91–100 of 137 posts
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Are you really sure that if there were no poverty and everyone had lots of education that there wouldn't be that kind of crime? Where are your real-world data to back up that idea?
Draw a map of drug-related violence. Draw a map of poverty. Same map?
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The whole time reading this article, I thought, sounds good, but having spent 25 years in jail he must have done something pretty bad. Then I read that Wikipedia article and it turns out he was caught selling cocaine in his 20s... Man, say whatever you want for drugs being bad, but that's kind of a BS reason to rob someone of their youth like that. For 25 years I thought maybe he'd killed a guy.
This is a problem mentality. Obviously the sentence was not harsh enough, because he still ran a huge cocaine smuggling operation. I wonder if the penalty for running a cocaine operation was death (like in lowest crime rate Singapore) if he still would have done it? If he did, Id bet the next person would not have. It is impossible to predict the murders and overdose deaths that a drug kingpin ultimately causes. Also…
What? Does this mean that the death penalty isn't harsh enough because people still murder?
> It is impossible to predict the murders and overdose deaths that a drug kingpin ultimately causes.
A problem mentality indeed. The claim that a drug dealer "causes" overdose is just as ridiculous as the claim that a car salesman "causes" car crashes.
> Crime has fallen every year for the last 20 years. Why? They are harsh on crime unlike us wussy western nations. Many Asian countries share a similar story.
Correlation does not imply causation.
> The mindset someone of saying that a sentence like this is too harsh is weak, new age, wussified emotion (as opposed to sound and proven logic). Do you think that being a drug kingpin is something that you could ever do by accident? He made a conscious choice. A decision, over and over again until he was caught. His benefit outweighed the risk in his mind. If anything, the punishment should be heavier.
I cannot see where logic plays into any part of this argument. He knew he was dealing drugs and therefore should be punished exactly X amount? Being complicit in a crime is certainly more damning than being an unknowingly participant, but no part of your analysis uses "sound and proven logic" to derive a 25 year prison penalty.
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My great-aunt remembers the time the first car arrived in her village in the 1800s. She lived to fly across the Atlantic in a jetliner, and see the moon landings.
You surely mean 1900s, right? Or 1890's?
The story is amazing. But what continuously went through my head was how different our world will be 25 years from now. It'll be 2038...what will technology be like? If you take a second to realize what it was 25 years ago, what it is now, and then ask yourself what it WILL be in 25 years...well shit, I was left speechless.
Except for computers and the internet, science and technology have been stagnant for the past 50 years. Our civilization is in decline. In 25 years, we will only have slightly refined versions of what we have today.
Exactly, especially the continued use of old drugs, lack of modern genetics, continued use of Bakelite and iron instead of aiming to develop newer materials such as composites and carbon fibers and modern alloys is appalling. And we still don't know how old the universe is, if there are planets at all outside the Solar system at all, we still have to wait for the images of outer planets, nobody really knows how to fight cancer, people around the world are starving because the green revolution has never happened, treating complicated medical cases is difficult due to the lack of X-ray tomography and MRI, sailors still navigate using a sextant because a global satellite navigation is completely inconceivable and innocent people rot in jail even though DNA evidence could prove their innocence at least in some cases.
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My great-aunt remembers the time the first car arrived in her village in the 1800s. She lived to fly across the Atlantic in a jetliner, and see the moon landings.
She remembers ? Wow. That's amazing. How old is she now then?
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The whole time reading this article, I thought, sounds good, but having spent 25 years in jail he must have done something pretty bad. Then I read that Wikipedia article and it turns out he was caught selling cocaine in his 20s... Man, say whatever you want for drugs being bad, but that's kind of a BS reason to rob someone of their youth like that. For 25 years I thought maybe he'd killed a guy.
This is a problem mentality. Obviously the sentence was not harsh enough, because he still ran a huge cocaine smuggling operation. I wonder if the penalty for running a cocaine operation was death (like in lowest crime rate Singapore) if he still would have done it? If he did, Id bet the next person would not have. It is impossible to predict the murders and overdose deaths that a drug kingpin ultimately causes. Also…
These are problems with drug prohibition, not drug use. This is like blaming whiskey for Al Capone.
Children follow the vicious drug cycle because of genetics. Most personality traits are fixed at the time of conception.
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Probably appropriate? Is there a measure that can be used to show this? You get less time for murder where I live.
Arguably more damage is done to society from a mass distributor of cocaine than a single murderer. I'm not saying that selling drugs is equal or worse than murder, just that there is a lot more to what happens when you distribute drugs than just moving around white powder.
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Cocaine use was a major problem in the 80's, which also gave rise to the crack epidemic which was even worse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic Santos was considered a "King Pin" under the law, which essentially meant that he had several people working under him and was also dealing with very large financial transactions (this by his own admission in the UC Berkeley video). By today's standards the punishme…
So patronizing. I was born in DC; I don't need the Wikipedia article on the crack epidemic. You really think locking people up is what solved that problem?
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Do you really want prison times to be completely flexible? There is a lot of potential for abuse there.
I had this reaction too, but if an offender is given opportunities to become a more conscientious and educated human being through hard work, it seems reasonable that we would want them released (and contributing to society in a positive way) sooner rather than later.
What kind of idiotic policy is it to keep prisoners from using the internet, computers, or electric typewriters? Are they trying to make it so that prisoners have no options but crime once they get out?
I'd believe that.