Ticking Bomb

Insight on “ Should the Ticking Bomb Terrorist Be Tortured?”

Reading the “Ticking Bomb”’ and relating it back to the Transplant Case from class, I found myself in an ironical situation. In the Transplant case, I agreed with the idea that we shouldn’t base our decisions on what will give the best outcome but rather whether the actual decision is moral/just in that it respects rights.   However, if we follow this same line of reasoning to the Ticking Bombing, which is essentially the same, except that in much more massive numbers and the individual to be tortured will not actually be killed and is actually guilty.  It might be easier to diagram:

Case	1		2		3		4
Scenario	*5 Dead *1 Alive	*5 Alive * 1 Killed	*5 Poisoned *1 Alive	*5 Poisoned are Saved *1 Killed	*Millions of Dead Civilians *1 Guilty Individual Not Tortured	*Millions Of Alive Civilians *1 Guilty Individual Tortured	*Millions of Dead Civilians *1 Innocent Child Not Tortured	*Millions of Alive Civilians *1 Innocent Child Tortured
Welfare	Less Welfare	More Welfare	Less welfare	More welfare	Less welfare	More Welfare	Less Welfare	More Welfare
Rights	No violation	1 Violation	5 rights violation	1 rights violation	Millions of violation	1 rights violation or no violation? No violation	Millions of violations	1 Rights Violation
Just	More just	Less just	More just	Less just	Less just	More Just	? No violation of right in your action Unjust	? 1 violation of right Unjust *More Welfare, Less rights violation --More just

Above, I constructed a diagram of my thinking on these cases. The 1st one is the transplant case.  The 2nd case is the modified transplant. The third case is that of the terrorist who plants a bomb in a city to kills millions of civilians and we are trying to answer whether to torture the terrorist or not. The fourth case is that of a terrorist who plants a bomb in the city to kill millions of civilians but torturing the terrorist yields no results and the question  is whether  their innocent child should be tortured in order for the terrorist to confess where the bomb is and how to stop it from going off.  

In the first case I stated that the correct thing to do would be to not kill the innocent person to save the five who are dying of natural causes.  My reasoning is that it is not moral and it is not just to violate the right to life of one individual to save five people who are dying of natural causes. The five people had their chance to live, their right to life was not violated. They were able to live their lives up to their natural deaths and taking away one person’s right to life to save those five is wrong. Imagine, if the person were killed to save the five people.  In the second case, I reasoned that the right to life of the one individual should still be protected and that the individual should not be killed to save the 5 poisoned. It is tragic, that someone violated the right to life of those 5 and it is tragic that there is less welfare overall, however, that does not justify killing an innocent person. Unjust circumstances do occur in life, but that does not mean we should impose other unjust circumstances over some to repair those of others.  Now, what seemed easy to decide in the first two cases suddenly becomes very difficult in the bomb ticking cases. Following the same line of reasoning as before, we should opt for no rights violation even if that means less welfare. However, does a terrorist whose intention is to kill millions of people, have rights? In this case, intervention or restricting the terrorist’s liberty would satisfy the Harm Principle. But is torturing the terrorist justified? To play devil’s advocate, we can also question what exactly is a terrorist? For example, a case brought up in the Ticking Bomb paper is would the Jews in the concentration camps be considered terrorist if they threatened to blow up a German kindergarten if they aren’t released or let free. It seems strange to call the Jews terrorists, it does not seem equite right. In this case, it seems rather as a case of protecting and defending their security, just like a nation defends its security.  

Possible Distinction Between Acts of Terrorism and Acts of Defense (both are acts which may cause harm to innocent lives on massive scale):

terrorist---> someone/group who attacks another for some interest without being attacked first

defense----> someone/group who attacks another as defense to an attack from the other

How to balance the nation’s security with the protection of civil liberty?

