While some argue that we should change our laws to open our borders, it is more common for pro-immigrant folks to argue for weaker enforcement of anti-immigration laws. They want fewer government agencies to be authorized to help enforcement, fewer resources to go into finding violators, and weaker punishment of violators. Similar things happen regarding prostitution and adultery; many complain about enforcement of such laws, and yet don’t support eliminating them.
1) and 2) are why I am against recreational drug legalization, yet okay with loose enforcement (e.g. Germany).
1) the problem is, most or the most visible pro-legalization people also approve of actualy using them. Or if not the most visible, the most radical will certainly be made the most visible by the media. And it makes it impossible for me to be seen agreeing with them, even though I would tacitly accept a social agreement where recreational drug use is frowned upon but legal.
2) is basically that it is not the fact of recreational drug use itself a problem but how people behave under the influence. so this enables the police to ignore well behaved drug users and not ignore those that are a nuisance.
3) I don't really know about.
4) yes, I think it is both common and accurate to think an overworld of normal people and a criminal underworld of habitual criminals clearly separated. that's because being a burglar is a profession just as much as being a baker. it takes training and tools. people tend to work a lot in their professions. But I think people are aware that illegal immigration or recreational drug use or abortion also happens with normal folks, not just habitual criminals.
This is how I would expect it to go. Originally these laws were enforced and few thought it was an injustice (I am thinking founding-fathers time-period). Eventually enforcement decreased as majority opinions changed, the world moved on and now we believe an injustice is a occurring when the law is enforced. At this point it is much easier to repeal a law or have it deemed unconstitutional than it would have been when it was first created. Yes it would be better if we could get rid of all unjust laws once our theory tells it is wrong, but that is much harder and sometimes a reduction in the harm caused by the law is the best we accomplish.
Yup, it's odd that people don't want to allow all good people into the USA but they'll say (like HRC), if they manage to sneek in and stay 2 years you get a path to citizenship. And BTW ahead of all the people in the queue. Makes no sense to me.
6. People want the laws and the enforcement but do not want to see the enforcment on real flesh and blood. Like I like beef but I do not want have to see the cattle slaughtered.
I have a friend who said, "I'm a Republican in theory but a democrat in reality." He meant he can talk a harsh game but when it comes right down to it he's unwilling to enforce harshly.
We usually don't enforce sodomy laws .Which makes the few times they are enforced seem really unfair and worse than useless. A man went to prison after proving his oral sex on his ex wife was consensual when a Georgia prosecutor brought in the old "unenforced" sodomy law
I do think the quantity matters in all of these other punishments as well, which is why a reduction of average jail time is indeed somewhat of a partial substitute for decriminalization. However, as I already pointed out, torture is a much more effective way to inflict severe disutility per unit time and cost and therefore the misuse/disproportionality risk is higher with torture than with fines, jail time or shame.
When you consider the most dystopic equilibria that societies can find themselves in, they're most plausibly comprised of a combination of normal torture(-blackmail) widely seen as legitimate, implemented cheaply for large quantities, and no culture of proportionality. It seems that norms that allow us to avoid these equilibria should be favored.
The same complaint can apply to any category of punishment, that we won't allow it because we can't control the quantity. But we do think we control the quantity of fines, jail, public shame, etc.
Torture allows much more severe infliction of negative utility on people in much shorter time periods; however, there is no guarantee that the time periods will remain short once legal. Proportionality is an important criminal justice concept; we don't want it to be normal for governments to inflict thousands of times the disutility of a criminal's actions on said criminal. Imprisonment can only inflict smaller amount of disutility per unit time and cost, therefore it's less prone to disproportionate misuse.
A stricter anti-torture norm can make less likely dystopian scenarios where prolonged, severe nonconsensual suffering is inflicted on larger numbers of people, or on each of us with higher probability. This anti-normalization effect is also why I think spanking children against their will should be strictly illegal, even if it is an effective means to improve their behavior in desirable ways.
5 The belief (wrt a given category of proscribed behavior) that a broader and/or simpler rule enforced with discretion works better than a narrower and/or more complex rule enforced absolutely.
