Moreso really by the notion that people can create ideas. When we realize that ideas exist outside of time, and get rid of these dumb laws, we can truly discover music. But it'll happen.
Of course, this then leads to serious questions about the division of "natural" and "unnatural". I do maintain, however, a belief that, once you are an adult, your life belongs to you and nobody else, and thus the only person who has a right to kill you is you or someone enacting the euthanasia clause of your living will.
Who said I think it's moral? Or that punishment always has to be moral?
Well, it tends to call into question the appropriateness of the punishment when it's not seen as moral, if you ask me. Morality is, for the most part, the way in which things are justified. Immoral acts are not justifiable. Anything justifiable has some backing morality to it. People do sometimes (often, conceivably) act before considering moral outcomes, but morality of some kind will inevitably be part of any analysis of the results. It might be as simple as "I did it, I felt right at the time, thus it's justifiable", but it'll still be there.
The fact of the matter is that according to my religious beliefs, I can't morally defend execution. I can justify it for other reasons
That's extremely curious to me. Again, morality is the way by which things are justified.
I don't think killing in any form is exactly moral, but my desire to see justice both for society and to the victim('s) family overrides it in this case.(Any responses about how a truly intelligent person always considers moral implications will be gleefully ignored. Ditto for questions such as "What if you were starving and needed bread? Should you be punished?")
I wouldn't suggest either thing. I would suggest, though, that "justice" is a moral construct. Given this, what you're saying seems to me to be "Killing is not moral. Justice creates a superior morality, though, that blots out the immorality of killing in cases where justice can be invoked." This ultimately leads back to having to really expose the moral basis of the State, the moral concepts you yourself are working with, etc.
Value" of someone has nothing to do with your analogy. It was about the (ill)logical conclusion you jumped to. You can argue about the moral differences between types of killing--and that's fine--but to make a claim that your scenario was logical is what I was really arguing.
I think a better perspective is that the process was logical, but that it started with false assumptions about your perspective I ascertained from the tone of your posts. I apologize.
I loosely trust the State to handle regulation of political liberty. It makes mistakes there, too, but the damage done by those mistakes is not quite as reversible as when it kills.
So why is the State skilled enough to even put someone on trial in the first place? I agree they obviously make mistakes, but what do you trust them to do?
I loosely trust the State to handle regulation of political liberty. It makes mistakes there, too, but the damage done by those mistakes is not quite as reversible as when it kills.
It tolerates murder because the punishments are rather tame. "Life in prison" is rarely that. How many times have you read of a prisoner being released before their term is up? Not many prisoners actually die in prison.
I'd argue that, long before the case is made for state-sanctioned murder, that issue needs to be addressed.
Frankly, all things considered, I don't really care what happens to them. I don't want them rehabilated and sent off to college or any other form of higher education. There's plenty of law-abiding citizens who don't get those opportunities. Now, if everyone else got theirs first, then that'd be fine. That clearly is not the case.
Perhaps, but we're always going to need certain classes of labor that many forms of criminals can be easily rehabilitated into.
I think en masse, executions would make future murderers think twice, but evidence has shown that right now that really isn't the case.
Actually, evidence shows that executions have never served as a deterrant for any crime. There's good reason to believe that, at least for certain common classes of murder, it cannot have a strong deterrant power.
It's interesting how feverent people are to defend the rights of the convict, but could care less about his victims and their families. No, the State doesn't grant life, but neither do individuals. Yet individuals still see themselves fit to take it away. That's where the State gains the ability to respond in kind.
Nice try, but I don't bite. I'm concerned with everyone's rights. Furthermore, I don't think prisoners deserve much in the way of rights, but I do believe people have a right to their own existence. The State doesn't gain any ability through some essential means- it operates as it will, and if it is revolted against and overthrown, it loses the ability to do anything.
No, labor is potential value. Since it's not being used and they do nothing but usurp money, that value is gone.
Yes, but as per our previous agreements about good systems of punishment, the labor can be used. It certainly has a better positive return than our system of execution.
Your argument about executing supporters of murder is idiotic. If you blindly try to extend logic without considering extenuating factors, you get into the kind of logic trainwrecks you detailed above.
That's a cute excuse. It brightens my day. Try making a case for why some forms of murder are moral and others aren't, and maybe I'll listen.
Here's an example: Your ridiculous argument also would imply that we as society can *never* support punishment of any type, because by punishing people for their punishing others in the first place, we should be punished ourselves (whew.) I mean, why not? If you want to say that I should be executed because I support capital punishment, then surely I should be punished for meting out any type of punishment.
Wow. I can't breathe because of all the words stuffed in my mouth, and I've been using your comments about someone's value after murdering. I'd hate to see what you'd do if I actually talked about my beliefs. All I ever said on the topic is that I don't know what killing another person can genuinely serve. If the effects seemed to be worthwhile, I'd entertain the practice. I've yet to see any worthwhile results, though. And I've seen a lot of negative side-effects, not the least of which are deaths of innocent people.
That aside, my personal feelings about their worth to society have nothing to do with your argument. There's a rather large gap between a random person murder
How would you propose the `bulls` force a homocidal criminal who cares little for doing what you expect or ask? If they cared they wouldn't be there. How do you force them? You can't. Why give them an opportunity to escape and reinfect society?
