Hi, Raedwulf...I'm back from the canoe trip. Money is "not in endless supply"? Actually, money IS in endless supply, but not to you and me or the public in general or the municipalities! It's in endless supply to the people who spuriously manufacture it whenever they want to (the banks). They do so by merely creating it out of thin air every time they make a loan to some major player on the business or financial scene. All of a sudden "Bingo!" there are millions more dollars in play that just magically appeared from nowhere, allowing already very rich people to become richer and do business and the banks to collect interest and become richer! What a pprofitable system, eh? It's an endless money tree for those who already have most of the money anyway...and most of the money ISN'T REAL!!!

The amount of real currency actually printed or minted by governments is a very small fraction of that created by banks through the use of loans, credit arrangements, and other such pyramid schemes. It is also the engine behind inflation.

This doesn't have much to do with the relative merits of paying or not paying for incarcerating prisoners, but I think it's an interesting aside on a social order which does in fact value money over all else, and most certainly over life, since your life or mine will indeed be forfeit if billions of dollars are at stake and we are in the way. Count on it.

Now, I'm not really suggesting that individuals on this forum value money over life, I'm just making a provocative statement in order to maybe get someone to look into the deeper implications of a decision to execute people "because it's cheaper than keeping them in jail". It seems like an almost unbelievably crass statement to make in favour of the death penalty to me. It's downright embarrassing that anyone would say it. Are people really that worried about the piddly amount of tax they pay each year (individually, I mean) to incarcerate prisoners? I would think the amount of money going to the building of nuclear weapons would outstrip it by far, and what could we possibly need more nukes for? Look, everyone pays taxes toward a lot of stuff that they don't personally agree with. You do. I do. It's inevitable. That's how the system works. It's the price one pays for living in an organized society that is doing many good things too. But to suggest that people should be executed to save you or some other person $5 a year or something like that (probably less) is just crass and shameful. It indicates shallow, knee-jerk thinking, as far as I'm concerned, rather than a real appreciation of what's actually happening on death row.

But here's another interesting notion: What may be the best thing to do in one social situation may be the worst to do in another, so like I said, laying down infallible rules of right and wrong (a la Ten Commandments) is virtually impossible. What we humans actually do is constantly make the rules up as we go along, and revise them whenever conditions change or whenever we change. Everybody does it. Some claim not too. Their claims are dubious, to say the least.

For the time being, given present conditions in North America, I would rather not see prisoners being executed. I don't think it serves any useful practical or moral purpose.

Naturally, there are other people who think it does.

In some places the law supports their view, in some places it supports mine. That will no doubt be subject to further change as well as time goes by.

- LH