allows
insurance companies resolve the damages from crimal acts.

------
ohazi
This is a terrible idea on its own, but I find it particularly unpalatable
because the author is deliberately tickling the fancy of all the "My theories
are so beautiful and internally consistent" libertarians who wouldn't be able
to identify a negative externality if it punched them in the nose.

I've had this discussion a million times in college. It's always a dumpster
fire.

~~~
nickik
The idea that libertarians don't understand negative externalities is simple
wrong. Maybe you talked to some people in collage who just don't know a lot of
economics.

But in actual economics people who one could describe as libertarian
politically have been on the forefront of research on externalizes. In fact
the most important work on that was done by Ronald Coase. And since then many
people like that have worked in that space.

~~~
ohazi
No, the idea isn't wrong, it simply acknowledges the fact that there are a
_lot_ of libertarians who act like this:

[http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-mouth-
li...](http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-mouth-libertarians-
or-armchair.html)

You're correct that there are many who are actually reasonable and pragmatic,
but it's disingenuous to claim that the other kind of pseudo-intellectual
libertarian doesn't exist. They do exist, and they give the reasonable ones
else a bad rap.

------
drivingmenuts
This reads like the premise of a bad movie. When I hit the part about
requiring insurance, I heard the ghost audio of a record screech.

Yes, he's trying to solve a real problem. This ain't the solution.

Requiring insurance for drivers is one thing - being able to afford a car
presumes some ability to afford insurance. However, his solution requires
insurance just to exist.

That's not workable.

~~~
RobinHanson
If we've set the fine levels right, someone who can't or won't afford crime
insurance is a net liability to the rest of us. The insurance premiums will
vary greatly with the conditions one agrees to. Very few people would be
unable to afford any such conditions.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Perhaps the author read Terry Pratchett because this whole thing smells a lot
like Ankh-Morpork. You pay a certain amount to the Thieve's Guild and you're
safe for a year.

> someone who can't or won't afford crime insurance is a net liability to the
> rest of us. The insurance premiums will vary greatly with the conditions one
> agrees to. Very few people would be unable to afford any such conditions.

Bypassing the "won't pay" for now - if someone can't pay, they're a liability?
Then what? Let them rot?

A very large number of people live in conditions where they are unable to
affect the overall crime levels. Sure, they can keep them from going up by
one, by not committing a crime themselves, but they don't have any control
over externalities.

All that aside, it's very easy step to the idea that if one doesn't have crime
insurance, that, in and of itself, is a crime. This already happens with car
insurance.

This is a stupid idea that taxes a person just for existing and if they can't
pay, could possibly wind up making them a criminal themselves.

It's basically a cheap shot at the poor.

------
bassman9000
_Yet we still suffer from a great deal of police corruption and mistreatment,
because government employees can coordinate well to create a blue wall of
silence._

So, to fix one minor problem, we're getting rid of equality before law, and
paving the way for feudalistic corporations, getting one step closer to Snow
Crash?

No, thanks.

~~~
Karunamon
Equality before law doesn't exist right now. Being rich carries with it
connections and enhanced representation that gets one out of many crimes scot
free that would be life-ruining to you or me.

~~~
enord
And replacing criminal proceedings with cash fines improves this _how_?

~~~
394549
> And replacing criminal proceedings with cash fines improves this how?

Because apparently the solution for not living in a utopia is to deliberately
construct something that will obviously be a dystopia.

------
fao_
This smells of slavery with extra steps

------
java_script
Reminds me of L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department:

[https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-
libertari...](https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-
police-department)

~~~
grasshopperpurp
Sad to see this downvoted - very funny.

------
powera
TLDR: A sufficient amount of ignorance about how insurance works can solve all
crime through magic.

