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The Economics of Executing Virus Writers
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."
While reading the article, just bear in mind that Slate is owned and paid by Microsoft.
Ironclad Security only exists when you have Chuck Norris on the shift. Do we really have to discuss this? (Plutonite)
We perform this kind of calculus as a society all the time. When the national speed limit (in the US) was raised from 55mph, there was a predictable cost in human lives. In fact, the fact that we allow cars in the hands of private individuals at all has a steep cost in terms of human lives, and so we attempt to mitigate the cost to some extent with mandatory safetey features, license issuance, etc. The same can be said of alcohol and tobacco. The same kind of math goes on in wrongful death civil suits on a regular basis. Human life does indeed have some finite value, although that value seems to vary depending on the human or humans in question.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Our legal system actually employs actuaries whose primary task is to compute the estimated earning potential and household work potential of a dead person based on what they had done at the time of their death and what statistics indicate what that person would have done in the future.
It's a sick job, but somebody's got to do it in civil cases involving a wrongful death finding in order for there to be a dollar value assigned to the verdict.
When you can be 100% sure that someone innocent is not hanged, then you have my blessing to kill those convicted of crimes.
Unfortunatley, any human justice system is prone to failures of mis-memory (people claiming things that didn't happen and fully believing they did with all good intent), courruption (police and other officials planting evidence to make their conviction rates better), and level of access (those with a good deal of cash hardly ever go to prison, and are never never executed due to better representation).
You make the system perfect, then I'll consider the death penalty.
To quote what I think is the greatest book ever (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand):
... We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power a government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game."
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?
And now, to my thoughts:
And there we have the underlying philosophy related to many drug laws. Once we have a blanket full of laws and penalties that many are likely to come up against now and then, we must differentiate them with the severity of their penalties, make the truly horrific punishments be those which no 'normal' upstanding citizen could ever commit, make them feel safe that they will never have to face life in prison or the chair for their vices, you leave them free to feel safe in their own law breaking knowing that the penalty for the minor things they do is trivial, but ultimately keep them feeling just guilty enough to keep them inline.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
This means there is an inevitable tendancy of Government to restrict freedom ever more wretchedly. DMCA? Abusive patent ovverreach? PATRIOT? All merely corollaries of the root problem, my friends!
That's why I am posting this: The Free State Project
As far as I can tell, it's our best chance to have a free society. Even ESR thinks so (whatever you think of him!)
Part of the Second American Revolution!
You (apparently) have never been robbed. It's not the "shiny electronic gizmos" that go missing, it's the feeling of security. I don't care about that stuff, but it bothers me that I feel uncomfortable when someone I don't know rings my doorbell at night now.
That said, I agree that the marginal cost is definately not worth the benefit of lower crime. It sucks to have been robbed, but if that's the cost of preserving greater liberty for all, I'll take it.