You’ve all made valid points. I just want to point out that this is the first time I have put this idea in words and knowing my luck, it’ll end up being completely irrelevant.
Mangetout and CarnalK almost answer each others questions. You are right CarnalK that making drugs illegal because of the harm to one’s body goes against the “right of ownership” of your own life. But Mangetout clears this up by mentioning the need to protect the populous from potential crimes. If we take away the free will of the majority to decide on drug intake, is it of less “value” than the potential loss of life and injury that would be taken with excessive drug use. Whatever side the scales tip towards should be how the law is managed. So amendment to rule no.1:
Whereby a person or person(s) has lost, or has had a defined potential of losing, what is considered valuable by themselves or by a jury of their peers, whether it is property, the rights of an individual or the ability to act, within the confines of the law, to a person’s own discretion (free will)
You guys are going to have to help me on this one. I can understand that there will be problems along the way and any way you have of amending the “rules” would be most appreciated. Ravenman by your “deduction vs. induction” argument are you trying to say that while in one case it may be true, one cannot assume it true for all cases? If so, I agree with you. I want contradictions to form so that my own ideas of “crime” can be adapted accordingly. It is why I phrased my title as a question. Keep 'em coming, guys and gals.
All I’m “suggesting” is that “sodomy” doesn’t really qualify as a kind of “theft,” no matter how you stretch the definition. And I’ll thank you not to presume about what I know about sodomy’s definition, sir.
Ohh, just as a quick thought and sorry about the double post. (I’m not doing too well on this thread with all my mistakes, am I?)
The idea on drug use may be better suited if rather than a “black and white” decision, like Mangetout suggested was impractical, the use of drugs could be governed by limits and exceeding those limits incurs different penalties subject to Rule no.3:
Therefore a person caught driving just over the legal limit will be penalised less than the person who is several times over the limit and causing a public nuisance or possibly even worse.
Would it function, Yes or No?
Dammit, I’m going to stop forgetting things sooner or later. Preview is my friend. Preview is my friend.
Let me see if I can make myself clearer. The “draft” in my head, meant the Vietnam style draft. It made sense at 23:22 last night because I was thinking about if they reintroduced the draft for Gulf War II. If a person’s way of life is in no discernable danger, should they be forced to place in themselves in danger for the policies of their government? I say no. Compulsory military service, especially the forms whereby young adults are required to serve some years during peacetime, is still applicable under the rules. If a war were to start whereby your way of life was threatened and your services would be required, despite your protests, there should be a some compulsion to serve. After all it is their loss of free will against what would be the loss of the entire populous’. But looking back through history, especially during the First World War involving the “conscientious objectors”, if a minority who is not required to fight does not want to then his loss has no return and should be unjustified.
Civil Rights by my definition is having equality of rights between all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexuality. Of course there are limits if these rights work against the rights of others and unfortunately with civil rights it is often the minority who start out the weakest. You may say that the “rules” should, by my definition, work for the majority but in some cases, a greater suffering in few outweighs the slight suffering of many.
Sodomy does not qualify as a “theft”, you are correct but then do you see it as a crime? I don’t and that is why I believe my system works. Give me a definition of how sodomy is a crime and I will probably be able to define it as a theft.
I think a better question is, can all acts that should be crimes be considered a form of theft? The answer to me is, nearly 100% yes.
The only exception I can think of is lying under oath. But perhaps a better definition of acts that should be criminal are those that violate ethics, i.e. freedom of choice and property.
Including, for instance, littering and pollution, because you are marring the commonwealth property. Or insider trading, because you are both infringing on shareholders informed choices and are depriving them of capital gains.
No, I do not see sodomy as a “crime.” But that doesn’t mean that others haven’t considered sodomy to be a crime, or that it was never on the books. That doesn’t automatically add legitimacy to the view that sodomy is a crime…there have, over the ages, been tons of weird or alien laws defining things as “crimes” that I, personally, wouldn’t even consider immoral. Like laws against teaching evolution in schools. Or against selling booze on Sundays. Or tieing one’s Giraffe to a parking meter. Or taking a bath without a doctor’s permission. And some of these laws are even still “on the books.” I don’t agree with most (if not all) of such laws, and I wouldn’t turn anyone in for them, even if they were still being enforced (which may not even be the case). But, technically speaking, they’d still be “crimes,” if they’d never been repealed.
And, of course, there have been things that were crimes, once, in one place or another, but have since been repealed. Like the “Sedition Act,” for example. One can still talk and conjecture about such former “crimes,” and how, like in this case, they might figure in under the OP’s logic scheme, without actually believing them to be crimes today. I can hypothesize about how, say the “crime” of Slander against the Holy Inquisition may or may not be considered a form of “theft,” whether or not I personally believe such a law is even legitimate or moral, or if it should ever have been made into a “crime” at all.
Ludovic has got the idea I was after. The concept is not about showing all acts that are defined as criminal must follow the “rules”. It’s about showing acts that should be criminal must follow the “rules”. Any law that denotes punishment should be based on a loss by the injured party. After all any punishment is a form of compensation, is is not?
