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The Economics of Executing Virus Writers

Posted by michael on from the kill-9 dept.

applemasker writes "Slate.com has an article titled Feed The Worms Who Write Worms to the Worms which argues based on economic theory (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that it is a 'better investment' to execute the creators of worms, virus and trojan authors, than murderers. Anyone who has tried to resurrect a network or computer after a nasty infection may agree. Although the author does not seriously argue for capital punishment for the script kiddies, it does raise some interesting issues about how much 'value' society puts on certain types of harm and the author's view of a government's role in protecting us from it."

6 of 857 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wow by pclminion · · Score: 4, Informative
    Tounge-in-cheek or not, this article is comparing a person's life to a dollar figure. Now, I'm as much a fan of cleaning out virii as anyone else, but that's just messed up. How much is a human life worth?

    According to the U.S. government, anywhere between $1 million and $6.3 million.

    I seem to remember hearing that the U.S. military uses the value of $2 million per soldier. I can't verify that at the moment.

  2. In the spirit of Jonathan Swift by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Good to see that the style of Jonathan Swift's famous modest proposal for aleviating poverty in Ireland is still around. His idea was to treat impoverished Irish children as livestock to be fattened up for consumption. A tongue cannot become more firmly embedded in a cheek!

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
  3. The death penalty does not deter murder. by curlyFry · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the major assumptions by the author of the article (and most people) is that the death penalty deters murder. It doesn't.

    Check out The Death Penalty Inormation Center for more facts, info, and studies.

    All of the authors economic number crunching is totally invalid because of this. :(
    However that doesn't mean that I don't WANT to execute them. ;P

  4. Sorry you're wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's just you.

    Some penalties for some crimes have gone up over the last 15 years (and some have gone) but over the last, say, 100 years, the severity of punishments served out has gone down dramatically. Think of the hanging judges in the wild west, or the justice system of any European country 150 years ago.

  5. A Modest Proposal by rk · · Score: 3, Informative

    Jeez, people, it's satire! This form of satire has been around for a long time. I love how someone can write a "punishments go up, never down" hyperbole and another can write "how can we compare human life to a dollar figure?" (Hint: It's done all the time) and it gets modded insightful. I hope the original posters were extending the joke, but somehow, I get the sense that they were posting in earnest.

    If you don't see the humor in this article, I beg of you to abstain from watching Farrelly Brothers and Austin Powers movies and recommend you pick up some books and read some Jonathan Swift or Oscar Wilde, to name a couple. There's more to humor than dick and fart jokes, and if you understand that, I'm sure you'll live longer.

  6. USA has much higher crime rate by Cryogenes · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is a report of international crime statistics which shows that there is, in fact, far more violent crime in the US than in Western Europe.

    The following are average numbers of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants per year from 1997 to 1999

    US : 6.26
    England : 1.45
    Germany : 1.28
    France : 1.63
    Norway : 0.85
    Russia : 20.52
    S.Africa: 56.49

    Interestingly, the land of the free also has the extremely high prison population (from the same source, again per 100.000 inhabitants)

    US : 682
    England : 125
    Germany : 97
    France : 91
    Norway : 56
    Russia : 729
    S.Africa: 327