Bernie Sanders says that police departments are socialist institutions. Is he right?

Sophisticated socialists and anti-socialists rightly dunk on “socialism is when government does thing” takes. But sometimes these takes contain a grain of truth. For instance, socialists were embarrassed when Bernie Sanders called police departments socialist institutions and tried to explain why this is a mistake. But it’s not obvious to me that it is. Consider that policing is publicly provided and financed, centrally planned, subject to (indirect) democratic control, and accessible to all citizens (in principle). This strikes me as a lot closer to a socialist institution than a capitalist one by the standards of socialists themselves.

One objection alleges that socialism requires worker control and police departments don’t have that. Fair enough, but this objection deprives socialists of one of their favorite lines of defense—namely, pointing to benevolent public institutions as examples of socialism in action. For instance, Chris Maisano writes in Jacobin, “It’s one thing to identify public libraries with socialism. They operate according to democratic principles of access and distribution, providing services to all regardless of one’s ability to pay. They would be one of the most important institutions in any socialist society worthy of the name.” But public libraries don’t function as democratically-controlled, worker-run co-ops, so they shouldn’t count as socialist according to this objection.  

Another objection is that police departments don’t exemplify real socialism because they fail to operate in accordance with principles of egalitarian justice—for instance, they are often corrupt, self-serving, and benefit the few at the expense of the many. But this all-too-familiar reply is unconvincing for many reasons. I’ll just mention one: if we are judging an institutional arrangement in light of the outcomes we simply stipulate that it ought to promote, then socialist objections to capitalism instantly evaporate. The United State doesn’t exemplify real capitalism because employers often fail to treat their employees fairly, the rich obtain political favors, and so on.

Maisano writes, “If the forces responsible for killing Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, and Rekia Boyd exemplify socialism in action, then no person who wants freedom and justice should be a socialist.” Yet these forces do exemplify socialism in action more than Maisano wants to admit, which is why no person who wants freedom and justice should be a socialist.

The Rules Made Me Do It!

Here’s a story ripped from the headlines.  Yesterday at the US Open, Novak Djokovic accidentally hit a linesperson with a tennis ball.  He had just dropped his serve at love, and – clearly frustrated – took a ball out of his pocket and knocked it behind him.  (He might have hit it a tad bit harder than usual, but sending a leftover ball to the back of the court after completing a service game is standard practice.)  A split second after thoughtlessly hitting it, Djokovic looked back to see it had struck a linesperson, and was clearly horrified to see what he had done.  After rushing back to apologize, a lengthy conversation with the tournament referee ensued.  The outcome was that Djokovic was defaulted from the match and tossed from the Open.    

I’m of two minds about this.  A longtime Federer fan, I’ll cop to a little schadenfreude for any misfortune that befalls The Djoker.  (What’s a good nemesis for, anyway?)  But as a human being interested in rules, fairness, and normativity, the decision strikes me as a mistake. 

Here’s a second case.  In the 2018 US Open Final, Serena Williams played Naomi Osaka.  Early on, Serena’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, was cited for nonverbal coaching.  This gave Williams a ‘code violation’—basically a verbal warning from the chair umpire.  Serena protested that she had not cheated, and the chair umpire admitted her point, responding, “I know that.”  From there, however, the match “descended into chaos”.  In the second set, Serena broke her racquet in frustration.  Because she had already been issued a formal warning, this time the rules required her to be docked a point.  Serena was incensed.  She declared the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos, to be a thief.  He issued a third code violation for “verbal abuse,” resulting in Williams dropping a game at a crucial moment. 

It’s easy to see things spiraled from what appeared to be a simple ambiguity.  When Serena initially talked to Ramos after Mouratoglou’s coaching violation, she had insisted that she had not cheated.  Ramos agreed that she had not cheated.  From the player’s point of view, they had settled their difference.  From the official’s point of view, the issue was not that a player had cheated, but that the rules demanded a code violation for a coach’s action.  So when the racquet incident came around, it could appear either as the “first” of Williams’s violations, or as the “second” violation assessed to Williams, depending on how you were counting.

