I was driving along with my friend today We were discussing the Tines Square Bombing attempt.
The suspect is alleged - note these two words - he is a suspect because he has NOT been found guilty, and his actions are alleged because they haven't been proven by evidence. But leaving that aside - He is alleged to have placed fertilizer, gasoline and propane tanks in his vehicle with the intent that they should explode and hurt bystanders. So - in libertopia, we have arbitration and restitution as our legal basis. Free Market arbitration and assessment of damages. Okay. On Anti-war I have heard a lot of talk that two street vendors and a homeless man idenntified the bomb and alerted the police... Okay - so, because they were standing nearest to the vehicle that was rigged with the intent of explodiing... Let's say they are the plaintiffs - the complainants. Although the alleged dumb bomber didn't know them he wound up targeting them for attempted murder.... But his attempt failed utterly. His bomb was rigged badly, and nothing damaging happened. Assume for the sake of argument that the bomber has comitted the act, and that his intent was to murder random folks to make a ppolitical statement. As he approaches the parking spot, if our two street vendors and the homeless man identify the bomber, and his vehicle as a threat - they are entitled to take action to defend themselves, up to shooting and killing the bomber in order to prevent his attempt to damage them. But after he's left, and his vehicle fails to detonate - and THEN his attempt to hurt these ppeople is discoveered to have happened... What is the damage? My knee jerk is that bomber is liable for the amount of their lives*, and their belongings - as well as the damage to local privately owned property... But none off that stuff was damaged. No one suffered an actual, objective loss - the bomber's intent was to kill people and these three people are obviously the people in the threatened area.... But tey weren't hurt. They siffered no actual loss. What is their claim against the bomber? Is there any way to sanction the Bomber in order to say "As a cultural issue, we'd prefer you not blow people and their stuff up"? Or does he get a "You don;t know how to build a bomb" pass and damage to his reputation as a result? How does that work in Libertopia? -*- * I assume that a monetary value can be assessed for a human life, based on expected life time eanrings and rules of thumb concerning his emotional value to his lived ones. I don't say thhat this is the ONLY value, or even the Primary value of any given human - that depends on spiritual beliefs and principles that are hard to quantify - as a matter of arbitration, insurance and other social uses - we have to use the handles we have. We can only measure the parts of a humann being we have good systems of meeasurement for. So we can measure expected life time earnings and make some guesses about other values any given person brought to his loved ones. That's the value we use for arbitration of murder or injury to a human being. The ineffable values of a human being are beyond the scope of a social conflict resolution system - the fact that our arbitration customs cannot address these should not be construed to imply that we don't think they exist, or matter. Jay ~Meow!~ We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to. - W. Somerset Maugham Jay ~Meow!~
