Comment by AnthonyMouse
7 months ago
Sometimes we do exactly that. In general, if someone is trying to kill you, you are allowed to try and kill them right back. It's self-defense.
If you're talking about legalizing vigilantism, you would then have to argue that this is a better system and less prone to abuse than some variant of the existing law enforcement apparatus. Which, if you could do it, would imply that we actually should do that. But in general vigilantes have serious problems with accurately identifying targets and collateral damage.
Not quite my line of thinking but appreciate the reply. There's definitely an interesting debate to be had there about the difference between "legalizing vigilantism" and "not protecting criminals" (one that's been done to death in "hack back" debates).
It gets messy because, by definition the moment you remove the laws, the parties cease to be criminals... hence my Bushism "wrongdoers" (can't quite bring myself to say evil-doers :)
One hopes that "criminals" without explicit legal protection become disinclined to act, rather than become victims themselves. Hence my allusion to "nature", as in "Natural Law".
"Might is right" is no good situation either. But I feel there's a time and place for tactical selective removal of protectionism (and I am thinking giant corporations here) to re-balance things.
As a tepid example (not really relevant to this thread), keep copyright laws in place but only allow individuals to enforce them.
If you want a fun one in that line, allow piercing the corporate veil by default until you get to a human. Want to scatter conglomerates to the wind? Make the parent corporation fully liable for the sins of every subsidiary.
I wonder what the world would be like if we took corporate personhood to its logical conclusion and applied the same punishments to corporations as we apply to people.
You can’t really put a corporation in jail, but you could cut it off from the world in the same way that a person in jail is cut off. Suspend the business for the duration of the sentence. Steal a few thousand bucks? Get shut down for six months, or whatever that sentence would be.
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Good ones. Nice to shake up this thinking. We need more courageous legal exceptionalism to redistribute power and deal with complexity.
I've just finished recording a Cybershow episode with two experts in compliance (ISO42001 coming on the AI regulatory side - to be broadcast in January).
The conversation turned to what carrots can be used instead of sticks? Problem being that large corps simply incorporate huge fines as the cost of doing business (that probably is relevant to this thread)
So to legally innovate, instead, give assistance (legal aid, expert advisor) to smaller firms struggling with compliance. After all governments want companies to comply. It's not a punitive game.
Big companies pay their own way.
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