Like lamprey263 pointed out, your idea focuses heavily on rehabilitativefunction of a punishment.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but there are other functions that one should have in mind when thinking about punishments and / or criminal law in general.
To name a few, I would say that deterrence / prevention and incapacitation of perpetrator / protection of society are just as important as rehabilitation, if not more. And in both regards, your idea leaves a lot to be desired as it:
1. does not deter potential perpetrators from comitting crimes - really, imagine what a potential perpetrator would think while deciding whether to commit a crime or not, if he knew that the "punishment" he would receive, would be placing in some loving and caring family instead of being placed in a prison...
2. does not incapacitate criminals from committing other crimes (especially against law abiding citizens) - as others have pointed out, there's no guarantee that the very next victims of some criminal wouldn't be the members of a family he would be placed in. When the criminals are in prisons, at least they mostly can't directly commit crimes against non-criminals, but could some family guarantee the same thing? I doubt it.
Besides, like you said, in many instances it could be the case that some families would have to be forced to take criminals in. That would be a violation of their rights right there. And for what reason? Because somebody else committed some crime?
And that brings me to the another function of a punishement - retribution, which is mostly there to assure the society that crimes indeed are bad deeds and that "reward" for them will be something unpleasant for the perpetrator. In your case however, it would be the family who would receive the most unpleasant part of the punishment and it is questionable if given their previous situation, many criminals would even view such measures as punishment and therefore their behaviour as something that society disapproves.
SciFiRPGfan's forum posts
1. Alcohol is more dangerous, statistically both to an individual and society. If we're going to allow people over a certain age to drink alcohol with nothing more than an age requirement (which is a shoddy way of determining who should be able to drink), I don't see why people can't make up their own minds about other substances that are statistically less dangerous.chrisrooR
Umm, it was not my intention to compare negative effects of alcohol to drugs or make comparisons between drugs themselves and whatnot as I don't have sufficient knowledge about the topic, so O.K.. Maybe it is, maybe it is not.
That's kinda irrelevant for my topic (whether the legalization of heroin would grow the number of addicted people or not) anyway, but if the alcohol really is that dangerous, it only furthers my point that certain group of people, which is seemingly quite large, don't care that much about negative effects of substances on their bodies.
2. It's not about who I would rather deal with, it's who people are dealing with RIGHT NOW. Just because people have to go to a black market dealer doesn't stop anyone from getting anything, especially people who are addicted to heroin. If you're going to be willing to let your flesh rot off your body for a high, going to a dealer is going to be the last of your problems. The 'convenience' of obtaining any drug is currently at an all time high.
Actually, as far as "my topic" is concerned, it is more about potential newcomers than already existing userbase.
People who use heroin / drugs already would probably not stop using them if they were legalized, but as far as people who do not use them are concerned, their decision to try them out or not would to a degree depend on how convenient it would be to obtain them and on in how much trouble they could get themselves if they started using them. And in that regard, legalization would mostly reduce the number of reasons as to why they should not do it.
Woah woah woah. First, Just because they announce heroin being legal doesn't mean people are going to flock to try the stuff. That's absurd. People who know about the detrimental effects of heroin addiction aren't going to go out and pursue it; legal or illegal. This isn't a normal product, and it wouldn't follow conventional business thinking. chrisrooR
People don't need to flock to it for the userbase to grow. Cigarettes, cigars, alcohol,... all have negative long term health effects, yet it does not stop certain group of people (certain segment of market) from using them or trying them. Given that heroin is more dangerous, the overal userbase would most likely be smaller. I would still argue that it would be larger than it is now for the reasons I state in the 2nd paragraph.
Second, you're assuming that the accessibility isn't there. It is. It's actually more accessible on the black market, considering a drug dealer doesn't check for ID.
I guess that warries from country to country, from region to region, from city to city,...
It would also depend on under what conditions would such legalized drugs / heroin be supposed to be sold. In the most extreme scenario though - i.e. if they were supposed to be sold under the same or similar conditions as alcohol or cigarettes are now, I would argue that they would become more accessible as they are now in many areas since the shops / pharmacies are almost everywhere.
