It sucks to be them, but it would be worse for all of us if they aren’t disciplined severely (as severely as they would be if it were the football team, or the basketball team, or the lacrosse team).

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/14/analysis_somalia_piracy_began_in_response

I agree with the death penalty. I think there are crimes, and people, that death is the only solution. It is not a deterant. It is not about retribution, or rehabilitation. There are situations where the crimal is “broken” and cannot, ever, be considered a productive member of society.

What’s wrong with the death penalty isn’t “killing people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong” it is the system around it. Technically, anyone who is guilty has to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Unfortunately, that isn’t always true, which is how we have people being exonerated much later.

If we’re going to have a death penalty, we need to do it, and do it right. When they’re guilty and meet some predefined standards, so that it is equal of poor black men as well as rich white women, they get taken out back and shot, almost immediately following the trial. This crap where they wait an average of 20 years with a few appeals, just makes the death penalty look stupid and causes arguments like “the death penalty costs too much”, when in fact killing someone is quite cheap, roughly $.30 for a bullet and the sheriff’s time.

The entire premise of insurance is that some people will subsidize others.

Not so. That’s the entire premise of welfare. The premise of insurance is the pooling and spreading of risk as a service, because it is beneficial to the people being insured.

Folks who don’t want this or that insurance, by definition, don’t consider such an arrangement beneficial. Forcing them into the arrangement anyway is no longer insurance, it is welfare.

..unless you’re willing to stipulate that people who are less healthy, whether due to stupidity or bad luck or bad genes, get to suffer poverty as a result of this bad luck or, worse, to die from lack of care.

No I don’t ’stipulate’, if that’s the right word here, that people die from lack of care. Emergency rooms by law (EMTALA) must treat people in need, regardless.

As for the point about whether sick people ‘get to suffer poverty’, I’m not sure what you mean exactly. A poor person who gets sick and needs subsidized treatment is already ’suffering poverty’, what’s the alternative here?

best