[ExI] Brief correction re Western Democracies [WASI am Call To Libertarians]

[Kelly Anderson]

2011/2/27 Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 2011/2/22 Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com>:
>> > On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>
> When I wrote that private prisons would be an incentive to bogus
> incarceration I was hypothesizing, but now I found out that it has already
> happened:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

Alfio, the number of people inappropriately incarcerated in ANY system
is non-zero. Corruption exists everywhere. I think it is likely that
some AGIs will end up being corrupt too. Think of the number of people
incarcerated inappropriately by Stalin, Castro, today's China (where
prisoners are allegedly executed to be organ transplant donors), Iran,
Saudi Arabia...

Even occasionally today in the US. There is the very interesting and
controversial case of Leonard Peltier. And what about Ignacio Ramos
and Jose Compean?

The number of people who are NOT incarcerated who should be in the US
is much larger, heck that would include my ex-wife :-|

By this type of argument, we should ban axes and hammers because they
have been used as murder weapons. In the Old West, the number one
murder weapon was not the Colt 45, but the shovel. (Apparently, lots
of arguments came up at water turns...) To tell us that we should give
up a good tool just because SOME number of people have misused it is
to completely stop all human progress.

Just because someone died of arson, does not mean we should go back to
pre-fire days.

I find anecdotal stories to be unconvincing. How many people have seen
big foot, UFOs, and the like? These are statistically uninteresting to
me. If it were a widespread problem, such as is the case with
corruption in Mexico, then you would get my attention. This is no more
convincing than the arguments based on single cases for or against
government health care.

-Kelly