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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32096 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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I'm honestly a little irritated that none of the responses seem to really want to engage with my actual question, which is whether this particular type of crackdown could result in a net loss to society because criminals and criminal-adjacent people will start behaving worse.

Yes, I get that you don't like criminals, and think that removing them is good, and that arresting people who commit minor crimes is a "valid" (what exactly does that mean here?) way to do that. Taken at its most likely interpretation, this is a boring, mainstream position with no nuance and no utilitarian receipts shown. Why do you believe those things? If it's just axiomatic, then talking about it is not really appropriate for the venue, since the only way in which a moral axiom can be persuasive is by showing off a +1 to adherent numbers and hoping for conformism.

arresting people who commit minor crimes is a "valid" (what exactly does that mean here?) way to do that

No, arresting people who commit minor crimes is not a valid way to get serious criminals off the street. Arresting serious criminals who have outstanding warrants for serious crimes when they happen to get caught committing a minor one is. These are not the same thing.

I don't like being attacked or having my stuff stolen. Criminals can't do those things if they're in prison. So it's a good idea to put them in prison.

Well, I don't like people disagreeing with me on the internet, and I would assume you don't get a lot of opportunity to post from prison either...

(Quips aside, "I don't like it" really doesn't amount to much as an argument to remove "it" entirely in the general case. Have you thought through all the different contexts in which the same argument would lead to clearly nonsensical conclusions?)

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