Well, while that is possible, I don't think that has happened to the US as yet. I think some parts of it work that way. There is a mixture of corruption in everything and I don't want to conflate corruption with cultishness because they're different concepts.
For example, you the rabid apple people that will buy a literal piece of shit if it has an apple logo on it and then get the new version of it every time one comes out. And then you have people that are being paid do something or say something or not do something or not say something.
My issue is that both aspects are a problem and they're not the same thing.
The virtue of the money is that you can shift people in positions of power or influence to do anything you want so long as you meet their sellout price.
The virtue of the cult is that you can get hordes of fucking peasants with pitch forks to burn people out or book burn or kill people... literally or figuratively.
Both things are a problem but it isn't the same thing.
The saddest thing is when you see one of these things being cited as the solution to the other.
Don't like corruption? Get a cult together that will burn it out.
Don't like the mob? Bribe some people in places of power to quietly kill it.
When you use something evil to fight something evil... you're not leaving good behind.
Sometimes there is no option. The only answer to war is war. You can't throw candy at people genociding your people. But evil is to be avoided if possible. If you can't do it then you can't. But I think often people don't consider alternatives.
I am a big believer in reason. Literally a believer in it. Logic is what I bow to. And it is sad to me that we can't just sit down and work things out in a reasonable fashion.
I am a big believer in win win situations. People sitting down and saying "okay, I need these things, I want those things... what do you need and want from me that would make you give me those things?" And often as not there is an exchange that can be made that makes everyone happy.
Now sometimes people are not reasonable. They say "I need to rape your wife and I want your dried genitals as a trophy to hang around my neck"... I mean... you deal with that and fine... lets just kill each other. But even then, it is important to establish who is being unreasonable and who is not being unreasonable. Who is causing a problem where none needs to exist and who is not.
It is possible that both sides if we want to be binary about it are causing problems. And if that's what is going on... then again... yeah... kill each other. But even killing each other is more productive then a lot of the crap going on. There is just so much mindless shit talking. And it is that mindlessness that offends me the most.
The means are the ends. You can't stop something by doing the same thing. A thing is the product of the actions that created it. The means are the ends.
That was the logical error made when someone said "the ends justify the means". Morality doesn't come into it. The ends = the means just as the means = the ends. One is the other.
To create a different system you must play by the rules of the system you wish to create.
A system that does not reward bribery or the manipulation of chanting frothing lunitics.
A society run by either faction is not especially rational or desirable.
On the one hand you have people that will manipulate the system using their wealth to get whatever they want. And on the other you have a system where cult leaders use their chattel as fodder to get whatever they want.
I want a society of free people by free people for free people. A society of bribery very quickly leads to one where we are bought and sold... doesn't sound very free to me. And a society ruled by chanting cultists isn't especially free either since they require utter obedience to their dogma and cult leaders or they start throwing people onto bonfires.
If you value freedom or human dignity... how can you support either one?
As to money, we can do more to control and monitor the way in which public officials receive money or gifts. And of course establish stiff unconditional penalties if they break the rules.
As to cultists, part of the problem is that our system counts us as individuals in some places and values money in others. Where it counts us as individuals we're all equal when really we shouldn't be all equal. Some laws and rules effect some people and not others. What is more many laws are about giving someone something but not someone else. That means someone profits and not everyone. That means there are conflicts of interest because the laws do not effect everyone equally.
Something should be done to weight the votes on various things so that those the law applies to have more of a say in it then those that do not. And possibly if someone profits by a law they might have reduced influence.
If there is a law to give money to Tim, then maybe Tim should recuse himself form the vote. And if there is a law to make Tim pay for something but not Jerry... why does Jerry get a vote? Jerry isn't paying regardless.
Take an issue like abortion... do men deserve a vote on it? I don't see why. But if we had a vote on parental rights then obviously men and women would get a vote. So on and so forth.
