Starting over from scratch & the death penalty

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Postby Wing-0 » Thu Mar 03, 2011 10:24 pm

I still don't understand why people assume and keep doing so, even when being presented with that other idea, that it isn't there.

Forced labor for the remainder of their lives. Murderous sociopaths wouldn't be eating and sleeping for free. They'd have to work every bit as hard, if not more so than innocents. The idea would be to literally work their asses for as long as they can survive. It's horrible, yes, but hey. Those monsters just murdered innocents without hesitation.

It could be dangerous jobs that no one wants to do. Repairing electrical lines, cleaning sewers or more decent jobs like tending to farms and crops for the consumption of citizens.

If a homicide is unfit for work for any reason, then that homicide could be used as a test subject for vaccines. You know, instead of using lab rats, we could use convicted felons.

I don't approve of the death penalty. I see it in a different way. Why kill a physically able human? If he or she has committed murder, is an incorrigible criminal and a threat to society, why not make use of that body for the betterment of conditions for good people? Make them work! Make them earn their food. Fun? For them? They're in prison! No fun for them! Would they die? Most likely. Still, they'd be paying for their crimes.

I also don't think they'd interfere with jobs for honest people. You can have one farm owned and operated by say, William Anderson and his family to produce food for... [insert your favorite city here], while a federal penitentiary operates another for I don't know... exports, materials for processing different things, you name it. Every bit of money obtained by the work of prisoners would be used for building roads, fund public schools, government hospitals, building new... buildings, the list is endless.

I've never liked the idea of "everyone is equal". We ARE born equal, I think, but our actions determine whether or not we die equal at the ends of our lives.

The main reason I think a wipe would be bad is because we've accomplished many things NONE of the ancient civilizations ever did. We have a good deal of control over electrons, atoms, progress is being done on solar energy and prostetics. They are very valuable things that would be lost.

Also, a complete wipe would mean completely eradicating the human population. This time we're not just city states nor kingdoms nor countries. We're more global than we have ever been.

Benoit is in Europe. You and I are in different countries in the American continent. I have friends in Asia and even Oceania.

A clean slate means complete environmental obliteration this time. Nothing will remain for those that survive. If an asteroid hit us, it wouldn't kill us immediately. It would severely damage the surrounding area of its impact, but the following winter would destroy the environment in a much longer time. There's no quick wiping this time.
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Re: Post what's on your mind now

Postby BenoitRen » Thu Mar 03, 2011 10:51 pm

Black Sword wrote:Blindly declaring all killings equal is about as intelligent as saying all people are created equal.

Not at all. There's nothing good to be said about taking someone's life. That's why we have laws against it in the first place.
How is keeping someone alive when the supposed punishment won't have an impact "justice?"

If you're going to claim that not everyone is equal, you can't claim that the effects of punishment will be equal on everyone either. Furthermore, no one has said that prison is the only option for punishment.
Keeping a monster alive isn't justice. It's a taunt.

People have reasons for doing what they do. People can change. People can have regrets. We're humans. You can't just dismiss people who have murdered as monsters.
Not only that, people get to complain about their money is spent, because they're the ones footing the bill.

Yes, but it's usually the most prominent argument whenever the death penalty gets brought up. As if the opposing party doesn't have enough arguments to support his/her stance.
It's unacceptable, but unavoidable.

Or, you know, we could just abolish the death penalty.
Reform everyone? Impossible. Hold on to everyone on the chance they're innocent? Costs.

The rest of the civilised world seems to be doing fine in this regard, so I don't think that argument holds a lot of weight when held in the face of reality.
Civilized is an illusion.

I suggest you open your dictionary.
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Re: Post what's on your mind now

Postby Black Sword » Thu Mar 03, 2011 11:24 pm

And I've officially upgraded to calling bullshit. Nothing good about taking someone's life? Just what the hell kind of thought is that? So leaving braindead people alive who will never recover is good? Leaving monsters alive is good? That's lazy and sloppy thinking, at best, criminal at worst.

Alright, humor me. What else fits as punishment? Charging them a fine? That's a poor joke, at best. And you're correct, the effect of punishment is not equal. But punishment is as much for the victim as the perpetrator.

People have reasons? People can change? It's a nice self-serving theory, but that's not the universal condition. If it were, there wouldn't be any alcoholics, drug addicts, and the like, who die of overdose, or who survive overdose and continue business as usual. Murder is a malicious crime, and spree and serial killers do it for fun. You can try to argue they can be fixed. I'll just let you try to tell that to people the families of Ted Bundy's victims, and others.

It's a common argument, so you assume there aren't other supporting arguments? Just because I raise a common argument doesn't render everything else void.

