This is simply not true. It solves the problem of what to do with a guy who has demonstrated a total lack of respect for human life and a willingness to kill children in cold blood, it solves the problem of a murderer running around in your community, it solves the problem of the danger his continued existence poses to other children and humans. As for the "feeling better" part, you ignore proportionality. Stringing him up and taking his land as recompense is proportional to the crime. Tooth removal for sale on eBay is obviously not. Lack of proportionality is the reason this guy is a murderer in the first place! I know you're not that stupid, fatcat. Neither am I.
I was extending the analogy of tooth pulling as unnecessary and barbaric form of justice.
Pulling teeth to pay repairs for someone who smashed up your car will "solve" the problem, the point is, there is more than one way to deal with an issue, and violence shouldn't be used except to stop violence (or in consensual uses).
And as I pointed out in my post, the whole "stopping crimes in the future" is classic future crimes bullshit which I shouldn't need to go into. I could use the same bullshit logic to profer crippling of thieves, or monitoring of all ex-cons, etc.
Point is, execution doesn't make anything better, than that which can be achieved by moral, civilized means, and ultimately, a live person can do more to make up for a crime than a dead one.
Stringing him up and taking his land as recompense is proportional to the crime.
No its not.
What part of stringing him up is in anyway recompense for taking a life?
As I already mentioned, executing a person does nothing to
pay someone back for anything, and thus cannot be a form of compensation or restitution(especially if you count the cost of an execution).
The only way you can wangle it, is that if you think "feeling better" or "feeling better via revenge", can be compensation for a crime, and then who decides what is "enough" to make someone feel better? If you stab me in the kidney do I get to have your penis amputated because thats the only thing I say will make me feel better?
Firstly, its a completely subjective standard, which justice should absolutely not be about. If you steal from me, you owe me what you stole, and under some systems, you owe me what you stole, plus interest, plus what it cost to get back what you stole.
Obviously taking a life is of near inestimable value. Since we currently don't have the technology to resurrect people, so the compensation is practically infinite, which could translate to imprisonment in a labor camp, with all of the prisoners wealth generation going into resurrection technology, or something both parties agree on.
If someone steals a candy bar from you, there is an inherit limit to what you deserve in compensation.
The criminal cannot avoid his responsibility for restitution, but likewise, the victim cannot demand absolutely anything for compensation. Parties should be able to come to any understanding they want, but if theres a disagreement, theres a baseline for each party. One who owes and one who is owed.
You have done nothing to address this core point, besides the fact its immoral to kill someone when you don't have to.
If during the point of you trying to get compensated, the murderer tries to hurt you or other people, then by all means, use force against him, but if someones willing to repay for the harm they've done, they should not be used.
If its okay to use force, i.e. execute a murderer, for that crime, because it satisfies justice under the guise of "revenge", then why can't victims use force for other crimes? Lets go back to the candy bar analogy.
1 candybar theft is equivalent to what? A kick in the nuts? Chinese burn?
As you can see, this thing is totally subjective, but when it comes to murder, theres a very shallow reciprocation of "eye for an eye" thats easy to fall into. How about rape for a rape? You'd probably say that, it would be perfectly just for the guy to just pay back for the candy bar,
theres not need to use violence, it wouldn't serve anything, except to satiate petty violent urges.
What if the guy can't pay the candy bar back? Do you get to kill him then? No, you'll work out some way of him working. What if its a african peasant who trashes a million dollar sports car? Theres no way he will earn that amount of wealth in his lifetime, but as victim, you'd still deserve whatever he could afford to pay untill he payed you back or died.
The same thing goes for murderers. Stealing a life is magnitudes worse than stealing a candy bar, people are incredibly valuable, in a tangible and sentimental, but justice should always be about healing the victim, not meting out punishments.
Prisons can be run at a profit, so the idea that we need to execute murderers to keep people safe is ridiculousNot happy with the candybar analogy? Maybe you're gonna say something like, when you initiate force on someone, you lose your right not to have violence used on you. So are you consistent with other violent crimes? If someone breaks your arm, can you break theirs back? What if they were sorry afterwards and offered to pay you back? What if it was an accident?
If the person doesn't agree to deal with their crimes, and use force to avoid it, then sure, feed your blood lust, but having defacto "eye for an eye, life for a life" is a banner under which terrible barbarism can be commited.
People in favor of execution are just giving in to base evolutionary drives that say hurt people who hurt you, and especially hurt people who hurt your family.