Assuming that any person, who attempts to kill another loses their rights, then torture could be justified. It is interesting to see how being innocent or guilty of the unjust circumstances imposed on others, determines whether it is okay to violate your rights. For example, in the transplant cases it was wrong to violate one person’s right to save the others from unjust circumstances (death and poisoned). In this example, it is okay to violate one person’s right if they are guilty or responsible for the unjust circumstances imposed on others. This seems to be a very retributivist notion. This seems to imply that it is okay to violate someone’s rights if that person does something that deserves such consequence. Although, it also seems to be consequentialist in that excessive punishment of the terrorists would deter others from doing the same harm.  A consequentialist would defend torture if it leads to the best outcome or better world. A retributivist would defend torture if the person deserves to be tortured for some wrongdoing.  It seems that the consequentialist has more focus on preventing harm without regards to whether the person is actually guilty or not and the retributivist notion seem to focus more on desert (guilty/innocent) rather than preventing harm. Does punishment really prevent harm to others?  In this case, it seems that if the millions of lives were not presently at risk, this individual would simply have his/her liberty restricted. But since, something may be done to save the millions of innocent lives, the contemplation of doing more than simply restricting liberty to the individual is considered. In this case, I would say that by deliberately harming others this person and given that something may be done to save the millions, the terrorist should be tortured in order to save the millions of lives.   

If the terrorist already killed the millions of civilians, that person has already given up all their rights then it seems that there is no point in torturing them  because there is no longer no way of preventing their harm or obtaining information to prevent the death of the millions of civilians. Torturing them in this case would just be an act of vengeance. But then the question arises of whether the terrorist should simply be locked up in prison or whether the terrorist should be given the death penalty?  I guess the answer to this would depend on the magnitude of danger the terrorist represents to the rest of society.

This cases are very complicated. It really depends, in some cases torture is justified and in other cases it is not. Torture is always bad no matter what, it is always a harm, but some harms its seems that we justify and other harms we cannot justify. For example, simply torturing someone for torturing them (sadism), has no justification. On the other hand, torturing a guilty person to prevent harm to the people he/she tried to harm is justified.  The harm is the same: torture, but one is deemed as justified and another is not. But now, what about the case of torturing an innocent to prevent harm.   The Harm Principle would say that this is justified. If the  Harm Principle, is read as saying  we should restrict someone’s liberty or punish someone only to prevent harm to others”, then torturing the innocent to prevent harm would satisfy the Harm Principle and would permit  laws to be implemented knowing before hand that innocents will be unjustly condemned (as is the current case).  If the harm principle, is read as saying that we should restrict someone’s liberty or punish someone only to prevent that individual from harming others, then torturing the innocent would not be preventing harming to others because the innocent has not harmed others thus torture would not be justified. The Harm Principle is read as in the first definition and thus torturing the innocent child to save the millions of innocent lives would result in the violation of rights in the child but it would result in the protection of the rights of the millions of innocent lives and would result in the most welfare. Does the end justify the means?  It seems that in this case it may. You action to torture the child was bad, but it resulted in the better world. In contrast, not torturing the child,would result in your action not being bad (you are not harming the child and technically you aren’t killing the millions of individuals because you didn’t plant the bomb) but the result would be a worse world.   The problem here, is that it seems to problematic to say that the end justifies the means. It seems problematic to prevent harm to others when causing harm to one or to some in order to achieve the prevention of harm to others. On the other hand, it seems problematic to leave the millions of innocent lives perish, have their right to life violated. There seems to be a forced situation in which we are forced to choose between bad, worse, and worst situations. The problem with this is that how do we know in the long run what will the the best outcome?  And not only that but how much does the way in which that best outcome is achieved matter?

Parental Licensing

The argument for Parental Licensing is that assessing whether parent’s can raise a child will help prevent child abuse. Parental licensing focuses on prevention rather than the current system which focuses on amelioration.   I think the main beguiling error with the proposal of parental licensing is the fact that every parent and future parent is being subjected to this “assessment”, because of the relatively smaller proportion of bad parents that harm their children. I think that parental licensing will lead to many unjust decisions (e.g. children taken away from their parents unjustly) mainly because the definition of what is a good parent is very unclear and the definition of a bad parent can be deeply influenced by prejudices. Also, an expansion of a stricter definition of “good” parent seems to be easily permitted.  The main flaw in parental licensing is not in principle. In principle, the idea has some validity. However, in practice this would lead to a lot of power of the legal system over individuals and even nonexistent individuals by determining who is able to reproduce and whether those who have reproduced “deserve” to keep their children. It is not really clear that an implemented policy of parental licensing will really distinguish between parents that are clearly abusive towards their children psychologically or emotionally and between those parents that are considered “irresponsible, inadequate, incapable” or simply not ideal parents.  This is an important error to notice because it raises the possible unintended consequence that more assessments of parents will lead to much more errors where children are taken away from parents (thus violating both the rights and welfare of the children and parents)  compared to the current system’s errors of taking children away from their parents unjustly combined with the errors of leaving children with abusive parents.