No, do not abolish the death penalty. You argue that any margin of error is unacceptable, but that's because...actually, I can't input a motive. On the chance they're innocent? There are chances in everything, and we all suffer from the wrath of random chance. There are the 1 in 1000000 who survive getting impaled through the heart, and the other 1 in 1000000 who die from slipping on something. Avoiding something on the risk that it may be wrong is even more immoral than taking a chance and being wrong.

You really think reforming everyone is possible? Check into how many people end up back in prison after enjoying their stay. Check into the costs of sustaining prisons. And the rest of the so-called civilized world is just as vocal in debating the merits of death as punishment.

My dictionary is open just fine. So are my eyes. I suggest you open the latter.

WING-0 Your idea may be beneficial, but honestly, the holes are: chance of escape for sociopaths - high. Possibility of taking away jobs from people due to cheapness of forced labor - high. I do like the felon test subject idea very much.

As for a complete wipe? Wait until the wars begin over water or food. Those are anticipated. A system has famine, produces dieback, and starts over once the population has fallen below a certain point. That'll likely be the collapse.
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Re: Post what's on your mind now

Postby BenoitRen » Fri Mar 04, 2011 12:01 am

Black Sword wrote:Nothing good about taking someone's life? Just what the hell kind of thought is that? So leaving braindead people alive who will never recover is good?

Braindead people are as good as dead already, so it's different in that case. But it's still a gray area.
Leaving monsters alive is good? That's lazy and sloppy thinking, at best, criminal at worst.

There are better options than killing them. I already explained this. You also keep insisting on these people being monsters instead of humans with their own reasons and background to justify their execution. I wonder if there isn't a fallacy named after this way of thinking. It's the same kind of thinking that religious people and the USA use to strip individuals and tribes of their humanity and treat them like animals they can torture and kill without receiving a fair trial.
What else fits as punishment?

Have you missed WING-0's posts?
People have reasons? People can change? It's a nice self-serving theory, but that's not the universal condition. If it were, there wouldn't be any alcoholics, drug addicts, and the like, who die of overdose, or who survive overdose and continue business as usual.

You're assuming that alcoholics and drug addicts who died of overdose couldn't be helped. Now there's a self-serving 'theory'.
It's a common argument, so you assume there aren't other supporting arguments? Just because I raise a common argument doesn't render everything else void.

I never claimed otherwise.
There are chances in everything, and we all suffer from the wrath of random chance.

Yes, but we only take those risks if we have to, and not all of them result in death. The margin of error in death penalties is unacceptable because 1) it's not the best answer, and 2) said error results in the loss of human life, which is too high a price to pay.
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Re: Post what's on your mind now

Postby Wing-0 » Fri Mar 04, 2011 12:10 am

Black Sword wrote:WING-0 Your idea may be beneficial, but honestly, the holes are: chance of escape for sociopaths - high. Possibility of taking away jobs from people due to cheapness of forced labor - high. I do like the felon test subject idea very much.


Who says they have to compete? I added that competition could be avoided. If William Anderson wants to sell his product to the internal market, then he can have the internal market. If he wants to sell it to the external market, he can. The products obtained from prisoners could be used, as I said, as materials for processing other products. The prisoners escaping would be only if the guards were sleeping on the job. A completely surrounded field for crops with snipers perched high on the walls and electrified floors and fences surrounding the field could do wonders to deter criminals from escaping. That's a non issue. Also, who says they have to walk to their cells? There was a movie, I forgot which, where prisoners were stuck inside iron coffins and transported from one side of the prison to another with several restraints in place. Physics taught me that strong, oscillating magnetic fields can induce currents in metallic coils. Electronic Engineering taught me that coils can be manufactured in a miniaturized form and still have a large current output for a minimum of cost. Common sense taught me that one can make restraints that when entering a place with a strong, oscilating magnetic field, will produce an electric shock that con incapacitate even a large animal. A human is a piece of cake.

Again, escape countermeasures are as crappy as you allow them to be.

Black Sword wrote:As for a complete wipe? Wait until the wars begin over water or food. Those are anticipated. A system has famine, produces dieback, and starts over once the population has fallen below a certain point. That'll likely be the collapse.


Water problems can be avoided. There are things called desalinization plants and waste processing plants. Again, products of science.

Famine is also a controllable issue. Cuts can be done to many places... You know... like military spending, which is what? One third of the US's budget? Third world countries can avoid famine as well. Africa could, but guess what... Its governments are so corrupt and self serving that they have huge bank accounts in foreign, European countries. Like Switzerland. Also, Europe has had a very nice policy of sticking their hands into African resources for a good time now. Just a little example: British Petroleum has its hands in Arab countries. You know, those assholes that caused the big spill in our gulf.

