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Even a single minute of my time wasted can not be un-done. So if you accept the arrow of time points forward and that no single action can ever be truly un-done there are some actions that are worse than others. And so it would be good to aim for the least harm done.

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Sure, some actions are more harmful than others. Killing a person is worse than imprisoning them indefinitely.

But the degree to which it is worse (and whether it is enough to ban the death penalty) seems quite subjective.

Seems to me that you could use an identical line of reasoning to conclude that prison sentences longer than N years should be banned.

Is it a matter of degree? Or is there something fundamentally different about the death penalty that warrants a ban?

Death is final, everything else is on a gradient, death is an absolute. So yes, it's fundamentally different. That's why we hold parties on New Years Eve to mark the passing of time but we also hold funeral wakes when someone dies.

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