... you might also want to do a good turn by doing some shopping for her at a locally-owned store...assuming you have any left.
How does paying more money for things that could be bought more cheaply at a larger store like Walmart or Target or Rite-aid help Grandma? I don't understand.
So far, research has not been able to ascertain that. Yes, it has.
When punishment for a crime went up, that crime didn't go down.
Actually, if you read the first study (the Levitt one), it shows *exactly* that - when a punishment for a specific crime was increased, the rate of people committing that crime (and only that crime) went down. Now, I'll be honest, the debate is kind of muddy. There's sort of an ideological struggle between people who believe that the true purpose of punishment is deterrence, and others who believe that rehabilitation of criminals is the only way to end the cycle of crime and poverty.
No doubt, both sides want the same thing - no more crime! They both believe that crime hurts not just the victims, but the community, society as a whole, and even the criminal him/herself. They just have different ideas about how to go about doing it. I think that a truly just society needs to do both - punish in order to deter, and rehabilitate afterwards. Any nation that claims to be good and noble doesn't throw away people because they made a mistake, or had a momentary lapse of judgement. In addition, such a nation has to give its people the reasonable assurance that they can go about their day-to-day lives without fear of being killed, stolen from, or defrauded.
Anyway, (*steps off soapbox*) my point is that there's a place for both - rehabilitation and punishment. They both serve a purpose, they both do the things they claim to do, and they're both equally necessary. It's foolish to say that one of the two "doesn't work" (when they both clearly do) in order to further the other, when they're *both* critical, indespensible parts of the solution.
You can justify doing concrete harm if you say you are trying to prevent potential harm.
Uhm... Basically, you just summed up the whole point of *any* criminal justice system. When an individual harms another person by violating a law, we "harm" that individual through punishment in order to deter future potential harm caused by others violating the same law.
Punishment deters crime - that's a fact.
But the only way your argument makes sense (in the way you intended) is if the "potential harm" actually isn't real, and never happens, or the concrete harm outweighs the potential harm.
In your hypothetical situation, you have a 16 year old who understands that, a) consensually selling sexually explicit images of yourself is a valid, and profitable, form of expression, b) laws, whose intent is to prevent the exploitation of young people, are based on an arbitrary (and imperfect) standard: chronological age, and c) it is even *more* profitable to sell things that are prohibited by law due to the black market effect (i.e., drugs, child porn).
If a 16 year old has the capacity to understand all these things, then that (adult) person is exploiting the "boundary case" of child porn laws to their own benefit.
Look - laws that discriminate between young people and adults will always be imperfect until we create a consistent, efficient way of determining an individual's level of maturity. Just because we don't have one doesn't mean that *all* laws that recognize that children and adults are different are inherently wrong. The point of laws like this one is to prevent fraud - you can't make a truly free choice unless you have sufficient knowledge, and we almost universally recognize that people must reach a certain level of maturity before they have the general knowledge required to make such a free choice.
We use chronological age to gauge maturity - it's not perfect, but it's the best method we have right now. The case in TFA does not expose some horrible, fundamental flaw in our legal system - it's a boundary situation that demonstrates the imperfection of our current method of measuring an individual's ability to make free choices based on their age.
Look, the point of the article is that a reasonable, useful law - one that prohibits the sexual exploitation of young people - is being misused to punish the very people it's supposed to protect. I think you're trying to argue something really radical, and really wrong.
You're trying to say that the law itself isn't useful or just, because it's discriminatory. In general, I agree that laws should not discriminate among different groups of people when it comes to enforcement or punishment. We believe that all people are innately equal in their potential and their humanity, and should not be judged or limited based on statistical differences in their behavior, or by the average properties of their group.
There is, however, one group that we treat differently in a whole lot of laws: young people. Exactly *how* young is something that's usually left up to a particular nation, or state, but nearly everyone accepts that it's useful to have laws that recognize that children are different than adults. For example, we accept that childhood should be devoted to learning, so we protect that time by limiting the hours a child can be employed. We recognize that a three-year-old probably doesn't have a sufficient understanding of politics to vote. (It could be argued that some adults don't, either, but that's a separate conversation.)
Point is, that we believe that everyone should be allowed to freely choose what to do with themselves, as much as possible, without infringing on anyone else's freedoms. But you can't make a truly free choice if you're lacking key elements of knowledge or experience - that's why we have laws against fraud. Laws that differentiate between children and adults do so because we recognize that most children do not possess certain key elements of knowledge and experience that would allow them to make a fully informed, and thus, fully free, decision. Now, we all know that different people mature at different rates. A precocious seven-year-old may very well understand human nature and American politics enough to cast an informed vote in our next presidential election, while a sheltered, inexperienced eighteen-year-old might lack the knowledge and experience to prevent her from being sexually exploited by another, older, person. But the problem is that we lack the ability to quickly, efficiently, and consistently gauge an individual's true maturity. The best-fit solution (so far) is to arbitrarily use their age as a screening criterion. Obviously, it's not perfect, and it's not surprising that we would run into a questionable case involving an age-discriminatory law and two individuals that are both very near to the arbitrary boundary of that law.
But the point of TFA isn't that child porn laws prevent sexually mature individuals from expressing themselves. The point is that the imperfection of the arbitrary age boundary of a useful, just, but age-discriminatory law, is being exploited to punish two consenting, mature adults who just happen to fall on the wrong side of the discrimination boundary.
The *real* issue is that the DA in this case decided, a priori, that these two individuals, based on their age, were not sufficiently mature to make an informed, fully free, choice about expressing their sexuality. It's not that he's wrong, or that the two accused individuals are unable to make such a choice.
Slashdot Mirror
... you might also want to do a good turn by doing some shopping for her at a locally-owned store...assuming you have any left.How does paying more money for things that could be bought more cheaply at a larger store like Walmart or Target or Rite-aid help Grandma? I don't understand.