Check it- how does any forced labor camp work? As for escapes, they're not frequent enough to be much concern, especially if we're talking about Supermax prisons. Where more simple forms of security ultimately fail, modern technology can easily be leveraged to take over, and I'd suspect that, in the end, the cost per prisoner would end up comparable to that of prosecuting a death sentence.
The problem with death-sentences not being a detterant, as I see it, is that they are not linked to the crime as a consequence for murder. The temporal distance is to great for society to keep in its consciousness. Consquences need to be swifter with more media attention. Remind us, comfort us...
First off, it's easily proven that the death penalty has never been a sufficient deterrant. I wish that I had time to spell it all out here clearly, but time and post space prevent this. I highly suggest Camus' essay "Reflections on the Guillotine", which is an excellent starting point for any discussion of the deterrant power of the death penalty. It even covers times when executions of sentence were public. You are correct, however, that if society is to argue the deterrant value of capital punishment, executions of sentence must be public, and, in fact, watching prisoners being killed should be mandatory for man, woman, and child alike.
There will, are, were a few innocents `murdered` by the state but honestly I don't mind. Its not me or anyone I know.
Can you really look at yourself in the mirror and say those sorts of things?
Re:Howard Dean
on
Saving the Net
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Innocent people killed by execution is a huge problem, but there are countless cases where there is no question that the convict is the perpetrator. In those cases, I support the death penalty.
And you believe that the State is skilled enough to actually separate the wheat from the chaff? Hah! I, for one, will not take any odds of being a casualty of this system when other alternatives exist.
I'm curious as to what value you think it serves. I cannot see any real value in the death penalty, and therefore cannot support it in good faith.
I respect people that are opposed to execution on moral grounds, but IMO tolerating murder by letting killers live is just as bad as "being a band of murderous thugs". It's just too bad the system is so wasteful on resources that a killer can appeal appeal appeal for years and drain money.
Uhm...how is choosing to not execute a person "tolerating murder"? States without a death penalty generally give those who would be executed a sentence of life without parole. This is hardly tolerance. Consider the alternative of life imprisonment, especially lifelong imprisonment with hard labor as I suggest. This is still, technically, a death sentence. The difference, however, is that the convict's life hasn't been taken, merely his/her liberty. The State doesn't give you life; it does give you liberty. In a case of life imprisonment, especially a harsh one as I believe in, most of the allegedly beneficial aspects of state-sponsored murder are preserved.
At the end of the day, it kills another person who has no value to humanity. Good riddance to them.
I really hope you can see what a vacant argument that is, especially when you mix it with your agreement about hard labor. Obviously, you have to recognize that, at a minimum, a living person is a unit of labor. Labor has a value. Regardless of that, though, you seem bound to the assumption that someone who murders is without value to humanity, I guess on the grounds that murder is morally reprehensible and immediately strips you of your value. Surely, then, we should start our condemnation with those who murder and extend it to those who support murder. That's fine. The executioners have their backs to the wall first, followed by their supporters.
However, I agree with you about hard labor. But it will never happen...the ACLU or some other bleeding-heart organization and assert prisoners' rights to watching TV and living rather comfortably on taxpayer dollars.
Nobody batted an eye when McVeigh was essentially put in solitary confinement for several years. Clearly, people are able to distinguish between different levels of reprehensibility. I don't care if someone who's in prison for bouncing checks or selling marijuana watches TV and gets protection from violent prisoners. I *want* many of society's criminals rehabilitated so their lives can be of benefit to others (unfortunately, prison rarely rehabilitates). On the other hand, I want those who've violently taken things from others to be forced to serve them. In the case of murder, I believe no amount of labor can truly repay for the damage done, so the only option is to take back as much labor as possible, which is life, without parole, at hard labor.
I'd also like to add that, as the friend of someone who was thrown in jail merely for wearing the t-shirt of a heavy metal band, I am thankful that the ACLU exists.
Um those who live in glass houses should not throw bongs. Libertarian is not a bastardization of Liberal It is a statement of one being for Liberty.
Maybe, but at the same time, the words "Liberal" and "Libertarian" both come from a root of "Liber". Furthermore, if you go to WordNet, you'll see the first two definitions of liberal are...(1) a person who believes in progress, reform, and the protection of civil liberties (2) a person who favors an economic theory of laissez-faire and self-regulating markets.
There has been a strong drift in the meaning of the word "liberal". At the time of the founding of the US, the words "liberal" and "libertarian" would have been mostly redundant. Also, while I'm setting the record straight, the strict definition of "libertarian" is simply someone who holds to a philosophical concept of free will. The Libertarian Party and libertarianism are two completely different things.
As far as I'm aware, earlier in this century, the "progress" concept of liberalism led to people who called themselves "social liberals", and the term has since just become "liberal". Their ideology is radically different from classical liberal theory, but the moniker has stuck. It's important to note that saying the US was founded on liberal ideas is correct within many academic circles as "liberal" to them still refers to the philosophies of Smith et al. In fact, in 1997, I spent several weeks in a college-level European history class discussing the "collapse of liberalism" as a central ideology in the Western world. The professor was, of course, referring to classical liberalism, not modern liberalism.
