Student Loans & Bankruptcies (was Re: creative financing)

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Sat Apr 21 18:38:39 PDT 2001


Despite the rhetoric, probably most of us on the list have fairly conventional views about criome and punishment, although we'd be likely to agree with Yoshie that the list if bad guys ought to be a little wider than it's usually drawn. Carrol, despite his crankiness, is really very nice amd would have no truck with pedophiles, etc.; he just thinks--I think naively--that there wouldn't be any people like that under socialism, or not any who couldn't be dealt with by a stern talking to.

I will comment three things about punishment: First, theoretically, it is not easy to justify having the state impose harm on people even when they do harm to others, although I think that a defense of punishment can be constructed. Second, there is no doubt that as a society we in America are insanely punitive by world standards: we have two million people in custody, up from a few hundred thousand a quarter century ago,a nd ona per capita basis we punish ina league with Iran and China rather than with France and Germany--which latter societiesa re not exactlly overrun with thugs and goons. Third,a s Yoshie says, despite this, we don't get the very worst and most deserving of punishment--the Kissingers and Jack Welches and the like. So Carrol has gone overboard, but in the right direction.

--jks


>
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: >The majority of murderers & pedophiles go
>regularly unpunished today. >E.g., those who price food, clean water,
>medicines, & other >necessities out of the hands of the poor; those who
>refuse to make >safety equipment & procedures available to workers &
>consumers; those >who order wars & economic sanctions; those who kill with
>governments' >approval; sex tourists who patronize young prostitutes in
>poor >nations, etc.
>
>As a mother, I always worry about food, clothing and shelter for my
>children, but I cannot protect them from abductors, rapists or other
>predators who should be shot after their fair trial. Of all of these we've
>named, do you count yourself as one? Like that horrid man Carol, do you
>think they should be allowed to roam free and do as they wish with nothing
>done by the police? I don't know if what you say is the truth or not, I
>have no experience with sanctions or sex tourists, but if some nation is
>deserving, shouldn't they receive sanctions?
>
>I must surely be in the wrong place, if murderers, rapists and pedophiles
>are defended here. That is a Japanese name, isn't it? Yoshie? Do you have
>children? What do the authorities in Japan do with murderers and rapists
>and pedophiles? I just finished a book that described the soap houses in
>Japan. Isn't that the same sort of prostitution? Is it alright if it isn't
>in a poor nation, if the sex tourist can afford it? Have you ever worked in
>any of them?
>
>Catherine
>
>--
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