Тег: Murder

If the aggressor kills the property owner, does the property pass to him?

Someone

Property is, as is fashionable to explain nowadays, a bundle of rights. Moreover, an awful lot of these rights can be invented: the more complex the legal relations in society, the more of these rights there are, the harder they are to distinguish, and the more they intertwine. For example, I can visit a friend and sit down to work at a computer that he rents along with the apartment using his parents’ money, where I pay for access to the computer with a kiss. I use a pirated operating system and type the text of an article promised to a client, for which I have received an advance payment. In this regard, can the friend’s parents, the owner of the apartment with the computer, and the employees of the operating system manufacturer also demand a kiss from me, and exactly what share of the kiss? Can I, instead of a kiss, send the guy to my client so that the client can kiss him himself, since he has such an urgency that I have to work anywhere at an odd hour? The answers to these questions seem obvious only if we have some roughly similar notions of what is proper in our minds.

But notions of what is proper depend quite heavily on context. If I kill an opponent in a computer game, and the game implies the possibility of looting the corpse, then the transfer of the deceased’s property to me causes no particular dispute. If the same rules apply in a live-action role-playing game, then my ownership of the killed person’s property can also be quite legal. Finally, if I participate in such an unpleasant variety of role-playing games as a real war, then the appropriation of weapons, ammunition, and various souvenirs from the body of the killed person there also does not cause misunderstanding among those around.

Moreover, military booty may not be limited to things from a corpse. If tomorrow Navalny kills Putin, he could well claim to inherit the presidential post in Russia, and show me that strange person who would dispute this. Prescribe him a triple dose of fantasy.

But as soon as we move into a context where murder is not considered a way of resolving conflict, it ceases to be a legitimate way of acquiring the property of the killed. After that, the entire bundle of rights for the killer will shrink to the factual possession of what he managed to take from the killed, and only for as long as it is not taken away.

Madam President, please choose the dish upon which to place your trophy during the inauguration.

Would the police under ancap investigate the case of a person killed on someone’s private property, for example, in a case where the owner gave the killed person permission to move/be on their territory, and then took them out?

Anonymous question

Let us consider the organization of law and order according to David Friedman — in my opinion, his approach is the most developed and yet remains entirely within the framework of ancap, that is, a society with a free market where everything is traded, including law. Various law enforcement agencies and various courts operate in the market, guided by various legal systems. The task of a law enforcement agency is to protect the private property of its clients and assist in resolving conflicts between clients and other entities. The task of a court is to develop decisions that resolve conflicts between the court’s clients. Finally, a legal system is the product of the work of lawyers, representing a certain set of principles and templates for conflict resolution.

When the owner of a certain territory kills a stranger on it, this may cause a conflict with a wide variety of people or organizations. First, these could be companions of the deceased who are convinced that the execution was unjust. Second, his relatives or friends who were not present during the clash but are interested in finding out what happened. Third, the law enforcement agency of which the deceased was a client. Finally, any concerned individual who dislikes it when people are killed for no reason. In short, the killer has no reason to believe that no one will care about this incident.

In medieval Iceland, in the event of such excesses, the killer had to immediately tell the nearest neighbor what happened, taking him as a witness. It can be assumed that such a norm would also take hold under ancap, since the killer is directly interested in this: by telling everything, he can claim that it was an accidental conflict, or even one provoked by the victim, but if the story is hidden, it is unequivocally an intentional murder, for which much more serious sanctions are due.

Thus, after the murder has been announced, all that remains is to conduct an investigation. Much time has passed since the age of the sagas, technology has advanced, and it is possible to establish with slightly greater certainty how truthful the killer’s story is, even if there are no direct witnesses to the incident. Of course, the killer has no reason to obstruct the investigation, because that would predispose the court against him. But he can, of course, try to forge evidence to create a false impression.

Does the fact that the murder took place on the killer’s territory give any preferences in court? Only if it is established that the deceased violated the rules announced by the owner of the territory and refused to leave the other’s property. Therefore, naturally, the killer is interested in claiming exactly that. Whether he succeeds in creating the necessary appearance is a purely technical question.

A question about hitmen

As I understand it, it is the hitman, not the client, who exits the non-aggression pact, and therefore the perpetrator should be the one to face punishment. But in the murder of Nemtsov (and other political murders), should the clients really be exempt from responsibility?

