Empirically that simply isn't the case, look at the rate of post prison criminality in places like Norway (very liberal prison system) compared to the US. Leaving prison WITH a skill set makes them much less likely to engage in crime than leaving without one ... I've NEVER heard of a case of someone commiting a crime to go to prison to try and get an education.
You are confusing "recidivism" with "deterrence" (and your comparison is problematic). And I would suggest you hang with more LE. People commit crimes for free food and lodging in the winter. When you reduce the "prison is a bad place to go to", you decrease the "therefore I don't want to go there". If my options are A) continue to be an incredibly low-paid member of a gang or B) get caught and get a free college degree or professional skill set while learning in a structured environment to keep me from backsliding....
People join the military for that reason, after all (the GI Bill). And here we can send you to get killed.
No it isn't self-contradictory, that's why we can say that Hitler MURDERED, or Sadam Hussain murdered people, because it was immoral and unjustified
At that point all you are doing is appealing to a higher set of law. Unfortunately for you, in the United States, the highest law is the Constitution of the United States, which grants the local, state, and federal government the right to use force up to and including lethal.
Of coarse I can say the right doesn't have a "right" to kill ever, just like you can say the state doesn't have a right to restrict freedom of speech.
When we enter into the social contract, we give an actor (the state) a monopoly of violence. We don't give it a monopoly of thought or expression - because speech is not (usually) a tragedy of the commons (as violence is), and when speech
does become such a tragedy (for example, incitement) we
do give the state the right to restrict it.
Sure is really the only thing that counts ... The point is not you're afraid of MORE punishment, or whatever, it's just the surity of getting caught.
And you are afraid of getting caught because.... you don't want the cops to think less of you as a person? :roll:
The tragedy of the commons in pollution isn't exactly fully a tragedy of the commons, because private corporations are not polluting their own commons, they are polluting someone elses commons ... That's not a tradgedy of the commons that's externalities
:doh Go back and read what a tragedy of the commons is. You appear to be confused - pollution is a classic example of a tragedy of the commons because everyone's individual incentives are to avoid the cost of proper waste containment and safe disposal.
To help, when a resource is not depleted by its' consumption, you get a tragedy of the commons, because the incentives are for everyone to consume, but no one to buy, so the resource never appears unless a third actor uses coercion to
force a minimum number of purchasers into doing so.
People WOULD stand up to gangs, and they DO when it's their neighborhood.
Actually usually they don't. You find awesome counterexamples all over, but the typical reaction to a group being able to consistently exercise violence over an area is acquiescence. People make the rational judgement that the loss (violence from the gain) is likely to outweigh the gain (often little to nothing). If you were
correct we would not
have criminal gangs.
Compare unemployment rate in social democracies like Norway or Sweden, where you literally don't have to work to live a comfortable life, and places like the US, or the third world.
I love how everyone always tries to depend on Norway or Sweden. As though small, heterogeneous nations with strong community ethics and massive oil-per-capita resources really can reflect.
I tell you what. Let's compare the U.S. unemployment rate rolling average for the last 20 years with the unemployment rate rolling average for social democracies. Such as, for example, France, Spain, and Italy
.
Hey, take a look at how awesome those social democracies are doing :
No one is arguing that they will sacrifice themselves for the good of the others, that isn't what the commons is, it's actually in self interest, when the commons is actually in you're hands and you have autonomy.
Actually that is precisely what you are arguing. You are arguing that people will ignore self interest in situations where their particular self interests act towards the detriment of the group - you are arguing that there is no such thing as a tragedy of the commons. All the police forces, militaries, judges, of the world, they are all in vain, because there is no tragedy of the commons, and so people never commit crimes or otherwise harm others.
You mention collective farming in the soviet Union ... that wasn't collective farming, it was state slavery
lol, ah yes. This would be the famous "oh, when they actually implement it it doesn't count" excuse for socialism' repeated failures?
a better example would be the Cooperatives in Emilia-Romania in Italy, or the coops in Denmark, or cooperatives like the Mondragon cooperative, or electricity cooperatives which DO produce an amazing abundance.
"...All the massive, repeated, consistent failures don't count but a few minor temporary successes do. That's what you call "cognitive dissonance in action" right there.
Soviet Union collective farming isnt' an example of the commons AT ALL.
On the contrary - communism was precisely such an example of an attempt to enforce the logic you utilized.
The reason the State needs to enforce a draft is because it isn't "defending" the people, its engaging in imperialism, when communities need to ACTUALLY be defended, you don't need a draft, because it's in their interest to collectively defend themselves.
Wrong, actually. They faced this problem quite a lot in early America, where communities or homesteads would refuse to come to the aid of the other. The South during the Civil War, for example, was being invaded, a rather clear example of a community needing defense, and yet it had to institute a draft because people made the rational decision to seek to allow others to take the cost for a good that they did not diminish through consumption. Sure, it's in my interest to have collective defense. But it's even
more in my interest to make sure that
you take on the risk for this collective defense that we shall both enjoy. (shrug) we're all free-riders, my friend. It's simply a smart evolutionary strategy.
No the Alternative is NO ONE has that right.
That is incorrect - if your argument is that "no one has that right", then the problem is that you have simply ceded the power to the individual(s) most willing to abuse it. If, for example, the state does not have the right to say "you deserve to die", then they do not have the right to defend us from invasion unless they strictly do so with non-lethal means. If I do not have the right to make "you deserve to die" decisions, then I do not have the right to defend my own life and the life of my family from an assailant.
It is, in fact, mostly for the purpose of ensuring that we kill the right people in order to protect the right people that we
form governments. That is the States' primary role.
Now, that's neither here nor there as regards the Death Penalty. Whether you want one or not is up to other factors. But the argument that the state does not have a monopoly of violence is equally as unsupportable as the claim that there are no tragedies of the commons.