The angry man on your front lawn got into this mess because "he cheerfully accepted a cheque from the famous actor for the car". Ban the use of cheques as legal tender and watch this sort of problem decrease. (Sweden has already done this.)
The war on cash, property registries and no doubt other such fixes have the common tendency to centralise information and authority. The knock -on consequences might not be so very unintended.
Some (not all) of these problems are information theoretic in nature. E.g. bouncing cheques are a race condition between databases.
Cryptocurrency nerds are good at solving the informatic part of these problems. But they still need the real legal system to have an actually functional mode of commerce.
The war between conventional financial authorities and crypto revolutionaries is leaving a lot of social benefit on the table.
Somewhere in this transaction, with today's technology, and plentiful use of cell phones, we should be able to find a way to insert 2 factor or 3 factor authentication into the mix.
A check/cheque is simply a paper version of a credit card, with perhaps slower acknowledgement of "payment" or money transfer. Each is offered by a bank that the parties presume to have vetted the card possessor or check writer as to having the funds or credit to support the transaction. Physical possession of the medium can/should be augmented with at least a text/code process to confirm the presenter's identity. Fingerprint or face recognition processing would also be justified for transactions over some amount (say $1000 equivalent?)
If you can't demonstrate to the prospective buyer via "you" logging into "your" account with an ID and password known only to "you", followed by a text - code or other authentication step, then you probably aren't the real owner of that account. This can be done in such a way that the buyer shows a display of the proper bank web site [so you have to watch what URL is entered initially], then hides the ID/PW entry values except to show he is entering it, then shows the funds either being available or being transferred or at least a successful authentication by the receiving bank web site.
Authentication by 1) what you have = check or card; 2) what you know = ID/PW; 3) text-code* or bio step confirmation (fingerprint, eye scan, face scan, etc.)
*this might be considered an alternative version of what you have since you have the phone?
I am sure this process can be spoofed but I am not criminal enough to figure out exactly how.
Some here may be more adept at that than I? :-)
Spoofing this approach would 1) show clearly that the perpetrator intended a criminal act, no ifs, ands, or buts; 2) probably require a second party somewhere to help the process along??
I'm inclined to take a caveat emptor approach. Conceiving of the original owner of the car as having purchased the bad cheque with his car, a greater onus is on him to verify the value what he is receiving in exchange rather than on the supposedly innocent buyer to verify the legitimacy of the goods he is purchasing, unless the goods in question are facially contraband. If the original owner wishes to recoup his value he needs to pursue "David Tennant" for compensation.
To my mind, this is a situation where the outcome ought to rest on a judicial rule that the courts should not themselves be the cause of injustice*, rather than on an attempt to weigh one injustice against another. From that perspective, I think a significant consideration is the fact that the angry chap was in fact a willing seller (whose veracity cannot be taken for granted).
* I recognised this judicial rule back in the late nineties, when I had cause to speculate about how the maxim caveat emptor became dominant in Roman law over caveat venditor. More recently, I've formulated it as a fundamental principle of governance: that, as a general rule, agents of the state should not themselves be the cause, through the application of policy, of harm or mischief which, in the normal course of events, it would be the state's responsibility to prevent, mitigate or remedy. https://malcolmr.substack.com/p/caveat-regnator
Edit: I wrote THAT on a proper keyboard, and NOT a 'phone? That should have been 'I'll read that later. Sounds interesting. Tah!' I was over-tired, sorry!
“But what of your rights? You purchased the car in good faith.” Your Right is to recover the money from the car dealer, whose Right is to recover the money from the fraudster. Under Common Law your Right may not be enjoyed at the expense of the Common Law Right of another.
I would go a step further and say that original owner needs to recover his money directly from the fraudster, rather than involving a presumably innocent party like the dealer.
Was there a point to this excursus; or was it that you had the lawyerly urge to waste everyones time? :-) X minutes on shaggy dog stories that peter out in the desert of the raconteur's mind are X minutes I won't get back and get on my tits. Short and sweet, please; nevermind eeking out for billable "hours"! Grrr f%^! ftang! ;-)
Economist Mike Munger has an amusing thought experiment that demonstrates your point.
Imagine that you’re driving through a small town and you get pulled over by a police officer for driving through a green light. The officer explains that, in this town, people take social justice seriously, and they’ve realized that traffic lights are unfair.
Someone having to wait for a red light to change may have far more an urgent need to get through the intersection than the people sailing through on green. The townspeople have therefore decided that everyone must stop at every traffic light regardless of the color and compare their needs. The person that everyone agrees has with the most urgent need will go through the intersection first.
Munger, while admitting that traffic lights are arbitrary and, therefore, unjust, observed that they speed traffic flow for everyone. Having to stop at every light and discuss who should go first would make travel slower for everyone, including those with the greatest need.
While this experiment is silly, it actually has a practical application. In Hawaii, there are narrow roads with one-lane bridges (e.g., the “road to Hana”). The “fair” way to cross each bridge is to let one northbound car cross, then a southbound car, then another northbound car, and so on. The problem is that this scheme, while more fair, is very slow. An unwritten rule has evolved that speeds traffic considerably. Instead of alternating cars crossing, alternating *lines* of cars cross. A whole line of north or southbound cars cross the bridge at one time, while the cars on the other side wait their turn. Less “just,” but much faster.
