I've read the links. A few questions:

In dealing with theft and such, your source envisions most such crimes being resolved through restitution, with hard cases sent to minimum-security prisons.

But since you won't have any taxes, who will pay for those prisons? Voluntary donations? Your source seems to accept taxes, albeit low ones. But your taxless society can't operate that way.

Since the police force will be private and only protect those who pay, who will enforce the prison sentence? And if you haven't paid for police protection, are you out of luck?

Isn't a private police force that only protects subscribers a recipe for creating lawless zones in the middle of your community? And I love his suggestion for the poor -- form their own police. You're building a society of islands, armed have-nots and police-protected haves eyeing each other across walls and security cameras. Kind of like the situation in Colombia today.

This system is eerily similar to debtor's prison. A thief would be imprisoned -- though allowed to work in some fashion -- until he paid off his debt. Meaning the prison term for identical crimes would be different based entirely on the thief's ability to pay, or the value of the thief's work. A lawyer could pay off his debt and never see the inside of a jail cell; a stoop laborer might spend the rest of his life behind bars because the value of his labor doesn't come close to meeting the cost of his crime plus the cost of his imprisonment.

Your writer's response is that charitable organizations will help pay off the debt of such prisoners. What a capricious system.

As for violent crimes, he advocates a system where victims can sue their attackers. First, that's poor justice for being dead. Second, there's a flaw: he says the criminal will pay the court costs, but who pays if the defendant is found innocent? And do we use the criminal standard of evidence or the civil standard of evidence?

Under your system, a rich man could kill with impunity, pay the fine, and walk away, while a poor man might spend the rest of his life in prison for a minor property crime. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

__________________
Scarred survivor of the April 2008 Mod War.

I think there will still be funds left over from the flat tariff revenue after the government operation, courts, military (scaled down/neutral foreign policy/national militia), and federal law enforcement are funded. But, the prisons should be self-sustaining, and the FPI (UNICOR) shows that they could be. Right now, UNICOR is the only profitable aspect of government. Interesting that the reforms being called for is more privitization in regards to the removal of UNICOR's monopoly for providing to government:

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0404/041204nj1.htm

We could also expect to see more funds such as this one brought into existence and paid for by inmates being contracted by the private sector:

http://www.crimevictimsfund.org/funding.html

And the chances for abuse (prison owners trying to convict innocent people for cheap labor) will be greatly minimized since drug use will be decriminalized, as well as all victimless crimes, and since judges will not have immunity and any politician convicted of any crime will face a mandatory life sentence with no parole. We can also extend these harsh criminal sentences to prison owners as well. And there'll be no direct taxes as well.

Privatized police forces can be experimented with, but they won't be necessary at the federal level. Tariff revenue would provide the funding at that level. In the beginning we can have a division that polices the private police. Put in harsh criminal penalties - automatic life imprisonment for any private police officer who breaks the law - and that will lessen the incidence of corruption.

Yet her following description of the problem from the standpoint of the poor is true:
"As usual, poor people are hurt the most by the aggression of taxation. The poor pay a large portion of their income for rent, which reflects the property taxes that support the local police. As a percentage of their income, the poor may pay more for police protection than their middle income neighbors. Most crime occurs in low-income neighborhoods; nevertheless, the poor are largely ignored."

You're refusing to accept her logic, illustrated by the following story:

"My mother and sister came out of a drug store one day to find their bikes had been stolen. They silently followed the thieves to a ghetto apartment, where my mother and sister could see their bikes just inside the open door. The police officer they called told the two women that the police just didn't go into that apartment complex because it was far too dangerous! He advised my mother and sister to get whatever money they could from their insurance company!

If my mother and sister couldn't get the police to rescue their bikes that were in plain sight, what chance would a person dwelling in that complex have of police support? If the poor could threaten to take their tax dollars elsewhere, they would at least have some leverage. Without having the option to vote with their dollars, poor people are largely ignored. When individuals have sued unresponsive police, the courts have ruled that "the police do not exist to provide personal protection to individual citizens."(5) The individuals who get the least protection of all are the poor. As a result, they are forced to provide their own, in addition to supporting a police force that favors other segments of the population over them. Only by giving poor people their economic vote back can we hope to achieve equality."


There are no privatized police forces in Columbia though, it's just a civil war. Regardless, we can experiment with it, and with paying for police through the govenrnment via voluntary user fees. But the best deterrance against crime is an armed populace. People are ultimately responsible for their own self-defense. As above, "When individuals have sued unresponsive police, the courts have ruled that "the police do not exist to provide personal protection to individual citizens." Let's restore the 2nd amendment and spread concealed carry laws across the country and advertise that to the criminal element.

Look, if you sign a contract, and that contract meets all the legal requirements for validity, and you try to back out, you should be held responsible. The problem with our present system is the fraudulent fiat currency/central banking system. Once we clean this system up, then we should have a restitution system for any and all financial crimes.

But funds would invariably arise to do such, much like the old fraternal organizations prior to the welfare state.

This system is in addition to criminal penalties, and of course it doesn't work if you've been killed - that wasn't the point. There will still be incarceration for murderers and violent criminals - I couldn't support a system that didn't allow for this.

No it doesn't sound like a great idea, and I wouldn't support a system of pure, 100% restitution and only restitution. That could invite abuse, but I don't think she's saying that restitution is only a possible method of dealing with violent criminals. I believe that we should also have incarceration for murderers and other violent criminals IN ADDITION to restitution. If someone deprives someone else of the right to life outside the scope of self-defense, then they should have to surrender their freedom.

__________________
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

I read/skimmed a lot of this and what occured to me is that:

Truth Bringers solutions do not address the "Paradox of Value"

The fact is people are not willing to pay for high value items like justice, education, equality, but will spend a lot on diamonds.

In our society, the government basically forces us to pay for equality justice etc. I don't foresee this happening in your society, because it has been proven over and over that people won't pay the real value of those obscure items we consider to be very important.