Writer's Block: Capital offense

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

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It's barbaric, I would never support a candidate who thought it could ever be OK, and I think the UN should impose economic sanctions on any state which still practices it. Next!

(Bet you're all really shocked at my pro-life views given, you know, my normal pro-life views)

Comments

[plexq.livejournal.com]

I hope you'll allow me clarify as you seem to have extrapolated in a rather bizarre direction:

Firstly, in the matter of justice, the state often acts with the interest of a single person, so to claim that the state is acting by the will of a committee or group in all situations and cases is incorrect, and thusly the derived conclusion that a state is more trustworthy with justice than an individual is also flawed, because in many very important specific cases, the state is acting on the direction of a single individual. This does not mean that all states act in this fashion, or that states that act in this fashion do so in all cases. To apply this information and say that if a state is a person and that they should be assigned the same 'rights' as a person doesn't really follow. A state is clearly not a person, and as I indicated should thusly not be afforded the same status.

I had written at some point a sentence talking about accountability which somehow got lost in the shuffle, I'll try to get back to that somehow.

If the state is clearly set up as an organization which exists to serve the citizenry, to protect them amongst other things, then one of the things agents of the state are going to have to do is use deadly force against both external threats to the citizenry and against members of the citizenry who are acting in a way as to harm other members of the citizenry (yes, this is a gross oversimplification). The problem I have is that there are too many states that exist not to serve the citizenry, but rather to serve themselves, and themselves can be interpreted in a few ways depending on the instance in question. Sometimes it is the members of the state as apart from the citizenry, sometimes it's the ideals that the state is supposed to exhort. So often agents of the state act in ways which will preserve members of the state over the lives of the citizenry. Sometimes they act to preserve an ideal upon which the state was founded which ends up in contradiction with the interests of the citizenry, but the state deems that the ideal in question is more important than the people who live under the control of the state.

Regulation is only part of the answer. Enforcement, Judgement and Accountability expand the system so it can be functional.

Individuals have to be accountable for their actions otherwise you won't have a functional society. The less common situation is that states need to be accountable for their actions also. To both their citizenry and to other states. This is where a functional democratic state wins. Elected officials whose election depends on their actions and thus accountable to their constituency regulate the actions of both the state and its agents and the citizenry. If the citizenry doesn't like how they regulate, they can elect someone else. They cannot make that choice however, if they are not informed about what the representative is doing, and therefore we need an agency that is independent from the state to report on what the state is doing. It is also wise therefore to ensure that your citizenry are capable of making an intelligent judgement about the ability of their representative to legislate. And therefore it is a requirement for the citizenry to be educated.

If any of those elements cease to function adequately, you will end up with a state that starts acting out of self-interest rather than the interest of its citizenry, and if the balance is not redressed, then it will spiral into a very bad situation, sometimes very quickly.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

I hope you'll allow me clarify as you seem to have extrapolated in a rather bizarre direction

Three things: First, I'd taken you as being rather more absolutist on some points than your current post suggests. Second, my original complaint was against the state-as-person metaphor being taken too far - we now seem to be in agreement that this is a red herring. Third, I'm aware that my original statement was incomplete; your point about regulation being only part of the answer is well-made.

[plexq.livejournal.com]

I suppose that my short and terse reply could have easily been interpreted in such a fashion, my apologies.

It is difficult to balance the tendency of a faceless mass of committee to become so invested in process and procedure that it ceases to innovate or to reform at a fast enough pace for the community against the motivation of a reformist individual to push the state forward so quickly and in a direction that may not suit the citizenry, which could be either beneficial or detrimental. There are several cases of both in recent history: The civil rights movement comes to mind as one; Lindon Johnson (or was it Nixon) could not have got that legislation past a referendum, but in retrospect it seems that it was the right thing to do, and most folks today are glad of it.

I don't know how society can be successful in championing the reforms that are beneficial and those that are not. The reformers are often a small group of individuals pushing an agenda that is quite unpopular with a significant portion of the citizenry, though the reform is historically judged as a positive thing. This goes against the ilk of democracy in some ways, and is an interesting demonstration of how something that is a bit undemocratic can be quite positive.