In reading the OP the first thing that came to mind was that in such a society you would have people saying “If murder is criminalized than only criminals would commit murder!” and then going on to explain how much safer we are in a society where good honest citizens have the right to murder people as opposed to being helpless at the mercy of criminal murderers.
I think, that if murder was legal one day a year. For one 24 hour period you could kill anyone and it would not be a crime. By the end of that day the world population would be zero.
Because every asshole on earth has friends. If I kill an asshole, his or her friends would kill me and my friends would kill them and sooner or later we’re just launching missals.
This. Pay a business to murder someone, and your identity is out of it which reduces the chance for retaliation. The business can afford to hire the best people and keep them in secure locations, and agree with other companies not to bump off each others employees. There would be a good supply of Mafia hitmen to staff it.
Reminds me of the Discworld Assassins Guild.
On Tuesday the Times ran a profile of Steven Pinker. He said that as a 15 year old in Montreal in 1968 he was an anarchist because that is how you got dates. He was thoroughly convinced that laws were unnecessary because no one would rush out and rob banks and things even if there were none. Then the police went on strike, and there was immediate looting. So, there went that theory.
So what you’re saying is that there is more to the issue than simply whether or not murder is illegal. In other words:
There are factors involved beyond simply whether or not the action is legal, most notably cultural ones that along the lines of “tho shalt not kill.”
One such factor is the level of respect for the legal system. In places where people don’t trust the cops or prosecutors, they are more likely to feel they need to take the law into their own hands, and make sure justice is served. Likewise, when the system is seen as corrupt/incompetent, people will be more brazen. In both cases the presence of the law is only a small part of the overall murder rate.
What it call comes down to is that there are three groups in society:
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Those that will kill: the sociopaths that disregard social customs and want to murder. There is very little we can do about this group, except to hunt them down and lock them away.
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Those that won’t kill: which in reality I think is most of us. That even when pressed to a breaking point, when faced with an issue of self defense, we still are unlikely to pull the trigger. For this group, it doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not, they’re not going to go out and kill.
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Those that would probably kill: This is the group this debate is actually talking about. Even in the absurd situation that corporations are killing people, they still need to find people willing to kill.
It’s then a matter of personal belief how many people represent that third group. To me, these are the people that make up the military and police force–those that will kill when allowed to.
So just how large is that third group, and is it the same ratio in all countries? The wiki stats show the ratio of group 1 to group 2, but says nothing about group 3. This is why I bring up other actions like drunk driving or pedophilia. There are some actions we don’t do because their wrong, and some we don’t do because they’re illegal.
To highlight this with another example, consider the issue of underage drinking. In the use the legal age to drink is set at 21. So the question is, if we lowered the age to 19 would consumption for the 19-21 group go up? I say no, because those that would drink are already drinking. The legality of it isn’t stopping them, only making it a little more annoying, perhaps even encouraging.
So with murder, it’s possible that everyone who wants to kill is already going to (group 1), regardless of the legality of it. Leaving group 3 relatively small in comparison.
I love that you managed to bring conservative politics into it. Way to ride that one little pony of yours.
So what you’re saying is that we could make murder legal, but handguns illegal, and it would all be a wash?
Of course there would be more
Very good point.
One other scenario that I haven’t seen brought up so far (besides murder-for-hire and the cycle of revenge killings that areas in the Balkans or in Arabia have known for centuries and turns out terrible)
if the sociopaths, who currently only don’t kill if they fear being caught, but not because they think killing is wrong, now follow their impulse of shooting the guy who cut them off in traffic, or beat a guy at the bar to death for looking at them wrongly - will they be more likely eliminated by meeting other sociopaths?
We’ve had personal reports from Dopers who know people lacking self-control as well as empathy or basic understanding that other people might have rights, too. But if 20 guys are in a bar and 10 of them belong to that type, after a few drinks, won’t they end up killing each other, if the police won’t come to break things up, or if they don’t go to jail after the first time as currently happens?
There are countries where it is legal, or at least tolerated, for people to kill a daughter or wife or sister who is not behaving chastely. There are certainly more of these murders there than in other countries.
Actually, I suppose my example about countries where murder of women is tolerated is not a good one, because revenge killing of the murderers is not legal there.
But when they move to western countries, were those killings are prosecuted just like other murders, they aren’t deterred by the fact of the illegality, or jail time.
In fact, many of the Eastern Orient countries where honor is important have laws that prohibit honor killings on the books. It’s just that enforcment and juridical process are not followed as strictly in these cases.
I do think that if murder was legal, there could be a lot of mass killings based on a given society’s culture. For instance, an organized group might declare that on a certain day all people with a certain (minority) religion or race or sexual orientation should be killed, and there just might be enough people in the majority willing to go along with this to accomplish it. They wouldn’t have to worry much about retaliation later.
As people have asked above, if murder were legal, would many other laws have to be adjusted? Right now, if someone decided to acquire the materials and knowledge to build a nuclear bomb to set off in a city, this would be prevented by several laws. But what if he said, “I’m doing this in order to commit mass murder, and murder is now legal.”?
I suppose the point is, if the official government is no longer prosecuting murder, then various extragovernmental groups would have to form to protect the citizenry and capture or kill potential murderers (especially mass murderers). You would essentially have shadow governments forming, which enforced their own rules about murder or related crimes. They might even kill government officials who got in their way. Thus, even if murder were permissible de jure, de facto it would be more or less not permissible.
I still think OJ Simpson makes an interesting test case: He was acquitted in criminal court, which to me is a case where the law failed twice, once to prevent him from killing and then again to convict him of the act.
But in civil court he was accused of wrongful death, and the judge awarded the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman a $33.5 million judgement (very little of which he’s paid).
Instead of viewing it as murder, it could be seen more along the lines of theft. Killing a father (as an example) deprives the family of income, just as causing him injury would, resulting in financial settlements instead of jail time. In fact, when you think about it, putting someone in jail for life does little for the grieving family.
I also have to ask, for those that see a lot of murder for hire, what sort of price range do you envision? $10 or $10,000? There is plenty of it now, even with the current laws, do you see the price going down or up? Would it count as taxable income?