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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I don’t really buy into multiple intelligences, as g seems to do pretty well, but that’s not necessary. Making the correct assessment on “What’s the risk-benefit on selling drugs/embezzling/assault?” is just poorly correlated with being right about “is voting X good for the country/community/me?” Partly because political strategy is a hard problem for anyone, and I don’t think non-felons do a great job either. Partly because of the layers of insulation between a voter and any policy.

consent of the governed

Currently, “citizen” has a pretty expansive definition, and those who are governed without it are the exception rather than the rule. Children are the biggest one, restricted under the same strict scrutiny that we apply to all the other ways we don’t let them consent. Immigrants are the other big contingent; I don’t really have a problem with requiring their submission to government. I consider it another prerequisite to actually naturalizing and getting the full rights.

not repaid in full

Is this a reasonable expectation? It strikes me as perverse to have “...and permanent suspension of your voting rights” silently tacked on to all sentences in states with such laws. When sentencing guidelines are set, I don’t think voting rights get much consideration compared to the deprivation of physical liberty. In that sense, completing the prison time would be reasonably interpreted as paying the debt.

I would prefer to have slightly longer sentences in exchange for removing this afterthought of an indefinite punishment.

Making the correct assessment on “What’s the risk-benefit on selling drugs/embezzling/assault?” is just poorly correlated with being right about “is voting X good for the country/community/me?”

I don't think it's about having the intelligence to figure out the best policy for the country. I think it's about whose interest you're voting for. Criminals will vote for policies that benefit themselves. I would rather not optimize society for criminals. So it makes sense to me to do everything practical to exclude them from voting. I think we're better off when politicians don't have to pander for the support of murderers, rapists and drug dealers.

Maine and Vermont let people vote from prison. Do you have any evidence that this leads to bad policies being implemented?

Maine and Vermont have certain other characteristics that result in them being pleasant places.

Felons vote for the Democrats something like 2-1 and I believe most of the Democrats' policy positions are bad and also mostly beneficial to criminals and the criminal-adjacent (bloated welfare state, racial spoils system, defund the police, soft on crime). So yeah, I believe that Maine and Vermont will have marginally worse policies because they allow felons to vote than they otherwise would. If you believe that left wing policies are good then you will disagree but there's no way to resolve that argument.

Murderers wouldn't vote to make murder legal, because they know very well that they could be the victim of murder by someone else. (They might vote to make murder legal only if done by themselves and not by anyone else, but laws like that aren't on the table.) And if a crime is victimless, I'd be fine with letting criminals vote to legalize it. There may be edge cases (a vagrant who doesn't own property may want to make sleeping on someone's property legal) but I doubt that such things would be seriously proposed as laws anyway.

They might not vote to make murder legal, but they'll very plausibly vote for things like eliminating cash bail, defunding the police, making punishments more lenient and expanding the welfare state.

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