Keeping track of who does and does not have an interest in everything for 300 million people would be complicated. I don't know if that is logistically possible or if it would even be a good idea. But that would control the cultist issue where political parties say "vote for X and anyone that doesn't is EVIL". Everyone that voted would have their vote matter to the extent that it should matter. If you don't own a house, then why are you voting on property taxes? If you don't have a car, then I don't see why you're voting on gas taxes. If you don't have a child, then why are you voting on schools?
I am to be clear a libertarian. It is just a word. I don't think I fit into any ideology perfectly. But I do feel the government especially at the federal level should be stripped of nearly all its responsibilities. The only thing I feel comfortable with them maintaining are the Federal courts, Federal law enforcement, Federal prisons, coast guard, border patrol, and the various military forces. Nothing more. I'd be happier if everything else were state based. And the states especially in the west need to be subdivided. California and Texas being the prime example of states that probably need to get broken into 5 or 6 small pieces just so the people living in them have any say in the government.
California is very corrupt in large part because it is so large. The reigning politicians can do whatever they want so long as they keep most of the state happy. That can bend any portion of the state over a rail and fuck it raw, take pictures, and sell them as rape porn on the internet and nothing happens to them because they have a few cities that will vote for them regardless. Nothing matters so long as they keep those cities happy. And they don't even need to really keep them happy at that. Just keep everyone unwilling to vote for the opposition. And thus having a choice between the corrupt poli
My thoughts are that the Clintons are well known to be manifestly corrupt. Even democrats know it and they accept it on the basis that the Clinton are their criminals.
The republicans also have similar arrangements with their own corrupt politicians. So I'm not nailing either side.
The Clintons however are so corrupt that even the New York Times and Hollywood are turning on them. I wouldn't worry about Hillary. Her campaign is already over.
as to your notion that the parliamentary system is less vulnerable... I've seen no indication of that in fact. To the contrary, I've seen them just as beholden to such interests as anyone.
1. I said already that the big box people would probably not notice but the market is a lot bigger than those people. And it doesn't matter if they all get locked because the pirates are generally more sophisticated and they won't buy machines that don't let them rip movies. Which means they will rip the movies. Which means they'll upload DRM free movies on the internet. Which will let anyone watch it whether their machine is locked or not.
2. even if the big boxes get locked down that leaves the rest of the market which won't tolerate the locks and so they won't be locked. Those segments of the market are huge.
3. nothing is going to force every manufacturer to do this and those that don't will enjoy a competitive advantage because locking the machines against the will of the owner is a competitive disadvantage.
4. All it takes is the machine the pirate uses to rip the video to break the entire system. ONE person rips the video and then copies it to 10 other people. And those ten copy it to 10 other people each. And those copy it to ten other people each. And so until everyone has a copy of the DRM free copy.
The above is obvious to anyone the understands how computers work. The movie studios should understand this by now. They've had time and experience. That they don't is simple incompetence.
They've been at this long enough to know better. That they don't is merely incompetence.
Anyone that knows how a programmable computer works knows you can't prevent them from being reprogrammed without ruining their value.
They can't lock the operating system on a PC like they do with some smartphones. For one thing, the memory is physically exposed. For another, most of their customers require the machine to be reprogrammable.
And even if they were able to do it, they won't be able to lock all the machines just many of the consumer models. And the people ripping and uploading bluerays or dvds won't buy those machines if they prevent them from doing that. WHich means they'll either build their own using various parts to assemble their own system out of bits that aren't locked... or they'll buy a business class machine that won't be locked because business won't put up with this shit. A business IT department or data center or etc is not going to buy a machine they can't override or control or upgrade.
So this is little more then the Tech companies telling the apparently clueless studios lies that many children at this point would see through.
That the tech companies get away with that merely means the studios don't know how computers work. And that's pathetic. This is the 21st century. Figure it the fuck out.
Not really because the hardware makers want to sell their boxes to linux users and linux users include corporate contracts and small fabricators.
A lockable boot process with some interaction between the bios and the core system files is not unreasonable. However, you are right that MS would have it locked if they could get away with it. But they can't.
Lets say one manufacter does that... which one are you going to use instead? Anyone else. They'll not all lock it even if it gets so far that ANY of them lock it.