It “steals” the “right” of parents not to have their children hear about evolution.
It “steals” the “right” of people not to be offended by improper behavior on a day they think is special.
err…it “steals” the “right” of people not to die of a heart attack or laughing upon suddenly seing a giraffe tied to a parking meter?
This one at least could make sense if there’s a shortage of water. So, bathing would “steal” the more important right of the populace to water their crops, for instance.
The obious problem is tortuous reasonnings used by the OP to demonstrate that what (s)he thinks is a crime is a form of theft. Actually, one could demonstrate that any action is a form of theft, legal or not. I’m currently “stealing” the bandwith in order to post on this message board. I also steal the right of people not to see what I wrote, and steal the energy which could be put to better uses benefiting the populace (the “loss” for people who really need power…say to produce drugs for impoverished countries… is greater that the “loss” I would incur by not posting). And so on…
IMO, the best analogy is ** Ravenman **'s. It’s really akin to these numerological pranks. You take the result as a given, and find tortuous way to explain how it is numerologically related to whatever you want it to be related to. But it has zero predictive value, since it doesn’t work the other way around. Based on the idea that a crime is necessarily a theft, you can’t determine what should be considered a crime. But you can define whatever you want as being somehow akin to a “theft”, hence a crime.
It prevents the child from learning a publicly acknowledged belief. They should be taught all sides of a argument to make an objective view. Any other way “steals” from the child their “right” to knowledge. As I said before rights will, at some point, be stolen from both sides but the sides that could benefit most should be protected. If someone says a parent should come before their child, I’ll tell them to take a long jump off a short pier!
That would take the offence(sp?) of a few to be more meaningful than the requirement of a shopkeeper to earn money to live. It doesn’t make sense.
For that reason it makes sense for the law to be in place, like something obscure such as conserving your rubber tyres during the war, which in fact conserved much needed fuel. (or was that the other way around?).
How are my reasonings torturous? The only far-fetched reasoning should only come from laws that serve no purpose. The fact is you keep saying that my idea is flawed and yet none of you has come up with anything to disprove it other than the idea that it must be wrong because it was made from conjecture. Yeah, well so was Fermat’s Last Theorem. The difference between my idea and numerology is that numerology has been disproven several times and until my idea is disproven I will continue to believe in it. If it is disproven, no problem I will adapt, it is (again) why I phrased the OP as a question!
p.s. You give me this example of bandwidth, clairobscur and say that my examples are torturous. Your argument is poor because it doesn’t tackle anything criminal. Your right to bandwidth is a hell of a lot greater than the effect it would have helping others. You don’t steal the right of people who cannot read your post because they still have the ability to buying a damn computer if they wanted to. If they cannot buy a computer, which some people can’t, that is focused towards their rights of earning money, nothing else.
Who gets to decide what acts **should be ** criminal? From your posts I get the impression that you think your determination of what **should be ** criminal is the only legitimate one.
Clairobscur; I may be wrong but I suspect NT’s response to your post deserves a Whoosh.
The problem with your thesis is that in order to make “theft” apply to all the things you think are criminal, you have to stretch the definition of “theft” so much that it becomes meaningless. By using your new definition many things that everyone seems to agree are not criminal now qualify as “theft”.
So we’re left with the situation that with enough linguistic gymnastics any act can fall under your definition of “theft”. Since we all agree that many of those actions are not criminal, your thesis is useless to determine what is or isn’t a crime.
In the wacky way you define things so that they may be a “property” to be stolen.
So to clear up: are you looking for a common element in all things currently a crime, ever a crime, or what in your opinion should be a crime. If you are looking for help with the last one it’s going to be tough for us to help. With any of them you are still working backwards (thirding the numerology example)
Telemark, I’m not trying to stretch out the meaning of theft. As a criminal definition the term “theft” is entirely different to what I mean. To say something is a crime is to say that it has caused, what would be considered by society to be, an overall and deliberate loss. People can cause these losses without intention (car accidents, house fires etc.) but those people who do intentionally seek to take from society, whether it be in a personal or communal sense, should be considered criminals. My intention was never to make the system so broad as to be unusable but I still believe that as governed by my originally defined rules (plus the amendment) the system can be made to function.
And addressing your question askeptic, the point is that laws are decided by the society that they govern, or at least by their elected representives. The rules would not be used to judge on a person to person level. But by having laws that address the value of the individual person and how that value has been removed in some way the laws, I believe, can be improved upon. I see laws governing murder, armed robbery, rape etc. as suited to my ideas but laws that have seemingly little purpose, like the laws surrounding sodomy, would be repealed or adjusted for better rights and priveleges of the people.
BTW, this is the second time I have supposedly whooshed someone. I promise you that was not the intention because I have no idea what you are talking about. What the hell is whooshing?
