Yes let us just start collective punishment, because we have such a justice boner. Jesus christ, sometimes HN has some wild opinions.
Just to be absolutely clear -- it's not reasonable, and what you're suggesting is literally how North Korea handles crime.
"Oh but you know here it's different" -- you're setting a precedent which, if allowed, would mean your family members could face jail time for crimes YOU commit.
Yes let us just start collective punishment, because we have such a justice boner. Jesus christ, sometimes HN has some wild opinions.
FYI this does happen for companies. It's not that wild. Businesses like Lloyds of London and Greene King are paying slavery reparations today despite the fact that no one in the company had anything directly to do with that part of the business. I guess if you had stock that had been passed down through generations you would indirectly lose out on some money if the share price fell as a result.
Ideally proceeds from a bank robbery would be removed from the estate. From a purely practical standpoint, once the estate is settled, it should stay settled and no one should be forced to answer for the actions of another adult.
This is just a declaration, not an argument. Under what argument (that also doesn't apply to this) would those proceeds be removed from the estate, and when should an estate be "settled."
If somebody sells me a television they burgled from your house, I'd consider the transaction settled once the exchange was made and we'd parted ways. You would probably disagree.
Knowingly buying stolen property is illegal and may result in jail time.
Unknowingly buying stolen property still comes with a risk that if LE ever find it, they can take it away from you without compensating you.
I had my TV stolen and sold to a pawn shop. Detectives found it at local pawn shop and they recovered it for me. These laws exist so that when one is engaged in business, they have to do reasonable due diligence that they are not dealing with stolen or illegal goods.
I'm being emotional for saying we shouldn't punish family members of people who commit crimes? Sounds like you're the one following the emotional argument ("this feels right, because the gains are ill-gotten")
This is not collective punishment. There are already laws where children have to give up inheritance because it was created with illegal activities. There are laws against illegal dumping of dangerous chemicals. It is not too far fetched idea that existing laws can be used to recover some of damages caused by this.
Great. Now imagine the next administration deems that your prior, legitimately gotten gains, are now ill-gotten. Don't see how that could turn into a slippery slope, no sir!
And yes, punishing a family member for a crime perpetrated by another is, by definition, collective punishment.
No-one is talking about putting people in jail, but also (in my opinion), someone shouldn't get to inherit millions of dollars just because their grandfather committed some terrible crime -- inheritance should not be a right, when the original money was acquired illegally.
Whether that punishment is jail time or a fine is secondary. The primary question is, should the decedents be punished for a crime they did not commit?
Moreover, where do you draw the line?
Should all the decedents of german families who got their wealth off the back of slave labor by jews also be forced to forfeit their wealth? What about the decedents of families of plantation owners? How do you go about handling that with the institutions provided? What would they be charged with?
Honestly, I'd prefer we, as a society, did tend more in this direction. Where I live (Scotland), most of the country is owned by a small number of families, who inherited it themselves. I'd be happy with a model where this land was, possibly over generations, taken away and redisturbed in some way.
Though I generally agree with the sentiment that we should do more to claw back ill-gotten gains, civil asset forfeiture is a terrible precedent and should be eliminated, not expanded. The legal theory is that your money (and property) doesn't have the right to due process, since it's not a person. So basically you have to prove that it wasn't involved in a crime. Which just leads to police officers stealing from poor people who haven't been convicted of a crime.
>No-one is talking about putting people in jail, but also (in my opinion)
Every law, no matter how small and well-meaning, has implicit threat of prison behind it. You can't be so naïve as to believe that this enforcement action won't result in prison for some, destroyed lives for others, and because laws and enforcement are man-made, there's also a guarantee that your dragnet will punish some innocents, and let some guilty go (maybe because they can afford great lawyers and/or bribes). And of course, because this would be a very controversial measure, it would be highly politicized.
There are plenty of laws which don't have an implicit threat of prison behind it.
