The application of the death penalty should be massively increased. The prison population should be massively reduced, by freeing the people who don't belong in it and by killing the creatures who don't belong outside it. Indefinite and long-term sentences should be abolished.

Kill the useless, free the innocent, and give the remainder a genuine second chance where they are well treated as first class citizens and have access to all the help and tools they need to regenerate themselves into whole people.

Everyone who leaves prison, which should always be after a few years at most, should do so with a high standard of education and training, cash in their pocket, a career lined up if that's what they want, an investment in their society, someone they can call for help if they need it, plus their dignity and a pride in what they've become. A very few do this now, usually thanks to the help of mostly religious charities, and it works.

Rehabilitative efforts are worthless unless they're targeted on those who can benefit from them. We don't have infinite resources to throw at mostly hopeless cases in the belief that some of them will get better. Prison is either somewhere to dump criminals indiscriminately or it's somewhere that makes them better, a real social endeavour - it can't be both. So if you want it to be the latter you should be campaigning not to abolish the death penalty, but for a thousandfold increase in executions.

We have the potential to build a mechanism by which defective, low-performance, harmful individuals are turned into exceptional, high-performance, beneficial ones. The death penalty isn't what's wrong with the modern justice system; it's just one of the more clumsily applied elements of one big clumsy, failing monstrosity, which needs to be completely re-engineered.

>> ^spoco2:

Exactly, people who espouse to be anarchists or libertarians only really want to be up to a point. They always seem to be quite happy to take those things that are provided by living in a society, but seem to get shirty when that entails paying taxes to fund such things.
Strange that.


>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

....until a band of vicious outlaws takes them from you, captures you and forces you to fight to the death with other prisoners in a makeshift gladiatorial arena they've dubbed 'The Thunderdome'.


I use the compulsory services I'm forced to pay for. Yes. Government has a monopoly on violence, so I must use their armies and police. They've a monopoly on first class mail, so I use their postal service. They also maintain a monopoly on property, so I use their roads to move about and live on the land they claim to own.

Problem?

>> ^Trancecoach:

Isn't this surreal? What's unfortunate is that five years ago, we were applauding gross wealth disparities as if they were a good thing... not hating on Trump for this plane, but jealously hyping his "hard work."
How interesting to see the cultural shift in the last few years, eh? From envy to anger.


It's somewhat true - at least with me. Now when I see a Ferrari driving down the road I immediately think the guy is an asshole/crook/schemer.

I knew that music was familiar... X-Men First Class. Works great here too!

>> ^blankfist:

Two comments in and you're back to your old games again. Where did I say "all" immigrants will be poor or "all" immigrants will refuse to pay taxes? Notice I mentioned US citizens as well. But you probably missed that while only listening to what you wanted to hear.

Seriously blankie, what's with the hostility? Forgive me for just this once talking like a normal person and saying "all" when I should've said "disproportionately."

I was mostly just asking about whether you thought immigrants were a special class of people with different demographics than the indigenous population, because I don't see the how you link immigration to the solvency of a social safety net unless you presuppose that immigrants are either going to be disproportionately poor, or disproportionately likely to commit some form of fraud (tax or entitlement).

>> ^blankfist:
It's not that "all" immigrants are poor, it's that if you were poor and you realized you could go somewhere and have access to things you'd not normally have access to, then what're the odds of you exploiting that?
It's a numbers game. The more you allow for exploits in a system, the more it'll be exploited. Etc. Same goes with citizenry and citizenry birth. But the real difference, I believe, is that if you are stable in your home country, you're probably less likely to migrate somewhere just for the entitlements. The opposite is probably more likely however if you're not stable. Is that not a reasonable assumption?


So here's the part where I walk on eggshells and gently point out that you do seem to be saying that immigrants will be disproportionately likely to be poor or commit fraud.

You're also tossing in that you think native born citizens will be that way too. If that's the case, then we're back to "so what does immigration have to do with anything?"


Let's say we turned America into a Finnish-style welfare state -- taxes are high, infrastructure is modern and in good repair, our public schools are the best in the world, our health care system is both cost effective and provides quality care, unemployment is low, our budget is in surplus, our unemployment benefits are generous (and have no time limit), and we have a growing private sector with a heavy technology focus.

If we then threw the gates wide open on immigration, I think you're right; most of the people coming here would be poorer than the average American, and at least in the short run, it'd be bad for the government's net fiscal situation -- more people on welfare, without a completely offsetting tax revenue increase.

But over the long run, I think the situation would reverse. The immigrants and their children would get a free, quality education. They'd get first class health care. They'd have access to public transportation, and a healthy jobs market. For the most part, they'd "exploit" the advantages offered to them to bootstrap themselves into a more productive, wealthier, tax-paying lifestyle. In the long run, the state's investments in the human capital of those immigrants would pay dividends that go beyond mere economic growth, it'd also diversify and enrich the culture of their nation, and bring new ideas and different ways of thinking into the shared project of their society.