Liberals today are for restricting free speech, under the idea of political correctness Liberalisms ugly offspring people; have to watch what they say or do at a university for fear of getting kicked out. Don't believe me? try to hang a confederate flag in you Dorm window.
Depends on whether or not that dorm is in South Carolina, really. Also depends on the university. I mean, it *IS* the university's dorm. They can do what they want with it.
The term "Libertarianism" did not exist when the USA was founded but the spirit did..
..and that spirit had a name, and it was called, and is still called (by many) "liberalism".
The only thing I can think of that is wrong with the death penalty is that all of the appeals actually costs us more than just letting them rot for life.
How about the innocents killed by execution? Is that not a problem? How about the fact that it merely sets up the state as a band of murderous thugs? How about the fact that, at the end of the day, it just kills another person and therefore doesn't genuinely solve anything?
Here's a clue for your civiliation. Life is NOT precious.
At a minimum, it's a source of labor, which means it has some value. Personally, I'd prefer to see that principle put to use- forced hard labor for life for all people who would otherwise be condemned to death.
But how do we decide things like what goods get transported, where do they get tranported, and who is paying for said goods? Before you can do anything, you have to have the information exchange. That's where the importance of the network comes in. Sure, we do it all mostly without the Internet now, but having the Internet gives us the ability to increase our efficiency by orders of magnitude. Our dependency on it is only going to increase.
Maybe; maybe not. To make an "importance" comparison between roads and the Internet is still naieve. At a minimum, roads *ARE* a sufficient transport infrastructure for information exchange already, thus roads are also sufficient for ensuring the information exchange necessary for goods shipping. Roads thus are even more clear a necessity of survival for any "society" of certain characteristics (which all modern and industrialized ones are). The Internet still isn't.
I don't presume that their is only one way to build roads.
I'm not following.
Why do you think we've decided to build roads the way we do? I think there are several good reasons but I've already blabbed on enough here so I'll let you think about it.
Again, I'm not following. I guess I could as my brother, who is earning a Masters in construction, why roads are built the way they are, or I could ask my paternal grandfather, a civil engineer. What does this have to do with comparisons of importance between roads and the Internet?
I have to disagree somewhat about the BBC. I have found that their news coverage at least is superior to that of the US stations. Ironic isn't it? The state controlled news organization seems to be more impartial and professional than the privately owned "independent" ones.
I disagree. BBC World News, at least, has as much a bias as any news network except Fox News. Their bias is a subtle one...like NPR's news bias. Their bias is an interpretative bias rather than a rhetorical one, but it's there. Despite that, I wasn't talking just about BBC News. I was talking about the BBC in its entirety- television, radio, and all. Their televised entertainment programming is, for the most part, crap in general. Their documentaries are about like watching TLC, except they don't have the high standards of TLC (note the sarcasm). Maybe that's because TLC buys a lot of BBC documentaries. And their radio?! Forced funding through taxation is the only way those schlock stations could stay on the air. Wow. The programming mix for Radio 2 (I think it was 2, anyway) when I was last there was...one song from the British top 40, then two Northern tosspots talking for 20 minutes, then another single song from the top 40...and so forth. And their "regional radio" funding is a joke. I couldn't pick up Radio Cornwall, and I was 15 minutes from Truro the entire time!
Sorry, I can't agree that the BBC is worth a damn, and the fact that they collect a tax on owning and operating a television to fund that horseshit is the sort of thing I find offensive.
Last point, I promise. I think what it boils down to is who do you want to make the rules for how we access the Internet? Right now, the telecom/cable industry makes the rules. They listen to the people that pay them. We pay them a little, but the content providers and advertisers are a much better long term revenue growth opportunity so eventually we'll get their content, their restrictions and their ads and little else. If the Internet is public then we play by the rules set down in the US Constitution. I like those rules a lot better because they give me, the consumer, a lot more power.
Jesus, are you ever naive! Seriously...the last time the US federal government presented a level playing field for everyone was before the Civil War. We might pay the government a little, but campaign contributors pay a lot. The government shafts us as quickly as private industry does because, frankly, they're now one in the same. And if you don't th
And there's an obvious metaphor that's been with us for years: The highway system. In most of the world, it is "free", and all you have to buy out of your own money is a vehicle.
What? No. I have to buy government registration papers and be issued license and identification, too. Often, this requires jumping through additional hoops. I have to pay filing fees, testing fees, fees to a mechanic to prove my emmissions meet government specifications, more fees to a mechanic for engine repair if my emmissions aren't right...
In no way does buying a car let you use public roads outright. At least, this is true in the US and Britain. I'm reasonably certain it holds true elsehwere.
It isn't really free, in the "free beer" sense, of course, since we all pay for it with taxes. But it is free in the "free speech" sense, since anyone can use most roads without paying anything extra.
...except all of those registration and licensing fees I mentioned. Seriously- what country do you live in where it's free to get a vehicle operation license, free to register your car, and free to have a certification of emmissions? I'd love to live there.
Isn't a free and open connection to the Internet at least as important as your roads?
Surely you jest. There's not even a comparison here. A "free and open" Internet connection is less important than a road system by several orders of magnitude. If you think it isn't, then let me ask you this- can you transport food, clothing, fuel, and building materials over the Internet? No. Is a transportation infrastructure necessary for moving those listed goods from their points of production to points of disbursement to consumers? Yes. Is said infrastructure often necessary for transporting consumers of those necessary products to the point of dissemination, too? Sure is.