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CarnalK, I don’t believe I have made my definitions wacky unless of course I was describing the laws that have no meaning (like banning evolution in schools)
I don’t understand why you can’t see things that have meaning in our lives as “property”. Do you not believe you are have control of your life, or over your education, your employment? Do you not believe that if something occurs that threatens to, or does, cause a change beyond your control and against your wishes that it should be criminal? Does it not go hand in hand with someone tampering with a physical piece of property?
If your child is murdered, is it not along the same lines as someone destroying you car, but obviously to a much higher, and more serious degree?
I guess this question should have been asked much earlier.
What is your definition of theft? Under English Common Law is is the taking and carrying away of the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive him thereof. Also property comes into two categories, Real and Personal. The first is land the second is any tangible object other than land. More recently anothe category of Intelectual property has evolved but I do not know much about that subject.
Nevertheless, by those definitions, people may be deprived of Rights, but technically those Rights cannot be the subject of theft.
BTW, Whoosh is used to indicate that someone has missed the point. I was not suggesting that you had whooshed anybody, but rather that you had been whooshed by Clairobscur.
I said that I did not mean theft as in the legal definition so by comparing it to Common Law is irrelevant. Theft, to me, is the taking of anything. Whether that be physical, mental, social or emotional. Why is that so hard to see?
I also do not believe I was whooshed by clairobscur. She said that any situation could be construed to be a “theft” legal or not. I said that was true but to prove it would seem idiotic and that better proofs can be found that show greater benefit than loss. She said that it is akin to numerology because it has a basing on a single fact which is stretched to ridiculous proportions for no predictive value. Yes, my idea is based on single facts and yes, it has no predictive value. That is because it isn’t some mathematical formula. The law at the moment has no predictive value. You cannot set the rules for murder and try a kidnapper with those same rules. Law requires that each individual rule be taken on its own. One must consider the law for murder, and then for kidnapping, then for…ad infinitum.
I am not trying to make an entirely new legal structure here. I am simply trying to express my view that a new legal system, perhaps a better legal system could be constructed using the one-by-one idea above, under the premise of the “rules”. I still do not see why I am going backwards, CarnalK. If there is a fault in my logic, then surely you can see the error, correct it to the intentions of the “rules” and create amendments. How exactly am I going backwards? I’m having trouble understanding that. Of course everything seems right in my head at the moment, that’s why I’ve started a Great Debate.
p.s. You guys are awesome for keeping this up even though you still sound like you don’t have a clue, even those of you that oppose me. Cheers
If I walk up to you on the street and threaten you with bodily harm, you have not lost anything tangible but it is still a crime. Assault doesn’t necessarily involve a loss of anything to the victim, except piece of mind. Not to diminish it, but it’s not a tangable loss.
But lots of things cause loss of piece of mind. Telling someone that you think their girlfriend is hot and you’re going to try and steal her from them also involves a loss of piece of mind but it is not a criminal act. You system doesn’t allow us to distinguish the two.
If you can show how your concept of “loss” in simple assualt is materially different than the concept of “loss” when someone steals your girlfriend, then you may have a workable thesis. But I don’t think you can. We, as a society, have decided that threatening physical harm is a crime. It’s not based on a sense of “loss” but on sense that it is not allowable in society. Stealing someone’s girlfriend, is frowned upon but not elevated to the level of criminal activity. Clearly, there is something else besides loss involved.
Let’s put this into a scenario. Let’s say you bumped into an old lady on the street one day. You apologise but she is in a bad mood. She threatens to “give you a good hiding”. Do you take her threat seriously? No, because she poses no threat to you. Now lets say that it was rather a 7 feet tall, 250 pound guy with muscles on his ankles the size of your head. Do you take his threat seriously? Hell, yes. And that is because he poses a risk to your safety. Not only does he have the possibility of assault you (which I will define in a minute) but also his threat has compromised your decision making. At this moment he is in control of your life. He has “stolen” your free will. People keep underestimating the value of free will in society. Now would you want to charge the man? Of course you would. How about the old lady? No, well according to the law at the moment you could and because of the fact that her inability to actually hurt you doesn’t have any bearing on the matter she could be unfairly disciplined.
As for assault, it does not just become a loss of peace of mind. The assault took away your ability to control your life at that moment. Also if it has any lasting physical effects you have lost you ability to function as you wished you were able to. If a man is into S&M and decides to get a beating from his mistress she is not performing a criminal activity. The man has chosen to be in this position, regardless of physical consequence, whereas a man being assaulted is not in the position by choice. He may have been a jerk but that does not mean he asked for physical harm. One of the major premises of the “rules” is the sanctity of free will. Do any of you see that as a problem?
NT: Out of curiosity, are your assertions based on Proudhon’s Writing - *What Is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government * or some anarchist principle, or what?
Absolutely not. No one has stolen my free will. I’ve been threatened before in my life, and it’s a threat. I still have many options, many choices, just like every other situation in life. If my boss says “do this or be fired”, has he taken my free will away? Of course not, he’s put pressure on me but at no point have I lost the ability to make decisions. Equating a physical threat to complete loss of free will is why your thesis fails. It does not model reality.
So does someone cutting in front of me in line at the grocery store. But one is a threat and the other is just rude.
