On the one hand, I feel somewhat strongly that the state shouldn’t execute criminals. On the other hand, it’s more important that billionaires face the consequences of their actions like normal people do.
I think the death penalty should really only be allowed for mass murder / enslavement.
However, I doubt any billionaires are innocent of enslaving people, even if it’s “I paid them ($0.07 / day, which is slave wages)!” So, fuck the ultra rich. They didn’t get there by hard work; they got there by exploiting people and the system. Finances are not unlimited, so funneling that much money to yourself means you are directly depriving whole communities of livelihood and, almost always, actual life.
My major issue with the death penalty is the very real chance of killing an innocent person. People have been wrongly arrested/convicted significant amount of times for mass murder situations, so while on principle I have no issues with the death penalty in mass murder cases… I can’t support it because of the chance of it being the wrong person.
With billionaires, it’s pretty easy to figure out exactly who is the billionaire out of a group of random people… Very hard to wrongfully convict someone of having over a billion dollars.
It’s pretty basic harm reduction. We support harm reduction. A terrible person being killed is harm reduction even if a terrible person being imprisoned and being rehabilitated if at all possible and made to be as productive of a member of society as possible in prison would be better harm reduction. The world is too big and too awful to look at everything in absolutes.
And it’s nice to see awful rich people actually get the real punishments they often deserve instead of poor people get those punishments that they often don’t deserve.
It’s a very easy argument for us both to have while dealing entirely in hypotheticals of how we feel about what other people are doing. I’m not executing anyone and I’m not in any position to do so I’m just enjoying watching bad things happen to bad people. The fact that I don’t trust anyone to be able to legally decide who deserves to be killed in cold blood doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate some real justice being done where it usually isn’t.
The cognitive dissonance in the hive mind is as strong on lemmy as it ever was on reddit, which I find interesting.
‘The death penalty is brutal, primitive, unjustified; corrupt billionaires should be put to death by the state.’
These two completely incompatible sentiments have been expressed just in the last few days on this same instance.
It’s about balancing principles…
On the one hand, I feel somewhat strongly that the state shouldn’t execute criminals. On the other hand, it’s more important that billionaires face the consequences of their actions like normal people do.
In this instance, justice demands death.
It’s a very hard line to tow.
I think the death penalty should really only be allowed for mass murder / enslavement.
However, I doubt any billionaires are innocent of enslaving people, even if it’s “I paid them ($0.07 / day, which is slave wages)!” So, fuck the ultra rich. They didn’t get there by hard work; they got there by exploiting people and the system. Finances are not unlimited, so funneling that much money to yourself means you are directly depriving whole communities of livelihood and, almost always, actual life.
My major issue with the death penalty is the very real chance of killing an innocent person. People have been wrongly arrested/convicted significant amount of times for mass murder situations, so while on principle I have no issues with the death penalty in mass murder cases… I can’t support it because of the chance of it being the wrong person.
With billionaires, it’s pretty easy to figure out exactly who is the billionaire out of a group of random people… Very hard to wrongfully convict someone of having over a billion dollars.
Nah, it’s more about having no principles.
Sticking religiously to ours principles isn’t a luxury most of us have. We just have to make do with pragmatism.
It’s pretty basic harm reduction. We support harm reduction. A terrible person being killed is harm reduction even if a terrible person being imprisoned and being rehabilitated if at all possible and made to be as productive of a member of society as possible in prison would be better harm reduction. The world is too big and too awful to look at everything in absolutes.
And it’s nice to see awful rich people actually get the real punishments they often deserve instead of poor people get those punishments that they often don’t deserve.
Yes, yes. ‘The death penalty is acceptable for some’ is all I’m hearing.
You say harm reduction, I say Bullshit!
It’s a very easy argument for us both to have while dealing entirely in hypotheticals of how we feel about what other people are doing. I’m not executing anyone and I’m not in any position to do so I’m just enjoying watching bad things happen to bad people. The fact that I don’t trust anyone to be able to legally decide who deserves to be killed in cold blood doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate some real justice being done where it usually isn’t.