We no longer enforce sodomy laws even though there are many jurisdictions where the authorities could still charge citizens with these crimes but it doesn't happen and I assume that's because there would be riots in the streets if they tried. It looks like these laws were eventually deemed unconstitutional in 2003 Lawrence versus Texas but even before then these laws seemed more like a joke and less a threat, at least in the places I lived.
No doubt discretionary enforcement can create situations where some people continue to be prosecuted but, presumably, the people who fought for decriminalization will continue to fight for these people too, only now they will have additional allies in all the people they have saved and who are no longer being locked in cages. They gain additional information as to what happens in places where the law is not enforced in order to better argue their points, before low-enforcement everything is theoretical, after low-enforcement there will be studies that could show the effects. This information can be used to fight for repeal.
Also, the fact that it is not completely removed is what allows the pro-specific-law side to compromise.
It is not a perfect solution, but it seems better than either choosing the status quo (no change) or using the political economy (grid-lock, forced dichotomy, grand-standing, reduction of ideas to slogans, expensive).
Of course I don't fully trust authorities' discretion, but a more useful question is what kinds/degrees of discretion are least bad for various rule types in various domains.. My guess is that with current technology the no-discretion option is only infrequently feasible, and even then rarely optimal, given the values of most (say) Americans.
Re 2) Selective enforcement has a whole swath of unsavoury connotations, and is therefore underrated. Observe that writing a set of laws that does exactly what we want it to is precisely as hard as the AI alignment problem. Selective enforcement on some level, be it police, prosecutors, or judge, is unavoidable. Furthermore, despite all the attention given to the typical mind fallacy, human minds are in fact much more similar than they are not, so in the vast majority of cases, people do agree on who to selectively punish, it's just so obvious to us that it barely registers that we're actually being selective. Given this, it's not surprising that different people want different levels of selective enforcement, and in particular, some people want a lot of selective enforcement. Tangentially, a good deal of this argument can also be leveraged into an argument against transparency, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Mark Kleiman supports a high tax on alcohol rather than prohibition. Would that be an acceptable compromise on drugs?
1) and 2) are why I am against recreational drug legalization, yet okay with loose enforcement (e.g. Germany).
1) the problem is, most or the most visible pro-legalization people also approve of actualy using them. Or if not the most visible, the most radical will certainly be made the most visible by the media. And it makes it impossible for me to be seen agreeing with them, even though I would tacitly accept a social agreement where recreational drug use is frowned upon but legal.
2) is basically that it is not the fact of recreational drug use itself a problem but how people behave under the influence. so this enables the police to ignore well behaved drug users and not ignore those that are a nuisance.
3) I don't really know about.
4) yes, I think it is both common and accurate to think an overworld of normal people and a criminal underworld of habitual criminals clearly separated. that's because being a burglar is a profession just as much as being a baker. it takes training and tools. people tend to work a lot in their professions. But I think people are aware that illegal immigration or recreational drug use or abortion also happens with normal folks, not just habitual criminals.
This is how I would expect it to go. Originally these laws were enforced and few thought it was an injustice (I am thinking founding-fathers time-period). Eventually enforcement decreased as majority opinions changed, the world moved on and now we believe an injustice is a occurring when the law is enforced. At this point it is much easier to repeal a law or have it deemed unconstitutional than it would have been when it was first created. Yes it would be better if we could get rid of all unjust laws once our theory tells it is wrong, but that is much harder and sometimes a reduction in the harm caused by the law is the best we accomplish.
Yup, it's odd that people don't want to allow all good people into the USA but they'll say (like HRC), if they manage to sneek in and stay 2 years you get a path to citizenship. And BTW ahead of all the people in the queue. Makes no sense to me.
6. People want the laws and the enforcement but do not want to see the enforcment on real flesh and blood. Like I like beef but I do not want have to see the cattle slaughtered.
I have a friend who said, "I'm a Republican in theory but a democrat in reality." He meant he can talk a harsh game but when it comes right down to it he's unwilling to enforce harshly.
