Norwegian mass murderer faces just 21 years in prison

[Judge Jude]

Beck?

Nobody here flips onto more crazy radio guys - for sport - than I do (yesterday Michael Savage implied that Breitbart's death was no accident, lol), but I haven't run across him in many months.
And I don't think he's on TV, either.
If he's out of the NY-area market, ouch for him.

[Pauly]

inside a norwegian "prison"

[johnnya24]

I'm all for prison being an environment to reform and re-educate prisoners, but that seems a bit ridiculous ... but maybe that's a necessary price to pay for being a country that leads the world in practically every meaningful statistic (education, health care, per capita income etc). Would be interesting to see the re-conviction rates of their prisoners.

... although, that is probably not even part of the debate when you delve a little further into how people perceive prison and punishment in certain countries. Here is an excellent documentary into the death penalty and the science of killing ... it was analyzing the "best" way to kill a person who has been sentenced to death. One of the fascinating conclusions was that for many people/institutions/judicial-bodies who advocate the death penalty, that the prisoner losing their life wasn't enough ... they wanted them to suffer while dying.



In Northern Ireland the terrorists groups were allowed to run their parts of the prisons. As a consequence, most of the people I spoke to who have been to prison, didn't find it such a bad experience ... some enjoyed it ... and none really feared going back. In fact there are plenty of cases of people deliberately getting re-convicted so as to go back in. We were out on the town a couple of months back, and bumped into an ex-classmate of my brother in law ... he was out celebrating something with friends and family. Turns out he glassed a guy in a nightclub, and was going to jail for 6 months, and this was his going away party (just like the mob movies). Brother in law comes up to me later in the evening, and tells me that the guy just had a huge argument with his "missus" because she forgot to buy him a new Playstation 3 to take in with him. Poor basta*d ... I bit my tongue.

[Judge Jude]

devil's advocate play proffered:

"maybe that's a necessary price to pay for being a country that leads the world in practically every meaningful statistic (education, health care, per capita income etc)."

that seems like saying the best home run hitter in baseball is the guy who led Class A.

If you aren't able to defend yourselves militarily from a major attack, with the related expenses involved, can you be in a "best" conversation?

On the scale of "child" to "adolescent" to "adult," where does Norway rank?

Is it easier to manage an economy when you will rely on the kindness of strangers should things get rough?

Always wanted to hear comments to this, so as we say in NY/NJ, "I'll hang up and listen."

[Lucky]

devil's advocate play proffered:

"maybe that's a necessary price to pay for being a country that leads the world in practically every meaningful statistic (education, health care, per capita income etc)."

that seems like saying the best home run hitter in baseball is the guy who led Class A.

If you aren't able to defend yourselves militarily from a major attack, with the related expenses involved, can you be in a "best" conversation?

On the scale of "child" to "adolescent" to "adult," where does Norway rank?

Is it easier to manage an economy when you will rely on the kindness of strangers should things get rough?

Always wanted to hear comments to this, so as we say in NY/NJ, "I'll hang up and listen."

I hate to get into this, but it seems as though you are implying that if we didn't have to pay so much for our military that we would be ranked much higher in health care, education, per capita income, etc. Could you draw that causal connection for us?

Your post also seems to imply that our military spending is intended to make us able to defend ourselves militarily from a major attack. Instead, it seems our military spending is less for our own defense, and more as an instrument of foreign policy, at least since the Bush Doctrine. But, again, how would spending less on military improve our health care, education, per capita income, etc.? Unless you're saying that cuts and military spending should be used to upgrade our nation's health care and education, it seems to be a non sequitur. And one of our political parties specifically wants to keep the federal government out of education and health care.

I don't know why we don't see the USSR as a cautionary tale. They reached the point they couldn't afford their military, and it wreaked havoc on their economy. Maybe we're headed that way, too.

[johnnya24]

devil's advocate play proffered:

"maybe that's a necessary price to pay for being a country that leads the world in practically every meaningful statistic (education, health care, per capita income etc)."

that seems like saying the best home run hitter in baseball is the guy who led Class A.

If you aren't able to defend yourselves militarily from a major attack, with the related expenses involved, can you be in a "best" conversation?

On the scale of "child" to "adolescent" to "adult," where does Norway rank?

Is it easier to manage an economy when you will rely on the kindness of strangers should things get rough?

Always wanted to hear comments to this, so as we say in NY/NJ, "I'll hang up and listen."

In fairness all the Scandinavian countries punch well beyond their weight. But you are right that it's impossible to compare the logistical problems of governing a society with 60+ million people with that of 6-10 million. It would be great to follow the Finish educational model wherein the average student is light years ahead of students from larger developed nations by the time they are 11 years old ... but I'm not sure if it's logistically possible.

Who is going to attack Norway? Who is going to attack America for that matter?

That said, America's relation to it's military is much more complex than a simple matter of civil defense. America's need to have a massive military complex is probably more economic than military these days, especially with the massive decline of her private-sector manufacturing base. Nearly 1 million people are directly employed by the US military in one form or another, and $100's of billions of public money is ploughed into the private military industrial sector every year. You can't outsource military manufacturing for security purposes, so it's a good way to use public money to protect US jobs and promote technological innovation ... you could almost call the US attitude to its military as "socialist" (or Military Keynesian to be precise)

If the US decided to reduce it's military expenditure to a level that accurately reflected it's need for civil defense (as with Norway), the economy would tank in a big way.