New gov't proposition here for the critiquing.

[sassafrassquatch]

Then why don't we then kill the killer of the killer (and so on)? If killing is wrong in principle, why is it OK for the state to do it?

Killing the guilty is not the same as killing the innocent. I don't consider justified killing to be wrong, if a person causes physical harm to an innocent person they should be killed. Rapists, murderers, wife beaters, abusers, molesters, all of them butchered in public in the most sick, evil, perverted ways possible. Well, just the men, women can get life in prison.

It's an interesting idea. Perhaps part of what is behind the idea of reforming criminals.

There is also this idea.

I have never belived that punative measures are very effective. I consider them cop-outs, and often are institutionalized forms of exacting revenge.

I like punishment and revenge.

 

[Nocapszy]

I don't care if he cured AIDS and cancer. The killing is all that matters. You kill, we kill you back. That's the way things should be.

That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, he killed, but he's clearly doing more good on the outside than inside.

Not that curing aids and cancer should be like a "get out of jail free" ticket for when you DO decide to kill people, but at the same token, there's not really the same compensation.

Someone who cures cancer saves millions of lives. You can't save someone's life millions of times, but there should at least be something they've got to look forward to. Money's great, but past a certain point, it doesn't matter how much more you get... you don't have enough time to spend it all. Giving them more (for selling more antidotes presumably) won't really do them any good. So the scale is unbalanced then.

 

[Kiddo]

That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, he killed, but he's clearly doing more good on the outside than inside.

Not that curing aids and cancer should be like a "get out of jail free" ticket for when you DO decide to kill people, but at the same token, there's not really the same compensation.

Someone who cures cancer saves millions of lives. You can't save someone's life millions of times, but there should at least be something they've got to look forward to. Money's great, but past a certain point, it doesn't matter how much more you get... you don't have enough time to spend it all. Giving them more (for selling more antidotes presumably) won't really do them any good. So the scale is unbalanced then.

Some interesting questions come to mind. What if the person they killed was you mother, father, lover, or your own kids? Would you really be content to let them off for taking away the life of someone special to you just because they cured a disease? How is that fair to the person they killed? What if the person they killed could have cured a hundred diseases had they lived? How would you know? Would the scale be balanced then?

 

[sassafrassquatch]

That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, he killed, but he's clearly doing more good on the outside than inside.

I don't give a shit about what good he can do. He kills, he dies.

 

[Wandering]

Someone who cures cancer saves millions of lives. You can't save someone's life millions of times, but there should at least be something they've got to look forward to.

Why? I'm serious: why SHOULD there be any official reward for inventing the cure for cancer or anything like that? If someone CHOOSES to spend their time and money doing so, then why should WE be somehow obliged to reward them for succeeding? It was their choice, and we never wrote a contract with them saying that we would reward them if they succeeded.

And by the way: why limit the rewards to only the one who succeeds in finding the cure for cancer? Shouldn't all those who spend their entire professional life *trying* to find that cure be "compensated" for it too?

 

[Kiddo]

Why? I'm serious: why SHOULD there be any official reward for inventing the cure for cancer or anything like that? If someone CHOOSES to spend their time and money doing so, then why should WE be somehow obliged to reward them for succeeding? It was their choice, and we never wrote a contract with them saying that we would reward them if they succeeded.

And by the way: why limit the rewards to only the one who succeeds in finding the cure for cancer? Shouldn't all those who spend their entire professional life *trying* to find that cure be "compensated" for it too?

That is a good point. And its not like there aren't rewards for those who do good deeds. Such as the Nobel Prize or even just the sense of fulfillment for doing something good for the world.