My present concern is not to resolve what was or was not retracted by implicature of Ramos’s from-the-chair speech act, “I know that.”  Rather, my claim is that for the US Open to turn on niceties of this sort is ridiculous.  Serena herself was the first to make this point.  When Donna Kelso, the Grand Slam Supervisor, entered the court to explain how Ramos was following the letter of the law to an understandably upset Williams, Serena countered: “I get the rules, but I’m saying that it’s not right.”

Serena’s case is different from Novak’s.  The most basic rights are those protecting one’s physical person, so it matters that someone suffered harm in today’s episode.  The only physical damage done in the 2018 final was to Serena’s Wilson Blade racquet, which I strongly suspect she owned outright.  But anyone on the ground of a grand slam tennis match appreciates that tennis balls will be moving through the air.  Djokovic is the responsible party, as he also understood.  However, it’s hard for me – at least – to see how altering the course of the Open in response to a truly bizarre accident serves anybody’s interests (except, well, Federer’s – and so by extension, my own).  Like I said, I see both sides of this one.

Don’t worry about that.  Believe as you will about Novak and US Open rules.  I’ve taken my (and your!) precious time getting to it, but what I’m really after here is The Rules as a kind of normative banner.  In the wake of today’s decision, lots of commentators have insisted that the tournament referee had to throw Djokovic out because The Rules required it. 

Two points about this.  One: whenever anybody says “The rules require it!” I strongly recommend consulting the fine print.  Two: what The Rules require is not conceptually transparent to what’s right. Serena was too smart to be go in for that bit of bureaucratic doublespeak, and we should be, too. 

I teach a big intro class at a university.  Alas, there are rules.  Lots of rules.  My syllabus is full of them.  Yours probably is as well.  But here is the thing.  I – for one – have learned by sad experience that I’m just not clever enough to construct any set of rules such that their strict enforcement will serve the values I care about.  I don’t know quite why this is.  My experience is that enforcing the rules is bad for me, and for my most vulnerable students.  Now, you might think I haven’t thought hard enough about how to make the rules fair.  And maybe so.  But no matter what rules I put down, those rules aren’t even dry on the syllabus before Ambitious Students will have figured out how to maximize their interests within the game those rules constitute.  And because I have to grade on a curve, that’s not great news for not-so-ambitious students.  For whatever it’s worth, my very consistent experience is that the students who stand to win from The Rules are overwhelmingly upper-middle class or rich, white, and male.  Nothing against those students, who are within their rights to play by the rules.  But a system where you only get ahead by figuring out The Rules and playing hard within them will not be neutral in upon whom in confers benefits and burdens.

I’ll end with a jeremiad.  I have met The Rules.  I hate them.  Including my own.  Sometimes I feel a temptation to enforce The Rules against a student whom I really feel has it coming.  “They called me a thief!” I’ve said in my own way.  But when I’m in that state, I’m not seeing things right.  People I trust have to tell me to suppress my vanity, to let go of the rules.  I have never regretted following their advice.  I’ve also had students try to enforce The Rules against themselves.  (Curiously, never the same students eager to use the rules to get ahead.)  That’s not good, either.  I don’t work for The Rules, and nor should they.  Were we created for the syllabus, or the syllabus for us?   

What’s my thesis?  When someone tells you they are just following the rules, it’s also true that they are following the rules.  We cannot divest ourselves of responsibility for our actions by saying the rules made us do it.  They didn’t.  There’s a question about what the rules say, and there’s a question about what’s right.  Running those questions together is more dangerous than a flying tennis ball.

The Intuitive, Presumptive Wrong of Interference

The Mercatus Center held a book forum on In Defense of Openness (IDoO) with Anna Stilz, Kit Wellman, and James Witte as respondents. I'll post the podcast when available. 

