The American punitive view vs. a rehabilitative one is terrifyingly real in these comments. It was an awful awful thing that happened, and he should be monitored the rest of his life, but if it is determined by medical professionals (a.k.a. not you) then he deserves to lead a full life, and have the opportunity to contribute to a society that he caused harm too instead of being a cost to taxpayers everywhere for the rest of his life, while he is medicated and able to rejoin society, that harms everyone even more in the long run.
This man should have had the health supports he needed before this ever happened, likely something exacerbated by the US medical system.
Also to dispel some common myths:
- Due to legal fees, it costs significantly MORE to sentence someone to death in the US (sidenote, also one of the few 1st world countries still conducting the backwards barbaric practice), than the cost of them continuing to serve life in prison; it is not the “cheap” option.
- Insanity pleas on average 1) yield longer sentences in mental facilities than similar cases where there was no insanity plea, b) if not successful in getting an insanity sentence yield longer jail sentences on average. From a criminal judicial standpoint, there is very rarely any advantage to pleading insanity, and it’s even rarer still that someone actually gets it when they were not in fact insane. The testing, and level of evidence needed far exceeds what you can gather from a casual read and comment online. It is a hugely rare thing legally, we just tend to hear about them as they’re represented in the media at disproportionate rates compared to standard trials.
To all my American friends, not shitting on you, you’re a wonderful country, of largely wonderful people, but with some bad bad bad policies that I hope will improve in coming years.
Love,
Your hat.
People far too often argue “Communism/Socialism/Capitalism/etc. is the best economic system, because blah blah blah”. Anyone that has played Civilization and has half a brain cell can tell you that there is no single best economic system, as it’s so heavily dependent on the structure of a country, current levels of development, and many other factors.
I have always said, that capitalism is very probably the best economic system for rapidly developing countries in a state of industrialization (there was obvious horrific cons to this, but the complexity of discussing the use of slavery, child labour, land repossession, genocide, etc., is a conversation beyond the scope of this simple remark on economics. Consider the dominance of France, Britain, and Spain in 1800 and compare it to the juggernaut that the US became in the next 100 years by 1900, and the benefits of relatively unfettered capitalism during industrializing periods, should be readily apparent given that colossal level of growth from a sparsely populated and undeveloped country in it’s infancy in the late 1700s-early 1800s) and is probably the best economic system for this, BUUUUUUT commensurate with the level of automation, and computerized work roles within a society, a more and more heavily socialized economic system makes sense to stymie the accumulation and sole ownership of the automated systems by the wealthy few who profit off of it, while job opportunities dwindle for the rest.
The world needs to socialize more heavily, and fast, the US is in a particularly precarious spot. The number 1 job in nearly every state is truck driver, and there are already autonomous trucks on the road today. Between AI, and autonomous vehicles, we will see what happened to jobs in the automotive sector from 1950-2000, in industries like taxis, truck driving, coding, graphic design, journalism, and much much MUCH more in the next 50 years, and the US is not ready for it’s job market to do country wide, what happened in Detroit. The wealthy owners of these automated machines, and AI systems filling these job roles will become richer off of them, while the rest of the country struggles. Heavy socialization, alongside reduced work weeks and either subsequent massive increases in minimum wages, or guaranteed basic income will be a necessity for coming generations to not exist in poverty.