[baggy_trough]

Of course he’s probably wrong about much of that. Punishing him for it in a court, if that’s what you mean, would be illiberal and grotesque.

[ceejayoz]

Why? It’s negligent homicide.

It’s just so diffuse that it doesn’t fit in our crime model. Like polluters who shave years off an entire neighborhood’s lives via health impacts.

[baggy_trough]

Because an opinion can’t rise to homicide, even if it influences policy. That’s not what homicide is. Instead, it’s simply bad policy, to be punished at the ballot box.

[ceejayoz]

Bad policy that needlessly kills thousands of people should be punishable outside the ballot box.

If your policy of letting kindergarteners play with grenades goes bad, you go to jail.

[UncleMeat]

This is a broken system. When somebody allegedly steals a backpack they get thrown in Riker's. When somebody with substantial power causes a whole bunch of people to die in aggregate via pollution, misinformation, or whatever our society has no mechanism to punish them.