Our main strategy in the first few chapters of IDoO is to argue that there is an extremely strong presumption in favor of free trade and open borders. We then look at and defeat objections which try to override this presumption.

We start by using modification of Michael Huemer's starvin' Marvin case, which goes roughly as follows:

Imagine Starvin' Marvin is starving. He will starve unless he makes a trade with some people. Fortunately, there are people in a market who want to buy what he sells. But suppose Bob shows up with armed guards and forbids those people and Marvin from trading. As a result, Marvin dies.

Here it looks like you have done something really evil and wrong. You don't have to be a libertarian to agree. 

In response, Stilz said:

For one thing, the case is ambiguous: it’s not obvious that what is salient here is that Marvin is prevented from making a trade with a willing partner, rather than the fact that he is placed into a scenario in which he must starve and die.  Most people agree that it is wrong to leave people with no option but to starve.  But note that there are many ways to prevent starvation (we might give people a right to economic exchange, we might give them a universal basic income, we might give them land on which to grow food, and so on).  So how do our intuitions about starvation support strong rights of free exchange?

That's right on it's own as a response to this one example, but it's a problematic response overall for a few reasons.

1. We anticipated this point in the book. Accordingly, we included number of alternative cases where the stakes are lower. It still seems wrong, indeed, awful and rotten, to interfere even if the stakes are lower. Imagine Marvin will merely remain poor. Or imagine Bas is literally indifferent between eating at Denny's or Perkins, but I show up with a gun and order him to pick Perkins. Here, I have treated Bas very wrongly, even though he is indifferent between the two outcomes. The wrong of interference comes not merely the welfare loses from interference, but from the interference itself. We don't even have to posit that Bas has a "right to choose where to eat" to explain why this such an evil way to treat him.

Indeed, if you have a theory which says, "When Bas is indifferent between A and B, it's ok to threaten to force him to choose B with state violence," I'd regard that as a reductio of your theory. The fact that your theory says that means your theory is false. (If you had some good reason to threaten him, that's different, but it'd better be a mean good reason. See below.)

2. Regarding Stilz's own solution, imagine that when Starvin' Marvin shows up, I once again post armed guards and forbid him from making a willing, consensual, mutually beneficial trade with others. But suppose I offer him a sandwich and care package, plus I give the willing trading partners some cash, too. Here, it nevertheless seems that I wrong him badly. Threatening him with armed guards and violently stopping adults from interacting with each other who want to do so seems very wrong, even if I make the payments so high as to be equal to the welfare gains from trade. I had better have a damn good reason for treating them this way. Not just any old reason will do.

It's of course scary and frightening to have armed guards who threaten people with violence. This is more analogous to the real world--there are indeed armed men who will attack you at the border or track you down and attack you inside the country. Indeed, even US citizens such as I have to interact with armed, mean Border Patrol agents when driving on various highways in the US. But you imagine that the interfaces is done magically instead. Suppose I cast a magic spell which simply prevents Bas from ever going to Perkins. He would rightly be pissed even though by hypothesis he has other alternatives that are as good.

So, there is a strong presumption in favor of not treating people like this. This presumption can be overridden or defeated if one can show that there are other hidden moral or welfare costs to allowing such trades, but the presumption must be overcome.

3. Overcoming the presumption is difficult, not easy, as Stilz suggests. Consider some things that would not justify this kind of violence or interference: You can't forbid Marvin from trading because you feel like it, because you dislike his race or religion, because he listens to the wrong music, because you want to use video footage for a documentary you're making, as a form of performance art, because some of the neighbors dislike it when people trade, or because some other people want to trade with Marvin's potential partners and hate the competition. You can't say, "I want to stop Marvin from trading because I am worried that it will reduce the income of the very rich by a slight amount for a short time." None of these look like good justifications. So the presumption seems very strong, not weak.