I wouldn't worry about it. The PC world wouldn't tolerate it.
I'm sure MS etc knows this can't possibly work. So they're doing this to placate the movie studios by doing something that the studios think will work even though it can't possibly work.
All that has to happen is ONE person has to break the DRM and then convert the movie or whatever into some other DRM free format and then that format is passed around the internet.
Look at all the crap on the pirate channels and it is all DRM free. And nearly all of it had DRM on it at some point. It was stripped off.
Now they say here that this is Hardware DRM. But that's bullshit. Some aspect of it is going to be software and that is where the cracker is going to break it.
So yeah. Headline should read "Movie Studios still don't understand how computers work."
Oh, there's something call the "lameness" filter. It triggers if you use the same character over and over. If I just put 20000 hyphens in there or something it would trigger. It also triggers if you post the exact same post twice.
The problem with it is that it has a lot more triggers for it than that and I don't know them all. Every so often it doesn't like a post and I have no idea what its problem is with it. So when that happens, I just post it to postbin and then put the URL in the comment.
If the lameness filter were specific about what it was responding to, then I'd correct it. But often as not, I have no clue what it doesn't like and really can't be bothered to figure it out if the site operators can't be bothered to explain themselves.
As to you not feeling safe on postbin, that is possibly the dumbest fucking thing I've heard all day. Postbin is not some random fucking site. It is a commonly used repository for bits of text like that.
Your comment makes about as much sense as you saying you think Wikipedia is going to hack you or something.
Whatever. Do what you want. You don't want to read my comment. Don't do it. But your bullshit excuse for not reading it was flagged as bullshit.
This is the sort of mentality that lets people think it is okay to plant bombs to blow up police cars because you're mad about the vietnam war or something.
If I can rip customer credit card information from them, that will matter. Are you going to buy a coupon from them if someone can steal your credit card information from their payment system?
They'll pay. The companies are unforgivably stingy about paying security bounties. Obviously a good person is not going to sell it to black hats. But why would anyone investigate security in these companies without compensation guarantees or the intent to exploit them for personal profit?
Just stop even bothering to exploit them unless you interest is to sell the information to the highest bidder.
Help companies that want help if you're a good person and exploit stupid companies if you're a bad person.
I had to put the post into postbin for no reason. Sorry about that. You can click the link to see my response. Slashdot vetoes posts arbitrarily sometimes. http://pastebin.com/rDYHwssm
No, you can't argue in favor X simply because X+Y isn't shown to be more effective. I could as easily respond with removing X and just having Y... Right?
Think about it... as cruel as it would be, on the issue of deterrance alone imagine if all long term prison terms were just replaced with execution. I'm not advocating that, I'm pointing out the flaw in your logic. If you executed anyone that would get a sentence of 30 years or more... would that not be as likely to deter people as simple imprisonment? You wouldn't claim that people would be less afraid of execution than imprisonment?
Because we know for a fact that the criminals are a lot of more afraid of execution. Listen to the guys on death row. These are murderers... shitting themselves. They WANT to be left in their cell with their cable TV, porno mags, and full medical care.
I'm okay with imprisoning someone that I'm going to let out of jail before they're collecting social security checks. But if you did something so vile that society feels they need to lock you away for 50 years... then that is just a waste 50 years of room and board. Let him giggle on nitrogen. I'm done with him.
The thing is the most violent criminals are not deterred by anything. They're often crazy or of a certain psychological profile that derives pleasure from other people's pain. Sadists etc. Previous generations called such people "evil" or "bad". We're not comfortable with those terms so we wrap the concepts in pseudo academic jargon until we've convinced ourselves that we're saying something that our ancestors didn't say 2000 years ago.
You can't argue against execution on the basis that it doesn't deter without addressing that imprisonment doesn't deter either.
I don't know what I'd have to do to deter sadists. I imagine I might get a statistical drop if I publicly tortured them in the most horrifying manner possible. But that's a further injustice to society and a further injustice to which ever poor bastard is tasked with scooping out the sadist's eyes with a spoon. So not practical.