None, and I repeat NONE of this can be done with the Internet unless the Internet includes some sort of matter feed like from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Until then, a transportation infrastructure like a road system is nearly a necessity for supplying survival goods given a certain population size and distance between points of production and consumption. By comparison, the Internet is just a cool way to move information around.
It should also be noted that many people don't believe that a road system should be a government endeavor and believe strongly in a privately owned toll-road system. I am not one of them, but it's worth noting that making this comparison to roads presumes that the ONLY way to have roads is through act of government.
Finally, regardless of the road argument, the reason I would prefer to not have the government "owning" and managing the Internet is because I've seen what a good job government control of radio and television has done for Britain. Nothing quite like paying a tax on owning and operating a TV, and still getting crap programming on a minimum of stations! If we were to make the Internet like the roads, I'd be paying a yearly fee to have a license plate put on my IP address so that the authorities could better track me, and I'd never have an alternative other than not using the Internet.
I think the system's just fine as it is, honestly.
One word: exams. If you're still writing individual letters separately by the time you sit written exams, you'll write at about half the speed of someone with good joined-up handwriting. In essay subjects it really helps to churn out long answers as fast as possible, and even in subjects with short answers it doesn't hurt.
It didn't hurt me any. Then again, in grade school, I was taught how to answer essay questions quickly, easily, and concisely. It's been my observation that, on essay questions, more time is eaten up in the preparation of the answer than in writing the answer on paper. Now, granted, I didn't have too many essay exams in college, but I happily wrote in plain manuscript on all of them, finished before all of my colleagues, and was able to get high marks on them all the same.
This leads me to believe that maybe, if you're taking so long on an essay exam that your writing speed is a choke point, that it might be worthwhile to brush up on general strategies for essay exams so that your prep time can be shortened. With just a little practice, it's easy to skip preparation and simply churn out an essay.
Re:Cringley, Linus, and Christoph Hellwig
on
Today's SCO News
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· Score: 1
NT runs a Microkernel. Microsoft doens't HAVE to abandon Windows for Unix. They can merely run it as a separate subsystem. They can run both simultaneously.
Hm...you mean like Mach? Given Mach's success, this should be an easy and surefire option for NT (or XP, or BS, or whatever two letters it is tomorrow).
conversely, if you do not trust your government, there is no way they can ever do any good. You will be suspicious of them, no matter what they do. Based on these preconceptions, an individual will determine their absolute 'fact base', that is, what their definition of the truth is. Then everything they see, they will compare to these 'truths', forcing their interpretations to fit their version of reality.
Except that the US is a system designed by a group of people with an inherrent distrust for government. That cultural value is etched into the American experience, and I think it should stay. The general cultural values of distrusting authority and staying armed seem to me to be healthy. When you lose these two factors, the rich and "powerful" win and start exploiting everyone else.
I'm guessing Neal Stephenson was a little bit off...it won't be The Diamond Age for us but instead The Zircon Age, a cheap knockoff of the cyberpunk world Neal envisioned.
Also, for the record, I was being sarcastic on part (b). Bad attempt. Of course I know it's the relative speed of collission that's important. On a practical note, though, what's most important about your survival is physical armor.;)
It wasn't at intersections. One was the entry-point for a liquor store parking lot. The other was for the campus library. In both cases, the designated entrance for the car was the "ramped sidewalk" deelie where the sidewalk is sloped to permit car access.
I always check over my shoulder (or did, anyway), but we're talking about people in a "hurry."
Okay, bud. I have mod points, but I'd rather respond, since I'm sure others will mod you down appropriately. I'm taking some gloves off because there's a reason I don't ride my bike anywhere anymore (I walk or drive my car). Read below...
Still, I couldn't help but take a swing at your softballs.
(a) Pure trolldom. No solutions offered, no analysis provided.
(b) Of course, you took physics so you know that the velocity of only ONE body is relevent to determining damage done in a collission. Just because you're going slower doesn't mean you're any safer when a vehicle slams into you at a moderate-to-high velocity. In fact, it can play against you in some circumstances. Either way, you're not armor plated, and it's really your physical impact protection that's important here. I'm happy for your great luck. Read below for how great mine's been.
(c)Riding on the sidewalk doesn't necessarily make you safer. I have been nailed by a car TWICE in the same year while riding my bike, and both times is was ON THE SIDEWALK! Both times, the driver in question tried to make a quick turn, coming in from an oblique angle at me. I'm just glad that I had enough reaction time to jump off of my bike and clear of the "action" from the first incident so that I lived to see the second.
After that, I switched to walking or driving my car.
That'd be an ass-backward hack of a way to do it, but ass-backward hacks tend to be popular enough...
You'd have to make the preprocessor engage in some very specific activities, though. And the Hungarian notation would have to express full typing information.
It's not possible to engage in the level of typechecking you're talking about with generics. All objects go through a typesafe container having the type of java/lang/Object. Java, right now, cannot check at compile time whether or not a call to get(), returning java/lang/Object, will yield an object of java/lang/String in the typecast. This is preceisely why ClassCastExceptions at runtime is such a big deal.