The situation is bad, but nothing that requires a wipe. Science can help with MANY of the problems that humanity faces. Science is something that mustn't be lost.

Not only science must be preserved. Philosophies must also be preserved. Science and philosophy can't go in different directions.

One just needs to TEACH the younger generations and stomp out unwanted variables.
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Re: Post what's on your mind now

Postby carlsojos » Fri Mar 04, 2011 1:16 am

Since I'm in the mood to cause trouble....
Black Sword wrote:Alright, humor me. What else fits as punishment?

This leads into a question that's typically presented as part of a series to determine a person's liberal verses conservative viewpoints. An alternative viewpoint is to view the resulting sanctions as not a punishment, but rather corrective action. The example that comes to my mind is a part of the research related to sensory deprivation as it relates to maximum-security inmates. In some facilities that followed a recommendation to minimize disciplinary usage of solitary confinement they found a marked decrease in the amount of rule-breaking by the affected inmates.

Black Sword wrote:Murder is a malicious crime, and spree and serial killers do it for fun. You can try to argue they can be fixed. I'll just let you try to tell that to people the families of Ted Bundy's victims, and others.

Another concept that (theoretically) controls the judicial process is that the punishment may not be equal to or worse than the crime- essentially, the institute isn't supposed to stoop to the criminal's level. This is the reason why there are so many countries that do not utilize the death penalty for anything less than truly extraordinary circumstances.

Black Sword wrote:You argue that any margin of error is unacceptable...

This comment, and the one it's responding to, are both highly charged, so I request both parties to present empirical evidence to justify the viewpoints. I cannot argue for either side when emotions and sentiments are the arguments.

Black Sword wrote:You really think reforming everyone is possible? Check into how many people end up back in prison after enjoying their stay. Check into the costs of sustaining prisons. And the rest of the so-called civilized world is just as vocal in debating the merits of death as punishment.

Another aspect to counter your argument is the case of a person whose name I'm unable to recall at the moment (Wikipedia suggests it might be Stanley Williams), but while sitting on death row, supposedly went through relatively great lengths to dissuade others from becoming gang members. Quite a few people actually called for him to be pardoned for his humanitarian actions while in prison, despite being found guilty of something like 4 murders. It's still open to debate whether his motives were pure, but it still leads to the question of whether the fact that not all people atone is justification for permanent damnation of all.

Black Sword wrote:My dictionary is open just fine. So are my eyes. I suggest you open the latter.

This, and the comment that it responds to, are both targeted statements, and are not conducive to a constructive debate. I request both parties to consider retracting their statement.

Black Sword wrote:...chance of escape for sociopaths - high. Possibility of taking away jobs from people due to cheapness of forced labor - high.

The chance of escape will vary depending on the nature of the work. The other controlling factor is that such a program is normally regulated to only accept certain varieties of inmates- a program in the southwestern United States that's controversial for forcing inmates to wear pink underwear and sleep in Korean War-era military tents only accepts certain types of minimum-security inmates, for example.

The possibility of taking away jobs falls under the same domain as the illegal immigration debate, so I choose not to address it at this time.

On Benoit's statement on not killing braindead or true monsters (yes, a few people truly are too horrendous to count among civilized people- but only a few), I do encourage euthanasia. However, these are exceptions, not rules.
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Re: Starting over from scratch & the death penalty

Postby Black Sword » Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:51 pm

I've too much work to do today to give rebut thoroughly.

Benoit

You have made a general statement that killing is not justified. Either stick to it or admit it's a faulty statement that cannot be supported.

I have explicitly said your explanation is flawed, so bringing it up again just wastes both our time. I have also explicitly stated that I disagree with WING-0. I'll give you a personal anecdote why your "stripping people of their humanity" argument is bull. About five years ago, my aunt and her husband were ambushed by a pair of criminals with records longer than a giraffe's neck. Their attack destroyed my aunt's husband's eye and caused significant mental trauma. They were caught and imprisoned. It was not their first stay. They have killed before, but there was not enough proof to convict them. They're out again, and have sworn to kill my aunt and her husband. Before you even think to respond that they must have reasons and background for committing murder, attempted murder, robbery, and threatening to kill a pair of decent, hard-working people for crimes they have committed, I want you to think long and hard. Reasons and background don't have a bloody thing to do with it. "Humanity" doesn't have a bloody thing to do with it.

I'm fairly sure once you die, you're beyond help. The next time you cherry pick my words so you can cutely add quotation marks around something to try to denigrate my statements, I will tell you off brutally, which is not something I want to do. I hope we understand each other.