Which is to say, I don't think immigration poses a fiscal problem for welfare states.

Bigotry on the other hand, that poses a problem for left-wing policies of all kinds. I don't really think that's a strike against the policies of the left though.

I really getting tired of remake after remake after remake. But my biggest pet peeve is in my personal opinion STOP REMAKING ORIGIN STORIES! we get it, we know it, lets move on!

They are rebooting Superman and starting with the Origin story, it's been done to death

this spiderman origin story, they did origin story for xmen first class, even down to kid show remakes, the new thundercats cartoon starts over with the origin again.

I would love for once, instead of origin story we get a freaking continuation. A "Where are they now" you can call it. Like for spiderman let the first 3 stay in canon, then ok fine new actors I understand that part totally, but continue the story you dont have to add part 4 to it, but just continue, we know the origin already from the 60's live action tv show, the old 80's cartoons, the 90's remake of the cartoons, the movies, etc.

hehe yea I could rant forever about it, but it's just a pet peeve of mine. I really hate remakes of origin stories, I hated it with batman remake of the origin story and I don't think I'll ever like remakes of origin stories.

>> ^blankfist:
What backlash?
This comes to mind. I also suspect that if I looked back at every Siftquisition, there was no lack of people attacking the person making the complaint by saying that they need to "grow thick skin" with varying degrees of crudeness.

I can't really think of anyone who's ever stood up and said "X crossed the line when they did Y" and they didn't get subjected to a lot of ridicule, and an extended public debate about what a terrible crime it is for someone to get offended by something someone said.

We're supposedly all adults here, right? Maybe that should also mean that when people say something crossed the line, we shouldn't just reject that out of hand, and make a big stink about the tyranny of the "white knights" or "crybabies" or "whiners." That doesn't sound like adult behavior to me.

You yourself said there are lots of other places on the internet for people to go. You seem to want the people who're offended by racist commentary and/or personal attacks to be the ones to leave for someplace else.

Me, I want the people who do those things to find someplace else to be, or at least learn to live within our already lenient (and obscenely vague) limits.

>> ^blankfist:

I've been attacked personally for my difference of political beliefs, yet you don't hear me crying foul every damn time someone calls me a libertard or blankfuck or whatever. Sometimes I feel targeted by you, dft, and some other prominent Sifters, but I'm not going to hop on a soapbox and spin a yarn how I'm a victim. That would be disingenuous.


I don't think it would be, necessarily. I think (assuming it wasn't all a stunt just to make a point), this comment by @rottenseed really makes a very cogent argument for why even a first class troll (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) like him would be offended by being singled out and called a dumbass.

I think what he said about the way he conducts himself is true -- he makes incisive satire about the overall mood of the Sift without ever being mean spirited, and I can't recall seeing him make a personal attack.

I do think it'd be hard for you to make the case that (for example) me calling you a dumbass would be over the line. But that doesn't mean there are no limits on the kinds of things it's reasonable for me to say to you, either. If you feel hectored by me, you shouldn't be forced to either live with it or leave the Sift. You have a right to be here without being bullied. I also think you have a right to have it dealt with privately so you don't have to deal with the insensitive assholes who'd call you names for complaining in the first place...

I like her outfit for sneaking into the club in X-Men First Class

The trailer is as good as the movie. X-Men First Class Quotes

>> ^blankfist:

You confused me a bit here. You're repeating my sentiment on this.
Certainly it's a smart business move to use the post office in less accessible/less populated areas, because it's cheaper than paying a driver and buying a truck to do it. Again, this has something to do with the USPS having a monopoly on first class mail, because they're the only show in town for first class mail they have to offer their service nearly everywhere in the US - even to rural areas where they're probably losing money to operate there.

And again, I think that's probably true for some set of examples that don't involve deliveries to the NetRunner household. I don't live in a rural area. I live in an urban area, and even more specifically I'm quite near a FedEx delivery hub.

Still, they think it's cheaper to pay the USPS to deliver the package than use one of their own delivery trucks. I think they're right. It's far more efficient to use the USPS because they already have the infrastructure in place to deliver mail to my doorstep, and will be delivering mail to my neighborhood every day already. No point in inefficiently duplicating effort.
>> ^blankfist:
I think that's what @chilaxe meant by subsidizing. He didn't mean tax dollars,

I read the phrase "your and my paycheck" as an allusion to taxation. I also said as part of my rejoinder that it won't be affected, "unless you buy postage".

>> ^blankfist:
[T]he cost of postage on first class mail is subsidizing those drivers and stations in less profitable areas (though tax dollars did subsidize the post office for years). So, because the USPS already has trucks going out to those areas, companies like FedEx use that to their benefit where it would normally be unprofitable for them. Would you disagree with this assertion?