By comparison, by telling the compiler that you want all of the objects in some container to be of type java/lang/String, the compiler can provide checks against it because the expected type is now a facet of the method signature. To engage in the kind of typechecking at compile time that I'm talking about without programmer clarification (via generics) would require the compiler to have a guaranteed knowledge of a lot more than it does. For example...
If, in one piece of code you insert a java/lang/String into an ArrayList, then in another piece later, it is clobbered and replaced with a java/math/BigDecimal, and then in another piece, get() is called and the retrieved java/lang/Object is cast to java/lang/String, the compiler, to provide type-checking and catch this class cast failure, would have to be able to prove that, every time that specific get() was called, something other than a java/lang/String came out of it. To do that would requrie a lot of information about the dynamic state of the program at that time.
In fact, depending heavily on the method in question, it may be impossible to guarantee the permitted type of the object available when you cast/miscast it. Consider a multithreaded environment. You're fast reaching a place where the only way to know what the type of the object is is to actually wait and see each time, which is what runtime casting is.
You are correct that certain forms of type safety can be found at compile-time. For example, type safety in passing parameters, assigning values from a return, etc, can be tested. Likewise, a type saftey check of this nature is trivial:
ArrayList l = null;
String s = new String();
l = s;
However, there reaches a point where runtime type safety has to take over, and most of the cases of improved type safety thanks to generics is a matter of moving more type checks away from runtime and into compile time.
And generics does not have to be "a hell of type casts". It can be a preprocessor hack where, at compile time, the types are provided in a special syntax and the generics (or template) code is then used to generate a unique piece of source code from those types. This would clearly make your compiled code size bigger, but avoids excessive use of the runtime type system.
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Wow. That must be some really good acid you took.
Of course, this then leads to serious questions about the division of "natural" and "unnatural". I do maintain, however, a belief that, once you are an adult, your life belongs to you and nobody else, and thus the only person who has a right to kill you is you or someone enacting the euthanasia clause of your living will.
Well, it tends to call into question the appropriateness of the punishment when it's not seen as moral, if you ask me. Morality is, for the most part, the way in which things are justified. Immoral acts are not justifiable. Anything justifiable has some backing morality to it. People do sometimes (often, conceivably) act before considering moral outcomes, but morality of some kind will inevitably be part of any analysis of the results. It might be as simple as "I did it, I felt right at the time, thus it's justifiable", but it'll still be there.
The fact of the matter is that according to my religious beliefs, I can't morally defend execution. I can justify it for other reasons
That's extremely curious to me. Again, morality is the way by which things are justified.
I don't think killing in any form is exactly moral, but my desire to see justice both for society and to the victim('s) family overrides it in this case.(Any responses about how a truly intelligent person always considers moral implications will be gleefully ignored. Ditto for questions such as "What if you were starving and needed bread? Should you be punished?")
I wouldn't suggest either thing. I would suggest, though, that "justice" is a moral construct. Given this, what you're saying seems to me to be "Killing is not moral. Justice creates a superior morality, though, that blots out the immorality of killing in cases where justice can be invoked." This ultimately leads back to having to really expose the moral basis of the State, the moral concepts you yourself are working with, etc.
Value" of someone has nothing to do with your analogy. It was about the (ill)logical conclusion you jumped to. You can argue about the moral differences between types of killing--and that's fine--but to make a claim that your scenario was logical is what I was really arguing.
I think a better perspective is that the process was logical, but that it started with false assumptions about your perspective I ascertained from the tone of your posts. I apologize.
Correction: that should read "irreversible".
I loosely trust the State to handle regulation of political liberty. It makes mistakes there, too, but the damage done by those mistakes is not quite as reversible as when it kills.
It tolerates murder because the punishments are rather tame. "Life in prison" is rarely that. How many times have you read of a prisoner being released before their term is up? Not many prisoners actually die in prison.
I'd argue that, long before the case is made for state-sanctioned murder, that issue needs to be addressed.
Frankly, all things considered, I don't really care what happens to them. I don't want them rehabilated and sent off to college or any other form of higher education. There's plenty of law-abiding citizens who don't get those opportunities. Now, if everyone else got theirs first, then that'd be fine. That clearly is not the case.
Perhaps, but we're always going to need certain classes of labor that many forms of criminals can be easily rehabilitated into.
I think en masse, executions would make future murderers think twice, but evidence has shown that right now that really isn't the case.
Actually, evidence shows that executions have never served as a deterrant for any crime. There's good reason to believe that, at least for certain common classes of murder, it cannot have a strong deterrant power.
It's interesting how feverent people are to defend the rights of the convict, but could care less about his victims and their families. No, the State doesn't grant life, but neither do individuals. Yet individuals still see themselves fit to take it away. That's where the State gains the ability to respond in kind.
Nice try, but I don't bite. I'm concerned with everyone's rights. Furthermore, I don't think prisoners deserve much in the way of rights, but I do believe people have a right to their own existence. The State doesn't gain any ability through some essential means- it operates as it will, and if it is revolted against and overthrown, it loses the ability to do anything.
No, labor is potential value. Since it's not being used and they do nothing but usurp money, that value is gone.
Yes, but as per our previous agreements about good systems of punishment, the labor can be used. It certainly has a better positive return than our system of execution.
