On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 10:34:48AM -0600, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> Never touch the stuff!
>
> It's OK to do stuff that's legal, but remember that I'm the advocate of
> immediate and on-the-spot euthanasia for people with so pronounced a death-wish
> as indicated by their willingness to violate a law, e.g. by spitting on the
> sidewalk, speeding, or murdering a building full of people, with a written
> apology issued in the unlikely even that someone unjustly punished complain
> because their rights have been violated. It's got to be like violating a law,
> any law, is equivalent to jumping from a plane at 40K feet with no parachute.
> I've considered that in contrast with my recommendation that immersion in molten
> iron be used to dispatch sidewalk spitters, corrupt politicians, and mass
> murderers, etc, but, though I like the fact the punished will get the chance to
> enjoy the trip, the flight could get to be too costly.
Have you taken even one minute to think about this? Mandating the death
penalty for spitting on the sidewalk? This fucked up idea can happily
result in _major_ violence:
- guy spits on sidewalk,
- police man spots him, tries to arrest him (to send him off to the
executioner)
- guy realizes that his now in for death anyway, so things _can't_
possible get any worse.
- guys just kills the police man
- guy decides to at least have some fun before he is catched and killed
- guy steals really big truck, lots of barrels full of fertilizer
and some fuel oil (anybody saying ANFO?) some sticks of dynamite,
blasting caps ...
- guys drives directly into big government building and sets up his
10 ton ANFO bomb
Mandating extreme punishment for even small misdemeanours simply promotes
extreme escalation of violence for the simple reason that whatever you
do _then_ - your punishment _can't_ get any harder (hey, you can only
die once) so you might as well have some fun / do lots of damage to those
trying to kill you.
Modern law has generally accepted the idea that the punishment should
match the crime (i.e.: steal a candy bar - pay for it and do some hours
of community work, kill a person - off to the executioner with you (in
some countries) or behind bars for a very long time).
Regards,
Alex.
--
We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of
distributed ignorance. And we know and understand less while being
increasingly capable. -- Prof. Peter Cochrane, formerly of BT Labs
Received on Sun Jul 08 2001 - 16:58:30 BST