Huemer's Paper

This paper brings out the intuition and further solidifies that the Harm Principle is rather weak, that is to say that the Harm Principle details a necessary but not sufficient condition. The Harm Principle states that the only case in which someone’s liberty may be restricted is to prevent harm to others, not to prevent that person from harming others.  It is very implausible to view the Harm Principle as a necessary and sufficient condition. The reason is that among ourselves we harm each other in many ways. For some harms (e.g. rape, murder, theft, etc.) , we justify the restriction of liberty. For other harms (e.g. name calling, telling someone a hurtful truth, rudeness, gossip, etc. ), we do not justify the restriction of liberty.  Not all harms “deserve” or are such to restrict someone’s liberty.  The paper also goes on to describe something that the Harm Principle doesn’t really go into.  The Harm Principle describes harm to others, but not really harm to oneself. Although, it actually might. The Harm Principle was designed to rule out paternalism or legal moralism, which justify restricting an individual’s liberty for that individual’s own good. Thus if someone harms themselves but does not harm others, would this satisfy or would not satisfy the Harm Principle? It seems it would not justify the harm principle. Although,  one could argue that if someone harms themselves, then they would also harm those who are dependent on that person in any way (financially, mentally, psychologically, or emotionally). I guess the main question in drug legalization, similar to the suicide case, is how much should the government intervene to prevent people from harming themselves or emotionally harming others? Do drugs directly or indirectly harm others? I guess it depends on the type of drug. Say a person dies due to a drug overdose. This person will in fact have harmed others, namely those who depended in this person in some way. However, if this person died from a natural cause or a car accident or some other bad decision that led to the death, he/she would still harm others indirectly. Drugs are illegal, but it would seem ridiculous to illegalize death or car accidents. It seems plausible, though, to say that each individual has a right to do as they wish with their own life and body, even if it harms their self and ultimately results in their death, as long as they do not harm anyone else. Although, this raises issues of whether one can have a right to death also. A right to end one’s life if one desires to do so.  The issue here would be if the person is rational and completely understands what ending one’s life signifies.

Does criminalizing drugs satisfy the Harm Principle? In other words,can drugs be criminalized, can there be government intervention because drugs harm others and by intervening the government would be preventing harm to others. Presumably, the drugs would only harm the person who consumes them. However, we can imagine scenarios in which drugs can incapacitate or provoke someone to act out in ways that may harm others (e.g. impaired cognition that leads to car accidents thus harming others, violent behavior, etc. ). However, not all drugs are recorded to cause violent behavior or impaired cognition so it seems that generalizing against all drugs is not a justified intervention. A more justified intervention seems to be one that intervenes or criminalizes those drugs that cause violent behavior or impaired cognition that may pose harm to others. However, there are also prescription drugs that may cause impaired cognition and those are not criminalized. Then, again, they do have some kind of intervention due to the fact that they are not over the counter but have to be prescribed by a physician. I guess the main question in drug legalization, similar to the suicide case, is how much should the government intervene to prevent people from harming themselves or emotionally harming others? It seems that only those drugs that cause cognitive impairment (e.g. distorted vision, difficulty completing basic tasks, difficulty with motor functions etc.) or that cause violent behavior should be made illegal.Drugs that do not cause either of the two, seem to cause no harm to anyone else other than the person consuming them. Then, it seems the government should not intervene. However, the main problem I see with the argument for legalization of drugs, is the fact a person consuming drugs may not actually be fully informed or rational about their decisions. This actually may not be a problem, though, because this reasoning can easily be used to justifying intervention by simply stating that people are not well informed or do not know what is best. The real problem for this argument lies in the premise that drugs do not harm others. There are drugs recorded to cause violent behavior in which case they do pose harm to others and in these cases there should be interference. This is a very complicated case, because we see that alcohol (distorts cognition,motor functions, produces violent behavior) classifies as causing harm to others but it is legal. There are certain restrictions such as age limits and laws that prohibit drunk driving. According to the author’s argument in the paper, drugs should be legalized. However, alcohol is a drug that is legal but considering the Harm Principle, one would think it should be illegal.