Your argument about executing supporters of murder is idiotic. If you blindly try to extend logic without considering extenuating factors, you get into the kind of logic trainwrecks you detailed above.
That's a cute excuse. It brightens my day. Try making a case for why some forms of murder are moral and others aren't, and maybe I'll listen.
Here's an example: Your ridiculous argument also would imply that we as society can *never* support punishment of any type, because by punishing people for their punishing others in the first place, we should be punished ourselves (whew.) I mean, why not? If you want to say that I should be executed because I support capital punishment, then surely I should be punished for meting out any type of punishment.
Wow. I can't breathe because of all the words stuffed in my mouth, and I've been using your comments about someone's value after murdering. I'd hate to see what you'd do if I actually talked about my beliefs. All I ever said on the topic is that I don't know what killing another person can genuinely serve. If the effects seemed to be worthwhile, I'd entertain the practice. I've yet to see any worthwhile results, though. And I've seen a lot of negative side-effects, not the least of which are deaths of innocent people.
That aside, my personal feelings about their worth to society have nothing to do with your argument. There's a rather large gap between a random person murder
Check it- how does any forced labor camp work? As for escapes, they're not frequent enough to be much concern, especially if we're talking about Supermax prisons. Where more simple forms of security ultimately fail, modern technology can easily be leveraged to take over, and I'd suspect that, in the end, the cost per prisoner would end up comparable to that of prosecuting a death sentence.
The problem with death-sentences not being a detterant, as I see it, is that they are not linked to the crime as a consequence for murder. The temporal distance is to great for society to keep in its consciousness. Consquences need to be swifter with more media attention. Remind us, comfort us...
First off, it's easily proven that the death penalty has never been a sufficient deterrant. I wish that I had time to spell it all out here clearly, but time and post space prevent this. I highly suggest Camus' essay "Reflections on the Guillotine", which is an excellent starting point for any discussion of the deterrant power of the death penalty. It even covers times when executions of sentence were public. You are correct, however, that if society is to argue the deterrant value of capital punishment, executions of sentence must be public, and, in fact, watching prisoners being killed should be mandatory for man, woman, and child alike.
There will, are, were a few innocents `murdered` by the state but honestly I don't mind. Its not me or anyone I know.
Can you really look at yourself in the mirror and say those sorts of things?
And you believe that the State is skilled enough to actually separate the wheat from the chaff? Hah! I, for one, will not take any odds of being a casualty of this system when other alternatives exist.
I'm curious as to what value you think it serves. I cannot see any real value in the death penalty, and therefore cannot support it in good faith.
I respect people that are opposed to execution on moral grounds, but IMO tolerating murder by letting killers live is just as bad as "being a band of murderous thugs". It's just too bad the system is so wasteful on resources that a killer can appeal appeal appeal for years and drain money .
Uhm...how is choosing to not execute a person "tolerating murder"? States without a death penalty generally give those who would be executed a sentence of life without parole. This is hardly tolerance. Consider the alternative of life imprisonment, especially lifelong imprisonment with hard labor as I suggest. This is still, technically, a death sentence. The difference, however, is that the convict's life hasn't been taken, merely his/her liberty. The State doesn't give you life; it does give you liberty. In a case of life imprisonment, especially a harsh one as I believe in, most of the allegedly beneficial aspects of state-sponsored murder are preserved.
At the end of the day, it kills another person who has no value to humanity. Good riddance to them.
I really hope you can see what a vacant argument that is, especially when you mix it with your agreement about hard labor. Obviously, you have to recognize that, at a minimum, a living person is a unit of labor. Labor has a value. Regardless of that, though, you seem bound to the assumption that someone who murders is without value to humanity, I guess on the grounds that murder is morally reprehensible and immediately strips you of your value. Surely, then, we should start our condemnation with those who murder and extend it to those who support murder. That's fine. The executioners have their backs to the wall first, followed by their supporters.
However, I agree with you about hard labor. But it will never happen...the ACLU or some other bleeding-heart organization and assert prisoners' rights to watching TV and living rather comfortably on taxpayer dollars.
Nobody batted an eye when McVeigh was essentially put in solitary confinement for several years. Clearly, people are able to distinguish between different levels of reprehensibility. I don't care if someone who's in prison for bouncing checks or selling marijuana watches TV and gets protection from violent prisoners. I *want* many of society's criminals rehabilitated so their lives can be of benefit to others (unfortunately, prison rarely rehabilitates). On the other hand, I want those who've violently taken things from others to be forced to serve them. In the case of murder, I believe no amount of labor can truly repay for the damage done, so the only option is to take back as much labor as possible, which is life, without parole, at hard labor.
I'd also like to add that, as the friend of someone who was thrown in jail merely for wearing the t-shirt of a heavy metal band, I am thankful that the ACLU exists.
Maybe, but at the same time, the words "Liberal" and "Libertarian" both come from a root of "Liber". Furthermore, if you go to WordNet, you'll see the first two definitions of liberal are...(1) a person who believes in progress, reform, and the protection of civil liberties (2) a person who favors an economic theory of laissez-faire and self-regulating markets.
There has been a strong drift in the meaning of the word "liberal". At the time of the founding of the US, the words "liberal" and "libertarian" would have been mostly redundant. Also, while I'm setting the record straight, the strict definition of "libertarian" is simply someone who holds to a philosophical concept of free will. The Libertarian Party and libertarianism are two completely different things.
