The co-founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX pleaded not guilty to a seven count indictment charging him with wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.
An attorney for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in federal court Tuesday his client has to subsist on bread, water and peanut butter because the jail he’s in isn’t accommodating his vegan diet.
Just playing devil’s advocate here:
When a person does crime, they’ve decided to violate a Social Contact that says we all agree to abide by a body of laws for the benefit of us all. They’ve opted out of that system at some scale, be it stealing a loaf of bread, to fleecing thousands of people out of billions of dollars, to (on an orthogonal dimension) depriving people of their safety, civil rights, and very life. It is an abhorrent notion to many, but to many others, it’s just a way to “get ahead.” To crime is to assault the fabric of modern society.
It’s not an unreasonable response, then, when the abiding party (I.e., those who DIDN’T crime) say “this guy deserves to be treated the way he treated us.” Eye for an Eye is a VERY old code of punishment. Its also effective because it puts things in concrete, unambiguous terms.
But, ostensibly we are modern and cultured now. Now we can discuss where the lines are between where brutality must meet brutality and where compassion must meet intransigence, but really it’s all just academic. Not everyone can be rehabilitated, and not everyone deserves to be dignified when they have so befouled the social contract. Some people are truly, fundamentally broken and just need to be listed from Society for our collective good.
All to ready to pronounce social death, people are squeamish about what to do about the corpus of the Self they’d already damned. Capital punishment is cruel, lifetime incarceration is cruel, and while rehabilitation is preferred, it is intensive, time-consuming and perhaps ultimately fruitless for the most incorrigible among us.
So what do you do? Someone’s will has to be broken here. For the good of us all.
I think the statistics show our non-rehab priaon system only hardens the will of criminals, and if we want to break their will to do crime we will actually have to show them compassion, as dozens of other countries are successfully doing.
Absolutely, there needs to be an effort to help people become better citizens, and not just beating them down. People who you beat down fight back to protect themselves, which is literally the opposite of what you want here (unless the goal is to have more people rescinding).
Ummm… you think an eye for an eye is effective? You realize the saying is “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”, right?
I was staking out a rhetorical position for the sake of debate. “Devil’s Advocate.” As much as said so on the tin. Didn’t really get a debate going though.
Personally, no. I think “eye for an eye” is an abhorrent mode of punishment, excepting that there needs to be a spine for dealing with the most incorrigible and truly evil among us. I don’t profess to know what that spine is, though.
Okay good, that’s my bad for missing that. Sorry for the misunderstanding!
