Conn. murder trial...

[David Jamieson]

yep, people of all kinds steal.

tell me what the demographic breakdown is of convicted felons.

I can pretty much guarantee you that big time crooks like maddoff are a remarkably tiny little fraction of a percentage point while those with chronic socio-econbomic disadvantages are fiulling your private prison systems to the max.

so, instead of using outliers as you like to do, why not start dealing with actual facts instead?

your arguments otherwise are null and void for the most part.

[BJJ-Blue]

yep, people of all kinds steal.

That's not what you said in your last post.

[solo1]

im pro death penalty. i dont buy into the tripe that killing someone makes society no better then the killer. I think it is necessary for a just society to rid itself of killers. I dont know if the death penalty is a deterrant and I dont think it even matters. We have a right to rid ourselves of people that do heinous things and an obligation to the victims.

[KC Elbows]

BJJ-Blue and I are in full agreement. If one can't trust government with their money, they can less trust them with their lives.

The death penalty means innocent people WILL be executed, and often, in societies, means those with the power to do so will use that power for their own benefit.

[Kansuke]

why do people steal? because they want and don't got.

So the answer is to take everything from those who have and give to those who don't until they are appeased? That will make everyone safe and end crime? What a load of liberal, illogical bull****.

[KC Elbows]

Any society can punish its transgressors.

Any society that allows the children of transgressors to fall through the cracks and does not put resources to educating them will pay for it.

Any society that allows resources to fall into one group, and allows an inheritance structure that makes it hereditary, will pay for it.

Traditional Chinese structures of inheritance had advantages in this sense.

[Kansuke]

Any society that allows resources to fall into one group, and allows an inheritance structure that makes it hereditary, will pay for it.

Bull ****. That is pure socialist nonsense. Poking holes in the boats that actually work well does not make anyone drier.

[SoCo KungFu]

So being broke caused them to rape a woman, a 17 and an 11 year old girl? Caused them to strangle them and burn them in their home? You know there are lots of animals on the planet that kill off their defective members. Pro-death penalty is perfectly natural...

[Drake]

So being broke caused them to rape a woman, a 17 and an 11 year old girl? Caused them to strangle them and burn them in their home? You know there are lots of animals on the planet that kill off their defective members. Pro-death penalty is perfectly natural...

If we gave them jobs, this never would have happened...

[KC Elbows]

Bull ****. That is pure socialist nonsense. Poking holes in the boats that actually work well does not make anyone drier.

Free rides to non-producers and inheritance are not mutually exclusive practices. The Chinese model gives a good example of this playing out. Inheritance was split pretty well evenly between all sons. One would assume, if profitable lines tended to stay that way, that those sons would tend to mostly profit, but the reality was, in traditional China, because of the inheritance structure, that who the wealthy families were changed quite often, with families falling from rich to poverty being a common story. Your "boats that work well" is a story, families naturally rise and fall under systems that don't reward them for nothing more than having a parent with money despite their offspring not necessarily being capable of achieving the same without inheritance. It's just privatized welfare.

[BJJ-Blue]

This may sound like a novel concept, but why not let the person who actually earned the money decide who gets it when he dies?

[KC Elbows]

This may sound like a novel concept, but why not let the person who actually earned the money decide who gets it when he dies?

I could be mistaken on this, but I don't know that the Chinese model was based on legality as much as what would be viewed as a socially (and thus, in the Confucian sense, morally) inappropriate act. If one left the family resources to only one offspring, it's tantamount to saying that one failed in fatherhood except in one instance, and to punish the remaining sons for the father's own failure would just be failing again. The higher responsibility was always toward fulfilling one's role as parent, not toward a family legacy based on any lesser criteria. To do the appropriate act was more important toward legacy in traditional China.

Now, in state Confucianism, it might have been a legal fact, I don't know for certain. But in people's personal approach to it, there was a strong social factor.

It is the longest lasting socially conservative society in existence. It could rightly claim that any could rise or fall in it, with some caveats. The society itself supported the ability to rise and to fall. Even communism was forced to adapt it in much the same way that Genghis Khan, the Manchurians, et al did. And the logic is not easy to answer: to choose one chiild for an inheritance based on others failing a criterion is to buck one's own responsibility as parent, regardless of whether one is from the East or West.

So, one can choose, as you suggest, but one is open to criticism based on their choice, and only someone who was a poor parent would not balk at making a failure in that case and then punishing the recipient of one's failure for it.

[BJJ-Blue]

Thanks for the explanation KC.

I will say I don't look at someone choosing to leave out a child or leaving it all to one child as tantamount to the parent failing. Look at the Bulger family, for instance. One son ended up becoming the dean of a university while another son was on America's Most Wanted and the FBI's Most Wanted List.

[KC Elbows]

Thanks for the explanation KC.

I will say I don't look at someone choosing to leave out a child or leaving it all to one child as tantamount to the parent failing. Look at the Bulger family, for instance. One son ended up becoming the dean of a university while another son was on America's Most Wanted and the FBI's Most Wanted List.

No problem, mostly just enjoy discussion odd tangents, so that would describe this.

In the system I'm talking about, I don't think one would be expected to leave inheritance to a killer or warlord, if one son chose those things.

BUT, to leave more to one child because they were good with money would be frowned upon. Even though it is common enough in the West, on the assumption that that one child will help the others, it creates a rich class of essentially welfare babies feeding off the more fiscally able among them, when the system would run better if those welfare babies posing as trust funders were allowed to fail, because it is all family, they are far more often subsidized in their incompetence or excess, and far less likely to assume their rightful role in heirarchy of wealth as poor people.

You really can't have a society that allows the individual to rise to their rightful place without also allowing for falls, and inheritance appears to play a role in either supporting this or preventing it, depending on which method one looks at.

[Drake]

We had a 72 year old woman robbed in Pueblo the other day. At her own doorstep. Thief took her rent for the month, and she had no other means of paying it. She had already lost three children, and her fourth was dying of brain cancer. Yet we would support the thief due to a presumed lack of opportunity?

At what point, DJ, would you say that they should be punished for their cruelty to others? At what point would you say that regardless that they are exploiting those, who, despite being equally hard pressed to pay their own way, have no other options?

I beg to differ. There is always work. But why would someone work for minimum wage when they can just knock down an old lady and take her rent money? Your argument is flawed, because we are all given the same opportunity to succeed. Bill Gates wasn't always rich, and neither was Steve Jobs. A lot of millionaires started with nothing.
I grew up in a home that couldn't afford to pay the utilities and relied on welfare and charity for food. I now make around $70k a year and am working on my doctorate. I may be making close to 100k+ a year once I get out. I COULD HAVE become a thief, and many I grew up with did. That was a CHOICE I made, and it was a CHOICE they made. Nobody owed me a job. It's the responsibility of the individual to make themselves marketable, and with a massive amount of federal, state, and independent financial aid out there, as well as flexible colleges and trade schools. there is no excuse.

You are taking a lazy approach, DJ. You want to blame the system, because nobody wants to blame themselves. You want to excuse criminal behavior, which hurts and damages our way of life, because these people are owed something? They ARE owed something. They are owed an equal chance to be successful. Just because they (expletived)ed it up isn't my problem. They can either try to fix themselves, or they can go to jail. Again, another CHOICE.