Economics and the Value of Death
This is written from Huntsville, Texas. To much of the world we have one, and only one local distinction. Unfortunately it is not the largest statue of and American hero (Sam Houston). It is because in this city Texas performs more executions than in any other place in the free world.
Because human beings are uniquely economic-minded creatures I'll point out why this is important.
It is preposterous to call execution the "death penalty". It is preposterous because if you accept that term you have lost your case for civility up front. The point of punishment is the achievement of penitence, hence the term "penitentiary". This term is indicative of a societal desire to induce among those who have done great harm a sense of remorse so they would turn from their dark path to a path of light. Penitence and remorse are absolutes, spiritual qualities religious in nature. They are irrelevant in corpses. If you base your argument for the "death penalty" in religious principles you lose. Period.
But, in fact, what we call punishment actually serves an economic purpose difficult to achieve in the nominal marketplace of human transactions. The economic purpose of crime is to gain the product of work without the cost of work. One of those products is power- the leverage to gain at will the product of the labor of others, and to sense that one's own value is greater than that of others as well. This is a particularly important point in light of the recent execution of Saddam Hussein. Societies that fail to place a damper on this sort of activity suffer something equivalent to a short-circuit in an electrical device. A great deal of potential is used up not doing useful work. Economically, punishment works like the insulator coating electric wire, placing a high cost on what perpetrators desire to be a low cost short-circuit, in the hope that they will choose to labor more productively.
For a moment let's go back to that notion about value- that one can gain from one's crime a sense of one's value in relation to the value of another. Human beings place a great deal of stock in dominance. It is a bequest from our animal nature. We will pay a high price for the appearance of dominance. The question is- will society play along? If society acknowledges that the value of the life of an innocent human being is worth only a number of years of confinement for that person's killer society has played along. The killer's combination of audacity and viciousness is rewarded by the killer being valued more highly than the inoffensive or the innocent.
In Texas, though, we have chosen to place a logical high value on the innocent. Like an auto lost to a car wreck or a house lost to a fire, a human life should have a lasting latent value. That value, logically, is redeemable only in a coin of like value.
One can actually use worldly money as a means of balancing losses of things less than a whole life, and that has a corollary in time lost to imprisonment, but a life itself is an infinity to that one person who loses it. To value it in an earthly coin or in time demeans innocence, honest living, and life itself, and rewards viciousness with easy extra value. In Texas we demand that a life be worth a life. Here your daring to kill me does not automatically make you worth more than I am worth as it does in much of the Western world.
Sounds a little dry, doesn't it? Not very transcendent. Be that as it may killers are basically stupid as regards airy thoughts like spirituality and transcendence. On the other hand if they think a life costs them twenty years in a place full of tough guys that's different from thinking a life costs them a LIFE, something of which most stupid people know they only have one.
One might also ask about "forgiveness". First, it is a blatantly religious principle, extremely subjective, and as such is an easy mark for manipulation. Because of that it is also, secondly, a violation of the certainty that keeps us from, at a whim, attempting to violate laws of nature. People don't have the sneaking suspicion that they can escape the consequences of gravity, so even the vast majority of teenagers are not foolish enough to try. Enough of them die when they do try that the rest are suitably chastened. (So far the Supreme Court has not yet overruled God on this point.) Even teenagers see a high cost to doing nothing more than violating nature’s order. Most are unwilling to risk that unescapable price.
In our society we are quick to talk about the "value" of life, but slow to be clear what we mean by that term. An eye need not be worth an eye. But its value should be crystal clear. Then, as with gravity or the price tag at Wal Mart, the cost of a violation will stare the potential perpetrator in the face.
It is pretty simple economics that no person should be worth more than another person in the eyes of the law. There is no substitute for life. Nor should there be a discount on the extinction of one person when we get around to redeeming that person’s latent value on someone who sought to steal their life for free.
