When economists attack: Death Penalty for hackers

Daniel writes “In what seems to be a completely serious article, Economist Steven E. Landsburg argues for the death penalty for computer hackers. This is what is dead wrong about materialism.”

July 21, 2005 by Uncategorized 3

You may also like...

3 Responses

  1. opaqueentity says:
    July 21, 2005 at 4:05 pm

    Does make some good points
    not that the death penalty is the right answer (and besides that’s not available in a lot of states is it?) but rather the point that the world has changed and the legal system needs to take that into account and create new laws and therefore new crimes to deal with such problems.

    Yes you can bring it down to a simple economic arguement about number of spam emails and viruses etc but even on an simple emotional level you know you’d want to see those guys dealt with.

    Reply
  2. Lee Hadden says:
    July 21, 2005 at 5:17 pm

    Nuke ’em till they glow, then use their asses for
    An interesting thesis. However, it can be logically followed to an even more interesting conclusion- nuclear war. If a vermiscriptor comes from Pakistan, and we kow what city, but don’t know who, we can apply the same logic by having the US drop a nuclear bomb on the city, thus getting rid of the hacker plus all his family and friends. If we apply the logic of human value to fellow Americans, we can also apply these values to foreigners who interfer with our commerce.
          Certianly it would be an interesting deterrence of mutually assured destruction, not to mention “shock and awe.”
          However, the economist doesn’t explore the other deterrence penalty, that is worse than death. What can be worse than death, you ask?
          Well, the NY Times had the suggestion that all hackers be sentenced to life imprisonment, and required to do hard labor of answering help desk requests from people with 2400 baud modems and Windows 98 operating systems. Believe me, that is a more powerful deterrent than execution.

    Reply
  3. flarecarrot says:
    July 21, 2005 at 7:07 pm

    Pfft
    Like we all haven’t wished for it…!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

LISNews Archives