52 Comments

But by framing it that way you are making an implicit assumption about baseline rights that is at least as dubious and controversial as any common stance on redistribution. Namely, that people do not have any inherent preexisting moral right not to be enslaved for mere failure to pay an insurance premium, and that forbearing to enslave such people constitutes "feeling sorry for them." This is to put it mildly not a neutral stance.

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As I read this, your voucher negotiates your rights to privacy and against self-incrimination, essentially setting your due process burden. It appears you expect them to charge a higher premium for a higher due process burden, but that is counter to their interests. If it's harder to convict you, your voucher faces less risk of financial loss. Similarly, the privacy component seems to be between you and the voucher - e.g. you pay less if they can read your emails. Again, this seems counter to their interests - assuming they can be compelled by a bounty hunter to disgorge evidence against you, they can lower their risk by not collecting that evidence in the first place. It's in their interest to see/hear no evil. Corporations have document destruction policies limiting the retention period for documents for this very reason.

Auto insurance offers discounts for those who allow the insurer to electronically monitor their driving habits, but I'm pretty sure they can't be compelled to share that data with liability plaintiffs. If they could be so compelled, they'd likely analyze the data and delete it on the fly.

The voucher assumes the primary risk of loss in the face of your conviction - why would they charge you more for reducing the risk of said conviction? Seems like they would have a discount for clients who have their fingerprints removed. They have every reason to help you get away with a crime.

We have something similar to your bounty hunter concept already, in enforcement of things like the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are filing mills devoted to shaking down businesses for settlements and lawyer fees for frivolous ADA claims. Privatizing enforcement creates incentives for blackmail of the deep pocket miscreant, which lets him get away with it for a fee and then go victimize someone new. Not a great deterrence.

Someone compared this to the dystopia of The Purge - except that in this case getting away with it is tied not to the calendar, but to the perpetrator's wealth. It's a return to a system best described by Mel Brooks - "it's good to be the king" (or the rich.)

Our current system is based on our society's foundational proposition that all are held equal before the law - it appears your intent is to eliminate current shortfalls in realizomg this proposition by abandoning it. Your responses to commenters criticisms suggests that you're too intrigued by the intricacies of your construct to be bothered with the potential moral calculus or questions of justice and fairness, but the issues you seek to address don't exist in a vacuum devoid of those considerations. Unless you broaden your analysis, this just looks like the quaint musings of someone too far along the sprectrum to understand the realities of human society.

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Also seems like an awfully large disincentive to having kids or (especially) adopting. How is this is an improvement over our current system in any way at all? I don't see a lot of people clamoring for the ability to barter away their constitutional rights in exchange for lower crime voucher premiums, when we don't have to pay crime voucher premiums at all now.

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This proposal is the sort of dystopian scheme featured in movies like The Purge or In Time. One of the primary criticisms of the current system is the disparity in punishments between the poor and the rich-and that is true where we at least attempt to strive for equality. This takes that present flaw, and (instead of tackling it) magnifies it, and enshrines it as an official "feature" of the system. Your point number 2 doesn't really change that. Of course the rich don't get a "free" pass, they get an expensive one. That's the whole point.

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I'm making no claims about moral rights here.

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If everyone's pockets get deeper, the the end result is likely to be more lawsuits. America famously has too many lawsuits as it is. Perhaps some steps to make everyone a bit less sue-happy could be part of the proposal - to counter-balance this effect.

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Those things have long already been in the crime world. I'm just changing how we handle them.

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IMO, this is a general problem with insurance. If you have inside information that your house might burn down and that information is not known to the insurance company, you can potentially take out a policy, watch your house burn down and then cash in your policy. In extreme cases, this can result in arson, murder and so on. Of course, insurance companies take various steps to try and minimize this kind of behavior and ensure it is classified as "insurance fraud" - but it does happen, and insurance companies raise everyone else's rates to pay for it.

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They are not independent. However you can have 2 without 3 - just insist on insurance. Elsewhere, you mention synergy - and that seems correct with point 3 (above) - in that it depends on 2.

Maybe your "enforcement" proposal can be split more too. Seems as though it is privatization - plus more prizes (and less wages).

Anyway, the overall package looks pretty fantastic. Am just wondering if anything can be done to make it more digestible.

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I don't see how you can split 2&3. The person who can choose punishments must internalize the cost of doing so, and the insurer is that party.

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It seems to me that this proposal can be split up into: 1. Privatize law enforcement (bounty hunting); 2. Compulsory liability insurance (vouching) 3. Negotiation of punishments.The parts seem fairly independent to me. Splitting the proposal up has various advantages. It might make some of it more palatable and thus easier to deploy. It might mean that we can test and evaluate the parts independently. Presented as one big pill it might prove to be be more difficult to swallow.

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"It appears you expect them to charge a higher premium for a higher due process burden, but that is counter to their interests." You ignore how I propose to have fine multipliers vary with such things.

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What am I misunderstanding? It looks like this imports adverse selection and moral hazard into the criminal justice arena. Sure you require everyone to get a voucher, but you allow individuals to purchase vouchers with lesser punishments/more constitutional rights, presumably for higher premiums. Doesn't that create both moral hazard and adverse selection?

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They would be more expensive because you are giving a well-heeled organization an incentive to pay attorneys to avoid a conviction. Rather than being represented by public defenders, most would be represented by the equivalent of insurance defense counsel hired by the voucher companies. The higher the potential fine, the more the voucher company will pay attorneys to file motions, examine witnesses, file appeals, etc. Why couldn't the vouchers cut conviction via choosing more rights without cutting crimes? Say one decided to grant a right against electronic surveillance? Wouldn't that tend to reduce conviction rates without reducing crime?

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#2 key detail: Finland (and I think also Switzerland) already have a system where monetary infraction fines are tied to your income. A Finnish NHL player Rasmus Ristolainen paid this year some $131k (€120k) fine for speeding in Helsinki. In the same spirit the Finnish tax authority publishes yearly everybody's earned income & taxes paid on that, capital income and taxes paid on that. Most Finns seem to think that all this is a good system.

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I think you aren't understanding how insurance premiums work.

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