Current Political Debates on Abortion Laws in the U.S. (NY Times Article)

The following link is a relevant post by the NY times, discussing current takes on abortion laws in the U.S. According to this article, nearly 60% of Democrats claim that abortion should be legal, as compared to 30% of Republicans. The link shared discusses the current presidential candidates' views on abortion, questioning various scenarios (such as child rape, mother in critical condition) etc., and is a good, informative read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/upshot/candidates-disagree-on-abortion-but-public-is-in-surprising-harmony.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&abt=0002&abg=1

Abortion - A Case on Child Rape in Paraguay

In our presentation on abortion, Stephanie and I mentioned a case of child rape and the toll it may have on the child (in addition to the rape itself, of course) to be denied an abortion. This article is about a 10-year old girl, a rape victim, being denied an abortion in Paraguay and what she may consequently go through as a result of the law. 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/05/to-make-a-10-year-old-give-birth-isnt-just-horrifying-its-life-threatening?CMP=fb_gu

Gender selective in abortion

Today, I watched a documentary called India's daughter. It is based on 2012 Delhi bus gang rape. In the film, a woman mentioned that, in India, most women in rich family have had abortion because the baby was female.  Indian women have lower social status than man. The unbalanced gender ratio leads to that some men cannot get married, which is one of the reasons for rape cases occurring frequently in India. So what do you  think about this issue? Can you think about a way to prevent selecting gender? In India (also in China), it is illegal to know the sex of the baby. However, you can simply bribe the doctors. So, that's why only rich family can choose the sex of the baby. In poor family, women just keep having babies, until a boy is born.

Gun Control Stats

My group gave a presentation on gun control. Our assistant, Matt, had some counter-statistics that suggested that gun control has failed to reduce crime rates in the UK where our data suggests the exact opposite. I thought this was an interesting example of how statistics can be skewed in favor of each side of an argument.

One statistic I thought was interesting was the idea that gun control is highest in the US in Detroit. One perspective is:

"A quick review of Michigan gun laws shows that law abiding citizens wishing to own a gun for self-protection are strongly regulated and actively discouraged. First, they have to take and pass the Michigan Basic Pistol Safety questionnaire. Then they have to apply for the Ten Day Handgun Purchase Permit to buy the gun and make sure they find and buy the gun of their choice within 10 days, otherwise they have start the process all over again. When they make their purchase, they have to fill out a Michigan Pistol Sales Record form and make sure the pistol has a valid firearm Safety Inspection Certificate.

Once the citizen has purchased their firearm, they have 10 days to take the gun to the local police department, have the sale recorded, and a new Safety Inspection Certificate issued in their name. Otherwise, they are considered in violation of the law and could be arrested on a misdemeanor gun violation.

Federal laws also require a background check if you purchase a gun from a licensed dealer with a Federal Firearms License.

Note that each and every legal gun buyer in Michigan, and particularly Detroit, must be approved by the local police at least twice each and every time they purchase a gun and undergo a background check by the federal government.

As a result, Detroit has the second highest murder rate in the nation and is considered by many to be the most dangerous city in which to live in the United States. Simply put, gun control, as a means of controlling crime and protecting law abiding citizens, is a dismal failure." 

But it seems like there could be more to the story than what the article presents. Does anyone think they could come up with a counter example to this argument or another reason why crime rate may be so high in Detroit despite gun control rather than because of it? I'd be interested to hear other's perspectives. 

For more about the quoted article visit: 

http://mic.com/articles/22835/gun-control-facts-detroit-crime-rate-is-the-result-of-gun-control

Birth Rates and Long-Term Growth

I brought this up as a question in class on Tuesday but I wanted to post the article here on the topic.  Essentially, it details how falling birth rates will have long-term economic implications in developed countries as the number of people who are able to join the workforce decreases, despite the short-term benefits of decreasing fertility rates.