Here's one: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/1 . Quoting Wikipedia: "This is a U.S. federal law, but only suggests voluntary customs for handling of the American flag and was never intended to be enforceable. The code uses non-binding language like "should" and "custom" throughout and does not prescribe any penalties for failure to follow the guidelines." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code
There are laws naming post offices and other objects. There are law recognizing people and bestowing honors on them. There are laws which cancel previous laws.
There are plenty of laws which have no threat of punishment.
But I'll set that objection aside.
Let's go back to CJefferson's comment, to be more concrete. "inheritance should not be a right, when the original money was acquired illegally."
Money (at least as CJefferson refers to) exists because of laws, and the way we think of money exists because of laws. Inheritance is a legal concept, enforced by laws. So the right to inherit millions of dollars by your definition exists because of the implicit threat of prison.
Thus, changing the law as CJefferson describes doesn't necessarily add a new threat of violence - it could change the balance of the existing threat of violence, or even reduce it.
Thus, an argument against changing the law simply because laws carry a threat of punishment is really an argument to maintain the status quo for the existing threats of violence. It is not a strong argument against changing the law, which is what I think you meant it as.
>Jesus christ, sometimes HN has some wild opinions.
I'm not a libertarian myself, but I miss the libertarianism of Silicon Valley and HN. They are still around, but there's a lot more progressives around and there is a very real authoritarian and violent strain that runs through that movement.
> here's a lot more progressives around and there is a very real authoritarian and violent strain that runs through that movement.
Actual facts show that at this moment in time in the U.S. it's white supremacists and related extreme-right ideologies which are producing most domestic terrorism (i.e. actual violence).
Very curious what the rationale for downvoting this is.
In addition to the link I shared, both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have recently reported white-supremacist aligned groups as the major source of violent attacks (aka domestic terrorism) within the U.S. in recent years.
No, I do not. If my grandfather left my father $X, my father left me $Y, at the very most the maximum would have to be the lesser of $X and $Y, decremented by the full cost of answering the lawsuit.
This is problematic from a variety of practical angles, though, not just mathematical ones. It seems like something the forensic accounting lobby would salivate over.
Should I be forced to defend a lawsuit because my great^6 grandfather owned slaves? (As far as I know, none did.) That’s more abhorrent than legally dumping chemicals that today’s common sense says should have been done differently.
The only think which could in anyway get close to legality would be to:
- Legally hold a case against whoever did it and win it. (Can even legally have a case against a dead person?) This requires thinks to have been illegal when done.
- Requiring that (likely dead) person to pay a fine based on existing law.
- Arguing that whoever accepted an inheritance did inherit the fine, too.
But as far as I know every point of this list has many legally questionable aspects.
But what you MUST NOT do under any circumstances in a state of law is to not base judgement on law but arbitrary "I feel like this should be done" arguments. This is also why it's of upmost importance to fast adapt laws make them general instead of specific and not put any loop holes in them. Because then you can judge people to some degree even if they do something bad even if that specific think wasn't explicitly forbidden. (E.g. based on a generic law which makes any form of causing environmental damage in a context where it's reasonable to assume it the person should have been aware illegal. Sure you need some threshold, too. Else driving your care is illegal.)
I'm sure you could have a civil case against a dead person's estate. Although, my understanding is it's legally and logistically challenging to reopen an estate after it has been settled.
I don't see how you could have a criminal trail against a dead person in the US, without violating the sixth amendment. It would be impossible to inform the deceased of the charges, etc.
But if you grandfather lost all of $X, your father would not have any of $Y (based entirely on $X being an amount they got from business dealings and $Y being a smaller amount which came from $X).
Subtract it from what he would have earned if he had dumped the cash into an index fund, and we may find that his earning, creating and saving abilities were negative. His only profitable skill may have been having a father who dealt in slaves.
Having a period after death for the government to bring charges against the estate seems reasonable. We already have this, but I could see a reasonable person arguing to make it a longer period.
I think it's unreasonable for the same reason getting rid of all statutes of limitations would be unreasonable. At some point, you have to let people stop looking over their shoulder. Society doesn't work very well when you incentivize people to dig up century old dirt on their enemies.