We usually don't enforce sodomy laws .Which makes the few times they are enforced seem really unfair and worse than useless. A man went to prison after proving his oral sex on his ex wife was consensual when a Georgia prosecutor brought in the old "unenforced" sodomy law
I do think the quantity matters in all of these other punishments as well, which is why a reduction of average jail time is indeed somewhat of a partial substitute for decriminalization. However, as I already pointed out, torture is a much more effective way to inflict severe disutility per unit time and cost and therefore the misuse/disproportionality risk is higher with torture than with fines, jail time or shame.
When you consider the most dystopic equilibria that societies can find themselves in, they're most plausibly comprised of a combination of normal torture(-blackmail) widely seen as legitimate, implemented cheaply for large quantities, and no culture of proportionality. It seems that norms that allow us to avoid these equilibria should be favored.
The same complaint can apply to any category of punishment, that we won't allow it because we can't control the quantity. But we do think we control the quantity of fines, jail, public shame, etc.
"more efficient forms of punishment (eg torture"
Torture allows much more severe infliction of negative utility on people in much shorter time periods; however, there is no guarantee that the time periods will remain short once legal. Proportionality is an important criminal justice concept; we don't want it to be normal for governments to inflict thousands of times the disutility of a criminal's actions on said criminal. Imprisonment can only inflict smaller amount of disutility per unit time and cost, therefore it's less prone to disproportionate misuse.
A stricter anti-torture norm can make less likely dystopian scenarios where prolonged, severe nonconsensual suffering is inflicted on larger numbers of people, or on each of us with higher probability. This anti-normalization effect is also why I think spanking children against their will should be strictly illegal, even if it is an effective means to improve their behavior in desirable ways.
5 The belief (wrt a given category of proscribed behavior) that a broader and/or simpler rule enforced with discretion works better than a narrower and/or more complex rule enforced absolutely.
Usually is good enough.
We no longer enforce sodomy laws even though there are many jurisdictions where the authorities could still charge citizens with these crimes but it doesn't happen and I assume that's because there would be riots in the streets if they tried. It looks like these laws were eventually deemed unconstitutional in 2003 Lawrence versus Texas but even before then these laws seemed more like a joke and less a threat, at least in the places I lived.
No doubt discretionary enforcement can create situations where some people continue to be prosecuted but, presumably, the people who fought for decriminalization will continue to fight for these people too, only now they will have additional allies in all the people they have saved and who are no longer being locked in cages. They gain additional information as to what happens in places where the law is not enforced in order to better argue their points, before low-enforcement everything is theoretical, after low-enforcement there will be studies that could show the effects. This information can be used to fight for repeal.
Also, the fact that it is not completely removed is what allows the pro-specific-law side to compromise.
It is not a perfect solution, but it seems better than either choosing the status quo (no change) or using the political economy (grid-lock, forced dichotomy, grand-standing, reduction of ideas to slogans, expensive).
Yes 'discretion' works.
Of course I don't fully trust authorities' discretion, but a more useful question is what kinds/degrees of discretion are least bad for various rule types in various domains.. My guess is that with current technology the no-discretion option is only infrequently feasible, and even then rarely optimal, given the values of most (say) Americans.
It's #2.
GIven how prevalent it is, hard to call it underrated.
Yes, that's a reason to publicly favor arbitrary enforcement.
You can only get authorities to USUALLY stop enforcing a law; they retain the discretion to enforce in any particular cases they like.
Re 2) Selective enforcement has a whole swath of unsavoury connotations, and is therefore underrated. Observe that writing a set of laws that does exactly what we want it to is precisely as hard as the AI alignment problem. Selective enforcement on some level, be it police, prosecutors, or judge, is unavoidable. Furthermore, despite all the attention given to the typical mind fallacy, human minds are in fact much more similar than they are not, so in the vast majority of cases, people do agree on who to selectively punish, it's just so obvious to us that it barely registers that we're actually being selective. Given this, it's not surprising that different people want different levels of selective enforcement, and in particular, some people want a lot of selective enforcement. Tangentially, a good deal of this argument can also be leveraged into an argument against transparency, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.