4. It's worth noting--and I did note--that even Rawls agrees. (Stilz is, I think, a kind of Rawlsian.) Rawls things there are very strong rights to be able to live where you want, to take a job you want (subject to reasonable regulation and licensing in special cases), and so on....but only within one country. But Rawls has close to zero argument at all for restricting this to one country.  

In Defense of Lori Loughlin

 If you read this blog, you’ve probably noticed its writers largely agree that the political state does more than its share of unjust things.  But that point is pretty mundane.  I’d venture that a majority of academic folks we associate with across the political spectrum broadly agree about the most egregious examples of political injustice. 

Sometimes, however, there is a case where something seems obviously unjust to me, but for some reason a lot of academics I know see it differently.  This post is about Lori Loughlin, who yesterday was sentenced over her well-publicized ploy to get her children into USC under the guise of a rowing scholarship.  I confess this strikes me as crazy.

Here’s a case to warm you up to my view.  Imagine you want to get into Fancyperson Richclub, an exclusive fraternity for the well-heeled and well-mannered.  One of the rules of admission is that your parents and grandparents must have also met certain criteria of membership among the social elite.  As it happens, your family’s past is checkered with markers of low and middle class heritage.  Your application is turned down.  Indignant, you fabricate a new family history, purging old family pictures of birthdays at Cheesecake Factory and photoshopping in nights at the symphony, etc. etc.  Unused to your plucky ambition, Fancyperson Richclub is duped.  They admit you.

Is your action wrong?  Well, there is some deception, which is often wrong.  But in some cases, deception as a way of parrying unjust background conditions – or what philosophers sometimes call defensive deception – is ok.  I’ll admit mileage may vary on this question.

Is your action unjust?  Here I say no, it’s not unjust.  If they smell you out as a low class striver, they’re free to excommunicate you.  That’s freedom of association.  But nothing more.

Second case.  Over the years, Fancyperson Richclub starts losing members and money.  Sure, they still have their pride, but that doesn’t pay for the ice sculptures.  They decide to take a few members with less distinguished pedigrees, provided they can make a “donation” up front.  You just have to take your "donation" to the Appropriate Office.  As long as you do, you’re in.  But if by chance you take your “donation” to the Inappropriate Office, the attendant there calls the police on you.  As it happens, you bring your briefcase of cash to the Inappropriate Office and get made.  The police arrest you.

Here is what puzzles me.  I don’t know why the state should intervene at all.  And if the state intervenes, why take the side of Fancyperson Richclub?  Doing that looks plain suspicious.  It’s almost as if the state had some interest in defending the old class structure. 

I’m going to introduce a technical term.  I will call something a “scam” whenever some agent or group represents themselves as something they’re not in order to get a positional advantage.  Elite colleges like to represent themselves as not trading admissions for money.  That way they can maintain certain reputational gains that give them a positional edge.  At the same time, elite colleges trade admissions for money.  So elite colleges are engaged in a scam.

Astonishingly, Lori Loughlin got the better of them.  How did a middle class divorcee turned B-list celebrity do it?  The answer to that question is the stuff of what I regret will probably not be first Hallmark true-crime thriller. 

How should an egalitarian minded political society regard people who scam the scammers?  Polite indifference?  Public commendation?  A medal of some kind?  Those are my pre-theoretical intuitions. 

Not so.  Lori Loughlin was sentenced to two months in jail.  I think this is unjust. 

I’ve had this argument with a few people.  Sometimes I’m told that it wasn’t fair for Lori Loughlin’s kids to get admitted to USC because they took some else’s spot.  Three responses.  First, I want to note that most academics tend to think “you took my spot!” reasoning betrays a kind of category mistake.  Second, for spot-taking to be unfair, it must be the case that the person who’s spot was taken was in fact more deserving.  But third, let’s say for the sake of the argument they were more deserving.  Now some star high school rower is slumming it on the crew team at UC Santa Barbara instead of USC.  And we’re going to put Lori Loughlin in a cage used by some humans to physically contain other humans as a form of punishment?  Insanity.  At the worst, we should make her send a note of apology or something. 

