75
User voted Yes.
4 votes
Nov 17, 2015

Tough one. Word "deserve" excludes using any objective facts, but I'm still sure of my opinion: yes, there are. We are basically living only for 4 F's, but we've actually made it to something like next level of existance thanks to power of our brains. Therefore started the responsibility for our actions and there simply are actions that deserve to be punished by death. Furthermore, the highest form of punishing people is torturing them, death penalty is making sure they will never do anything harmful, so it has its grounds.

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0
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0 votes,
Nov 18, 2015

And what angel will be making these judgments and delivering them?

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100
User voted Yes.
1 vote,
Nov 23, 2015

None. There is no "angel" or any omnipotent mind that can decide about if it's right or not. There is only you. We reached the point where things like this are getting complicated not by morality, but by society's good. If I kill someone because I decided that he or she had been dangerous, then anyone can do it, right? But what if entire society agree on killing that person? Is it fine? Maybe society is wrong? That's why I pointed out there is no objective fact in my opinion above. I just think there are people that deserve to die and I would kill them as long as it had no consequences on me. But "deserve" is not always "should". For now, prisons are doing just fine.

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0 votes,
Nov 23, 2015

So, even if we concede in theory that it is meaningful and ethical to say some "deserve" to die, the issue is precisely that we recognize both that collective institutions and individual people are very much incapable of being consistently fair in their judgments, recognizing all the complex causal factors at play, and are themselves far from perfect. So it seems to me that even discussing the issue, when practically it is irrelevant, seems to be flawed.

Prisons are far from doing "fine" globally. American prisons are routinely castigated by human rights groups for routinized torture and an atmosphere that breeds sexual assault.

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100
User voted Yes.
2 votes,
Nov 23, 2015

Sorry for this statement about prisons, what I meant was punishment for crimes, but, indeed, I haven't looked wide enough at this case. And about discussion itself being flawed: I agree with you. Again, what I wrote was just my opinion, which came out of me thinking that world would be a better place without certain people. But only MY world, because I can only see world by my eyes. If you don't want anybody on earth to be dead, then it's fully logical that you disagree with me, as by your seeing of the world, there really isn't anyone that deserves to die.

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