As far as I'm aware, earlier in this century, the "progress" concept of liberalism led to people who called themselves "social liberals", and the term has since just become "liberal". Their ideology is radically different from classical liberal theory, but the moniker has stuck. It's important to note that saying the US was founded on liberal ideas is correct within many academic circles as "liberal" to them still refers to the philosophies of Smith et al. In fact, in 1997, I spent several weeks in a college-level European history class discussing the "collapse of liberalism" as a central ideology in the Western world. The professor was, of course, referring to classical liberalism, not modern liberalism.
Liberals today are for restricting free speech, under the idea of political correctness Liberalisms ugly offspring people; have to watch what they say or do at a university for fear of getting kicked out. Don't believe me? try to hang a confederate flag in you Dorm window.
Depends on whether or not that dorm is in South Carolina, really. Also depends on the university. I mean, it *IS* the university's dorm. They can do what they want with it.
The term "Libertarianism" did not exist when the USA was founded but the spirit did..
How about the innocents killed by execution? Is that not a problem? How about the fact that it merely sets up the state as a band of murderous thugs? How about the fact that, at the end of the day, it just kills another person and therefore doesn't genuinely solve anything?
Here's a clue for your civiliation. Life is NOT precious.
At a minimum, it's a source of labor, which means it has some value. Personally, I'd prefer to see that principle put to use- forced hard labor for life for all people who would otherwise be condemned to death.
Maybe; maybe not. To make an "importance" comparison between roads and the Internet is still naieve. At a minimum, roads *ARE* a sufficient transport infrastructure for information exchange already, thus roads are also sufficient for ensuring the information exchange necessary for goods shipping. Roads thus are even more clear a necessity of survival for any "society" of certain characteristics (which all modern and industrialized ones are). The Internet still isn't.
I don't presume that their is only one way to build roads.
I'm not following.
Why do you think we've decided to build roads the way we do? I think there are several good reasons but I've already blabbed on enough here so I'll let you think about it.
Again, I'm not following. I guess I could as my brother, who is earning a Masters in construction, why roads are built the way they are, or I could ask my paternal grandfather, a civil engineer. What does this have to do with comparisons of importance between roads and the Internet?
I have to disagree somewhat about the BBC. I have found that their news coverage at least is superior to that of the US stations. Ironic isn't it? The state controlled news organization seems to be more impartial and professional than the privately owned "independent" ones.
I disagree. BBC World News, at least, has as much a bias as any news network except Fox News. Their bias is a subtle one...like NPR's news bias. Their bias is an interpretative bias rather than a rhetorical one, but it's there. Despite that, I wasn't talking just about BBC News. I was talking about the BBC in its entirety- television, radio, and all. Their televised entertainment programming is, for the most part, crap in general. Their documentaries are about like watching TLC, except they don't have the high standards of TLC (note the sarcasm). Maybe that's because TLC buys a lot of BBC documentaries. And their radio?! Forced funding through taxation is the only way those schlock stations could stay on the air. Wow. The programming mix for Radio 2 (I think it was 2, anyway) when I was last there was...one song from the British top 40, then two Northern tosspots talking for 20 minutes, then another single song from the top 40...and so forth. And their "regional radio" funding is a joke. I couldn't pick up Radio Cornwall, and I was 15 minutes from Truro the entire time!
Sorry, I can't agree that the BBC is worth a damn, and the fact that they collect a tax on owning and operating a television to fund that horseshit is the sort of thing I find offensive.
Last point, I promise. I think what it boils down to is who do you want to make the rules for how we access the Internet? Right now, the telecom/cable industry makes the rules. They listen to the people that pay them. We pay them a little, but the content providers and advertisers are a much better long term revenue growth opportunity so eventually we'll get their content, their restrictions and their ads and little else. If the Internet is public then we play by the rules set down in the US Constitution. I like those rules a lot better because they give me, the consumer, a lot more power.
Jesus, are you ever naive! Seriously...the last time the US federal government presented a level playing field for everyone was before the Civil War. We might pay the government a little, but campaign contributors pay a lot. The government shafts us as quickly as private industry does because, frankly, they're now one in the same. And if you don't th
What? No. I have to buy government registration papers and be issued license and identification, too. Often, this requires jumping through additional hoops. I have to pay filing fees, testing fees, fees to a mechanic to prove my emmissions meet government specifications, more fees to a mechanic for engine repair if my emmissions aren't right...
In no way does buying a car let you use public roads outright. At least, this is true in the US and Britain. I'm reasonably certain it holds true elsehwere.
It isn't really free, in the "free beer" sense, of course, since we all pay for it with taxes. But it is free in the "free speech" sense, since anyone can use most roads without paying anything extra.
Surely you jest. There's not even a comparison here. A "free and open" Internet connection is less important than a road system by several orders of magnitude. If you think it isn't, then let me ask you this- can you transport food, clothing, fuel, and building materials over the Internet? No. Is a transportation infrastructure necessary for moving those listed goods from their points of production to points of disbursement to consumers? Yes. Is said infrastructure often necessary for transporting consumers of those necessary products to the point of dissemination, too? Sure is.
