From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 04 2002 - 08:56:06 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> I think that capital punishment---in those societies that
> choose to exercise it---has profit potential. The state
> might raffle off tickets for who gets to pull the switch
> on an extremely notorious murderer or rapist. Or merely
> let it go to the highest bidder, allowing corporate
> sponsors and group contributions for one particular
> candidate. Executions really should turn a profit.
>
> This would be greatly facilitated by a television documentary
> to hype (though staying within the bounds of the truth, of
> course) the actual acts of the perpetrator. People who get
> really angry---and in my opinion rightfully so---at some
> hideous act committed by a criminal, will be willing to
> spend more.
### Excellent suggestions! I would add the sales of pieces of the hangman's
noose, and other paraphernalia, as well as the auctioning of the murderer's
body, fresh off the gallows, to the waiting transplant surgeons. Perhaps
this would make legal killing a financially self-sustaining venture, as
opposed to being merely a pricey way of achieving catharsis. Kudos to Lee
here.
--------
>> ### Say, I have video footage from the cameras I have in my house.
>> The murderer was bitten by my dog, there is his DNA splashed around
>> the living room, the neighbor's cameras filmed him and his car
>> arriving at my house and then leaving. All other evidence checks out.
>
> Still, there is a finite non-zero probability that you
> have the wrong man.
### Actually, we can extend this line of reasoning further - maybe if a
murderer is executed, he is not really dead - there is a finite non-zero
probability that he is being taken to the transtemporal re-education camp
run by advanced beings from the future, and we are actually doing him a
favor by hastening his meeting with the sublime. Imagine how cheated you
might feel, being a German serial murderer, who spent 50 years of his life
in a miserable prison, while his American buddies were already frolicking
with ethereal superintelligence.
Rafal
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