Incarceration has exactly one purpose: to prevent and deter people from endangering the community.
Wrong. Incarceration has two purposes: to prevent and deter future crime AND to punish.
Statistically, most of the released inmates will have been there for drug-related charges, which, since drug law enforcement doesn't work anyway, I'm not gonna lose any sleep over.
What part of "drug law enforcement doesn't work?" Is it because people still use drugs? People still murder but no one is claiming that "murder enforcement law doesn't work." When you make something illegal then fewer people do it.
But again, the only reason to keep him locked up - the only reason the government should do anything with other people's money, for that matter - is if it will do some good.
Demonstrating punishment does good. If people think that there is not a larger consequence for fleeing the scene of an accident and leaving someone to die then that is the more likely response. Why hang around if you are driving drunk when you can flee and have a the chance to escape?
Just curious: how much do you think an American citizen should pay in order to "earn" the police cruiser that comes when that burglar breaks into his house? Or the fire truck that comes to stop it from burning down?
So let's send you a bill every month - your full, equal share of the government services you not only have, but take for granted.
They do send me a bill. It's called property taxes. It's itemized to include both police and fire service. Law enforcement and criminal justice is actually a job of government. It's one of the few things that they must do since we are a country of laws.
A policy that lets a government-funded insurance company compete with private insurers in a free market? To spur innovation, destroy oligopolist practices and drive down costs, all while giving individual Americans the right to choose whatever insurance option they want? If any? A true communist would be apoplectic.
Government funded really means taxpayer funded. So I would be paying for a system to compete with the one that I currently use? And the company that currently supplies me with health insurance doesn't get to set regulations? Doesn't get to create mandates? Has to worry about a profit? This is not competition. And a government that can't come out and say they want socialism has to take baby steps and work under the guise of "fairness" and "helping the poor."
The preexisting condition argument is the one that I find the most ridiculous. Of cours INSURANCE doesn't allow preexisting conditions... EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE. You can't wreck your car then get insurance. But you can get a job that provides health insurance, which is how most people get their health insurance, and because it is a group plan then your preexisting condition is accepted.
Ahem. Forty years on, Medicare is one of the most popular and successful government-run programs of all time, and the senior population would pretty much lynch anyone who tried to take it away.
The "first in" on a ponzi scheme will always support the program. And if you define "success" as "out of money and rife with fraud" then I'm not sure what to say.
I like you Kaelri and I know you once said that you enjoyed reading Atlas Shrugged. I'd suggest re-reading it and remembering where Ayn Rand came from. I take the side of less government because that always means more freedom.
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I have a couple of questions, although the first suggests that I'll get an answer to neither, but what the hell? Here goes:
1) Daniel, why do you have a policy of not commenting on your blog?
2) Have you read "Atlas Shrugged" yourself? The entire book?
Thanks in advance if you choose to violate your "policy."
1. If I spent any time responding to the endless lies told about me then I'd have no time for anything else and the minute I chose to ignore one of the lies everyone would leap on my silence as proof that it is true.
2. I'm actually in the middle of it right now. I'm enjoying it. Don't ruin the ending for me.
Thanks again ... I don't think you should respond to personal attacks, name-calling and "lies" either, but your response to Kaelri, and to me, illustrates that you're capable of engaging in a civil, intelligent discussion about issues with people who disagree with you. My vote, for what it's worth: Do it more often. Discussion, real discussion, is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I'm curious to hear a review of "Atlas" when you're done. No spoilers from me, happy reading.
Cheers. :)
"Wrong. Incarceration has two purposes: to prevent and deter future crime AND to punish."
Yes, but punishment is subjective. Some criminals are so messed up that they are utterly incapable of feeling regret or remorse; if we executed them, they'd go giggling to their graves. Others are so wracked with internal guilt that nothing the justice system does could add to their torment. And then there's everything in between. We have no scientific standard of matching crime and punishment; if ten years' imprisonment isn't "enough," is twenty? Thirty?