анонимный вопрос

In order to exit a contract, one must first enter into a contract, so the very concept of a non-aggression pact is as dubious as, say, the concept of a social contract for the establishment of a government. One can only state that people are generally not inclined to kill each other without reason, as if they had agreed upon it, or that people generally behave toward the government as if this institution acts on their behalf. In reality, people are simply inclined to adhere to the status quo and view its violation with suspicion.

States are organizations that systematically exercise aggressive violence, so in the current worldview, political murders are precisely part of the status quo for many people, which means it is an ancient and venerable tradition: a state representative has the right to order a killing, and the perpetrator must follow orders, and for this, the court will treat them with understanding. Therefore, of course, in a deeply etatist society, where it is not difficult but quite easy to find a perpetrator of a political murder on behalf of the state, placing all responsibility on the perpetrator signifies a lack of understanding of the foundations of the world order by the person doing so.

So it is more correct, until proven otherwise, to view murders in the interests of political groups as a common division of labor, where there is a client, a manager, and hired workers; all of them are to some extent involved in performing the work, and all of them to some extent bear responsibility for the result, whether it be the success of the operation or a trial of its participants.

Now, under ancap, should a contract killing occur, it is conversely more appropriate by default to assume, until proven otherwise, that the perpetrator bears full responsibility, since it is he who makes the decision based on his own personal moral convictions. If, during the investigation, a serious economic dependence on the client emerges, or hostages, or some other crap where not only the reward for successful work but also serious sanctions in case of refusal to execute the order depend on the client—then it would be appropriate to hold the client responsible, as if it were the ancient wild era of total etatism.

The vertical is a double-edged sword.

A girl ordered her own murder.

It is interesting to consider this case from the perspective of ancap. At the same time, the parents are against it, and are already upset that the guy was sentenced to 48 years (which brings up the question of the victims; it turns out there is a conflict). And others claim that the girl could have been saved, and that she needed psychological help.

анонимный вопрос

I have already covered the topic of euthanasia in quite some detail. In itself, there is nothing criminal about a killing requested by the person being killed, but in order to prove the voluntary nature of the transaction and the capacity of the client, it is advisable to carry out certain legal procedures. From the circumstances of the case under consideration, it is clear only that there was indeed a request, but the awareness of the actions remains unproven.

Of course, in the absence of a state, it would be much easier for the girl to appear at a clinic accompanied by a notary, so that the latter could record her clearly expressed intention and the results of an examination by a psychologist confirming that she is of sound mind and memory, after which she would receive her lethal injection of heroin from a doctor and pass away peacefully with a blissful smile on her face. If the prediction from the song—that under ancap, we probably won’t need to die at all—does not come true, then personally, I expect to end my life in exactly this way in my old age.

In the case under consideration, there are too many circumstances that are very difficult to imagine when ancap is all around and there are no bans on euthanasia. I will start inventing how such a thing could happen, and you will respond by claiming that ancap is sheer cannibalism; well, screw you.

Well, there is no need to hire the first guy you meet on the street when there are doctors. There is no need to hide the fact of the killing if everything happened by agreement, and this can be easily confirmed. And finally, the parents have no right to demand retribution from a conscientious executor of a legally flawless contract.

Now, if you want me to consider specifically the case linked, where the state is still around, but for some reason my non-deciding opinion is important to you, then okay. I consider the perpetrator of the killing a jerk who didn’t step away from this slippery subject, although he had every opportunity to do so. If he was driven by curiosity, then I would be wary of such curious people—maybe next time he’ll decide to be curious with a knife in my guts. If he thought such things were fucking romantic, then he could have taken a second dose of heroin, and it would have been a double suicide in a beautiful Japanese style. If he just needed money, there are many more ethical ways to earn a living. Nevertheless, this is all, of course, not a reason for a half-century prison sentence; community service in a morgue would be quite sufficient.

I don’t want naturalistic images, just a beautiful tyan in the forest!

If a libertarian penitentiary system is aimed at restitution, then how will it work in the case of a murderer?

anonymous question

The system will work exactly as it does with a robber. Compensation for damages resulting from a murder will be demanded by those who suffered that damage. This is precisely why insurance companies play such an important role in theoretical developments regarding ancap: they suffer direct financial loss from the death of the insured person, and therefore, a developed insurance market will obviously lead to a reduction in the murder rate.

If one attempts to limit feedback to such archaic mechanisms as blood feuds, this also works, of course, but it looks rather primitive in modern society; more effective market mechanisms have been developed in our time.