Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

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> This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. What you're describing is anarchy.

Not at all.

Suppose the worst possible person is in the prosecutor's office. They get to decide who to prosecute. But they can't just file false charges against someone and throw away the key, they have to prove it in court with evidence and convince a jury of the defendant's peers. Moreover, we could prohibit prosecutorial misconduct and set up an independent agency for investigating and punishing it. And we could require vague laws to be construed in the defendant's favor and strike down excessively broad ones as unconstitutional.

It's possible for these checks and balances to fail -- there is some evidence that they have -- but in principle we could have stricter ones that work better. And if they work as intended, it doesn't matter how bad the prosecutor is, they don't have the power to cause harm, and they themselves are punished if they try to exceed the limits of their power.

But if they just do their job, i.e. investigate crimes and prosecute the offenders, they do have the power to do that.

And so it is with any other office in the government.

There is another failure mode. The prosecutor can refuse to prosecute a guilty party. This can happen for several reasons. 1) corruption, don’t prosecute your friends. 2) ideology, the law or punishment are “unfair” or the defendant is “misunderstood” or “disadvantaged” according to the prosecutor. 3) politics, to advance their political careers prosecutors want an unblemished record of successful convictions.

It is good that our system biases toward avoiding wrongful conviction but there’s no check that forces a party to “do their job.”

> The prosecutor can refuse to prosecute a guilty party.

But this is intended as one of the checks and balances. If the legislature passes an unjust law or one with unjust applications, the prosecutor can exercise their discretion and not enforce it, acting as a check on the tyranny of the majority.

You could remove prosecutorial discretion and require prosecutors to proceed against anyone someone wants to file charges against (let the judge and jury sort it out), but now you're making a trade off against something else.

Notice that this applies to any of the rest of it. Congress could refuse to pass a law that makes sense because their cronies benefit from the status quo etc. But the concern here is that the government has an unprecedented capacity to do harm because it exercises a monopoly on violence. If the prosecutor's buddy is a serial killer, you can still exercise your right to self-defense, or avoid being alone in public. If the prosecutor's buddy is allowing your company to not pay you for hours worked, you can sue them yourself, or quit. All while lobbying the government to replace the prosecutor. If you're falsely imprisoned by the government, what are you supposed to do?

Prosecutors are relatively new. It used to be the right of citizens to petition a grand jury to indict. A few states still allow it.

You can have multiple prosecutors. E.g., if one does not want to prosecute (and so not get paid) then another will.

While you can't ensure an individual does their job, market forces and competition can ensure the job gets done (by someone).

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