Dustpile of history, sure, but gallows first. Bleeding out on the pavement is also acceptable.

Way too often, connected ("powerful") people manage to escape proper punishment, sometimes in the name of a "peaceful transition of power".

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thomassmith65 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A peaceful transition of power is nothing to sneer at. After a revolutionary change, they are rare.

	▲	martin-t 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		1) Not sneering at it but everything has a cost. If authoritarians get the impression that all their past offenses will be forgiven if they hold everyone hostage and negotiate well, then there's no risk for them. And it's disrespectful to the victims. There should be things you don't come back from. For example, if you imprison people for political reasons, the time they spent in prison should be added up, multiplied by a punitive constant (2-3) and given to the offenders. And if that is a just punishment (I believe it it), then not doing that to them is unjust. Simple as that. 2) We should be looking for ways how to have both a peaceful transition and just punishment for the offenders. Look at Unit 731 as an example ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 ). The people most responsible got away for free by skillful negotiation (immunity in exchange for data). Instead, the proposition should have been a) you give us the data and graciously accept your death penalty b) we repeat the experiments on you, nonlethal first. That's harsh and will make many people today recoil (because they've been indoctrinated into a 1-step moral system which seems to correlate with stability but injustice), but it's fair and just. They think those experiments were OK to perform on innocent people, so they are very much OK to perform on them (guilty people) by their own logic.

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lukan 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hm. I am not sure if a lynchmob and more blood would have helped the transition. The main important thing to the people was, that the wall was down and Stasi (secret police) out of power.

There has been prison time and the careers of anyone important connected to the Stasi ended.

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tialaramex 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a hard one. I can tell you something which doesn't work because the Americans have tried it twice so far. It won't work to say "Well, that was naughty, please don't do it again".

That silliness is how you get Jim Crow, it's how you got Trump 2.0

In a civilized country I can believe jail time would be good enough, but the US still uses capital punishment, so seems to me that if you want to be taken seriously some of those responsible have to be executed

In practice I remain doubtful that such an orderly transfer is likely. If there's chaos, for even a few days, that's how you get France's "Wild Purge" in the period when German withdrawal and Allied liberation are happening one town at a time. The accused are punished, sometimes even executed, without anything resembling due process.

	▲	martin-t 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The accused are punished, sometimes even executed, without anything resembling due process. I also don't like this but I wonder, if this is because the choice is between a) full punishment with less certainty of guilt now b) lenient or no punishment with high certainty of built later. The ideal would be to hold those people until they can be tried and punished in an orderly fashion. And in principle all you need for this is enough food to keep them alive, though in such situations, even that might be a luxury.

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potato3732842 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You need "a little bit" of politician/judge/enforcer lynching to keep the government in line the same way they make a big show of "a little bit" of kicking in people's doors at 4am to keep the peasants in line.

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martin-t 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a bad implementation?

Obviously, if you intend to abduct ("imprison") or kill ("execute") somebody as punishment, then you should have very high certainty they deserve that punishment. One of the methods of achieving that is giving them a chance to defend themselves ("court process").

I don't see any difference between individuals and monopolies on violence ("states") doing this, as long as they both have sufficient levels of certainty.

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lukan 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a bad implementation?"

Maybe because of your language?

"Bleeding out on the pavement is also acceptable."

	▲	martin-t 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because the optimum is a public process which proves their guilt beyond reasonable doubt so that every good person supports their punishment and has the confidence (certainty of guilt) to support it publicly. But if the choice is between no punishment and somebody gunning them down in the street or droning them, i prefer the latter. Court processes are useful when guilt is uncertain at first look and you want to increase certainty. But dictators and their close supporters, the certainty is often sufficient by nature of many their actions being public. Sometimes they literally go on TV and declare they're going to a foreign country to kill their people and take their land. At that point, it only becomes a matter of making sure you have the right person. And don't forget the victims. Many authoritarian regimes don't kill opposition outright (for various reasons) but imprison them instead. Such a victim knows many of the people (cops, judges, informants, etc.) responsible for / guilty of falsely imprisoning them. After a regime change, the victims go free and have often more knowledge of the offenses than can be proven to a court by the simply virtue of being there and therefore have more than enough confidence to deliver a just punishment.

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potato3732842 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>I don't see any difference between individuals and monopolies on violence ("states") doing this, as long as they both have sufficient levels of certainty.

This peasant is faulty. He's not indoctrinated enough. Someone nab him and send him for reeducation. /s