Quote: (04-22-2014 06:21 PM)soup Wrote:
Quote: (04-22-2014 05:20 PM)Tail Gunner Wrote:
Quote: (04-22-2014 03:48 PM)Wutang Wrote:
Should anyone be punished for committing a crime if they never had a chance to begin with as you are saying?
This is one of the biggest blue pill threads that I have ever seen.
The "deprived poor" in Western nations have a level of ease and comfort that no King of old, with all the wealth of the world, could have ever imagined. Even if those kings could have imagined such ease and comfort, all the wealth of the Earth could not have purchased what "the poor" possess today.
The "deprived poor" in Western nations have shelter, free medical care, free food with no possibility of starvation, refrigeration, stoves, cell phones, indoor plumbing, and even vehicles. A city bus offers more ease and comfort than the finest carriage of antiquity.
In short, the average poor person today lives better than any king of antiquity with no worries of starvation or death by infection and most childhood disease. A poor person today is only poor by comparison to the rest of society -- and certainly not in comparison to traditional notions of poverty.
In fact, while collecting welfare payments from taxpayers, a poor person can not only live a life of luxury -- as compared to the conditions found throughout most of human history -- but also a life of ease and leisure. Not backbreaking work. Not degrading work. Just living with no work at all!
So, a poor person has absolutely no excuse to commit a murder (or any other crime) and then complain that it had something to do with his deprivation. Heinous conduct, such as murder, has everything to do with narcissism and a sense of entitlement in a sick culture and nothing to do with poverty.
Most of this thread is blue pill thinking at its finest. No historical perspective. No moral distinctions. No scrutiny of the meaning of true poverty. No empathy for the victims. No thought for the future consequence of rewarding bad behavior today. Quite simply, no logic or reason.
All that stuff in your last paragraph. A man can't make decisions if he doesn't know they exist. How can anyone make good decisions if they don't have the education and socialization to do know what's available, and the experience necessary to do those things?
I think that you missed the context of that last paragraph. It was aimed not at the poor, but at members of this forum who actively participate in creating a society in which narcissism and a sense of entitlement enable poor people to believe that having less than others provides them with a free pass to harm other people -- despite being far more wealthy than all the kings, emperors, and pharaohs of history.
That feeds directly into your second point: how can anyone make good decisions if they don't have the education and socialization to do know what's available? There is only one way to do that. By rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior. It was true 2000 years ago. It is still true today. While that is something that parents should do, it is also something that society must do, which leads us back to the discussion of capital punishment.
If voters insist on remaining ignorant of history, basic concepts of morality, and no thought for the future consequence of rewarding bad behavior today -- in short, employing no logic or reason when electing policy-makers -- then we will all live in a hell hole. In a democracy, voters get the type of government that they deserve.