As you know, there are also very good reasons to punish some crimes more severely than others, based on both the effect and the motivation. I've written the following truism several times here, but it's worth repeating: not all crime is equal.
So should this man be punished? Absolutely. But in the absence of any way of knowing how much punishment is "enough," our resource expenditure has to be based not on the transient emotions of one man, but on the things we can measure: prevention and deterrence.
"What part of "drug law enforcement doesn't work?" Is it because people still use drugs? People still murder but no one is claiming that "murder enforcement law doesn't work." When you make something illegal then fewer people do it."
If murder enforcement actually increased the number of murders, I would say without reservation that it didn't work. In 2001, Portugal decriminalized the possession and personal use of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, LSD and more. Five years on, the rate of deaths from street drug overdose dropped by about 25%. New HIV infections from dirty needles dropped by 70%. Overall lifetime use of marijuana and heroin by teenagers is down, and the number of people seeking medical treatment for addiction has doubled, "after decriminalization and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment." Now of course, what works for Portugal may not necessarily work for the United States with the same degree of success. But humans are humans, and it's an incredibly compelling example.
I don't - and this may be a key difference between me and many of the people who frequent this blog - believe that the best way to dissuade people from undesirable behavior is to make the behavior illegal. I believe that's treating the symptoms, not curing the disease. On top of that, if individuals choose to disease themselves, I'm not sure I understand why it's such a concern of yours. We punish people for drinking while driving or operating heavy machinery, and for distributing it to minors - that all makes sense. But our blanket ban on marijuana use in particular has had about as much good effect as Prohibition did back in the day. It's just a huge waste of resources on something we can't stop and have no real reason to try.
"Demonstrating punishment does good. If people think that there is not a larger consequence for fleeing the scene of an accident and leaving someone to die then that is the more likely response. Why hang around if you are driving drunk when you can flee and have a the chance to escape?"
Oh, I agree. That's what I meant by "deterrence," in fact. And again, not once did I ever suggest that the criminal in question should go without punishment; I never said it and I don't believe it now. What I'm saying is that if I had to keep one person locked up, and it was a choice between this guy and a remorseless culprit of premeditated murder, it would not be a tough call.
"They do send me a bill. It's called property taxes. It's itemized to include both police and fire service."
You missed the word "equal." Your objection to the health care plan (one of many, I assume) was that it would provide coverage to people who hadn't "earned" it, by virtue of making enough money to meet the market-determined price of insurance. My response was to suggest that if you had to pay for your equal share of every single government service you take advantage of, without the relief of a progressive tax, business taxes and other sources of federal income, you would not make nearly enough to "earn" them, by your definition.
"Government funded really means taxpayer funded. So I would be paying for a system to compete with the one that I currently use? And the company that currently supplies me with health insurance doesn't get to set regulations? Doesn't get to create mandates? Has to worry about a profit? This is not competition."
You forget that the government has the luxury of setting prices according to a more altruistic logic than profit projection. If they're smart about this - and, admittedly, they have a record of missing that mark - they'll work out a market price that's enough to force private insurers to lower their costs and improve their systems, without truly "competing" hard enough to drive them out of business.
Now, I, for one, am not scared of a completely government-run system. There are a lot of myths flying around about socialized systems in Canada, Britain, and so on. But I've actually spent some time in Canada, and the fact is that the people there are happy with their system. They pay less, they don't have to worry about getting shafted for idiotic reasons (which I'll get to on your next quote), and it frankly just works. It's not perfect - no system is - but it was hardly a gateway drug to communism.
"The preexisting condition argument is the one that I find the most ridiculous. Of cours INSURANCE doesn't allow preexisting conditions... EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE. You can't wreck your car then get insurance. But you can get a job that provides health insurance, which is how most people get their health insurance, and because it is a group plan then your preexisting condition is accepted."