Dropping birth rates threaten global economic growth (Nancy Strumwasser)

As a further discussion on this article, we seem to be in a moral conundrum in terms of our Earth's future.  On one hand, we cannot continue to sustain our development and destruction of the world's resources, but on the other we are causing human society a different type of long-term harm by forcing the remaining population to shoulder the economic burden of decreased economic growth. One needs to look no further than Japan and Russia to understand the strain this could possibly cause future generations once the large working-class population retires and leaves a smaller group behind.

What do you think?  Is there a way we can go beyond the birth rate problem to simultaneously allow us to lower birth rates to conserve resources while keeping our economies large enough to sustain us?  Or will we have to choose one of these two options and be left wondering which one would actually have caused less overall loss of welfare?

Population Control - More Info

It is a certainty that this Earth will eventually run out of resources for us to use. The question then becomes - How pressing an issue is it? Some will argue that humans have always found a way to adapt to our situation and create new technologies that allow us to keep procreating. Link 1 shows a study that accounts for these advances in technology, and indicates that we have still consumed more than we have produced for each year in the last 3+ decades. If we believe this, there is no question that one of two things must be done. Either we reduce consumption per person, or we reduce the number of people consuming. Because humanity does not like to revert to a lower standard of living when it has already had a taste of the higher, I'll focus on the latter option. 

Let's take it as a fact that we need to do something to mitigate the growth rate of the human population. There is a myriad of options and issues that we face. The most obvious policy would be to increase contraceptive (and information on how to use them) distribution to those that want it. The government is already involved in such "passive" population control through their funding of Planned Parenthood. Link 2 below shows a paper that has collected data on unplanned pregnancies and their proportion to total pregnancies. In each region of the world the rate of unexpected pregnancies is above 30%. Increased distribution of contraceptives and information could realistically reduce this value to 10% or even to 5%. The size of this reduction in the birth rate might be large enough to ensure the government would not have to insert itself into "active" population control.

But of course, that is where the interesting conversation is. If we decide that it is beneficial to reduce the growth rate and "passive" efforts aren't doing enough, how do we restrict the births to parents that want to have children. Certainly proposals like forced sterilization and forced abortion cannot be considered because each is a direct violation of one's right to their body. Even more realistic proposals like issuing birth credits (for more info, see Link 3), face issues, albeit with a chance at acceptable modifications. Some may scoff at this idea and suggest that we are implementing the next Chinese one child policy and that's almost exactly what it would be (more of a ~2.3 child policy, but with the same idea of restricting births). The only difference is that, if enacted in the United States, we have the ability to mitigate the problems that were discussed in the Case Study of the presentation. Instead of jailing people under the threat of forced sterilization or forced abortion, we just impose fines on those who exceed their allotment. Instead of the favoring of boys, the increased gender equality in the West would lead to a more balanced gender birth rate (although I think we still have some more work to do with regards to this). 

All in all, I think it's an issue that is coming into the foreground, not only as we have more children, but also as those children live for more extended periods of time. One day - maybe even in our lifetime - the human race will need to create policies on such an issue. By talking about it now, we can ensure that the future generations have thought through the topic and are in the best position to make their decision.

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/99/14/9266.full.pdf+html

[2] http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/j.1728-4465.2014.00393.x.pdf

[3] http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/birth-credits-population-control

Ticket Scalping

In the group presentation there was a topic on the use of private websites like ticketmaster and stubhub that are legal to sell to the public that I thought was incorrect. If I remember correctly the group said that prices on these websites are monitored so that they is no obscene mark up for individuals to monopolize on. Well this is slightly incorrect. The New York Rangers made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals last year in the NHL playoffs and played against the Los Angeles Kings. The ticket prices in the two biggest cities in the United States NY and LA were no where near eachother. The average seat was nearly 3x as expensive in NY then in LA. Stubhub is simply a legal market to sell the product it doesn't prevent outrageous markup because based on the market the product is in people will pay for it. I know I was looking for tickets but saw there was no way to afford them. StubHub is a great way to sell tickets if you can't make it to a game but the markups are still there and no way to stop this process as of now. As an ex season ticket holder to the NYR I know how the prices for tickets change each round of the playoffs  but in the conference finals and Finals the average fan could not afford the markup of these tickets being resold to the public. I don't think this is a crime in any fashion. I believe it is more of an auction to see who is willing to pay to go see an event that may not happen that often. Supply and demand as they say. This was just my thoughts after seeing the presentation

