Milosevic dies in jail

Ultimately the problem with convicting Bush or Blair on warcrimes is proving whether or not they personally implemented policies that lead to Geneva violations or Crimes Against Humanity.

Even assuming they didn't, you could still get Bush on the fact that he is the Commander in Chief of US Armed forces, and that any policies commited by said entity come back on his shoulders, regardless of any ignorance on the President's behalf.

As far as Blair is concerned, since "sending young soldiers to war" isn't an actual crime in any sense, the worst thing I can think of the British being responsible for is compliance with the indiscriminate use of White Phosphorous by Americans in civilian areas.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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Sorry if this is off-topic, but I've never understood that. Why should you create even more suffering in the world than there already is? I mean why should you make someone suffer because he made someone suffer? That way you're not better than him, because you have caused as much suffering, not? Anyway, as an utilitarian, I think that it's wrong to cause even more suffering than there already is, no matter who is the one suffering ...
Generally I think that justice is the wrong way to go about problems. The world is unfair, it's just the way it is ...

So then, what is your solution for people that commit heinous acts? Slap them on the wrist, and hope that they can be rehabilitated? Tell me, have you ever seen the movie A Clockwork Orange?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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You should never say something like that on an American message board, see above to find out why

It's not as if we metaphorically dropped his pants and verbally sodomozed him for this. Or are you saying that we're behaving unreasonably?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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Sure, you have to take the deterrent effect of punishment into account, and see whether the unhappiness caused by the punishment is smaller or larger than the happiness "caused" by it by deterring people from comitting crimes.
But I do think there is a limit to what punishment can do to prevent crimes, and I don't think that the death-penalty is doing a better job than long prison sentences do. I see no reason why I should punish someone harder, if a lesser punishment is as deterrent as the hard one.

Yet your argument wasn't that people should serve jailtime, but that creating more suffering in the world wasn't what is right. Yet, how can jailtime be interpreted in any way other than suffering? The response then, is to create a prison environment where inmates do not suffer at all, yet if that is the case, then you are essentially rewarding criminals with taxpayer money, and how is that right?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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The point I have been trying to make, is that I don't think that "justice" is the right way to go. I believe that whatever causes the most happiness is the right way to go, and if "letting Milosevic experience a few million deaths" would cause greater happiness overall in the world than him only getting to spend a few years in prison, or even be freed, than I would think it's the right thing to do.

Again, have you ever seen the movie A Clockwork Orange? I'm assuming that you haven't, because otherwise this dilemma would have become apparent to you, so I'll give you a basic synopsis of what happens in the movie.

Spoiler:

Basically, a British youth enjoys spending time going out with his thug friends, stealing, beating, and raping anybody who they can get away with for jollies. This kid is legitimately evil, and revels in the misery he causes for others. Eventually, he commits manslaughter, and is sent to a legitimate penitentiary, where he weasels out of being gang raped by working in the prison chapel, yet despite giving the impression that he has become Godly, the stories he reads of the debauchery and villainy that occur in the Bible only fuel his want for self-serving destruction. Eventually he is selected as a test case for a new rehabilitation program where his mind and body are conditioned to react violently to violent impulses. He is considered a success, and released into the world, where his inability to behave violently eventually lands him in the care of the man whose wife he had previously raped. In an anti-government conspiracy, the man and his associates cause stimuli in the boy with the intention of causing his death, and revealing the nature of the rehabilitation program to the press, in order to force out the current government in the elections. However, the boy doesn't die, and is taken to a hospital, where he is de-programmed, and used by government officials to act as a witness against the conspirators, who currently reside in jail. For his compliance, he is rewarded with a lifted prison sentence, and a government salary. It is at this point that the movie ends.

In the case presented by A Clockwork Orange, you have an individual who increases his own happiness by causing pain and misery to others. Eventually, this misery is visited back to him by an amoral government, yet he is also eventually rewarded for being a terrible person by said government, which seeks to service it's own ends.

So, the boy derives pleasure from harming others, increasing his own happiness, and reducing those of others. Eventually, he is sent to prison, which serves to increase the happiness of the relatives of his victim, while simultaneously increasing his own. Eventually, an amoral government which seeks to cause the most happiness in society (i.e. a low-cost rehabilitation program to replace expensive penitentiaries) causes an extraordinary amount of pain and suffering to the boy to further it's own ends. Causing more pain and suffering to the boy increases the happiness of the man whose wife he raped, yet this man, who acted in a justifiable manner, is eventually punished, while the boy is rewarded by the government, which seeks to maintain this idealized level of "happiness" by punishing a select amount of Just individuals.

By all acounts, the boy should be executed, yet he is both punished, and rewarded, and put into a position where he could potentially harm more people, all for the sake of self-serving agendas in the assumtion that a greater good is being accomplished.

Ultimately, had he been left to rot in prison, society in general would have been for the better, as he was in a place where he could not harm others.

How do you respond to this?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Yet you're forgetting what happens in the movie, which is that because certain agents acted in the pursuit of "happiness" that more suffering is caused than happiness. Without the morals applied by a just society, the amount of suffering and potential suffering caused in the movie would have been avoided. All of which was caused in the pursuit of ultimately Utilitarian ideals.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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Utilitarianism is purely theoretical, and it does not tell people for which reasons they should act, just that the morally right thing to do is the one that causes most happiness. Someone trying to achieve most happiness doesn't neccessarily cause it.

Then Utilitarianism is a meaningless philosophy, because if it is impossible to determine whether or not one's actions cause happiness, then there is no objective way to implement moral decision making. It is decisively amoral.

Besides, the pursuit of "Justice" in the case of Alex doesn't necessarily cause more happiness, as it does present a tremendous amount of suffering. That is the problem with Utilitarian thinking, that happiness is created by any number of criteria, and that destructive elements of it are considered good.

FELIPE NO