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. EMIRELADERO · 1790838290 · focus · HN ↗

         > 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

         There's no connection between "protect[ing] people" and "vengeance", The latter is not necessary for the former.

         The retributive instinct should not be "fed" by the State. It is perfectly normal to have that feeling, but we should recognize it for what it is and let it stay as such. You might think this isn't possible or stable but the Nordics would prove you wrong.

         1. ajkjk · 1790872624 · focus · HN ↗

            No they're just two different things. That's my point. On the one hand the state is delegated with using violence for protection. On the other hand the state is delegated with carrying out retribution.

            If you had no state you would see people build the exact same delegations in private: first, people would enact their own protection and retribution; then, they would coordinate to make it more just by centralizing those powers and (theoretically) subordinating them to some system of justice that uses them more fairly than individuals would. We're just on the other side of that process, which is why I'm saying it's the explanation for why the state has those powers.

            This has no bearing on the morality of "should the state do this"; it's just how it actually is, and why it makes sense of the minds of people who are okay with it (since the OP said they couldn't imagine a reason).

            But, I think, if you aren't going to let the state carry out vengeance at all, you do need to figure out what you're going to do about people's desire for it to happen. (In practice though, you definitely are, you're just going to modulate how extreme it can be, i.e. killing people vs incarcerating them.) Just, IMO, the people who pretend like the justice system is not at all about retribution and only about rehabilitation/protection are... living in a fairy tale version of reality. Like I would love if that were the case, and if everyone was reformable and came out repentant for their behavior then it would be possible, but in practice, people want other people punished for their crimes. Consider that the point of jailing executives for fraud, which everyone wants more of, is not to prevent fraud but to actually punish them. Since it is the punishing that has a theoretical chance of stopping other people from fraud.

            1. EMIRELADERO · 1790873364 · focus · HN ↗

               > But, I think, if you aren't going to let the state carry out vengeance at all, you do need to figure out what you're going to do about people's desire for it to happen.

               You educate/culture it out of them, which is what the Nordics, and Western Europe more generally, choose to do. Seems to be working fine so far.

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