None, and I repeat NONE of this can be done with the Internet unless the Internet includes some sort of matter feed like from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Until then, a transportation infrastructure like a road system is nearly a necessity for supplying survival goods given a certain population size and distance between points of production and consumption. By comparison, the Internet is just a cool way to move information around.
It should also be noted that many people don't believe that a road system should be a government endeavor and believe strongly in a privately owned toll-road system. I am not one of them, but it's worth noting that making this comparison to roads presumes that the ONLY way to have roads is through act of government.
Finally, regardless of the road argument, the reason I would prefer to not have the government "owning" and managing the Internet is because I've seen what a good job government control of radio and television has done for Britain. Nothing quite like paying a tax on owning and operating a TV, and still getting crap programming on a minimum of stations! If we were to make the Internet like the roads, I'd be paying a yearly fee to have a license plate put on my IP address so that the authorities could better track me, and I'd never have an alternative other than not using the Internet.
I think the system's just fine as it is, honestly.
It didn't hurt me any. Then again, in grade school, I was taught how to answer essay questions quickly, easily, and concisely. It's been my observation that, on essay questions, more time is eaten up in the preparation of the answer than in writing the answer on paper. Now, granted, I didn't have too many essay exams in college, but I happily wrote in plain manuscript on all of them, finished before all of my colleagues, and was able to get high marks on them all the same.
This leads me to believe that maybe, if you're taking so long on an essay exam that your writing speed is a choke point, that it might be worthwhile to brush up on general strategies for essay exams so that your prep time can be shortened. With just a little practice, it's easy to skip preparation and simply churn out an essay.
No, it was the body count from the Tet Offensive.
Hm...you mean like Mach? Given Mach's success, this should be an easy and surefire option for NT (or XP, or BS, or whatever two letters it is tomorrow).
Except that the US is a system designed by a group of people with an inherrent distrust for government. That cultural value is etched into the American experience, and I think it should stay. The general cultural values of distrusting authority and staying armed seem to me to be healthy. When you lose these two factors, the rich and "powerful" win and start exploiting everyone else.
...especially when corporations exist at the luxury of the state.
There's something ironic about that... ;)
Also, for the record, I was being sarcastic on part (b). Bad attempt. Of course I know it's the relative speed of collission that's important. On a practical note, though, what's most important about your survival is physical armor. ;)
In fact, in the first collission, I had literally rolled the pedals over after being at a near stop.
I always check over my shoulder (or did, anyway), but we're talking about people in a "hurry."
Still, I couldn't help but take a swing at your softballs.
(a) Pure trolldom. No solutions offered, no analysis provided.
(b) Of course, you took physics so you know that the velocity of only ONE body is relevent to determining damage done in a collission. Just because you're going slower doesn't mean you're any safer when a vehicle slams into you at a moderate-to-high velocity. In fact, it can play against you in some circumstances. Either way, you're not armor plated, and it's really your physical impact protection that's important here. I'm happy for your great luck. Read below for how great mine's been.
(c)Riding on the sidewalk doesn't necessarily make you safer. I have been nailed by a car TWICE in the same year while riding my bike, and both times is was ON THE SIDEWALK! Both times, the driver in question tried to make a quick turn, coming in from an oblique angle at me. I'm just glad that I had enough reaction time to jump off of my bike and clear of the "action" from the first incident so that I lived to see the second.
After that, I switched to walking or driving my car.
Spare me your vacant hubris, bike boy.
You'd have to make the preprocessor engage in some very specific activities, though. And the Hungarian notation would have to express full typing information.
Or you could just use generics.
Don't leave me in charge of those containers. I can't tell the safe ones from the unsafe today. ;)
By comparison, by telling the compiler that you want all of the objects in some container to be of type java/lang/String, the compiler can provide checks against it because the expected type is now a facet of the method signature. To engage in the kind of typechecking at compile time that I'm talking about without programmer clarification (via generics) would require the compiler to have a guaranteed knowledge of a lot more than it does. For example...
If, in one piece of code you insert a java/lang/String into an ArrayList, then in another piece later, it is clobbered and replaced with a java/math/BigDecimal, and then in another piece, get() is called and the retrieved java/lang/Object is cast to java/lang/String, the compiler, to provide type-checking and catch this class cast failure, would have to be able to prove that, every time that specific get() was called, something other than a java/lang/String came out of it. To do that would requrie a lot of information about the dynamic state of the program at that time.
In fact, depending heavily on the method in question, it may be impossible to guarantee the permitted type of the object available when you cast/miscast it. Consider a multithreaded environment. You're fast reaching a place where the only way to know what the type of the object is is to actually wait and see each time, which is what runtime casting is.
You are correct that certain forms of type safety can be found at compile-time. For example, type safety in passing parameters, assigning values from a return, etc, can be tested. Likewise, a type saftey check of this nature is trivial:
ArrayList l = null;
String s = new String();
l = s;
However, there reaches a point where runtime type safety has to take over, and most of the cases of improved type safety thanks to generics is a matter of moving more type checks away from runtime and into compile time.
And generics does not have to be "a hell of type casts". It can be a preprocessor hack where, at compile time, the types are provided in a special syntax and the generics (or template) code is then used to generate a unique piece of source code from those types. This would clearly make your compiled code size bigger, but avoids excessive use of the runtime type system.