I'm well aware that runaway retributivism can have bad effects. But I don't support runaway retributivism, any more than (I suspect) you support unaway utilitarianism of the sort that would justify framing the innocent to make an example. And, as a matter of fact, retributivism explains why it is wrong to frame the innocent: they didn't do anything bad. Only people who do bad things should be punished.
In addition, you're not going to change the impulse to harm those that harm you, the best you can do is channel it. Arguments don't help. It's too deeply rooted. Ignoring that leaves it unchanneled and liable to burst into mere revenge of the sort you decry here. So from a utilitarian standpoint, you ought to be a moderate retributivist.
Finally, I have a somewhat novel argument for retributivism, but I have to work it up some more before it is ready for public presentation.
--- Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
> Justin wrote:
> >...Most people are retributivists like me who think
> that
> >sometimes it is desirable to increase the amount of
> suffering...
>
> Retribution as justification for punishment is such
> a bad
> concept. Not only does it appeal to the worst human
> propensities--like revenge--but it inevitably leads
> to the
> monstrous abuses characteristic of the
> democratic(sic)
> US's penal system. Worse, by making bad people
> worse
> (both properly-convicted criminals and
> cops/jailers), it does
> evil of the worst kind to those people, to society
> as a
> whole, and especially to those innocents victimized
> by
> those made worse by the retributivist police/penal
> system.
> And in the immediate aftermath of the Beslan
> horror--perpetrated
> in the first instance by people carrying out
> retribution for
> real atrocities against their friends and
> families--to justify
> retributionism is to justify monstrosities. The
> "Black Widow"
> is the prototypical terrorist and the most sincere
> retributionist.
>
> Shane Mage
>
> "Mortals immortals, immortals mortals,
> living their deaths, dying their lives"
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
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