As to your statement that I just "know" executions are cheaper without the endless appeals. Anyone knows that.
One of the old virtues of execution for governments back in the day was that they were cheaper than imprisonment. You don't have to feed them or shelter them for years on end. You make them dance on air, then put them in the ground. Where is the expense?
In the modern context the cost comes from the trials. And the reason a non-execution trial is more expensive than an execution trial is that appeals that go on for years and years and years.
Cap the appeals at one year and the cost of execution will fall far below the cost of life time imprisonment. It is mathematically impossible for it to do anything else especially when we're providing for the medical care of convicts as they grow old. That includes organ replacements and I think gender reassignment surgery... not sure on that last one. But suffice to say that keeping convicts healthy especially when they're inclined to stab each other is expensive. And if you don't have to pay for it by virtue of the fellow being ash in a cardboard box... then that is a cost savings.
Logic. Logic is terrifying for some people. It is heartless, ruthless, merciless, and pitiless.
And for better or worse, I worship logic. It is my religion... my ideology.
I rub the emotional, the sentimental, the politically correct, and various other heretics against logic the wrong way. It isn't intentional.... usually. Logic is an argument what a freight train is to a game of chicken. The freight train runs along its tracks and anything standing in the way of that train is getting pulverized and dismembered. And the train will neither stop nor slow nor notice nor care.
This is not an internet taunt. I am trying to share with you a bit of how my mind works. I am not the freight train. I just know where the tracks are and respect the train enough to get the fuck out of the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, while that is possible, I don't think that has happened to the US as yet. I think some parts of it work that way. There is a mixture of corruption in everything and I don't want to conflate corruption with cultishness because they're different concepts.
For example, you the rabid apple people that will buy a literal piece of shit if it has an apple logo on it and then get the new version of it every time one comes out. And then you have people that are being paid do something or say something or not do something or not say something.
My issue is that both aspects are a problem and they're not the same thing.
The virtue of the money is that you can shift people in positions of power or influence to do anything you want so long as you meet their sellout price.
The virtue of the cult is that you can get hordes of fucking peasants with pitch forks to burn people out or book burn or kill people... literally or figuratively.
Both things are a problem but it isn't the same thing.
The saddest thing is when you see one of these things being cited as the solution to the other.
Don't like corruption? Get a cult together that will burn it out.
Don't like the mob? Bribe some people in places of power to quietly kill it.
When you use something evil to fight something evil... you're not leaving good behind.
Sometimes there is no option. The only answer to war is war. You can't throw candy at people genociding your people. But evil is to be avoided if possible. If you can't do it then you can't. But I think often people don't consider alternatives.
I am a big believer in reason. Literally a believer in it. Logic is what I bow to. And it is sad to me that we can't just sit down and work things out in a reasonable fashion.
I am a big believer in win win situations. People sitting down and saying "okay, I need these things, I want those things... what do you need and want from me that would make you give me those things?" And often as not there is an exchange that can be made that makes everyone happy.
Now sometimes people are not reasonable. They say "I need to rape your wife and I want your dried genitals as a trophy to hang around my neck"... I mean... you deal with that and fine... lets just kill each other. But even then, it is important to establish who is being unreasonable and who is not being unreasonable. Who is causing a problem where none needs to exist and who is not.
It is possible that both sides if we want to be binary about it are causing problems. And if that's what is going on... then again... yeah... kill each other. But even killing each other is more productive then a lot of the crap going on. There is just so much mindless shit talking. And it is that mindlessness that offends me the most.
I don't think the solution is giving the people less power over their government or empowering career politicians with more power.
I agree, going to a more state centric system would be less prone to this manipulation.
The frothing cultists don't like that though. All glory to Cthulhu, apparently.
The means are the ends. You can't stop something by doing the same thing. A thing is the product of the actions that created it. The means are the ends.
That was the logical error made when someone said "the ends justify the means". Morality doesn't come into it. The ends = the means just as the means = the ends. One is the other.
To create a different system you must play by the rules of the system you wish to create.