No, I agree with that assertion. Do you think there's something wrong with that kind of subsidization?

>> ^blankfist:
By the way, I think highly of Marxist philosophy. Marxists and little 'l' libertarians (think anarchist leaning) have more in common than Marxists and Social Democrats & Progressives. But that's a whole other conversation.


And one I'd like to have sometime. I personally think it's pretty strange for you to claim to respect Marxist philosophy, while decrying everything liberals do.

>> ^NetRunner:

Maybe that's true someplace, but it's certainly not true for where I live. I'm in Columbus, OH and pretty close to the airport, and the local Fedex hub. I think the explanation is that the USPS already has a truck coming by my house every weekday anyways, and the marginal cost of adding a small package to their delivery is going to be way less than Fedex sending out a truck just to drop off a package for me.
Oh, and I think you want to be careful about implying that profit-seeking is putting some sort of competitive disadvantage on commercial carriers. That almost sounds like a Marxist argument.


You confused me a bit here. You're repeating my sentiment on this.

Certainly it's a smart business move to use the post office in less accessible/less populated areas, because it's cheaper than paying a driver and buying a truck to do it. Again, this has something to do with the USPS having a monopoly on first class mail, because they're the only show in town for first class mail they have to offer their service nearly everywhere in the US - even to rural areas where they're probably losing money to operate there.

I think that's what @chilaxe meant by subsidizing. He didn't mean tax dollars, he meant the cost of postage on first class mail is subsidizing those drivers and stations in less profitable areas (though tax dollars did subsidize the post office for years). So, because the USPS already has trucks going out to those areas, companies like FedEx use that to their benefit where it would normally be unprofitable for them. Would you disagree with this assertion?

By the way, I think highly of Marxist philosophy. Marxists and little 'l' libertarians (think anarchist leaning) have more in common than Marxists and Social Democrats & Progressives. But that's a whole other conversation.

>> ^blankfist:

Again, because they've monopolized first class mail they probably offer the cheapest mail delivery in certain areas that're typically too expensive to deliver to normally (without adjusting the fair to make it profitable - profitable meaning able to pay the staff and make a reasonable return).

Maybe that's true someplace, but it's certainly not true for where I live. I'm in Columbus, OH and pretty close to the airport, and the local Fedex hub. I think the explanation is that the USPS already has a truck coming by my house every weekday anyways, and the marginal cost of adding a small package to their delivery is going to be way less than Fedex sending out a truck just to drop off a package for me.

Oh, and I think you want to be careful about implying that profit-seeking is putting some sort of competitive disadvantage on commercial carriers. That almost sounds like a Marxist argument.

>> ^blankfist:
But because the USPS is a government monopoly it must subsidize the areas that're not as profitable and yet still offer a carrier service.
I actually don't have a problem with the USPS, because it's a user fee based service, but they should lift the monopoly. Do you disagree?


To be honest, I've got no complaints about the USPS at all, so I haven't really spent much time thinking of ways to reform it. Personally, I don't see why we'd change it. It's not like Fedex is being strangled, and it's not like there's some widespread, intense dissatisfaction with the postal service.

If anything, my biggest reasons for tinkering with the postal system would be environmental (stop driving trucks all over the city every day to deliver junk mail made out of trees!), or to revisit the original intent of the post office, and realize that its real mandate was universal data service. This whole thing with delivery of physical pieces of paper was just the only data network available in 1789.

Outside that, I don't see the point.

>> ^NetRunner:

And a third point to @blankfist's gung-ho praise of private carriers, all the packages I've gotten this year from Fedex were sent by Fedex's SmartPost, where they hire the USPS to do terminal delivery for them, because they can do it more efficiently.
Ditto for DHL and UPS. It's been a while since someone other than a USPS mail carrier brought me a package.


Again, because they've monopolized first class mail they probably offer the cheapest mail delivery in certain areas that're typically too expensive to deliver to normally (without adjusting the fair to make it profitable - profitable meaning able to pay the staff and make a reasonable return). But because the USPS is a government monopoly it must subsidize the areas that're not as profitable and yet still offer a carrier service.

I actually don't have a problem with the USPS, because it's a user fee based service, but they should lift the monopoly. Do you disagree?

>> ^blankfist:

I bet if they opened the market up to first class mail, you'd see some rather great options being created. Maybe not all at once, but over time.
But as it is now it's illegal to offer first class mail services in the US unless you're the US Government. What kind of bum deal is that?


Ya, a relic of eras gone by. Perhaps a good idea when you needed a central network of ponies to run a country. Not so necessary nowadays. I think the Mayan's had a foot version of the pony express. But it really has outlived it usefulness. I remember some other stories of kids starting a local mailing route to be faster than snail mail for in city deliveries. They were subsequently shut down because it is a legal monopoly. If you want to stifle things, get government involved, it works! Speaking of, lets get the government to do the internet, that should work well.