Bullshit. I was minding my own business walking home and I got hit by a goddamn car. I didn't take any risk; I WAS WALKING HOME WITH STREETLIGHTS ON, HIGHLY VISIBLE. You can't argue that we "take the risks we have to" when I did no such thing. You can't just argue for the safest way out of cowardice when nothing is safe in the first place. There is no "best" answer. There is just problem and solution. Lastly, you argue that the loss of human life is too high a price to pay. According to what measure?

WING-0

You can't remove competition. Basic economics. You have created a cheap labor pool, which governments will sell off to corporations to reduce their costs. Corporations in turn will use that cheap labor to reduce their costs. By reducing costs, someone else who used to do that job at marginally better pay is now unemployed, which has a net negative effect on society.

Great idea, in theory. Which government is actually going to pay for it?

and I'll continue this when I have more time, since the clock is ticking.

@carlos

You're taking the role of the debate moderator? So cause equal opportunity trouble.
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Re: Starting over from scratch & the death penalty

Postby Semix » Fri Mar 04, 2011 5:08 pm

But there's no sense crying over every mistake, gotta keep on trying 'till you run out of cake (8)
Lets consider this as a heated debate rather than an argument (y)
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Re: Starting over from scratch & the death penalty

Postby carlsojos » Fri Mar 04, 2011 5:42 pm

I was not planning on being the moderator this time, but you've called me out on my actions, Black Sword, and I am now honor-bound to attain neutrality for the remainder of the discussion by any means necessary, or potentially destroy my honor. I guess I should attack weaknesses in all viewpoints to drop my opinion.

Braindead people are as good as dead already, so it's different in that case. But it's still a gray area.

This is indeed a rescindment against the statement of declaring capital punishment as unfit for a civilized people. The big question is whether you really can consider exceptions when applying a rule as a whole- this line of thought is extended quite a bit further when you look at the concept of vegetarianism.

You also keep insisting on these people being monsters instead of humans with their own reasons and background to justify their execution.

Indeed, there are people who truly are so twisted that logic cannot be reliably applied to determine motives. This is an argument that is questioned by people who consider mental illness as a poor excuse to punish people, but at this time, insanity is still primarily a legal term, not a medical diagnosis.

Have you missed WING-0's posts?

On the basis that labor-based punishments are currently mostly restricted to minimum-security inmates, this solution is currently unfeasible for all cases. I cannot predict whether this will change if society is wiped.

You're assuming that alcoholics and drug addicts who died of overdose couldn't be helped. Now there's a self-serving 'theory'.

It's a very slim proportion to the people who die, but there really are a few addicts that can't be helped. They generally go through progressively more intensive therapy until they exceed the maximum capabilities of the psychiatric body, at which point they are permanently stowed as incurable patients.

The margin of error in death penalties is unacceptable because 1) it's not the best answer, and 2) said error results in the loss of human life, which is too high a price to pay.

Unfortunately, these are both arguments that are based in opinion, and need to be reinforced with empirical data to become valid. Reference to studies undertaken related to the Ford Pinto's safety concerns.

Who says they have to compete?

Competition is natural in capitalistic trade, and is often considered to be a good thing, except by the people who don't win in the end.

Again, escape countermeasures are as crappy as you allow them to be.

Inmates are notoriously crafty, because the only thing they have to avoid boredom is to think of new ways to circumvent the rules, including the "No escaping" rule.

As for the statement that food and water problems can be avoided, this isn't necessarily true, as the connection between demand and development isn't instantaneous, so it is possible for a sudden imbalance to tip the scales towards chaos. It is also possible for something that is unforeseen to cause the complete wipe.


I hope you guys don't mind, but since my hiding place has melted, I'm gonna hide in the bathroom for a day or two, until this place cools down a little.
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Postby BenoitRen » Fri Mar 04, 2011 5:55 pm

I'm bowing out of this, as there's more at play here than simple supported and unsupported statements. I am aware that even with supported statements, no one will change their thinking one bit, because it comes to down to beliefs about life and people.
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Postby Wing-0 » Fri Mar 04, 2011 8:20 pm

To be honest, I just don't understand why a discussion like this has tended to go into a minefield... I have disagreements with both you Black Sword, and you, Benoit. That's more than evident and I'll leave it at that.

If you want to continue the discussion, we can do it through private messages since our moderator is hiding in the bathroom, which I must add was quite the smart choice.

Just one condition for that. No getting angry. It's just a discussion about simple topics from two opposing views. I was in a debate "club" in my equivalent to high school. I know we can conduct a simple debate in peace despite our differences.
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Re: Starting over from scratch & the death penalty

Postby The HuBBs » Sat Mar 05, 2011 3:09 am

*pops in logan's run on the tv & starts reading 1984.*
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coming soon.....
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