A system that does not reward bribery or the manipulation of chanting frothing lunitics.
A society run by either faction is not especially rational or desirable.
On the one hand you have people that will manipulate the system using their wealth to get whatever they want. And on the other you have a system where cult leaders use their chattel as fodder to get whatever they want.
I want a society of free people by free people for free people. A society of bribery very quickly leads to one where we are bought and sold... doesn't sound very free to me. And a society ruled by chanting cultists isn't especially free either since they require utter obedience to their dogma and cult leaders or they start throwing people onto bonfires.
If you value freedom or human dignity... how can you support either one?
As to money, we can do more to control and monitor the way in which public officials receive money or gifts. And of course establish stiff unconditional penalties if they break the rules.
As to cultists, part of the problem is that our system counts us as individuals in some places and values money in others. Where it counts us as individuals we're all equal when really we shouldn't be all equal. Some laws and rules effect some people and not others. What is more many laws are about giving someone something but not someone else. That means someone profits and not everyone. That means there are conflicts of interest because the laws do not effect everyone equally.
Something should be done to weight the votes on various things so that those the law applies to have more of a say in it then those that do not. And possibly if someone profits by a law they might have reduced influence.
If there is a law to give money to Tim, then maybe Tim should recuse himself form the vote. And if there is a law to make Tim pay for something but not Jerry... why does Jerry get a vote? Jerry isn't paying regardless.
Take an issue like abortion... do men deserve a vote on it? I don't see why. But if we had a vote on parental rights then obviously men and women would get a vote. So on and so forth.
Keeping track of who does and does not have an interest in everything for 300 million people would be complicated. I don't know if that is logistically possible or if it would even be a good idea. But that would control the cultist issue where political parties say "vote for X and anyone that doesn't is EVIL". Everyone that voted would have their vote matter to the extent that it should matter. If you don't own a house, then why are you voting on property taxes? If you don't have a car, then I don't see why you're voting on gas taxes. If you don't have a child, then why are you voting on schools?
I am to be clear a libertarian. It is just a word. I don't think I fit into any ideology perfectly. But I do feel the government especially at the federal level should be stripped of nearly all its responsibilities. The only thing I feel comfortable with them maintaining are the Federal courts, Federal law enforcement, Federal prisons, coast guard, border patrol, and the various military forces. Nothing more. I'd be happier if everything else were state based. And the states especially in the west need to be subdivided. California and Texas being the prime example of states that probably need to get broken into 5 or 6 small pieces just so the people living in them have any say in the government.
California is very corrupt in large part because it is so large. The reigning politicians can do whatever they want so long as they keep most of the state happy. That can bend any portion of the state over a rail and fuck it raw, take pictures, and sell them as rape porn on the internet and nothing happens to them because they have a few cities that will vote for them regardless. Nothing matters so long as they keep those cities happy. And they don't even need to really keep them happy at that. Just keep everyone unwilling to vote for the opposition. And thus having a choice between the corrupt poli
My thoughts are that the Clintons are well known to be manifestly corrupt. Even democrats know it and they accept it on the basis that the Clinton are their criminals.
The republicans also have similar arrangements with their own corrupt politicians. So I'm not nailing either side.
The Clintons however are so corrupt that even the New York Times and Hollywood are turning on them. I wouldn't worry about Hillary. Her campaign is already over.
I offered no plan.
as to your notion that the parliamentary system is less vulnerable... I've seen no indication of that in fact. To the contrary, I've seen them just as beholden to such interests as anyone.
We need a system less easily manipulated by people with money or hordes of mindless cultists.
1. I said already that the big box people would probably not notice but the market is a lot bigger than those people. And it doesn't matter if they all get locked because the pirates are generally more sophisticated and they won't buy machines that don't let them rip movies. Which means they will rip the movies. Which means they'll upload DRM free movies on the internet. Which will let anyone watch it whether their machine is locked or not.
2. even if the big boxes get locked down that leaves the rest of the market which won't tolerate the locks and so they won't be locked. Those segments of the market are huge.
