I always thought Film Noir caricaturing somewhat realistically the struggles everyone unavoidably found themselves in.

Where have we come since then? I think in the later decades cops and the government still get a pretty cynical licking. But statist heroes also got their big breaks like James Bond and the spies doing their best for their country and government.

And technological progress still has detractors. There’s a whole fun genre about technology gone wrong (2001 Space Odyssey, or Jurassic Park, or War Games).

And who can forget dystopian nightmare scenarios where government becomes totalitarian (and always for everyone’s good, no less!). Of course, the message in these films usually is that a better government currently underground will replace it.

Cheers Jeff!
Thanks for the article.

I really enjoyed the article, but it raised for me a concern I worry that mises contributors do not take seriously enough: legal rights and duties sounding in privacy and personality.

I have read some of Stephan Kinsella’s criticisms of intellectual property, and while I share many of his concerns, I find it astounding that anyone could say law should only protect (1) physical bodies, and (2) real and personal property. Think of the consequences of the world Kinsella imagines: Defamation would always be legal, in all circumstances. If I were to say that a gynecologist sexually molested his patients, destroying his practice in the process, he would be without a legal remedy.

But human beings don’t just live in a world of bodies and physical goods. We live in a world of ideas, and we all have names and reputations. The common law has always recognized that, and defamation is one of the oldest and most well-established torts at law.

The information age presents challenges unknown during the age of Blackstone and Cooley. We all celebrate the conveniences that modern technology brings, but we also all shudder at the awareness of our diminishing sphere of privacy. Consider the actress whose face is photoshopped onto a pornographic image. Now imagine that is your daughter, and the photoshopped image appears in high-school boys’ lockers. Or consider the difficulty an ex-felon has in starting a new life in another state in the world of perfect information.

In short, the information age presents new challenges for human interactions, and access to private information is high on the list. While Mr. Tucker celebrates the fact that we can quickly learn about another person’s past, I wonder if he would be comfortable posting his drug prescriptions for us all to view. Or his internet cache. Or his high-school transcript. Or his book purchases. Should the government have access to that information?

We must sustain zones of privacy around the individual in order to preserve one of the most valuable aspects of human interaction: the necessity of actually interacting with another person before acquiring highly personal information about him or her. The precise boundaries of those zones should be subject to vigorous debate, as well as the consequences in which they should arise. But I for one believe that so long as human beings live in a world of ideas as well as things (that is, so long as they are human beings), then law should protect their property right in certain core ideas about their personality and identity: like their names and reputations.

Peace.
-D

One aspect of film noir I find interesting is their treatment of police beatings — either to extract confessions, or to elicit leads in criminal investigations. They’re presented casually enough to suggest being done routinely. Nobody seems to object to it much in principle so long as it’s done with honest intentions and discretely enough so as not to embarrass the police.

Here are two examples that made particular impressions on me:

In _Fallen Angel_ (1945), a police detective beats a suspect, already in custody, in an unsuccessful attempt to extract a confession of murder. (Later the detective tries to frame another suspect of the murder.) Eventually we learn it was the detective himself who’d committed the murder. (I’ll resist the temptation to compare this with the federal government’s investigations of 9/11.) Good metaphor for how so much of the government functions generally, enhancing its power by citing problems caused largely by that same government in the first place. (Unfortunately that metaphor is somewhat undermined by the speed with which the police department moves to arrest the detective once it receives the incriminating evidence: Not what would happen much in real life, and falsely conveying that the system is basically sound, notwithstanding occasional bad apples.)

In _On Dangerous Ground_ (1952), a rugged police detective beats a career criminal to successfully extract the whereabouts of a suspected murderer. Though the murderer is apprehended, it leads to revenge, which in turns leads the detective to engage in more, now wanton, brutal behavior. The detective’s superior, concerned with the prospect of embarrassing the department, sends him out of town to deal with another investigation. This time, though, the detective — newly inspired by a good woman — changes his behavior and decides not to use violence to learn the whereabouts of the suspect. Though we like the “reformed” detective better, the impression is left that beatings — i.e. torture — often provide important leads for investigators. An ambivalent but nonetheless thought-provoking movie.

I don’t follow the connection of David’s comments with film noir, but in any case I don’t agree with him at all.

We’re all so used to the government outlawing defamation and (nontangible) privacy invasion that it’s hard to adjust one’s thinking around it. Certainly, if the laws were changed, it would take society some years to become psychologically adapted to it. But it would be well worthwhile to make those changes anyway, as a matter of natural rights and of practical (utilitarian, if you will) advantage.

Defamation laws put government in the untenable and threatening position of ajudicating the veracity and intention of everyday speech and writing. It supposes it’s the coercive institution of government’s responsibility to set things straight if people say certain kinds of wrong things about others in certain contexts. The potential for abuse by government and by citizens with the funds for complicated litigation is boundless.

Conversely, the absence of such laws means that people are responsible for making their own determinations of what is said and written. Talk is cheap, and people would get used to listening critically, rather than lazily relying on government to decide for them. On the one hand, people would feel freer to criticize the rich and powerful. On the other, communicators would come to hold great stock in their own reputation for veracity. The common man would learn quickly to reserve judgment about others. From such freedom would emerge a greater sense of responsibility.

Photoshopping heads on pornographic images? That reminds me of Mises’s discussion of crooked cowmen selling cattle by weight that have been heavied up by being given salt and water:

“It never occurred to [the novelists depicting such practices as characteristic of free markets] that their narration implicitly describes all other Americans as perfect idiots whom every rascal can easily dupe. The above mentioned trick of the inflated cows is the most primitive and oldest method of swindling. It is hardly to be believed that there are in any part of the world cattle buyers stupid enough to be hoodwinked by it. To assume that there were in the United States butchers who could be beguiled in this way is to expect too much from the reader’s simplicity. It is the same with all similar fables.” (_The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality_, Ch. III.6.)

We’re supposed to lose sleep worrying that someone will photoshop our heads on pornography or in the commission of crimes, and then entrust the government to protect us from that? Apparently the rest of us are fools, readily duped in this day and age to suppose that any photo we see can’t have been altered. Or that any rumor about a health professional must be true. So we must trust the good people in government to keep these things straight for us. (And, what with government’s superior judgment, let’s have it be responsible for educating our children, licensing who’s qualified to practice medicine, deciding what drugs and nutritional supplements we can buy, etc.)

…besides, haven’t you ever wondered why politicians are protected from defamation when speaking in the chamber of parliament?

good for the goose, good for the gander.

To McCosker & Newson

Thanks for the critique. I agree with much of what you say.
What of the tort of invasion of privacy? Or publication of private facts? Assuming for a moment that Law is desirable, should a person have legal recourse if another person spies on him while he is having sex with his wife? What if someone publishes the names of all the women who received abortions at a particular clinic? These are both actual cases.

As I said, I agree with much of what you wrote above, and I am uncomfortable with the implications of some of these claims. I would appreciate your thoughts if either of you are still following this thread.