On a 1990's trip from the US to England, we had occasion to witness a similar situation, but with an automated scheme for controlling the traffic flow so groups of vehicles could use the single available lane in turn. Instead of two humans with radios and Stop/Slow-Go signs at each end of the controlled passage, they set up red/green traffic lights on a timer. I found that to be a marvelous idea, instead of wasting money on two people doing altogether too simple a task.
I am sure there are situations where this approach is suboptimal, but it seemed to work very well when I saw it in operation.
Seems extremely straightforward. How great it would be if I could recover the effects of my foolishness and fatuous credudlity by damaging someone else.
The law always makes compromises, in my experience. I agued once in a military court (actually several times until a wise judge interrupted me) that my client was innocent. After repeating it a few times, the judge woke up and thundered at me, "counsel, no man is innocent, and that is not the standard of proof. The question is only, can the government prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt."
Interesting conundrum, indeed! Even Solomon would have a problem here; this isn't a baby a mother wouldn't want to see harmed. So that solution might not work in this case. I don't envy the judge handed this case at all!
Well, I finally had to look up David Tennant. And to my surprise I recognized him as the lead detective in the Broadchurch series. I didn't care much for Broadchurch, but we were sucked in and kept watching, except we somehow lost track of some episodes during the 2nd or 3rd season and never saw the final segments. Thus I am glad I found this site explaining the ending (sort of): https://collider.com/broadchurch-season-3-ending-explained/
I no longer watched Dr. Who so I missed his (two?) times in that role. Now he will probably always be "Alec" and not David, for me.
The angry man on your front lawn got into this mess because "he cheerfully accepted a cheque from the famous actor for the car". Ban the use of cheques as legal tender and watch this sort of problem decrease. (Sweden has already done this.)
You will have no doubt noticed that these kind of banking reforms (think the "war on cash") often have unintended consequences. Caveat emptor!
The war on cash, property registries and no doubt other such fixes have the common tendency to centralise information and authority. The knock -on consequences might not be so very unintended.
Some (not all) of these problems are information theoretic in nature. E.g. bouncing cheques are a race condition between databases.
Cryptocurrency nerds are good at solving the informatic part of these problems. But they still need the real legal system to have an actually functional mode of commerce.
The war between conventional financial authorities and crypto revolutionaries is leaving a lot of social benefit on the table.
This is not an accident.
Somewhere in this transaction, with today's technology, and plentiful use of cell phones, we should be able to find a way to insert 2 factor or 3 factor authentication into the mix.
A check/cheque is simply a paper version of a credit card, with perhaps slower acknowledgement of "payment" or money transfer. Each is offered by a bank that the parties presume to have vetted the card possessor or check writer as to having the funds or credit to support the transaction. Physical possession of the medium can/should be augmented with at least a text/code process to confirm the presenter's identity. Fingerprint or face recognition processing would also be justified for transactions over some amount (say $1000 equivalent?)
If you can't demonstrate to the prospective buyer via "you" logging into "your" account with an ID and password known only to "you", followed by a text - code or other authentication step, then you probably aren't the real owner of that account. This can be done in such a way that the buyer shows a display of the proper bank web site [so you have to watch what URL is entered initially], then hides the ID/PW entry values except to show he is entering it, then shows the funds either being available or being transferred or at least a successful authentication by the receiving bank web site.
Authentication by 1) what you have = check or card; 2) what you know = ID/PW; 3) text-code* or bio step confirmation (fingerprint, eye scan, face scan, etc.)
*this might be considered an alternative version of what you have since you have the phone?
I am sure this process can be spoofed but I am not criminal enough to figure out exactly how.
Some here may be more adept at that than I? :-)
Spoofing this approach would 1) show clearly that the perpetrator intended a criminal act, no ifs, ands, or buts; 2) probably require a second party somewhere to help the process along??
The above is an attempt at an engineering solution, not a legal one.
What do others suggest as a potentially better alternative??
"more adept at that than I? :-) " than I am; or than me ???? :-)
Dude! You got a tattoo!
So do you, dude! Dude, what does my tattoo say?
"Sweet!" What about mine?
"Dude!" What does mine say?
"Sweet!" What about mine?
"Dude!" What does mine say?
I'm inclined to take a caveat emptor approach. Conceiving of the original owner of the car as having purchased the bad cheque with his car, a greater onus is on him to verify the value what he is receiving in exchange rather than on the supposedly innocent buyer to verify the legitimacy of the goods he is purchasing, unless the goods in question are facially contraband. If the original owner wishes to recoup his value he needs to pursue "David Tennant" for compensation.
To my mind, this is a situation where the outcome ought to rest on a judicial rule that the courts should not themselves be the cause of injustice*, rather than on an attempt to weigh one injustice against another. From that perspective, I think a significant consideration is the fact that the angry chap was in fact a willing seller (whose veracity cannot be taken for granted).
