how many carats are we talkin about here, and does the thief have a buyer?
i jest.
yes, in theory it would be great if we lived in a society that not only had reasonable laws everyone agreed on which were properly enforced, but also consisted of people who never had the desire to break those laws (for whatever reasons). in practice, however, this has proven to be a very unrealistic expectation.
on the matter of being held ‘responsible’, if you qualify this term pragmatically to mean something like ‘complying with consequences for criminal action’, i would say ‘well yes, criminals are expected to comply with the consequences of their actions’… and this essentially only means ‘you are about to be punished. do you understand the punishment you are about to recieve?’ but note that this condition does not require the criminal to agree on whether or not the punishment is reasonable. the criminal’s ‘compliance’ only means he’ll go quietly into the night on this one, rather than resist.
but if you mean something metaphysically along the lines of - 'you are ‘responsible’ in that you had the freewill to choose what you did, as well being knowledgeable of some intelligeable, objective imperatives like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ - i’d say you’ve lost your marbles.
the peculiar nature of the law is that it has to utilize a specific falsehood in order to avoid having to commit a greater tyranny that is considered worse than the lie it tells; it has to pretend that freewill exists so that it can put the burden on the offender and relieve itself of its own responsibility for controlling the conditions that generate crime.
the state gives a degree freedom to its citizens in the form of not exhibiting control over the circumstances that engender criminal behavior… and then relieves itself of its own responsibility by pretending the criminal is something more than a consequence of his environment. for this it needs the idea of ‘freewill’. so for example, a homeless fellow steals a loaf of bread because he’s hungrier than a mawfucka… and then the state punishes him. a better question would be; why is this fellow homeless and hungrier than a mawfucka. ah, but this question inconveniently interrogates the state and puts into question its authority in enforcing law where it doesn’t exhibit absolute control over the circumstances that contribute to criminal behavior. the state has its cake and wants to eat it too, see. but if the homeless dude has his loaf and wants to eat it too, the states’s like ‘nah fuck that’.
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.” - stirner
some will interpret this as a plea to the state to become some kind of monolithic father figure and hold everybody’s hand. i know of one already warming his fingers up to go on another tangent of nonsense. biggs knows who i’m talkin 'bout, doncha biggs?
no sir. as an anarchist, i have no preference either way, and simply offer a disinterested analysis of some of the more concealed aspects of the problem. what i speak of is inherent to this kind of liberal democracy, and no amount of philosophizing will excuse it. the decision one is faced with is this; if you prefer to keep this kind of society, you should expect this problem to continue. there is no getting out of it. it comes with the package.