566
gotta step up our game fr (thelemmy.club)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
114 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 90 points 5 months ago (62 children)

I appreciate their sentiment but no govt should be allowed to murder its citizens

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 62 child comments
    •
  • [–] 49 points 5 months ago*

    no govt should be allowed to murder its citizens

    The headline is less sever that it looks at a glance.

    In the Chinese legal system, a death sentence with a suspended sentence usually means that in the absence of new crimes, the sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment.

    That said, it's the age-old is/ought problem of governance. Would love to see China abolish the death penalty. But I'm glad to see someone complicit in social murder through the powers of the state is not held to a lower standard than a peer who committed grievous harm to his neighbors through more direct methods.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 24 points 5 months ago (35 children)

    Lets say a real person, who is doing very well in a job that contributes to society, can take home 150k a year. And lets say they work from 18 to 65, that's about a $7M career over 50-ish years.

    The crook in OPs post stole more than 440 lifetimes of wealth. Even if he were to be put to work paying off that debt in the highest paying position which productively aids society (no lawyering, no managing, no marketing, no internet fame bs) it wold take him over 440 LIFETIMES to pay it off.

    You can sentence him to 18,000 years of prison but he will never receive even 0.5% of that punishment.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 35 child comments
    •
  • [–] 42 points 5 months ago (31 children)

    The crime does not matter. The reason the death penalty should be abolished everywhere is to spare the innocent a wrongful execution. It can never be 100% accurate 100% of the time so it should not be allowed at all.

    The guilty can rot in prison. The innocent should never be executed.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 31 child comments
    •
  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago

    Even beyond the fact that they may execute the innocent it's still wrong. Let's say a world exists where the government has a 100% accuracy rate. The issue is that by giving them the right to execute their own citizens and the power to make laws it then allows them the ability to create laws designed to kill specific people.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago* (9 children)

    This is fallacious statement - nothing is ever 100% accurate 100% of the time, that's impossible.

    This is called absolute inaction in ethics - if you say that you can't take action unless there's utter most certainty and there's nothing in the universe that is utter most certain -> you can't take any actions. You're perpetually stuck in indecision.

    So it's perfectly possible to reach certainty where someone is practically 100% guilty. Would you say that the killing of Musolini was unjustified? Should he be serving a life sentence instead and we ought to risk revival of nazis just for sake of not breaking this dichotomy? Yeah he's 99.99999% guilty but we can't be 100% sure.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    nothing is ever 100% accurate 100% of the time, that’s impossible.

    EXACTLY. So while we need a system to punish and reform criminals we do not need to execute. Thats just not necessary and we can absolutely operate without it. We can ensure that we are not executing innocent people by not executing anyone.

    It is not absolute inaction. It is sparing the innocent because the govt cannot be trusted.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    I generally agree but there are costs to not executing someone clearly guilty as well and it's about measuring these costs. For a general murderer - sure the costs of keeping them banished forever are quite low but for someone like Musolini or this mayor? There are real costs of keeping them alive in banishment primarily the risk of them coming back or leaking influence back into the real world so imo death sentence here could be justified.

    Though in practice I agree that it's safer to not give government this power as overall risk of abuse is too high but ethically it's completely justifiable to kill someone who's incredibly dangerous even if 100% certainty is not possible.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    I dont care about costs. This is about preventing wrongful executions. I cannot accept the arguement that say "well, its expensive to prevent the state from accidentally executing the wrong person" Too bad, thats the cost of justice. Prison is a punishment for the guilty, no one should be murdered by the state.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

    I did not mean monetary costs but societal costs as well. Having a dangerous person in banishment still leaking danger to society costs more lives than that of one person.

    Let's say there's a cartel boss and sure you lock them up but they can still cause enough instability to start a cartel war killing thousands of innocents - wouldn't killing them (legally) be better for society as it would save thousands of lives? I mean we can probably be quite certain they're the cartel boss, not 100% but as close as practically possible right?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
    load more comments (3 replies)
    • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (19 children)

    Why draw the line at execution?