* I recognised this judicial rule back in the late nineties, when I had cause to speculate about how the maxim caveat emptor became dominant in Roman law over caveat venditor. More recently, I've formulated it as a fundamental principle of governance: that, as a general rule, agents of the state should not themselves be the cause, through the application of policy, of harm or mischief which, in the normal course of events, it would be the state's responsibility to prevent, mitigate or remedy. https://malcolmr.substack.com/p/caveat-regnator
I read that later. Aounds interesting; tah!
Edit: I wrote THAT on a proper keyboard, and NOT a 'phone? That should have been 'I'll read that later. Sounds interesting. Tah!' I was over-tired, sorry!
In short, the main maxim of libertarianism.
“But what of your rights? You purchased the car in good faith.” Your Right is to recover the money from the car dealer, whose Right is to recover the money from the fraudster. Under Common Law your Right may not be enjoyed at the expense of the Common Law Right of another.
That's *a* rule, and the one used in many jurisdictions, but is it the *best* rule?
I would go a step further and say that original owner needs to recover his money directly from the fraudster, rather than involving a presumably innocent party like the dealer.
Was there a point to this excursus; or was it that you had the lawyerly urge to waste everyones time? :-) X minutes on shaggy dog stories that peter out in the desert of the raconteur's mind are X minutes I won't get back and get on my tits. Short and sweet, please; nevermind eeking out for billable "hours"! Grrr f%^! ftang! ;-)
Sometimes you just can’t get justice for everyone.
Does there need to a point to everything?
Not sure how to unwind the sale, but at a minimum fake-David Tennant should hang.
I, for one, found this interesting and insightful.
Thank You.
“Sometimes it is simply better to make a rule”
Economist Mike Munger has an amusing thought experiment that demonstrates your point.
Imagine that you’re driving through a small town and you get pulled over by a police officer for driving through a green light. The officer explains that, in this town, people take social justice seriously, and they’ve realized that traffic lights are unfair.
Someone having to wait for a red light to change may have far more an urgent need to get through the intersection than the people sailing through on green. The townspeople have therefore decided that everyone must stop at every traffic light regardless of the color and compare their needs. The person that everyone agrees has with the most urgent need will go through the intersection first.
Munger, while admitting that traffic lights are arbitrary and, therefore, unjust, observed that they speed traffic flow for everyone. Having to stop at every light and discuss who should go first would make travel slower for everyone, including those with the greatest need.
While this experiment is silly, it actually has a practical application. In Hawaii, there are narrow roads with one-lane bridges (e.g., the “road to Hana”). The “fair” way to cross each bridge is to let one northbound car cross, then a southbound car, then another northbound car, and so on. The problem is that this scheme, while more fair, is very slow. An unwritten rule has evolved that speeds traffic considerably. Instead of alternating cars crossing, alternating *lines* of cars cross. A whole line of north or southbound cars cross the bridge at one time, while the cars on the other side wait their turn. Less “just,” but much faster.
On a 1990's trip from the US to England, we had occasion to witness a similar situation, but with an automated scheme for controlling the traffic flow so groups of vehicles could use the single available lane in turn. Instead of two humans with radios and Stop/Slow-Go signs at each end of the controlled passage, they set up red/green traffic lights on a timer. I found that to be a marvelous idea, instead of wasting money on two people doing altogether too simple a task.
I am sure there are situations where this approach is suboptimal, but it seemed to work very well when I saw it in operation.
In other words, ‘to everyone according to their need’. Seems I’ve heard that somewhere before...
Seems extremely straightforward. How great it would be if I could recover the effects of my foolishness and fatuous credudlity by damaging someone else.
The law always makes compromises, in my experience. I agued once in a military court (actually several times until a wise judge interrupted me) that my client was innocent. After repeating it a few times, the judge woke up and thundered at me, "counsel, no man is innocent, and that is not the standard of proof. The question is only, can the government prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt."
Reminds me of:
Boswell: "But what do you think of supporting a cause which you know to be bad?"
Johnson: "Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad until the judge determines it.”
http://samueljohnson.com/law.html
Where is Michael Sheen in all of this?
Interesting conundrum, indeed! Even Solomon would have a problem here; this isn't a baby a mother wouldn't want to see harmed. So that solution might not work in this case. I don't envy the judge handed this case at all!
Perhaps there’s matters the law should not have touched?
Well, for Americans it’s too late.
I could have told you beforehand...Do not do business with David Tennant. It’s pretty obvious, actually.
But.... now I have to reconsider my man crush on David Tennant.
Well, I finally had to look up David Tennant. And to my surprise I recognized him as the lead detective in the Broadchurch series. I didn't care much for Broadchurch, but we were sucked in and kept watching, except we somehow lost track of some episodes during the 2nd or 3rd season and never saw the final segments. Thus I am glad I found this site explaining the ending (sort of): https://collider.com/broadchurch-season-3-ending-explained/
I no longer watched Dr. Who so I missed his (two?) times in that role. Now he will probably always be "Alec" and not David, for me.