The death penalty has various serious problems and lifetime imprisonment is really really expensive.
I guess we should be happy every time someone so thoroughly bad we want them out of society forever (like a serial murderer) does us the favour of killing themselves. Nothing of value is lost, and the justice system saves money. Right?
It seems to me it logically follows that we should incentivize such suicides. Like: 5000 dollars to a person of your choice if you're dead within the first year of your lifetime sentence, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
It feels very wrong and is clearly outside the overton window. But is there any reason to expect this wouldn't be a net benefit?
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No, they should be executed. For free.
The only thing more cowardly that not facing up with the consequence of admitting some criminals are beyond saving is asking the criminals to do society's duty in it's stead because we so fear having blood on our hands.
Not to mention the utter affront to the dignity of man having people haggle themselves into death is.
Asking people to debase themselves so cannot be called justice. It's torture. And it's evil. As are all such unnecessary cruelties.
How would you feel about the option for long-term inmates to have the means to commit suicide? With painless pills. No bribe system, just an option. Not like there's a ton of dignity in dying of old age in prison. Or having to kill yourself in some DIY way. And on that point, I'll never believe that the government owns our lives, so they have no right to stop us from ending our lives. Unless it's directly going to impact other lives. For example, suicide bombers, or people raising kids.
This does not address my charge of cowardice. So I feel about it the same.
In fact I do not see any difference, given such "options" are optimized into being mandatory every time they are introduced. This is why I'm also against the revolting Canadian euthanasia system.
If you want people to die, kill them. Don't nag them onto suicide.
This tells me you don't actually hold any such principle and are perfectly fine with the government killing your actual ennemies. You just feel more kinship with some criminals than others.
To your last point, I think your emotions got the better of you. Or you're just extremely confused. But with your anger at the Canadian gov allowing euthanasia, I think it's the former. The government doesn't own humans. We aren't property. Our lives are our own to end, whenever we want. I understand that totalitarians can't grasp this concept, so I don't waste too much time trying to push that point to you guys.
On the first point of cowardice... again, allowing people to chose to die if they don't like their circumstances is not cowardice, it's compassion. Forcing someone to rot in a cage is peak cowardice. Whether or not I WANT people to die is irrelevant. I WANT them to have the agency to determine for themselves if they want to live or die. Inside or outside of jail. Again, exception for the direct harm to other people. But if the point is that jail/prison will drive more people to suicide, well that is completely irrelevant because the fact remains that we will still be locking them up. And they'll still be humans with the inherent right to determine for themselves if they want to continue living. And they shouldn't have to torture themselves in some crude manner in order to get their wish.
I think you have a flawed theory of natural rights if you think being killed by your declared ennemies is something abnormal.
There is no such thing as a right to life. Because nature doesn't afford any such right without the existence of the State. All that God provides is a right to defend yourself against the State to the death if they want to kill you. Nothing more.
Now of course the government doesn't own you. It's impossible to own a human or anything that has a will in any coherent sense. But we kill things we don't own all the time, through war, property has nothing to do with it, unless you want to think of justice or victory as a form of slavery, which is in fact the sort of barbaric view I do not condone.
I don't think you understand what totalitarianism is if you think that I'm one or that supporting the death penalty has anything to do with it.
Was the British Empire totalitarian? How about France up until the 80s? What about ancient Greece?
We'll have to disagree. If you believe that it is just some die, kill them. If you do not, don't. Asking others to do the job and calling it free will is silly business.
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