But really, why should the state intervene at all?  To me it looks suspicious.  It’s almost as if they had some interest in defending the existing class structure.  Maybe you disagree.  I realize I’m in the minority.  But if you’re on the other side, I am curious who you think the bad guys are in any heist movie you’ve ever watched. 

 

Perverse Incentives Created Our Dysfunctional Criminal Justice System

Chris Surprenant and I have the lead essay this month on a Cato Unbound symposium on why the US criminal justice is so terrible. It draws from our book Injustice for All. 

Abstract of the symposium:

We all know that the United States imprisons many more people per capita than otherfree countries. But why? Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians all have their favored theories, but this month’s lead authors, Chris W. Surprenant and Jason Brennan, argue that none of them captures the whole story. Here to discuss with them this month are Clark Neily, the Cato Institute’s Vice President for Criminal Justice; and John Malcolm, the Heritage Foundation’s Vice President for the Institute for Constitutional Government and Director of the Meese Center for Legal & Judicial Studies. The conversation will continue through the end of the month, and comments on posts are open to readers during the same time period.

Is Politics like a Relationship?

Philosophers in the Rawlsian tradition often like to think about political relationships on the model of personal relationships.  My own view is that we don’t share a meaningful connection to other persons just by virtue of happening to live within the same political state.  But nevermind that.  A bigger worry is that if political associations are like personal relationships, that is more disturbing than comforting.  No matter how bad things get in our personal relationships, resorting to threats of force or coercion remains totally beyond the pale.  If we really think about the relation of political rule on the model of a relationship, then it seems like a very messed up kind of relationship.

Let’s say we go ahead and think in relationship terms.  Consider what we know from political psychology about the kind of people who want to rule over us.  They are more Machiavellian.  More than most, they seek their own ends at others expense, rather than looking for shred values.  They are more narcissistic, or inclined to exaggerate their achievements and deny criticisms.  They prioritize short-term rewards to longer-term commitments.  They are less agreeable, or concerned with getting along with others.  And they may score higher in psychopathy, which would make them more willing to use force and violence than most people.  In short, “There is no doubt that some who run for elective office crave the benefits and adulation that comes from positions of power.”

People curious about the prospects for exercising rule generally want to couch their ambitions in terms of “service” for fellow citizens.  But given the list of traits just mentioned, we should know better than to take this at face value.  Those who want to get into politics often see it more as a way of realizing a goal to hold and exercise power over others more than they see it as a way of providing communal goods.  (This is especially true for men, who continue to be dramatically over-represented.)

Imagining these problems away by idealizing political rule as a healthy personal relationship can give us the wrong idea about how we should treat signals from political elites.  As Jess wrote a while back:

Charisma is not a positive feature of a leader, nor is it ‘value-free’ as Weber claimed. Rather, charisma is quite morally problematic insofar as people defer to charismatic leaders on the basis of their charisma rather than their moral or epistemic authority. A charismatic presence often inspires followers to bypass any deliberation of their own. Whether charismatic leaders are moral or not, when charisma is the reason for deference the motives followers are therefore morally worse.

There are a lot of reasons to think this is a real phenomenon.  People take their partisan leaders’ word for it all the time.

What to make of all of this for thinking about actual political activity?  Lately my sense has been that those who have opposed peaceful protests seem to think that protestors should be more grateful for the terms of political rule.  To my ear, their skepticism still has the tone of “You’ll be back!”  That rejoinder has been wrong before, and relying on political rule to guide our moral actions and beliefs – the way we might rely on people with whom we share real relationships – continues to look unpromising.  The bottom line is that if the reminder of someone’s love is found at the literal point of a fully armed battalion, it might time to start rethinking some relationship goals. 

