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gotta step up our game fr (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
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[–] 3 points 4 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.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 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.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 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.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 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?

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Once again you are focusing on punishing the guilty and not sparing the innocent. If we want to execute cartel bosses we will also execute innocent people. the only way to be sure the death penalty is not used erroneously is not use it at all.

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