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by bestsolution
1152 days ago
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It’s not really possible to measure this over the long run. Short and medium term studies show that mass incarceration dramatically reduced crime in the US, mostly by literally removing violent young men from society, but that’s not the main reason why I support strong punishment. The moral decay of a society can take a hundred years to set in, but once the consequences become apparent, it can be too late to do anything about it. There is a lot of wisdom encoded in the ways of the past. Retribution for crimes is a universal institution for a reason. |
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And talking about "moral decay" (as if morality was some objective set of rules that society can either follow or not follow, and not a huge continuum of various moral standards of both individuals and societies) makes me quite sure that you're speaking from sentiment, rather than from reason. "It feels right to me, therefore it is right" is not a good argument for convincing anyone of anything.
I agree that it's very hard to measure this sort of thing. There are way too many (constantly changing) factors that affect the crime rate, that it's almost impossible to isolate a single cause and measure its effect. However, that should only motivate us to approach the problem even more rigorously, rather than to resort to subjective heuristics.