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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."

2 of 857 comments (clear)

  1. 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
  2. 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