Patent Law

In my discussion with the Patent Law group and Professor Tresan I came to realize that my argument was following the wrong perspective. It was not utilitarian based but rather Lockean in sense of one has the right to the fruits of his labor. In the open discussion I put forth in class there was a case of Apple v Creative Tech in which Apple took the menu program from Creative Tech and was fined 100 million dollars for it. Now obviously one has the right to protect their own creations but who wins in this case. Creative tech in a sense put down the foundation for an operating scheme of Apple's. Apple has made billions off their creation of the ipod but creative tech has no where to be found since 2006. Shouldn't Creative Tech at least have some stock in the matter, after all it was there program that was used in the ipod. Otherwise why should companies even create products for sale when they could simply just focus on what corporations need. Example like programming and networking in which companies sell individual needs/services to other companies but don't produce any good. Therefore they are always protecting themselves from copyright issues and are providing there own service and receiving pay (the fruit) for there labor.

More Information about the Netherlands' Drug Laws, et al.

Just to put forth a bit more information about the Netherlands (if anyone has a passing interest):

The drug laws (or lack thereof) passed in the Netherlands are perhaps the most lenient in the world. Marijuana is almost entirely legal, both for consumption and sale, so long as one isn't a major international trafficker. The laws themselves technically forbid the sale of cannabis, and therefore have no regulatory agencies in place to set standards for health and acceptability--but almost exclusively minor drug dealers are left quite alone. This is pursuant to a topic I mentioned briefly in class, that the country as a whole takes an entirely different approach than do America and similar countries: the government wants to create a culture and atmosphere wherein it is socially acceptable, generally, to use drugs recreationally. Even for what we probably consider a "major" or "hard" drug, cocaine, there is almost no criminal prosecution in the Netherlands, because its harmful health effects are largely unproven to be severe. Perhaps the most interesting part of these "pro-drug" policies is the lack of a normative moral component that we would be shocked to find in America. Users of hard drugs, even the most extreme a la PCP or heroin, aren't shunted into a substratum of society--rather, they are allowed to seek treatment, provided by numerous health agencies and society at large, without being judged as morally reprehensible for their actions. I'm going to copy/paste a bit here from my notes (sorry, Professor Tresan and Jarod) for some fascinating statistics:

o   “Fewer young people are becoming addicts”—this is of utmost importance

§  Average age of drug addicts continues to go up across W. Europe

o   Only .6% of people in a survey claimed to have used cocaine in the past month (or 1.2% among the 20-29 Y.O. demographic, the highest number). Compare this to 1.5% total in America

o   Apparently 60-80% of Dutch drug addicts/users are frequent visitors to specialized health services, leading to their appearing “relatively well and sound”

o   Very interesting table:

§  22% of a heroin user’s income in the Netherlands comes from non-drug crime; 43% in NYC. 18%/17% respectively for income from drug dealing. However, there is a massive spike in pimping/prostitution for the Dutch: 22%/7%. Very telling aspect: 28% in Netherlands comes from public support; 11% for NYC

o   “It has widely been observed that the Dutch drug market is relatively peaceful”

§  15 deaths from 1980-1988 related directly to drug distribution; +32 with possible ties

§  135 total criminal deaths in that period

§  Only TWO dead policemen in that time in that space—that’s outstanding

A major reason why the amount of violence is so low among drug-related offenses is simply because there is no more motivation for the introduction of aggressive tendencies in the selling of drugs. In a way, the dealers (though technically guilty of misdemeanor level crimes!) are incentivized to not perpetrate violence, because they'll be left alone as long as they stick to what they're best at. By the same token, recreational users, and even addicts, are less prone to be "swept up in the system," to quote the Drug Laws group, because of the leniency towards the small-time use of drugs--and thus a decrease in "street life" violence (if I may be so politically incorrect).