3. nothing is going to force every manufacturer to do this and those that don't will enjoy a competitive advantage because locking the machines against the will of the owner is a competitive disadvantage.
4. All it takes is the machine the pirate uses to rip the video to break the entire system. ONE person rips the video and then copies it to 10 other people. And those ten copy it to 10 other people each. And those copy it to ten other people each. And so until everyone has a copy of the DRM free copy.
The above is obvious to anyone the understands how computers work. The movie studios should understand this by now. They've had time and experience. That they don't is simple incompetence.
They've been at this long enough to know better. That they don't is merely incompetence.
Anyone that knows how a programmable computer works knows you can't prevent them from being reprogrammed without ruining their value.
They can't lock the operating system on a PC like they do with some smartphones. For one thing, the memory is physically exposed. For another, most of their customers require the machine to be reprogrammable.
And even if they were able to do it, they won't be able to lock all the machines just many of the consumer models. And the people ripping and uploading bluerays or dvds won't buy those machines if they prevent them from doing that. WHich means they'll either build their own using various parts to assemble their own system out of bits that aren't locked... or they'll buy a business class machine that won't be locked because business won't put up with this shit. A business IT department or data center or etc is not going to buy a machine they can't override or control or upgrade.
So this is little more then the Tech companies telling the apparently clueless studios lies that many children at this point would see through.
That the tech companies get away with that merely means the studios don't know how computers work. And that's pathetic. This is the 21st century. Figure it the fuck out.
Not really because the hardware makers want to sell their boxes to linux users and linux users include corporate contracts and small fabricators.
A lockable boot process with some interaction between the bios and the core system files is not unreasonable. However, you are right that MS would have it locked if they could get away with it. But they can't.
Lets say one manufacter does that... which one are you going to use instead? Anyone else. They'll not all lock it even if it gets so far that ANY of them lock it.
I wouldn't worry about it. The PC world wouldn't tolerate it.
I'm sure MS etc knows this can't possibly work. So they're doing this to placate the movie studios by doing something that the studios think will work even though it can't possibly work.
All that has to happen is ONE person has to break the DRM and then convert the movie or whatever into some other DRM free format and then that format is passed around the internet.
Look at all the crap on the pirate channels and it is all DRM free. And nearly all of it had DRM on it at some point. It was stripped off.
Now they say here that this is Hardware DRM. But that's bullshit. Some aspect of it is going to be software and that is where the cracker is going to break it.
So yeah. Headline should read "Movie Studios still don't understand how computers work."
Oh, there's something call the "lameness" filter. It triggers if you use the same character over and over. If I just put 20000 hyphens in there or something it would trigger. It also triggers if you post the exact same post twice.
The problem with it is that it has a lot more triggers for it than that and I don't know them all. Every so often it doesn't like a post and I have no idea what its problem is with it. So when that happens, I just post it to postbin and then put the URL in the comment.
If the lameness filter were specific about what it was responding to, then I'd correct it. But often as not, I have no clue what it doesn't like and really can't be bothered to figure it out if the site operators can't be bothered to explain themselves.
As to you not feeling safe on postbin, that is possibly the dumbest fucking thing I've heard all day. Postbin is not some random fucking site. It is a commonly used repository for bits of text like that.
Your comment makes about as much sense as you saying you think Wikipedia is going to hack you or something.
Whatever. Do what you want. You don't want to read my comment. Don't do it. But your bullshit excuse for not reading it was flagged as bullshit.
This is the sort of mentality that lets people think it is okay to plant bombs to blow up police cars because you're mad about the vietnam war or something.
to which I can only respond with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That's because no one knows if anyone was actually hurt because of that. All we know is that they had a breach.
The banks likely ate most of the pain but they are suing target for the liability.
So... no, companies don't just get away with that.
Yes, only bad people would sell to black hats.
If I can rip customer credit card information from them, that will matter. Are you going to buy a coupon from them if someone can steal your credit card information from their payment system?
