Re: Socio-Economic Cults (Re: CypherPunk Cults)

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

>
>What's wrong with chopping the hands off of thieves and executing muderers?
>A lot of cultures have very little forcible redistribution of wealth, and
>little crime.

an idea already tried in repressive states like iraq/
iran. I would expect you of all people to spot the obvious deficiency.
a criminal system relies on the word of police and prosectors. a
system with penalties like these tends not to have a "due process".
that is, countries with policies like this tend to have only sham trials.

reasonable trials and nasty sentences like these seem never to be
found in combination. probably because they go together in the mind
of the public-- reasonable trials, reasonable sentences.

also, in any criminal justice system you cannot detect guilt with
100% certainty. some people would sleep better at night knowing that
if a mistake has been made, it won't be too severe on an innocent
person. that is a tradeoff that politicians never talk about-- about
the difference between "criminal" and "suspect" and how our system
is guaranteed imperfect in detecting the difference.

for interesting ideas on the court system, a new book called
"the truth machine" (fiction) has some speculations on a future
criminal justice system based on a 100% effective truth detection 
machine.