That's all I'll post for now--but there's a lot more. If anyone has any more interest in this topic, leave a comment and I'll see if I have anything pertinent to your request.

Mandatory Vaccinations furthering the point

Today during the mandatory vaccination Q & A session I could tell that there didn't seem to be much, if any, objections to mandatory vaccinations. I have this same belief, if we want society to be healthy and safe we should be using simple techniques such as vaccinations to ensure this. However I want to raise the most common objection to mandatory vaccinations which is, don't we have a right to personal liberty?

As I talked this over with Professor Tresan the other day he brought up a good point, if one individual says they aren't going to get vaccinated will that really change the outcome? And the short answer to this is no, one person choosing to not vaccinate won't effect the overall vaccination efforts. But than doesn't this lead to a slippery slope? If one person chooses not to vaccinate than why should anybody have to vaccinate? I'd love to hear what everybody else thinks about this issue...

A Defense of the Death Penalty

In this blog I will bring forward some questions and objections I had to the Capitol Punishment group's presentation. I will start off with the question of deterrence. The majority of studies that have been released on capitol punishment's ability to act has a deterrence have largely agreed that it is not an effective deterrence. However and endless amount of these studies do so by comparing the rate of capitol crimes of non Death penalty states with death penalty states. They seem to always conclude that the death penalty is no different than other forms of deterrence. But that is just it. It serves as well as a deterrence as states without it. So it may not function as a better deterrence but it seems to be at least equal when compared to other states punishments as deterrence. When this has been established it is no longer a question of which is a better deterrence but which option is the best option drawing on other reasons. One reason that comes into question is cruelty.
        The group quoted a supreme court justice as saying it is a cruel form of punishment. While this is only a small point it is worth noting that the supreme court as a whole as decided that lethal injection is not a cruel and unusual punishment. Now this decision is not final and the Court has the ability to reverse this decision. So lets look ourselves as to if we should believe that the death penalty is cruel or even cruel when compared to its alternatives. One objection was that the death penalty is often more cruel than the crimes they committed. They did this by comparing the process of capitol punishment to the murder of the victim. Saying that often the innocent didn't know they were going to die however the one being punished has to know months in advance they are going to die. And somehow this is more cruel than the crime they committed so Capitol punishment is unreasonable cruel. This line of argument I contest is absurd. The reason the crime was so awful was because it was the taking of innocent life. The idea that a person life which was wrongfully taken from them is less cruel than the legal process of punishment for that crime is not only a cruel comparison but misplaced. This idea of length of time the innocent knew of his death and the amount of horror they felt is somehow less than that of the convicted criminal is not a matter of fact but faith. The  feelings of the victim at the time of the crime should not be compared with the feelings of regret or despair that the murder feels as a result of his punishment. I would challenge anyone who truly thinks so should try and tell the proposed comparison to the victims of a murder and still think the comparison is not absurd. Furthermore i would contend that the alternatives to the death penalty are equally if not more cruel.
        The alternatives to the death penalty are life in prison with and without parole. One of their arguments were that death penalty is unnecessary for self defense and so we should save human life when we can. However if we truly want to defend human life above all else then we must isolate these murderers who are a danger to it. Often leading to life without parole and solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is one of the most cruel punishments unimaginable. It completely removes human dignity and breaks the prisoner down mentally. If we are truly concerned about cruel and unusual Solitary confinement takes the cake. Here is an relevant quote from an article on PBS and the interviewee.  

"Stuart Grassian, a board-certified psychiatrist and a former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, has interviewed hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement. In one study, he found that roughly a third of solitary inmates were “actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.” Grassian has since concluded that solitary can cause a specific psychiatric syndrome, characterized by hallucinations; panic attacks; overt paranoia; diminished impulse control; hypersensitivity to external stimuli; and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory. Some inmates lose the ability to maintain a state of alertness, while others develop crippling obsessions. “One inmate I interviewed developed some obsession with his inability to feel like his bladder was fully empty,” Grassian told FRONTLINE. “Literally, that man spent hours, hours, 24 hours a day it was on his mind, hours standing in front of the toilet trying to pee … He couldn’t do anything else except focus on that feeling.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/locked-up-in-america/what-does-solitary-confinement-do-to-your-mind/

My question to the group then would be how could the death penalty be a less attractive alternative when compared to this? If we imagine a person who would be tortured day in and day out of the rest of their existence, it would be less cruel to kill them. Of course this is subjective and not based on fact but at the very least this method reduces the people in question to less than human. The constant but dull attack on the human psyche as a result of complete confinement will never leave these people and the end result of death is the same. So it introduces unnecessary cruelty to the process.  I will move on to some more quick and small questions and objections.

