I realized now that I hadn't made a sufficient argument for execution specifically. I left out quite a few things, but It's such a monolith I'm not sure where to add things in.
There's a few competing options. A non-exhaustive list includes imprisonment (status quo), execution, legalization, rehabilitation, and fines/labor.
Imprisonment is bad and because it's the status quo I focused on it entirely. I consider it the worst of all options except fines/labor. Execution is a terrible option but, as I argue above, better than imprisonment. Fines/labor is the worst because it could incentivize people to increase the number of people who commit crimes in order to get free money/labor, as is already happening with red light cameras causing accidents just to generate more money. Legalization or setting them free is the best option for several classes of crime, but as I mentioned murder isn't one of them.
Rehabilitation / Clockwork Orange's system seems interesting depending on the data. Not the torture part; torture is something I don't condone since it would be expensive and ineffectual. However, ignoring Clockwork Orange's implementation, the idea of perfect rehabilitation is a powerful one. I know of an experiment with Norway's Halden Prison. It seems promising for a wide variety of criminals, though I'm curious about how they would deal with people who cannot be rehabilitated (eg, brain damaged). This approach is IIRC fairly new and I'm interested in what time will make of it.
I could very well see myself becoming an advocate of a pure rehabilitation system if it turns out to be successful.
One traditional punishment that I don’t see being explicitly discussed much is exile.
I.e., we don’t want you here. You have a month to find somewhere else to go, then we shoot you on sight.
It’s got quite a few good points for it:
The convict is responsible for his maintenance, so it’s him/her that must put a price on his/her life;
Even if we pay for his/her air fare it’s cheaper than permanent incarceration;
It’s not permanent (if the convict picks exile), so it can be reversed if new evidence comes up in a decade;
With modern communications the fam
Or is the convention against discussing politics here silly?
I propose a test. I'm going to try to lay down some rules on voting on comments for the test here (not that I can force anybody to abide by them):
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments (or ridicule me and/or this test); responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) Try not to downvote particular comments excessively, if they're legitimate lines of argument. A faulty line of argument provides opportunity for rebuttal, and so for our test has value even then; that is, I want some faulty lines of argument here. If you disagree, please downvote me, instead of the faulty comments, because this post is what you want less of, not those comments. This necessarily implies, for balance, that we not excessively upvote comments. I'd suggest fairly arbitrary limits of 3/-3?
Edit: 4.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate. (My apologies about missing this, folks.)
I'm going to try really hard not to get personally involved, except to lay down a leading comment posing an argument against abortion, a position I don't hold, for the record. The core of the argument isn't disingenuous, and I hold that this argument is true, it just doesn't lead to my opposing abortion. I do not hold the moral axiom by which I extend the basic argument to argue against abortion, however; I'm playing the devil's advocate to try to help me from getting sucked into the argument while providing an initial point of discussion.
Which leads me to the next point: If you see a hole in an argument, even if it's an argument for a perspective you agree with, poke through it. The goal is to see whether we can have a constructive political argument here.
The fact that this is a test, and known to be a test, means this isn't a blind study. Uh, try to act as if you're not being tested?
After it's gone on a little while, if this post hasn't been hopelessly downvoted and ridiculed (and thus the premise and test discarded as undesirable to begin with), we can put up a poll to see whether people found the political debates helpful, not helpful, and so on.