Monetize = civilize 3 (and se-lu 16)
The alien monsterblobs which dysrule the fucked former city of Spokane have accidentally done something that makes sense. It won't make a big difference, but it's a good move smartly implemented.

They passed a "Ban the box" ordinance, forbidding local employers from using a check-box question about criminal records as first-stage screening. Employers can ask the question, and consider its answer, during an interview.

Won't make much difference because Federal requirements remain in place for higher-level jobs. Employers who don't have to deal with Federal requirements (eg landscapers and small construction firms) are already loose about this question.

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Well, let's stand back and look at the entire question from the opposite angle, using DUTIES instead of "rights". I can speak from personal experience here, which means that I understand the issue AND I'm likely to be biased.

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The current setup using "rights":

Committing a crime is defined as "violating" someone else's "rights". "Rights" are arbitrary entities that appear magically when the screeches and grawks inside a black-robed demon's head instruct the black-robed demon to "create" a "right". After the "right" is "created", it has existed for all time. It was "given by God" at the start of the universe, and it was injected into your body as soon as you became a "person", which means several days after birth according to the "rights" defined by Harry Blackmun's demonic screeches and grawks.

After you commit a crime you are placed in an oven for a specified amount of time to bake and harden your criminality. When the timer dings you are pulled out of the oven, but you have lost some of your own "rights". In practice this means that you can't get certain kinds of jobs. There isn't a "right" to have certain kinds of jobs, but logic doesn't apply to "rights".

Despite the lunatic theory, the practical application works fairly well. A long criminal record indicates a permanent preference for doing things the criminal way. Employers don't want to hire people who are likely to steal money from the firm, or likely to use the job as a platform for crimes not authorized by the firm.

This doesn't work at all for one-time lawbreakers who violated a law in a futile attempt to gain status. Captivity trains them toward criminal culture, and the job limitation prevents them from regaining their dignity and utility through Makeforce.

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Now the other way, duties instead of "rights". This is unfamiliar territory within modern thought patterns, so I'll try to loosen the ropes. Probably won't succeed. Here goes anyway.

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Start with the PURPOSE AND DUTY of all living things.

Life is order and value.

Because we have life, we have a GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY to make more life and more order and more value. (Within the limits of our abilities and situations.) We have a complementary duty to avoid killing other life and creating disorder. (Again within limits; sometimes you have to kill or break in self-defense or family-defense.)

When we have broken or killed unnecessarily, Nature demands compensation. Nature is a diff amp or a balancing scale. Sometimes Nature does the compensating directly. When she fails, civilization must restore the null state.

For a breakage (ie theft or destruction) the obvious counter-duty is to restore order. Pay back the theft plus a carrying charge or friction charge. Repair the damage. Old English law strongly favored compensation over captivity. Null the imbalance and get on with life. You can't pay or repair when you're in jail.

For an unnecessary killing or injury, old laws applied compensation directly and literally and quickly. Slap for slap, punch for punch, eye for eye, limb for limb, life for life. It works.

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Now to the personal. In 1969 I was jailed for owning a small quantity of a plant that the government didn't like. Because I owned a disliked plant, my "rights" were "removed" and then partly "restored".

How does owning an unfashionable plant violate anyone else's "rights"? How does it violate the DUTY of life?

Simple answer. It doesn't.

You could argue that heavy use of this particular plant makes you overly calm and less willing to work, but the same argument applies to many fashionable products like alcohol. The same argument applies to some attitudes and thoughts and belief systems, which were formerly hard to define as "possession". Recent developments in AI and "smart houses" (snitchbots) are quickly bringing thoughts and attitudes into the realm of prosecutable "possession" and "sale".

Even though this type of crime makes no sense by EITHER standard, we constantly imprison people for owning an unfashionable product or an unfashionable attitude.

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How would you untie this tangled mess?

Perhaps by assigning civilization a DUTY toward low-status and unfashionable people.

When experience teaches you that proper non-criminal work gets you nowhere, you consider improper and criminal work. Often you get more status that way. I did.

If civilization takes pains to OPEN THE PATH toward desirable and productive work, and provides STATUS in return for desirable and productive work, the unfashionable youngster will quickly gain the pride and confidence and GOD-GIVEN JOY that necessarily arise from doing his GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY.

Labels: Emersonian justice, From rights to duties, Make or break, se-lu

  ¶ 5:26 AM