Blame Culture 47

[ScottyUK]

zdas04 rightly suggested that this belonged in a separate thread to where it was initially posted.

"I personally don't like some of the culture developing in the UK where everything is someone else's fault. No-one accepts responsibility for their own actions any more, however stupid those actions are. It is leading to increasingly restrictive legislation and in some instances corporate and state 'nannying', and an ever-growing level of paperwork designed to keep the ambulance-chaser lawyers at bay. How is it in the rest of the world?"

So - is it just the UK afflicted with this blame culture? Is it right? Or should Darwin's Theory of Evolution be allowed to take effect and reduce the number of stupid people in the world?



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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[HgTX]

Hang on...

"The deterrence needs to be in the law itself and imo should not be in frivolous law suits"

But yet the rest of your post suggests that you don't want the laws either--freedom of choice and all that.

Either we have laws to tell people what to do, or else we allow them to choose freely but then have a judicial system in which consequences can be imposed when they make the wrong choice. Gotta have one or the other; relying on the essential goodness of humanity doesn't get one very far.

Hg

Eng-Tips guidelines: faq731-376

 

[UcfSE]

Hg, you took me as one extreme or the other. That's not what I meant.

Security comes with a price tag: freedom. We obviously must have security, through laws and such, but where does it stop? Security being safety from bad people and foreign invaders and such. With too much freedom you have anarchy: bad. With too much security you have animals in a cage: bad. With my phrase about freedom of choice I was referring to the fact that I for one am not willing to give up more freedom in order to make someone else feel more secure. That decision is not really up to me however because I am an engineer not a politician.


I am saying the punishment should match the crime. You can't put every lawbreaker to death for instance. With IR's logic why not make every fine for anything a minimum $10^6? Why not minimum jail time of ten years to go along with that fine? That would deter a lot more people than whatever is on the books currently. We can't be the first ones to think of that so why is it not already in place?

I am also saying that the law should punish law breakers, not frivolous law suits. You should pay your fine, do your time and move on. That's the deterrent right there. Who the hell wants to go to jail or have that stuff on yoru record? If that isn't enough for you to learn your lesson then something should be done about that with the law. We have both laws to tell people what to do and a judicial system to punish people is exactly what we have. They also allows people to cry and get an exorbitant amount of money. In my opinion that only buys into the "blame culture" and bloats the judicial system. That's bad.

 

[Maui]

UcfSE, I believe that support for the point you are trying to argue is contained in the 8th Amendment to the US Consitiution:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

Maui

 

[IRstuff]

Because you don't have to; likewise, you're taking thing to the absurd limit.

Most jaywalkers would be deterred by a $100 fine, just as most commuters are reasonably deterred by $271 fines for going solo in the carpool lane. A $5,000 fine plus death for the dog might be enough to deter most dog owners such as he; which is probably the upper limit result of what the appeal might bring.

And no one has yet successfully argued that fines of that nature are excessive, cruel or unusual.

TTFN

 

[UcfSE]

Maybe we just have differing opinions on what the absurd limit is. Either way it makes no difference. It's good to hear different points of view and have a good discussion with you guys, I appreciate that.

 

[ScottyUK]

UcfSE,

"Having murder punishable by death has not prevented murders from happening"

Dead murderers don't reoffend.



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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[Maui]

UcfSE, imposing more severe punishment by enacting stricter laws does not appear to deter criminal behavior. Drunk driving is a good example of this. More severe consequences have been imposed for drunk driving in many states, along with a lower legal limit (0.08 in New York for example). I believe that most drunk drivers are repeat offenders. To quote you

You should pay your fine, do your time and move on. That's the deterrent right there.

It does not appear to deter many of these people from driving drunk after they have been caught.

I believe that a fine of $10,000 for the case of the dog owner would not be excessive. I believe that a fine of $45,000 is. But that is my perspective, and other may disagree.

Maui

 

[UcfSE]

I agree Maui and Scotty. The death penalty certainly keeps the executed person from re-offending but it seems to do little to deter others from murdering. There will always be people who will commit crimes. The people who are deterred are those who just didn't want it that bad. For someone who is determined to murder, or rape or something else, he or she will do so no matter what. It's kind of like putting an alarm on your car, and the club, and locking it and having a fuel shut-off device. That will deter most thieves but if someone really wants it, that car is gone. Likewise I think it will be similar for other crimes whether it's murder or owning a dangerous breed or drunk driving. Jail times and stiff fines deter some but for those who really want to do those things, they will no matter what. If punishments we have now are not working I am all for stiffer punishments. Personally I'm tired of seeing sex offenders released early and becoming re-offenders when they should have been in jail, or someone with 5 DUI's finally killing a family or something like that with his or her 6th. This is of course only my opinion .

 

[IRstuff]

Au contraire; that's a erroneous conclusion. Deterrence, short of chaining every possible actor is never absolute.

The fact that there are people who still drive below the speed limit shows that deterrence and/or moral values still hold sway. Most people stay below the threshold for getting tickets because the alternative is sufficiently annoying and inconvenient.

There are ALWAYS those who are sufficiently psychotic or otherwise unbalanced to think that they are either above the law or that they will always get away with it. Deterrence never works for them. BUT, the majority of the people are law-abiding, for the most part; so it can be argued that deterrence does work. Otherwise, this type of discussion would be quickly settled outside.

TTFN

 

[debodine]

I found this quote about law and deterrence on the website bastiat.org, a website dedicated to Frederic Bastiat, a philosopher from the early 1800's. In his essay entitled THE LAW, I discovered:

"Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.

But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.

When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder."

It seems Mr. Bastiat developed a theory that claims to explain the fundamentals of deterrence.

I hope you all find it interesting; I did.

 

[UcfSE]

Nice quote debodine.