4 ms·

The point of punishment is deterrence. You maximize value by facilitating a culture that doesn't lie, cheat, steal, and do harm to others. The value a single pe

The point of punishment is deterrence. You maximize value by facilitating a culture that doesn't lie, cheat, steal, and do harm to others. The value a single person can generate is dwarfed by the value an ethical culture will. "Worse case scenario, I have to live like middle America" is a terrible deterrent.

tsukikage 3y ago
Not just deterrence, but also safety. If these folk have already demonstrated they are willing to harm others in order to "generate money", having them do more of that seems... counterproductive. Harm done to others, meanwhile, is not free. Each of the affected toddlers will have had hospital time, and could have had a productive life of "generating money" had they not been killed by a fruit pouch; so even if you throw morality under the bus and focus purely on picking the outcome that "generates money"... society loses much more money with the death of a toddler than it gains with the sale of a fruit pouch. If it turns out that someone deliberately made that choice, that person is a risk to society and must be prevented from acting in ways that might cause further harm in the future.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Oh, and this is in the case the child dies.... survival may be worse. Lead and the developing brain are two things that should never mix. The mental declines caused by lead will leave a damaged, crippled human being robbed of their abilities.
  - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pixl97 3y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961898/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961898/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277241662200050X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277241662... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297731586_Lead_toxicity_A_review https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297731586_Lead_toxi... https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-015-0008-9 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-... Please, politely take your conspiracy bullshit elsewhere. Lead toxicity, especially in developing brains and in high amounts is well established.
      - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
        It's a combination of calling the defects the healthy state, and making things up. Yes, healthy children will not want to play with the deficient children, and see them as low status. There is nothing undesirable about that, it seems to be a conserved reaction, even fruit flies do that. The sane solution is to make everyone a noble. Rooting for the cripples is not reasonable.
- acdha 3y ago
  To clarify, I didn’t mean “can keep their current job”. My thought was that this is a crime of greed: the kind of CEO who’s going to cut corners to save a buck is going to be as deterred by the prospect of never in their life being in authority or better off than working class but taxpayers are better off if that guy’s staying out of jail to pay his victims than being a pure cost in jail.
  - tsukikage 3y ago
    Would you trust such a person not to throw others around them under the bus to benefit themselves if they are left free to exploit such opportunities in daily life, even once they are no longer CEOs of anything? I wouldn't. I used to have such faith in humans once, but, well, lead in toddler food.
    - acdha 3y ago
      It’ll come down to what an investigation turns up. If they knowingly picked lead, sure, lock them up like any other poisoner. What I’d bet will turn up, however, is that they picked the lowest bidder and did the legal minimum required testing. In that case, I have trouble saying they’re uniquely dangerous to the public unless we’re also jailing, say, the CEOs of fossil fuel or tobacco companies, big meat suppliers like Tyson’s and the farmers whose worker mistreatment reliably produces E. coli outbreaks, or, for that matter, people who drive around looking at their phones since we could save ~40k lives a year by doing nothing more violent than taking away driver’s licenses from irresponsible people. It’s natural to be angry here but I think what we should be doing is channeling this anger into demands for more aggressive regulation. Waiting until people get sick is too late, we should expect things like lead or salmonella testing to be done constantly. We could crucify the CEO of this company on livestream and it wouldn’t have much lasting impact because the kind of people who do this think the odds of getting caught are low – change that and it’ll have a much bigger impact.
refurb 3y ago
I agree 100%. For example, we could start punishing people who sell drugs with harsh punishments. It’ll surely work!
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  Its the balance of deterrence and incentives. In the case of drugs, no one really goes to jail fo doing drugs, only selling them. People therefore feel free to do drugs, which drives demand for people to sell them. Thus an incentive arises, which, for some, is worth the risk. The same balance applies here. If we dont want something happening, it needs harsh punishments to outweigh the incentives.
  - refurb 3y ago
    I mean people will smuggle drugs into Singapore under the penalty of death. And the flow of drugs continues. I’d imagine making tens of millions by selling poisonous food provides a similar incentive?
    - BobbyJo 3y ago
      > I mean people will smuggle drugs into Singapore under the penalty of death Yeah, but how many? Singapore has a very small drug trade when you consider its wealth per-capita. Most counties with similar wealth have trades several times larger per-capita. You can't completely eliminate a crime no matter what punishments you hand out. Someone people are just blind to risk. However, that doesn't mean punishing people is futile. It has a demonstrable effect. Now, I do believe that checks and balances that prevent crime are generally more effective than punishments, but punishments are still necessary to add risk to gaps in prevention.
      - refurb 3y ago
        > Yeah, but how many? Lots of people. There are sizable drugs busts (kilograms of heroin) in Singapore every few weeks. It's a country of 5M, smaller than a larger US city.

