Thread

1. comrade1234 · 1790835654 · focus · HN ↗

   The state shouldn't be able to take your life outside of war. I've had this strict belief since junior high, maybe because I was raised catholic. I don't understand how anyone can see otherwise. Do you want your neighbors to be able to kill you?

   1. ajkjk · 1790837756 · focus · HN ↗

      Is your belief based in something? You say "shouldn't be able to..." but, like, why not? To convince anyone else of it you'd have to agree on the framework in which states are and aren't allowed to do things.

      I think for most people the intuition is something like: the state is there to protect people (in principle at least); when someone is sufficiently dangerous to others they forfeit this right and it becomes just about protecting others from them; whereupon 'vengeance' is basically permitted against them, but then this is also delegated to the state to deter people from doing it individually because that's destabilizing, hence a death penalty.

      Seems pretty natural to me unless you happen to have an infinite negative weight assigned to killing someone, which I do not. I mean, I have a large negative one, but it's not infinite. (Maybe yours is, perhaps from the catholic upbringing, which is why this doesn't make sense?)

      (No idea what the neighbor thing has to do it; obviously nobody is arguing that neighbors should be (legally) able to kill anyone.)

      1. UncleMeat · 1790859012 · focus · HN ↗

         The state has a monopoly on violence. In exchange for this great power we expect great responsibility. A state that is flippant with its use of violence signals something to its people. I believe that even if there are zero incorrect convictions that the state should use the minimum of violence to improve the safety of the populace. The death penalty (as opposed to lwop) does not protect anybody from crime. It does not deter people. Its only function is vengeance. And when the state uses violence in vengeance it degrades society.

         1. ajkjk · 1790872426 · focus · HN ↗

            yeah but then you quibble over the definition of "flippant". What if the state is maximally responsible about its use of violence, so there's no arguing that it could be any more violence. Now what? You have to find a different argument.

            (Well, there is the "the limiting case of maximum responsibility is still nonzero errors therefore it is always unjust", which is a coherent stance, but I kinda get the impression that it's a fake one? Like it is not the actual reason that the people who profess it are opposed to the death penalty; instead it's a reason they kinda confabulate to justify their opposition even though it's not their actual reason. Their actual reason is closer to: nothing will ever get them to fully trust the state with killing. Which is much more reasonable, IMO, so I wish they would just state that directly. (this is all me trying to vibe out where other people are coming from, though, so I could be wrong)

            I was describing the thought process: the reason for a death penalty (which, to be clear, I am not arguing for either way, I am describing why I think it has come to be at a practical level) is that given that vengeance/retribution is a thing that people 'want', the state assumes the responsibility of carrying it out (responsibly) so as to avoid vigilantism / preserve the monopoly.

            1. UncleMeat · 1790873018 · focus · HN ↗

               > Their actual reason is closer to: nothing will ever get them to fully trust the state with killing. Which is much more reasonable, IMO, so I wish they would just state that directly.

               Huh? I just told you that this is my opinion. There is nothing that will ever get me to fully trust the state with killing. Even if God Himself came down and said that so-and-so was definitely guilty I would still oppose executing that person.

               1. ajkjk · 1790875035 · focus · HN ↗

                  I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about you. I was trying to disentangle three arguments:

                  1. we can't trust the state with killing because it is always necessarily imperfect 2. we can't trust the state with killing abstractly, because we simply don't trust the state in principle 3. we don't want the state to do killing for moral reasons unrelated to trust

                  I was saying that people say (1) but, I suspect, they really mean (2) or (3). It's not the imperfection of the state, or its flippancy, that is the actual problem. It's other stuff, which is perfectly fine. I just think that's it a lot less confusing if people say the other stuff outright instead of talking about the imperfectness of the system which is just a distraction.

                  1. UncleMeat · 1790892838 · focus · HN ↗

                     I personally know people (my mother is one of them) who legitimately are in category 1.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.