They'll pay. The companies are unforgivably stingy about paying security bounties. Obviously a good person is not going to sell it to black hats. But why would anyone investigate security in these companies without compensation guarantees or the intent to exploit them for personal profit?
Just stop even bothering to exploit them unless you interest is to sell the information to the highest bidder.
Help companies that want help if you're a good person and exploit stupid companies if you're a bad person.
Next issue.
Everyone knows it. Next issue.
using "/s" at the end of a comment helps.
Otherwise you run the risk of running afoul of Poe's law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I had to put the post into postbin for no reason. Sorry about that. You can click the link to see my response. Slashdot vetoes posts arbitrarily sometimes.
http://pastebin.com/rDYHwssm
Either ask a question on topic or have your post be treated as something that can be ignored. Your choice.
Put my post on pastbin because /. was rejecting the post for no reason.
http://pastebin.com/EazdNjdG
I didn't see you bring up any issue you wanted to discuss. Tell me if you do. Otherwise apparently you don't want to talk anymore?
No, you can't argue in favor X simply because X+Y isn't shown to be more effective. I could as easily respond with removing X and just having Y... Right?
Think about it... as cruel as it would be, on the issue of deterrance alone imagine if all long term prison terms were just replaced with execution. I'm not advocating that, I'm pointing out the flaw in your logic. If you executed anyone that would get a sentence of 30 years or more... would that not be as likely to deter people as simple imprisonment? You wouldn't claim that people would be less afraid of execution than imprisonment?
Because we know for a fact that the criminals are a lot of more afraid of execution. Listen to the guys on death row. These are murderers... shitting themselves. They WANT to be left in their cell with their cable TV, porno mags, and full medical care.
I'm okay with imprisoning someone that I'm going to let out of jail before they're collecting social security checks. But if you did something so vile that society feels they need to lock you away for 50 years... then that is just a waste 50 years of room and board. Let him giggle on nitrogen. I'm done with him.
The thing is the most violent criminals are not deterred by anything. They're often crazy or of a certain psychological profile that derives pleasure from other people's pain. Sadists etc. Previous generations called such people "evil" or "bad". We're not comfortable with those terms so we wrap the concepts in pseudo academic jargon until we've convinced ourselves that we're saying something that our ancestors didn't say 2000 years ago.
You can't argue against execution on the basis that it doesn't deter without addressing that imprisonment doesn't deter either.
I don't know what I'd have to do to deter sadists. I imagine I might get a statistical drop if I publicly tortured them in the most horrifying manner possible. But that's a further injustice to society and a further injustice to which ever poor bastard is tasked with scooping out the sadist's eyes with a spoon. So not practical.
As to your statement that I just "know" executions are cheaper without the endless appeals. Anyone knows that.
One of the old virtues of execution for governments back in the day was that they were cheaper than imprisonment. You don't have to feed them or shelter them for years on end. You make them dance on air, then put them in the ground. Where is the expense?
In the modern context the cost comes from the trials. And the reason a non-execution trial is more expensive than an execution trial is that appeals that go on for years and years and years.
Cap the appeals at one year and the cost of execution will fall far below the cost of life time imprisonment. It is mathematically impossible for it to do anything else especially when we're providing for the medical care of convicts as they grow old. That includes organ replacements and I think gender reassignment surgery... not sure on that last one. But suffice to say that keeping convicts healthy especially when they're inclined to stab each other is expensive. And if you don't have to pay for it by virtue of the fellow being ash in a cardboard box... then that is a cost savings.
Logic. Logic is terrifying for some people. It is heartless, ruthless, merciless, and pitiless.
And for better or worse, I worship logic. It is my religion... my ideology.
I rub the emotional, the sentimental, the politically correct, and various other heretics against logic the wrong way. It isn't intentional.... usually. Logic is an argument what a freight train is to a game of chicken. The freight train runs along its tracks and anything standing in the way of that train is getting pulverized and dismembered. And the train will neither stop nor slow nor notice nor care.
This is not an internet taunt. I am trying to share with you a bit of how my mind works. I am not the freight train. I just know where the tracks are and respect the train enough to get the fuck out of the way.