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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

Still not a great system unfortunately. Time based punishments still disproportionately punish the poor who have less of it.

Suffering based punishments hurt everyone equally, they don’t waste a person’s time they could be contributing something positive to the world and can be scaled to fit the crime. One hell of a deterrent too.

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Entirely true. There are crimes, particularly ones against the body politic, where it a reasonable disincentive on top of the reparative justice of paying for cleanup, though. Reparations are still important--but those reparations will just not raise enough of a threat to prevent it from being done again. Adding some blood is really the only option.

Because, candidly, the poor aren't dumping toxic waste in factory quantities.

Suffering-based punishments disproportionately punish the chronically unhappy, who have less non-suffering.

> One hell of a deterrent too.

Psychology says no.

Wait, are you advocating torture?

Sorta? I say this only speaking for myself. Given the option between a jail or prison sentence and receiving corporeal punishment I would take the latter always. I draw the line at anything that causes permanent harm or actual torture (which is an "I know it when I see it kinda thing.")

Things that would be absolutely miserable but I would do.

* Physical exertion like having to run suicides.

* Being forced to stand in an uncomfortable position hours.

* Being belted/caned/shocked so many times.

* Forced labor.

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