WS writes:
> Jim, I do not think this is the right way of conceptualizing it. You seem
> to assume that a person who willingly breaks the norms of the society and
> puts others at a considerable risk for a personal gain is still entitled to
> the protection by these norms. In plain English, this seems to give a
> criminal the protection that he denies to others. I do not think it is
> ethically justified.
Perhaps I've been spoiled by growing up under the Anglo-American tradition of "innocent until proven guilty." Unless we are God, we do not know _ahead of time_ whether someone is racing through the streets because they are "willingly break[ing] the norms of the society" in a bad way, i.e., "for a personal gain." They may be rushing a pregnant woman to the hospital. Maybe not, but the point is that cops aren't omniscient.
Further, since when has "put[ting] others at a considerable risk" justified the _death penalty_? That's what shoot-to-kill is about. In most legal systems that have death penalties, people are sentenced to death _after_ they commit murder, not before.
Wojtek, are you living in the world of the Tom Cruise movie MINORITY REPORT, where the police use mind-reading technology to prevent crime? (I haven't seen that flick. I hope I haven't misrepresented it.)
I prefer the system where the jobs of cop, prosecutor, judge, and jury are separated and a defendant has the right to an attorney and to confront his or her accuser. Perhaps this is because I don't trust agents of the government to always do the right thing.
Shooting to kill is rarely the right thing. For example, the cops could simply use their helicopters lay down large numbers of tacks right in front of the speeding car, so that the tires are popped. Or even easier, they could shoot-to-kill the car's tires instead of the driver. The police know the alternatives to shoot-to-kill better than I do, on this one.
> To see that, let's conduct a little thought experiment. Imagine, if you
> will, that the criminal in question is not a two-bit prick (revered by the
> bleeding-heart populists), but a wealthy business owner. Would you still
> uphold this persons "right" to pursue his fraudulent scheming protected by
> legal technicalities until he "runs out of gas?" If so, Enron would still
> be in business, and you would not make enough money to pay for your utility
> bill.
Please name a "bleeding-heart populist" who reveres two-bit pricks, This seems a straw-man argument. It's a case of unnecessary rhetorical flourish, what might be called dangling innuendo. It's also a cheap way to avoid rational argument.
Perhaps because you like to argue with strawmen rather than actual, thinking, human beings, you are confused about what I am saying. I do not defend the right of _anybody_ whether they are two-bit or two-billion-dollar crooks to get away with their crookedness. Rather, I was arguing for what is called "due process" in these here United States. (Admittedly, it's more of an ideal than a reality, but I favor the ideal.)
Further, the MAIN point of my message (see above) is that there is often more than the two alternatives you seem to posit (bleeding-heart "populist" clemency, kill-em-all and let God separate the innocent from the guilty). I don't understand why you ignore this point. Perhaps it's political dyslexia?
> The way I prefer to conceptualize the problem follows the Pascal's wager.
> In this wager the risks are weighted by potential loses and rewards, and a
> nearly sure loss of a relatively small magnitude is outweighed by a risky
> pursuit whose potential payoff is incomparably greater .... From that point of
> view, the main risk of a police taking whatever action it takes to stop a
> criminal is, in essence, a violation of a few legal technicalities and
> perhaps the criminal receiving a somewhat harsher treatment that he would
> have, had he been apprehended, tried, and sentenced by a court of law. That
> risk is minuscule comparing to the potential loss caused by his criminal
> activity, which may entail the loss of innocent life, people loosing their
> life's savings, sustaining grave bodily and emotional injuries, etc.
There's a big difference between you taking a nice intellectual Pascal's wager in the privacy and safety of your office and some cop taking that wager -- acting as prosecutor, judge, and jury -- and killing someone. Among other things, the cop's decision is an irreversible decision.
There is a nice thing about shoot-to-kill: it prevents pesky attorneys from arranging for DNA tests that could demonstrate that defendants are not guilty. This has freed all sorts of two-bit crooks from Death Row, so that they can drive unsafely and threaten Wojtek. It also denies us the visceral pleasure of hearing about bad guys being fried.
> Assuming that one should act on the principle that one would want to become
> a universal norm, it is therefore, ethically justified to place a smaller
> risk on the perpetrator of that risk, than placing a larger risk on the
> innocent people or society at large. Stated differently, the interest of
> the public being put at risk should prevail over individual interests of the
> perpetrator of that risk. The opposite of that principle, individual
> interest of the perpetrator prevailing over public interest is, in fact, a
> variation on the capitalist theme of privatizing profits while socializing
> risks. Would you like that be the universal norm?
See above for my argument against this. The "universal norm" should include matters such as the incomplete information that the cops have when chasing alleged criminals and the alternatives to simply killing the latter. -- Jim Devine "I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." -- Jerome K. Jerome.