Ask Lemmy

I'm Vice President of a computer science club for my Community College and i feel this exact same issue. The people above me run it like it's a training center for a job. There's no aspect behind it besides business and business connections. It's something i desperately wish i could change

The death penalty is just legal murder, and, by the very nature of bestowing that privilege onto some power structure, creates a perverse incentive. Now whoever controls the legal system gets to decide who is worthy of living and who is worthy of dying simply by deciding what counts as a "white collar crime"

That kind of power is resented by those worthy of wielding it, and coveted by those who would abuse it. The perfect recipe for despotism.

A stronger argument IMO is that those types of crimes are premeditated, calculated and committed by those who have many other options. So deterrents are likely to actually work against them.

Not that I agree with you. But there's an argument to be made for using deterrents where they are likely to work. Rather than against the desperate or impulsive.

I think there's a huge chasm between "I don't like this" and "This should not exist". The former is perfectly reasonable.

I see where you are coming from, and have thought about this before when there was a group of people near where i live who were doing a sort of vigilante mob tracking down suspected pedophiles and terrorising them.

It just made me consider that they might be attacking people with a mental disorder who could/should be treated.

But just to speak to what you said, if they are non-offending, are you talking about the ones that dont physically assault children? Because the ones who are viewing and distributing csam are still harming children. Maybe not directly, but its like supply and demand, isn't it? People make it if people want it.

I think perhaps even the violent ones should be treated for a mental disorder. Maybe punsihed too, but if you draw parallels to other violent crime, many argue other criminals should be rehabilitated. Should this extend to pedophiles too?

The more i type, the more nuanced this becomes in my head. Perhaps that in and of itself is evidence that despite the obvious knee-jerk reaction to probably one of the most heinous things a person can do. Perhaps there is just more to this than anyone is brave enough to admit. (I say brave because anyone that sees you defending a pedophile automatically accuses you of being a pedophile, which is a fucking pathetic leap to make)

Having said all of that. If anyone ever did anything like that to my kids, i would rip their fucking heads off.

Zoos are good if they serve as sanctuaries for animals. Otherwise I agree with you.