An Inconvenient History ...

[Gabri Rigotti]

https://dailyfriend.co.za/2024/06/30/land-and-race-may-we-tell-the-truth/ 

[Gabri Rigotti]

The only fault I can find with Kenny's article is that he says he was "jogging" past Peers Cave ... 

Knowing those trails like the back of my hand in my couple of decades and more of trail running there, jogging is down below on Boyes Drive or on Muizenberg beach ... 

Once you leave the tar and run uphill you are trail running ... 

However, eventually it became too dangerous ... 

Not because of say snakes like the puff adder that bit me thrice in an instant but because of murderers like the one who stabbed a man multiple times to death whilst he fended off the assailant so his wife could run to safety, in one of the beautiful ravines filled with indigenous forest and wet green dripping moss on the cliffs ...

Only the violent should be incarcerated, rapists and murderers forever, whilst everyone else a lifetime of Sundays of labour or community service if necessary to compensate their victims ...

The rest of the article is superb and needed saying ...

The next best thing to a genuine libertarian/individualist is a genuine classical liberal ... 

And South Africa may be the last hope for a regeneration of classical liberalism ... 

That would be great for us libinvs ... (libinv rolls smoother off the tongues than say libinds) ...

On Mon, Jul 1, 2024, 7:20 AM Gabri Rigotti <rigo...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://dailyfriend.co.za/2024/06/30/land-and-race-may-we-tell-the-truth/ 

[Gabri Rigotti]

Kenny is a classical liberal ... In case the fine print in his article was missed ... 😊

[Stephen vJ]

I think it was former minister of justice Dullah Omar (I'm not sure, it was a long time ago) who explained on TV one night in the late 90's that government is a representative of the people and gets its power and authority by delegation from the people. It follows therefore that if the people cannot murder, then the state cannot either - there is no power to put others to death within the people which can legitimately be delegated to the government that represents them.

This is similar conceptually to representation in contract law where I cannot appoint you as my representative to sign an agreement which I am not myself eligible to sign, for example due to not being over the age of consent or not being of sound mind, etc.... such legal and legitimate forms of representation having been around formally since at least Roman times. The representative cannot have more power than the ones they represent or more powers than what can be delegated to them.

Besides the fact that I don't trust any government with the power to kill, I found that a compelling argument for ending the death penalty in RSA, regardless of how horrible the crime or how much it would have deterred crime. However, that still leaves the problem of how to actually deal with criminals... if you can't kill them, is it any more fair to let innocents suffer and possibly die to pay for their incarceration ? That doesn't make sense either.

Crime is a serious and expensive enough problem to consider breaking with the above principle of representation and just kill them, if that would solve the problem... but there seems to be quite a bit of evidence to suggest it does nothing to deter, which means in addition to the killing being illegitimate, it also becomes pure retribution, rather than restitution or prevention... and that is rather barbaric.

That might all be besides the point... the bigger question is, why would we even want to put one of our most serious problems in the hands of the most inefficient mechanisms known to man in the first place ? If anyone should be tasked with dealing with serious problems like criminals, it should be people we can trust to find practical solutions at hardly any cost... i.e. anyone BUT government.

If we were to throw all principles away and go on emotions & feelings, then maybe we do want to kill horrible people who are beyond correction. Maybe we do want to cut costs and pay for a once-off use of noose rather than a lifetime of food, shelter and medical care. Maybe... but then why on gods earth would we want that job to be done by the least efficient and effective organization we know ?

Maybe criminals should be sold to the highest bidder or exiled to some island or something... but it seems putting them to death or caring for them at tax payer expense or depending on government for a solution are three of the worst possible ideas we could have come up with. Yet, here we are.

Stephen.

[Gabri Rigotti]

Hi Stephen

I am not sure how the death penalty came into this?

But in case there is a misperception I am against the death penalty ... a mistake is not reversible.

Furthermore, it is arguably unnecessary. 

Jails should only be for the violent, and murderers and rapists should be sentenced to much longer terms given the seriousness of the violence.

Incarcerating the non violent law infringers among the violent is not only barbaric but it feeds the violent with prey.

Violence should no longer be seen as an act to gain massive social capital in a community or within the jails. If society only incarcerates the violent, and for much longer sentences, we not only remove the violent from society, we also promote a disincentive for violence.

For example, home invaders who are not armed and who do not act violently if the household awakens and confronts them will be spared jail although they will have to  compensate their victims.

Home invaders who are armed or act violently will go to jail for sentences in proportion to their acts of violence.

If an innocent person is sent to jail for violence, there is always the chance that they may prove their innocence, and the justice system will need to fully compensate them for any trauma and loss of income that they have suffered.

This accountability for full compensation for incorrect verdicts will promote great care in finding guilt.

But the death penalty, no! Too risky, too expensive to get it absolutely right, and if wrong there is no reversibility.

If a murderer who faces life in prison seeks euthanasia, well that is another matter, and if the cost of keeping the murderer incarcerated is greater than the cost of euthanasia then yes, let it be so.

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" It is not the water in the fields that brings true development, rather, it is water in the eyes, or compassion for fellow beings, that brings about real development. "

—Anna Hazare

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Ok, maybe I did not present my case clearly - let me try again.

Taxation is robbery and the failure to pay it is punishable by death. So is attempting to hijack a cash-in-transit vehicle or breaking into the house of an armed man. Just because there is no judge proclaiming it in a court, does not mean the death penalty does not exist, it just does not exist as an official option within the judiciary... but it certainly exists (and is used) in the executive branch (pun intended). People in uniform taking you down without trial or due process does not make you any less dead.

People kill all the time and so does the state. Further, and to my point below; a) putting people in jail costs money and b) depriving poor people of money leads to some of them dying. It follows then that incarceration causes death. Less lives may in fact be lost (especially in Africa) by coordinating the cause of the death (the incarceration) with the actual death (the criminal). In other words, less lives may be lost by rather killing the criminal than to tax innocents to death to keep the criminal alive.

There is an admittedly utilitarian argument here analogous to the trolley problem, so I'm certainly not suggesting we actually do this... but I think it is important to note that your entire argument below hinges on the assumption that jailing people is costless. If putting people in jail will kill other people, would you still suggest it ? Are there other alternatives, like exile or slavery ? Sure, those are horrible options... but so is locking people up. We just happened to be a little more used to that idea.

In an ideal world there would be no crime - that is the real problem. In the real world where things are ugly and dirty and less than utopian, how do we as a society deal with that dirt ? I'm saying all of our options stink and putting people in jail stinks way more than we tend to think. I don't have a solution, but I can tell you a) putting it in the hands of government cannot possibly be the best solution and b) putting people in jail is far from being even remotely acceptable - it also kills people, directly and indirectly.

S.

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[Trevor Watkins]

This discussion on the death penalty started up in the libsa googlegroup under the wrong heading. I am manually transferring the posts to Individualist googlegroup so that the conversation can continue in the right place (Individualist googlegroup) under the right heading.

Trevor Watkins
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one

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[Stephen vJ]

I don't think I'm in that group, but please go ahead without me - I think I said my say. I am also a bit confused, since this seems to me to still be directly related to the topic Gabri brought up here... but my confusion belongs to me, if you'd like to file that under the private property topic. ;-)

Stephen.

On Jul 2, 2024, at 06:02, Trevor Watkins <bas...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Gabri Rigotti]

😊👍👌

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