Two Worlds on One Street: Guest Post by John Hasnas

The following is a guest post by John Hasnas, Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy, and by courtesy, Professor of Law, at Georgetown University.

One of the curses of too much education is that you cannot just experience life as it is, but constantly see what is going on around you as concrete illustrations of abstract principles.

I am fortunate enough to live in a community of homes that surrounds a lake, Lake Barcroft, near Bailey's Crossroads in Northern Virginia. Not far down the street from us is one of the beaches the homeowner's association maintains where residents can swim in the summer. At the other end of the street, just across the road from the Lake Barcroft community is a private swim club with two pools where member families can swim, dive, and play during the summer months.

The swim club is governed by the state of Virginia's plan to contain the coronavirus. Virginia is currently moving from Phase 2 to Phase 3 of this plan. This requires users to make reservations in advance to use the facility. Members can sign up for “Kids Fun”–using the pools while remaining 10 feet away from others, “Lounging only”–sitting in the sun in open areas 6 feet away from others, “Diving”, and “Lap Swimming”. Members may use the pool for 45 minutes after which they must leave while the facilities are cleaned before the next group is admitted for their 45 minutes. Members may sign up only once per day, must wear masks while waiting in line 6 feet apart to enter the club, answer questions about their health status as they check in, and use hand sanitizer upon entering.

The swim club is a sad and quiet place. Perhaps unsurprisingly no one signs up for the cruelly- named Kids Fun or for lounging. The pool is used almost exclusively by adults coming to swim laps for their 45 minutes and go home.

In contrast, the beach is governed only by the residents' voluntary behavior. The beach is full of families happily playing in the sand and swimming. They typically sit in family groups separated from other family groups, but kids throw frisbees and footballs back and forth and interact with other children. There are also many teenagers at the beach, playing spikeball, taking out paddle boards and floats, and generally hanging out together. None of the families or teenagers wear masks, but the general tenor of interaction is more restrained than it typically is in summer. A few older residents are there also, usually wearing masks and sitting away from everyone else.

The beach is a happy and cheerfully noisy place. People apparently believe that the risk of transmitting the virus is greatly reduced outdoors, and that only limited restrictions on their activities are necessary to prevent the spread of the infection. They are apparently correct because the beaches have been open since memorial day and there have been no increases in local coronavirus infection rates.

As a lap swimmer at the pool, I move between the sad, quiet world of the swim club and the happy, noisy world of the beach. Unable to prevent my over-educated mind from fleeing to abstractions, I see the two ends of my street as representing the difference between central planning and spontaneous order.

The swim club is fighting the virus under a one-size-fits-all mandate from the state's central

planning agency. Its goal is to suppress the spread of the virus. It has little to no incentive to run any risk of increased infection merely so that citizens can enjoy themselves. Using the pool reminds me of going through a TSA checkpoint and leaves the impression of just being more security theater.

The beach is fighting the virus on the basis of individual decisions as to how to balance the risk of infection against the other things that make life worthwhile. This approach requires people to learn by trial and error how to adjust their conduct to the new conditions. It carries a both greater risk of spreading the infection and a better prospect of obtaining other values that make life worth living.

Going to the beach makes me smile both because it is nice to see families and teenagers having fun and because I feel like I am part of a grand experiment to figure out how to live with a new risk without being controlled by politicians or scolded by their rabid supporters. For most people the pleasant experience would be enough. But because I am a pointy-headed intellectual, I characterized myself as having a real Hayekian experience.

Political Legitimacy or First-Degree Rights Violations?

Most people--and most philosophers--think governments have two special moral powers, legitimacy and authority. Legitimacy is what gives governments permission to create and enforce rules through coercion, while authority is what makes it so that we are morally obligated to obey those rules (because they are the rules, and not because of their content per se). Most philosophers also hold that these are in some way separate from justice. That is, they think that at least within a certain range, a government may legitimately enforce what is an unjust rule and that you are obligated to obey some unjust rules. For instance, consider the typical person who thinks, "Well, sure, it's unjust for the government to outlaw pot, but if you get caught, you have to serve your sentence."

