Microstory 677: Punishment for Thieves?

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Theft is not illegal throughout most of Fostea. All planets and system civilizations are free to make their own rules, and devise their own punishments for “crimes” but they don’t necessarily have to, which is why we tend to not use that word at all. Instead, we have the term aggression. When you carry out an act of aggression against someone, they will generally be completely within their rights to respond accordingly. Even murder is legal in most states, but the punishment is more often than not death, and is usually executed by the victim’s family. That’s why people don’t just go around killing anyone who done them wrong. When Sotiren Zahir was structuring the galaxy, he questioned this, though. All prior civilizations had some centralized adjudicative system in place, and that seemed to work out for them, for the most part. He was, in particular, concerned with theft. His family had experienced a long history of theft. For many generations, this was how they made their money; by taking from others, and selling their possessions. He was ashamed of his family’s past, spoke little of it in his memoirs, and didn’t mention it in the Book of Light. Still, logic prevailed, and all aggressions were deemed lawful to the galaxy. In the taikon, however, he left the window open for this to be altered, should his contemporary’s descendants feel differently. Eido Tamsin’s replacement, Sanctius Viktorov was chosen to manage an interstellar vote while the last several taikon were taking place. About half the galaxy decided that they would like theft to be punishable unilaterally, while the other half liked things the way that they were. So a compromise was made that hopefully serves both sides equally. Theft, like all other aggressions, remains legal. The difference now is that if any victim wishes to relinquish their personal justice in favor of a new committee designed to punish aggressors, they may do so, for a nominal fee. Technically businesses such as this one already exist, however, in this case, compensation will be set at a fixed price. The committee will operate outside the general market, and will be required to accept every case that comes to them, regardless of its worth. This is a new thing we’re trying here, and we’ll have to see if it works. The Sacred Savior has left for us another window of opportunity to repeal this decision later, if need be.