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It seems that the governments try to keep coming up with new ways to punish lawbreakers like drug traffickers without regard to the effect it has on the larger
by kiba 13y ago
It seems that the governments try to keep coming up with new ways to punish lawbreakers like drug traffickers without regard to the effect it has on the larger society and the economy.
If you're a criminal or marked as such, you couldn't 1) keep your ill gotten money, 2) make money from selling your stories about your criminal exploit, 3) can't make legit money once you get out of jail since nobody hire felons, 4) branded even more if you're a sex offender, 5) can't get on planes due to no-fly list, 6) can't get sent money if you're on the treasury list.
All of these are of course, "well intentioned", but it does collateral damages. If your name is even "Stephen Law", you can't get wired money. AML laws forced banks to spend a shitload of money spying on people's finance that would otherwise be spent on more productive activities. Oh, it disallow banks and other money related services from forming, creating olipologies and monopolies. People who aren't terrorists are now on the no-fly list for no reason or because of procedural mistakes. Now they drive and die in motor vechicle accidents. Felons cannot contribute to society or get because nobody wants to hire them, so they became the underclass in societies and some of them will turn back to criminal behaviors.
Obviously, there are measure worth implementing, but they must be judged not on just preventing crimes, but also the cost to societies. Heck, some of these measure aren't even effective, and wastes policing resource.
- notahacker 13y agoIt's worth pointing out the flip side of that cost-benefit equation, which is that the constant irritation of Western restrictions on their freedom to spend their ill-gotten gains is believed to be one of the main factors behind the Burmese military junta's relatively recent acceptance of reform. Arguably Myanmar's 60 million mostly impoverished people deserve as much consideration as a pretty large number of innocent people with the name Stephen/Steven Law.
- CamperBob2 13y agoSorry, but punishing me to get at the Myanmar junta isn't OK.
- cmsmith 13y agoThe entire nature of the social contract is based on the idea that punishing you to make the world better is OK. You are punished in the form of taxes so that the government can provide social security and foreign aid and military intervention (independent of whether you individually support those actions). You are inconvenienced in the form of DUI checkpoints to punish drunk drivers. You have a couple of choices: 1: Decide that the net cost to living in civilization is worse than the benefit, and go and live with some nomadic hunter-gatherers somewhere. 2: Vote to change policies you disagree with, and live with the ones that you are in the minority on.
- CamperBob2 13y agoJust out of curiosity (and no offense intended), how old are you?
- gcv 13y agoWhere are these hunter-gatherers who do not fall under the jurisdiction of a nation-state organization?
- ItendToDisagree 13y agoThe public gets to vote on these policies? Where and when? And no "the person you vote for does", or any other wording of such, is not a decent response to this for a multitude of reasons.
- coldtea 13y ago>the constant irritation of Western restrictions on their freedom to spend their ill-gotten gains is believed to be one of the main factors behind the Burmese military junta's relatively recent acceptance of reform. Believed by whom? That's just a make-believe success story of those imposing these policies. Certainly haven't affected any other junta with or without drugs.
- rangibaby 13y agoCounter-points: North Korea, Cuba