They briefly discussed that a mentally handicapped person was executed and that this is unfair and cruel, I agree and so does the Supreme Court. Atkins v. Virginia 2002 ruled that execution of mentally retarded was unconstitutional. However if it still happens not a point against Capitol punishment but for better regulations. 

The question of the possibility of killing an innocent is a good concern. However we have many systems in place that have similar dangers yet we do not question the legitimacy of them. We could save a couple of innocents by completely abolishing active police enforcement that sometimes results in innocent death. However we maintain it for the greater good. The same thing can be said for the death penalty. More attractive alternative than life without parole and Solitary confinement, and guarantees the safety of the vast majority. Furthermore there was only data on those released due to DNA evidence, no evidence of an innocent actually dying unjustly.  

As for the question of socioeconomic status and race. Any objection to these being used to unfairly decide for the death penalty is also true of all alternatives. Also the data was not whether or not they were convicted, but simply whether the death penalty was pursued. If we eliminate alternatives to an extent it will remove the chance of bias to an extent. Finally the socioeconomic point is no longer that strong with the recent emergence of the public defender. 

This will be my final point. There is a distinction between killing and murder.Killing is not the same as murder so the contradiction of the government for killing a murderer does not exist. We have many exceptions in our law when killing someone is permitted or permissible. War, self defense, euthanasia in some states. Our law does not specifically outlaw killing, but murder. 

I was thinking about the ticket scalping presentation today and comparing it to something I saw on the news over the weekend regarding the sale of Lilly Pulitzer goods at Target for a limited edition collection. For those who don’t know about Lilly Pulitzer, it is a high-end designer brand whose main collection typically ranges from $100-$300 per piece.  However, their partnership with Target had new dresses all available under $40. These products sold out within hours of sales on Sunday (when it hit stores/ online). However, there were major issues with people purchasing large quantities of the products and reselling them on Ebay at a much higher price.

Here is a thought on the outcome of the Target-Lilly partnership in regards to exclusivity:

“ ‘The more popular it is at Target, the worse it is for Lilly Pulitzer the brand…You see the same things happen with the outlets for some brands. Look at what happened to Coach; their outlet business went like hotcakes because you were getting Coach bags at the third of the price and, long term, it hit the exclusivity of their core business. Part of what drives high-end fashion is exclusivity.’ ”

Here is a thought on the outcome of the purchase and resale of Lilly Pulitzer brands on Ebay at significantly higher prices:

“Lee Yohn says she thinks that the collaborations are often a win-win, the designers can promote their brand and reach a different customer base while the Targets of the world can elevate their retail brand by association with the high end and exclusive. However, there is a downside to the frenzy: the reselling (and requisite marking up) of these hot-ticket items on sites like eBay. "That is less of a win for the retailer and the designer, because then it diminishes the strategy they are trying to implement."

Lee Yohn said that while it might inspire a raft of social media criticism, to protect the equity of the brand, next time, Target might want to look into setting a limit on how many items people could purchase. ‘In the long run, it might be a smarter way to do it.’”

So my questions are these:

1: Would you say this is a similar formula to what happens with ticket scalping?

2: Do you think the different industries (fashion v. entertainment/special events) make reselling better or worse for either? Does the importance of exclusivity in the fashion industry make it different from the reselling of ticket sales?

3: Do you think Target should have, as Lee Yohn suggested, set a limit on how many items people could purchase in order to prevent resale?

I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts! For more info here is the link to the article I referenced: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245290

Here is another article specifically about reselling LP on eBay: http://www.phillymag.com/shoppist/2015/04/20/the-10-most-insane-lilly-pulitzer-for-target-auctions-on-ebay-right-now/