So you look at the number of people who have literally died because their coverage was denied for pointless, irrelevant reasons, and your response is basically "get a job?" And I'm the one accused of heartlessness. (Not by you, Daniel - as they say, I like you well enough, it's your fan club I can't stand.) But I'm not sure you completely grasp the sheer exploitation that this concept has enabled. Do you understand that private insurance bureaucrats are congratulated for finding loopholes like this to drop people's coverage after taking their money? That the "death panels" everyone was screaming about three months ago actually exist in this form?
We need the government, not to take over the economy, but to participate in and regulate it, for one simple reason: we need the influence of an institution that does not exist solely for its own profit.
"The "first in" on a ponzi scheme will always support the program. And if you define "success" as "out of money and rife with fraud" then I'm not sure what to say."
Well we both know that's a longer debate, but even if that were the case, I'd take it over "bursting with profit and rife with fraud."
"I like you Kaelri and I know you once said that you enjoyed reading Atlas Shrugged. I'd suggest re-reading it and remembering where Ayn Rand came from. I take the side of less government because that always means more freedom."
Just because I enjoyed it doesn't mean I agreed with it. ;) And clearly you don't, either. You want Muslim extremists to be slaughtered indiscriminately. You want illegal immigrants to be convicted and deported, and a wall built along the Mexican border. You want police enforcement against smoking pot and gay people loving each other. I guess if Tom Tancredo were president, I'd be a libertarian too. ;)
As I mentioned in another of my recent posts, I find it strange that you decry the federal government when it restricts the freedom of individuals, yet somehow cherish the right of private corporations to do exactly the same thing. I honestly don't get it. The government is basically a powerful corporation with an altruistic mission statement and a rigidly-enforced system of public accountability; there's got to be something in there to say about a glass half full. Government exists to protect your rights, and frankly does a pretty good job of it.
I do not, to be clear, believe in a purely socialist society. That's economic communism, and it's just as stupid as Rand's glorofication of anarchy. There is a balance to be found. And you possess, hard as it is to acknowledge, more freedom thanks to a wide range of socialist institutions. They're already here, and they've done a lot of good. So it's time to stop being scared of the monster under the bed.
Thank you again for this direct response and the opportunity to give civilized discourse a day in the sun. It's a real breath of fresh air, especially around here.
Me again the 8:23 Anon. Just a comment on the first issue Kaelri addresses: Daniel, the "purpose" question of incarceration really isn't as black and white as you imply. Within the corrections community/industry, there is not unanimity on this issue. Corrections has historically been, and remains, divided on the question of what exactly ought to happen to those behind bars, a question complicated by the fact that there are people who by nearly all accounts probably don't belong there in the first place all the way, to the other end of the spectrum, to extremely dangerous and psychotic types. "Punishment" can be a total failure and in fact create a far worse (and expensive) situation by a tough-on-crime sledgehammer approach to swatting a fly. And unless I've misunderstood some of the comments made about your past, you evidently rehabilitated quite nicely without ever having been "punished" in the way you suggest is all-important. Would you, and society, have been better off if you'd spent 7 years doing hard time being raped on shower room floors? I don't think so.
In the 1870s in Kansas, I believe it was Dodge City, there was a judge names Isaac Parker, aka The Hanging Judge. He has this nom de plume because when he sentenced someone to hang for whatever, murder, horse theft, cattle rustling, that person was swinging within hours of the sentencing.
Judge Parker wrote, "It is not the severity of the sentence that deters crime, but the surety of that that sentence."
Quite a bit of our domestic problems with the criminal element nowadays is not the severity of the sentences, but the utter lack of the surety of the sentences. We are saddled with a lot, way too many in fact, of liberal judges who will let a criminal go be cause of some arbitrary reason, poor childhood, "remorse" for what he did, or whatever the lame reason. And the worst of this lot of liberal judges is the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in (where else?) San Francisco.
If a judge sentences a criminal after his trial and conviction, that criminal should go away for the full term of that sentence without benefit of parole. Anything less should be absolutely unacceptable.
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