Avoiding Ethical Dilemmas the Easy Way

There was a new episode of LUEE last week… I know it seems like it hasn’t been long enough since I commented on their work, but that’s because my last post was nearly a month late. Like 29 days and 22 hours late.

This month they were talking about the judicial system. Can I just say for starters how much fun it is to have people say things I agree with, backed up by multivariate statistical analysis? So much better than just shouting your opinions louder and louder, like I normally do.

They talked a bit about gun control, and I think they missed the mark a little. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with them here too. But it’s not enough to say that gun control means fewer gun homicides and gun suicides. The gun nuts have heard that before, and there’s an easy comeback that goes back at least to Archie Bunker: You’d prefer if people were stabbed?

Now, those gun deaths don’t all get replaced with other deaths. You know it, I know it. But it can’t just go unsaid. But there’s enough people intentionally confusing the issue that you need to talk about all-cause mortality, even if only briefly.

On to funner things. Racial profiling doesn’t work. Isn’t that great? It’s so convenient when you can completely avoid a difficult ethical dilemma because the basic premises are unsound.

There’s a new panelist (or very rarely recurring), Brendan. He was talking about prison abolition, focusing mainly on the US. I tend to agree with most of what he was saying, but I don’t think the case has been made for abolishing prisons in all cases. And in his defence, he admits there aren’t any easy answers for “what about the murderers”.

I think there’s a lot to be said for adjusting the baseline, though. In Canada the default rate of imprisonment is only a fifth that of the US, with no ill effects. I’m lefty-progressive enough to think that the Canadian prison rate could stand to drop as well, but if you take it as it is that still leaves room to abolish 80% of American prisons. Or better yet, abolish half of prisons and release 80% of prisoners, so simultaneously fix the overcrowding problem.

Not only is it nice to avoid difficult ethical dilemmas when the premises are unsound, it’s also really nice when you can put them off because there’s a lot of fixing to be done before you even get close to encountering that dilemma.

Anyway, great show. But I think I now have three books I have to read, which I don’t know that I have time for. I’ll see how it goes.