Forget justice (on which I suspect you and I think differently) for a moment, and let's talk about deterrence. Punishment as a deterrent doesn't work for garden variety crime because (among other reasons, one of them being that most such crime is not, as per moral reasoning, wrong), in the majority case, garden variety criminals have not many options. It's not like you can choose between stealing something or instead, get in on a hot social networking Web 2.0 startup with a $3 billion valuation -- such crime is a symptom (IMHO) of the breakdown of the social/welfare system/contract. Dictators and strongmen on the other hand, it seems to me, are opportunistic parasites who feed on a co-operative. Giving them an idea of what their fate would be, should they *choose* not to participate, seems like a jolly good idea to me. Plus, going back to justice as retribution, there is the whole emotive/ inspirational aspect of it -- we are not, after all, completely logical creatures.
--ravi
> --- On Thu, 5/28/09, Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Ace nails it
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Date: Thursday, May 28, 2009, 1:11 PM
>> Well, do you think that a conviction
>> of Pinochet by Spain would have brought
>> any actual positive results?
>>