Yes, it has.
When punishment for a crime went up, that crime didn't go down.
Actually, if you read the first study (the Levitt one), it shows *exactly* that - when a punishment for a specific crime was increased, the rate of people committing that crime (and only that crime) went down. Now, I'll be honest, the debate is kind of muddy. There's sort of an ideological struggle between people who believe that the true purpose of punishment is deterrence, and others who believe that rehabilitation of criminals is the only way to end the cycle of crime and poverty.
No doubt, both sides want the same thing - no more crime! They both believe that crime hurts not just the victims, but the community, society as a whole, and even the criminal him/herself. They just have different ideas about how to go about doing it. I think that a truly just society needs to do both - punish in order to deter, and rehabilitate afterwards. Any nation that claims to be good and noble doesn't throw away people because they made a mistake, or had a momentary lapse of judgement. In addition, such a nation has to give its people the reasonable assurance that they can go about their day-to-day lives without fear of being killed, stolen from, or defrauded.
Anyway, (*steps off soapbox*) my point is that there's a place for both - rehabilitation and punishment. They both serve a purpose, they both do the things they claim to do, and they're both equally necessary. It's foolish to say that one of the two "doesn't work" (when they both clearly do) in order to further the other, when they're *both* critical, indespensible parts of the solution.
Wonko, thanks for the link. I just started reading, and it looks very interesting.
You can justify doing concrete harm if you say you are trying to prevent potential harm.
Uhm... Basically, you just summed up the whole point of *any* criminal justice system. When an individual harms another person by violating a law, we "harm" that individual through punishment in order to deter future potential harm caused by others violating the same law.
Punishment deters crime - that's a fact.
But the only way your argument makes sense (in the way you intended) is if the "potential harm" actually isn't real, and never happens, or the concrete harm outweighs the potential harm.
In your hypothetical situation, you have a 16 year old who understands that, a) consensually selling sexually explicit images of yourself is a valid, and profitable, form of expression, b) laws, whose intent is to prevent the exploitation of young people, are based on an arbitrary (and imperfect) standard: chronological age, and c) it is even *more* profitable to sell things that are prohibited by law due to the black market effect (i.e., drugs, child porn).
If a 16 year old has the capacity to understand all these things, then that (adult) person is exploiting the "boundary case" of child porn laws to their own benefit.
Look - laws that discriminate between young people and adults will always be imperfect until we create a consistent, efficient way of determining an individual's level of maturity. Just because we don't have one doesn't mean that *all* laws that recognize that children and adults are different are inherently wrong. The point of laws like this one is to prevent fraud - you can't make a truly free choice unless you have sufficient knowledge, and we almost universally recognize that people must reach a certain level of maturity before they have the general knowledge required to make such a free choice.
We use chronological age to gauge maturity - it's not perfect, but it's the best method we have right now. The case in TFA does not expose some horrible, fundamental flaw in our legal system - it's a boundary situation that demonstrates the imperfection of our current method of measuring an individual's ability to make free choices based on their age.
Look, the point of the article is that a reasonable, useful law - one that prohibits the sexual exploitation of young people - is being misused to punish the very people it's supposed to protect. I think you're trying to argue something really radical, and really wrong.
You're trying to say that the law itself isn't useful or just, because it's discriminatory. In general, I agree that laws should not discriminate among different groups of people when it comes to enforcement or punishment. We believe that all people are innately equal in their potential and their humanity, and should not be judged or limited based on statistical differences in their behavior, or by the average properties of their group.
There is, however, one group that we treat differently in a whole lot of laws: young people. Exactly *how* young is something that's usually left up to a particular nation, or state, but nearly everyone accepts that it's useful to have laws that recognize that children are different than adults. For example, we accept that childhood should be devoted to learning, so we protect that time by limiting the hours a child can be employed. We recognize that a three-year-old probably doesn't have a sufficient understanding of politics to vote. (It could be argued that some adults don't, either, but that's a separate conversation.)
Point is, that we believe that everyone should be allowed to freely choose what to do with themselves, as much as possible, without infringing on anyone else's freedoms. But you can't make a truly free choice if you're lacking key elements of knowledge or experience - that's why we have laws against fraud. Laws that differentiate between children and adults do so because we recognize that most children do not possess certain key elements of knowledge and experience that would allow them to make a fully informed, and thus, fully free, decision.
Now, we all know that different people mature at different rates. A precocious seven-year-old may very well understand human nature and American politics enough to cast an informed vote in our next presidential election, while a sheltered, inexperienced eighteen-year-old might lack the knowledge and experience to prevent her from being sexually exploited by another, older, person. But the problem is that we lack the ability to quickly, efficiently, and consistently gauge an individual's true maturity. The best-fit solution (so far) is to arbitrarily use their age as a screening criterion. Obviously, it's not perfect, and it's not surprising that we would run into a questionable case involving an age-discriminatory law and two individuals that are both very near to the arbitrary boundary of that law.
But the point of TFA isn't that child porn laws prevent sexually mature individuals from expressing themselves. The point is that the imperfection of the arbitrary age boundary of a useful, just, but age-discriminatory law, is being exploited to punish two consenting, mature adults who just happen to fall on the wrong side of the discrimination boundary.
The *real* issue is that the DA in this case decided, a priori, that these two individuals, based on their age, were not sufficiently mature to make an informed, fully free, choice about expressing their sexuality. It's not that he's wrong, or that the two accused individuals are unable to make such a choice.
It's just a boundary case problem.
Child porn laws are not designed to protect minors at all.
Really? So do child labor laws actually exist to deny children the right to gainful employment?
(Whoops. I might have just fed a troll.)