(You can skip this part to get to the meat of the post)
Usually philosophers say that what makes otherwise unjust acts legitimate and/or authoritative is that they result from the right  kind of political process, a process which somehow confers these two moral statuses to what would otherwise be an unjust action. For instance, David Estlund argues that an unjust order or law can be legitimate and authoritative if meets the following four conditions:

1.     The act one is ordered to do is a token of a type of act that could in principle be justified.

2.     The decision process used is one that is publically justifiable to all reasonable people.

3.     The order results from reliable and fair decision process—a process that usually tracks the truth as well as any other process that meets condition 2.

4.     Those who issue the order sincerely and in good faith believe that the order is justified.

 

Note that condition 1 here does not rule out unjust actions. In principle, we can think of situations in which it would be permissible for me to kill you. So, for Estlund, if the other 3 conditions are met, then I may be both licensed and obligated to kill you when my commanding officers orders me to do so.

 

In When All Else Fails and some other papers, I explain why I don't find Estlund's main argument convincing, and I won't repeat all the details here. The main issue is that Estlund relies on casuistical reasoning to motivate intuitions on behalf of his view. I don't share his intuitions. As a public reason liberal, he has to overcome and defeat my reasonable objections, while--since I am objecting to coercion rather than defending it--I don't have to overcome or defeat his. He hasn't, so the argument doesn't succeed. Further, it's far from clear that, say, democratic decision-making in real-life is a reliable for fair process. Even if it's as reliable or fair as any other process that meets condition 2, it's not clear why that's good enough, since it's still very unreliable and quite unfair. 

(You can start here if you wanted to skip stuff) 

Instead, I want to explore a broader issue with all views that say, "It's okay to do unjust things as long as you decide to do them the right way."  

Consider three killers. Ann takes bath salts, goes crazy, and murders someone on the street. Barbara catches her lover cheating on her, and kills her in a fit of rage. Charlize reads certain kinds of anti-moral realist philosophy and concludes that morality is just a way of talking to push people around. She becomes a moral nihilist and moral skeptic because she finds their arguments convincing and she's convinced morality is just bunk. She decides it's thus not really wrong to kill her neighbor, so, for the hell of it (not out of spite or anger), she pays a hitman to kill him. 

 

If these three people were caught, we'd normally judge Charlize as worse than the other two. She'd be charged with first-degree murder, while the others would get lesser charges.

 

So, here's the issue. Philosophers often say that it's okay for governments to violate people's rights, or for voters to vote to do unjust things, so long as they do it the right way. If we deliberate and then violate people's rights, that can be (within certain limits) legitimate and authoritative. But politicians just decide spur of the moment to do it, it's not. 

 

Why not hold that deliberation which leads to rights violations instead is especially heinous and evil? Instead of saying "It's legitimate to X because we did it after deliberating" why not say "Wow, you deliberated and then decided to violate my rights? That's even more evil that had you done it on impulse."

 

A: "Hey, you guys are throwing me in jail for smoking a plant that makes me happy.If you read the empirical literature on marijuana, you'll see there's little or no public justification for doing so."

 

B: "Yeah, but we spent like six months debating this and then decided to do it."

 

A: :"Oh, wow, you're especially rotten, vile people. It'd be one thing if you just panicked and did this. But you spent months deliberating and then decided to violate my rights? Given that you spend that much time thinking about it, you should have realized it was the wrong thing to do."

 

If anything, though, this dialogue understates the problem, because the "deliberation" or "debating" in question for most laws is not well-reasoned, well-argued argument based on evidence, but demagoguery and idiocy. For instance, the actual process that lead to marijuana being criminalized was racist moral panic, not well-reasoned, evidenced based debate that unfortunately got the wrong answer.