However, what I had in mind was not just mere accessibility, but the convenience of buying the drugs in general. Would you rather deal with some shady (maybe even dangerously looking) dealer also knowing that what you are doing is illegal and that maybe in the worst case scenario your name could one day appear on the list of said dealer's clients or would you rather go to some shop / institution and buy your drug completely legally?
I don't know about you or about people who are or want to be into drugs already, but as far as undecided people are concerned, based on my experience (living in the dormetory for 5 years, having student parties for I don't even know how long), I would say that the questions of convenience and potential ramifications are very important when it comes to experimenting.
And I don't think the amount of heroine addict will go up if it's legalized... deeliman
What makes you think so?
Legalizing something would quite likely increase its accessibility. Especially, if it's something that has a potential to be desired by some people (some segment of market), which something like heroin probably does. That's just simple business thinking. There would be no reason for shops, pharmacies or whatever institutions that would be allowed to sell drugs, to not start offering (and maybe even advertizing) them. And with inceased accessibility it's not a stretch to imagine that the userbase would also grow up.
Besides, from consumers' perspective, sometimes something being illegal might be deterring enough for some people to not want to have anything to do with it, whether it's for moral reasons or for simple fear of being penalized should their use or posssesion of something illegal be uncovered. Sure, it mostly comes down to how efficient and thorough the enforcement of sanctions against violators of particular law is, but with the threat of being penalized being completely or at least mostly removed, that's one less reason for people interested in trying heroin to worry about.
Simply put, I just can't see the userbase of something previously illegal not growing up once the illegal object / substance is legalized. And now I don't know how addictive the heroine is, but with the growing number of people trying / using it, I don't think that it's a stretch to imagine that the number of people who would unfortunately become addicted to it would also go up to some degree.
What could happen if we didn't involve ourselves? A civil war that goes on for years and ends with a failed state? What does a failed state mean for the region? More unsanctioned attacks from non-state entities against Israel which means more support from us which means more detriment to our relations with Arab states?Squeets
This part I don't fully understand.
Wouldn't the idea of "no or at least smaller involvement in other countries' conflicts" also include no or smaller involvement in Israel's relationships or conflicts as well?
I mean, I am not that familiar with the whole situation (and by that I mean US' international relationships, especially in the Middle East, US's attitude towards their allies, people criticizing US for their involvement in conflicts between other countries,...), but I would assume that people who would want US to be less involved in other countries' relationships would want them to be not involved or less involved altogether, not just with respect to some countries.
And in that light, the reasoning like "US need to involve themselves in a conflict because otherwise they would need to involve themselves later to protect their allies from the results of said conflict" sounds kinda circular to me, because it does not explain why the US would need to involve themselves at all.
The rest of your post does outline some reasons as to why involving in other countries' conflicts / relationships could be beneficial to US, so I guess it could be applied to Israel's case as well (at least to some degree), but to make your post complete, maybe you could elaborate on why the US would need to support Israel more in case of more unsanctioned attacks against it.
Despite a lack of evidence in the trial, the judge took Coast's word over Montgomery's and sentenced the innocent man.
Whatever happened to in dubio pro reo? Or is it just a European thing?
I haven't gotten to that point yet. Normally when people say something is unfair they often aren't dealing with (accepting) a reality which they can cope with perfectly well if they put their mind to it. I've had unfair things happen to me sure, but life as a whole is not only 'not unfair', but the whole idea of looking at it through a lens of 'fairness' doesn't even make sense to me; it is what it is.Articuno76
I would say that "dealing with something that one does not think that it is fair" and "thinking that something is either fair or unfair" are two separate issues. One can be perfectly capable of dealing with something that he considers "unfair", but him being able to perfectly cope with it may not make him consider it any less "unfair" because of that.
As for looking at life through a lens of 'fairness' not making sense... I disagree. If one is able to judge "fairness" of individual situations (e.g. even your own "I've had unfair things happen to me"), one should have the tools to judge the whole system as well. Sure it is much more complicated to judge whole life / lives / living in general, but the basic principles are same or very similar to principles used in judging individual situations.