tsukikage 3y ago

Not just deterrence, but also safety. If these folk have already demonstrated they are willing to harm others in order to "generate money", having them do more of that seems... counterproductive. Harm done to others, meanwhile, is not free. Each of the affected toddlers will have had hospital time, and could have had a productive life of "generating money" had they not been killed by a fruit pouch; so even if you throw morality under the bus and focus purely on picking the outcome that "generates money"... society loses much more money with the death of a toddler than it gains with the sale of a fruit pouch. If it turns out that someone deliberately made that choice, that person is a risk to society and must be prevented from acting in ways that might cause further harm in the future.

pixl97 3y ago
Oh, and this is in the case the child dies.... survival may be worse. Lead and the developing brain are two things that should never mix. The mental declines caused by lead will leave a damaged, crippled human being robbed of their abilities.
- Anotheroneagain 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pixl97 3y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961898/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961898/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277241662200050X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277241662... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297731586_Lead_toxicity_A_review https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297731586_Lead_toxi... https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-015-0008-9 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-... Please, politely take your conspiracy bullshit elsewhere. Lead toxicity, especially in developing brains and in high amounts is well established.
    - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
      It's a combination of calling the defects the healthy state, and making things up. Yes, healthy children will not want to play with the deficient children, and see them as low status. There is nothing undesirable about that, it seems to be a conserved reaction, even fruit flies do that. The sane solution is to make everyone a noble. Rooting for the cripples is not reasonable.
acdha 3y ago
To clarify, I didn’t mean “can keep their current job”. My thought was that this is a crime of greed: the kind of CEO who’s going to cut corners to save a buck is going to be as deterred by the prospect of never in their life being in authority or better off than working class but taxpayers are better off if that guy’s staying out of jail to pay his victims than being a pure cost in jail.
- tsukikage 3y ago
  Would you trust such a person not to throw others around them under the bus to benefit themselves if they are left free to exploit such opportunities in daily life, even once they are no longer CEOs of anything? I wouldn't. I used to have such faith in humans once, but, well, lead in toddler food.
  - acdha 3y ago
    It’ll come down to what an investigation turns up. If they knowingly picked lead, sure, lock them up like any other poisoner. What I’d bet will turn up, however, is that they picked the lowest bidder and did the legal minimum required testing. In that case, I have trouble saying they’re uniquely dangerous to the public unless we’re also jailing, say, the CEOs of fossil fuel or tobacco companies, big meat suppliers like Tyson’s and the farmers whose worker mistreatment reliably produces E. coli outbreaks, or, for that matter, people who drive around looking at their phones since we could save ~40k lives a year by doing nothing more violent than taking away driver’s licenses from irresponsible people. It’s natural to be angry here but I think what we should be doing is channeling this anger into demands for more aggressive regulation. Waiting until people get sick is too late, we should expect things like lead or salmonella testing to be done constantly. We could crucify the CEO of this company on livestream and it wouldn’t have much lasting impact because the kind of people who do this think the odds of getting caught are low – change that and it’ll have a much bigger impact.

refurb 3y ago

I agree 100%. For example, we could start punishing people who sell drugs with harsh punishments. It’ll surely work!

BobbyJo 3y ago
Its the balance of deterrence and incentives. In the case of drugs, no one really goes to jail fo doing drugs, only selling them. People therefore feel free to do drugs, which drives demand for people to sell them. Thus an incentive arises, which, for some, is worth the risk. The same balance applies here. If we dont want something happening, it needs harsh punishments to outweigh the incentives.
- refurb 3y ago
  I mean people will smuggle drugs into Singapore under the penalty of death. And the flow of drugs continues. I’d imagine making tens of millions by selling poisonous food provides a similar incentive?
  - BobbyJo 3y ago
    > I mean people will smuggle drugs into Singapore under the penalty of death Yeah, but how many? Singapore has a very small drug trade when you consider its wealth per-capita. Most counties with similar wealth have trades several times larger per-capita. You can't completely eliminate a crime no matter what punishments you hand out. Someone people are just blind to risk. However, that doesn't mean punishing people is futile. It has a demonstrable effect. Now, I do believe that checks and balances that prevent crime are generally more effective than punishments, but punishments are still necessary to add risk to gaps in prevention.
    - refurb 3y ago
      > Yeah, but how many? Lots of people. There are sizable drugs busts (kilograms of heroin) in Singapore every few weeks. It's a country of 5M, smaller than a larger US city.