    Seems like that same logic could be applied to imprisonment, or any punishment in general. "It can never be 100% accurate, so prison should not be allowed at all".

    Under your proposed system, innocent people willl rot in prison for life.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 19 child comments
    •
  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    You can't bring somebody back to life after killing them. If it turns out they were innocent after all, there's no releasing or recompensating a corpse.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (8 children)

    Agreed that some innocent people will be set free, but again this is not 100% perfect, so it is certain that innocent people will rot in prison until they die.

    Why draw the moral line at executing innocent people, but not at imprisoning innocent people for life ?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Because you can review a case under new evidence or for any numbers of reasons, and figure you got the wrong person.

    Ooops can't un-execute that innocent. My bad.

    And the whole rehabilitation thing. But I am guessing your argument is you can't rehabilitate a billionaire or something. You are wrong btw if you think that.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (6 children)

    You're right to say that life imprisonment is an improvement over execution because some innocent people will be set free. But under the imprisonment system, it is still guaranteed that innocent people will rot in prison until they die.

    You can't un-execute the innocent, but you also can't un-rot the innocent who die in prison.

    Why is one morally acceptable and the other is not?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    But I am guessing your argument is you can’t rehabilitate a billionaire or something. You are wrong btw if you think that.

    You can not rehabilitate the thousands of people who's lives were worsened by a billionaires actions. They commit crimes on a scale so insane that they need to be addressed in an entirely different way from conventional crime. They don't rob a business and kill a store keeper, they put thousands of people out of work and leave them unable to support themselves and their families. They destroy lives for the sake of personal gain on an industrial scale.

    A single armed man in a stadium couldn't do as much harm to humanity as a multi-billionaire does from his desk.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    So i take it its a no for rehab over punishment?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    A thief can be rehabilitated, a murderer can be rehabilitated, those people hurt others by the ones and tens and maybe even hundreds. A billionaire commits crimes on a scale that rivals war.

    The story in OPs post is surprisingly accurate and the man did have 40B USD from bribes and other illegal business. Give the population (3M) and average income (17K USD) of Haikou he stole the equivalent of more than a year's wages from all 3 million residence. There is no way he was ignorant of the scale of his crime and there is no way to ever make him feel the 3 million working years of value that he stole from the people.

    There is no rehabilitation there, punishment as a deterrent to other industrial scale criminals is all that can happen.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Counter point - many of greatest society failures were due to insufficient isolation of bad actors. Hitler failed his first coup attempt and came back after 5 years in prison - very few people remember this.

    So some form of banishment is required and obviously death is the easiest, full-proof option so this is not a black/white issue as you make it out to be.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (2 children)

    The reason to abolish the death penalty is to spare the innocent a wrongful execution, not to 'prevent a hitler'

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    I appreciated the sentiment, but here's my counterpoint: Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, etc. That's only one industry and is nevertheless incomplete, but if I kept going it would take too long.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    As long as the death penalty exists it will be used against an innocent, as it already has and will continue to do.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Justice demands it. As a compromise, we could do it as a special military tribunal a la Nuremberg rather than having it be the regular law of the land

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    Any death penalty will create wrongful executions. It simply can never be perfect. How many innocent people is it acceptable to execute as long as we also execute guilty people?

    To me that is none.

    Any death penalty also means that there is an incredibly high level of trust in the government to be accurate and thorough and not corrupt. In the US thats the same government that allows the Epstein class to walk free right now. You trust them to wield death penalty?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    I don't think they executed any innocent people at Nuremburg. This isn't like the death penalty for a given crime like murder, where you can get the wrong guy. We know exactly who they are, there's no ambiguity or any need for an investigation to find the guilty party.

    This would not be the Epstein government doing the executions, in this scenario they would be the ones being executed

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    Stealing billions is stealing hundreds and thousands of lifetimes of work from society. When crimes are at that scale they should receive the kind of attention that ensures 100%, that the accused will receive a punishment equal to the lives they have destroyed through greed.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (11 replies)