Besides, if taken to the extreme, your "it is what it is" stance could have some questionable implications... Would you help someone in a need of your help (if you could) or would you dismiss him with "it is what it is"? Would you rather help someone who has "destroyed" his own life himself or someone whose life has been "destroyed" by the events that were out of his control? Or would you help neither? Or both?
I would argue that our ability to judge fairness of not only individual situations, but also larger / longer turns of events and maybe even entire existence / system is tested quite often actually and it helps shape our behaviour.
http://euobserver.com/defence/121312
Just going to leave this here....deeliman
While the ability to cut military budgets down by removing overlapping elements in national militaries sounds very appealing to me, I would very quickly start to be worried about what would the European politicians want to do with such undoubtedly powerful military mechanism. The very next suggested article hints towards interest of some of the EU politicians in EU's more active role in potential crisis around the world.
And that would be something I would be strongly against. The last thing I would want to see happen is EU trying to play catch up with US in terms of military strength and military operations around the world.
So personally, I would be very careful about approaching the topic.
[QUOTE="rastotm"]I agree it's a shame that petty differences are keeping is from closer integration.The benefits of a stable fiscal policy would be worth it. In the current situation, a collapse of the EU is more likely though. As there seems to be a rise in Populist anti-EU politicans. Sadly, government bashing parties always get a considerable amount of votes in relatively bad times. The dangerous result is that people forget the actual policies of the party that they are voting on, all they care about is showing of their disstatisfaction. The end result is often more problematic than the initial crisis.
deeliman
What do you mean by "petty differences"?
No.
Although I would say that the level of my disagreement would depend on how centralized would such superstate supposed to be.
I don't care about about "political games" between superpowers which have little to no effect on day-to-day life of an average citizen and often lead to more troubles than benefits.
The states usually have different policies for a reason and EU countries are still pretty different. Some are more productive and more progressive while others are less, some have a lot of natural resources while others don't, some are more inclined towards strong governments, others seem to be more inclined towards Laissez-faire approach.
I don't trust my goverment any more than the next guy, but I doubt that some politician from the other side of the continent would know better what to do than the local ones.
Some degree of cooperation and unification is nice. But things like fiscal policy, military policy, healthcare policy, labour policy and selected few others which can have very strong impact on peoples' daily life should stay firmly in the hands of local / national politicians. Not that they are good at it. But at least they can be held accountable more easily.
As for the ther question about implications for other countries, I guess it would make EU even stronger in any negotiations or potential conflicts. However, as I stated above, to me it does not seem to be worth it. Also, when EU politicians want, they can be pretty competent in negotiations already (e.g. EU - US steel tariff dispute).
I suppose that is up to the europeans. If they want the US out, then the US should leave.sonicare
i guess if Europe wants us to leavelostrib
Hm, I don't think that using the term "Europe" or "Europeans" would be the best. Sure European states have a lot of common interests and a lot of supranational regulations, agreements and institutions, but we are not that well united here. :P At least most of citizens of European (or even EU) states don't seem to think too much in supranational dimensions (speaking from anecdotal evidence only).
Some states in Europe seem to have exceptionally good relationships with US, others want to be more neutral. I would say that it would be somewhat difficult to summarize some kind of unified "European" position on this topic. Or on (almost) any topic for that matter. >.<
As for the question itself, personally, I don't mind either way. Like has already been stated ITT, the bases probably have small positive effect on economies of regions where the they are located. But I doubt that people living outside of those regions would notice much of a difference either way. Still better then not having them I guess.
The bases probably also increase the security of Europe. OTOH they may make it a more likely target for both the states which might be scared of US / NATO's expansions and for terrorist organizations which could be mad at European states for allowing US to conduct part of their operations from their lands. So I guess it's a mixed bag in that regard.
Overall, if US wants to stay, I do not see any reasons why they shouldn't be allowed to (unless some specific state would want to become more neutral) and if they want to leave, I don't think that European states should go out of their way to convince / incentivze them otherwise (unless the US presence is more beneficial than I am aware of).
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