Tuesday 10 August 2004

Pic of the day: Playing City of Heroes does not make me want to kill criminals in real life. I have wanted that since I was little. Sometimes more and sometimes less. My religion forbids me actually doing it, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing in principle, as long as the dirty work is left to the government. That's why we have government after all, to do the things we can't do personally. Like stealing, but I digress.

Summerhot bloodlust

I suppose the heat doesn't help in this matter: Lately I have given much thought to how we, as a society, ought to kill a lot more criminals. Lots and lots of them. Perhaps not all, but thousands.

My dream society is one in which the police is empowered to show up at 5 AM and search the house, and if they find a copy of Grand Theft Auto or its sequels and copycats, summarily execute the owner. After all, if GTA is not evil, evil has no meaning! Ahem.

Yeah, that's a pun on Bush and his assurance that he of all people is entrusted to define evil. I still think it makes a lot more sense to kill people who think evil is cool rather than random Arabs. There are good Arabs and bad Arabs, but there are no good people playing games where you are rewarded for killing off pedestrians. It's not that people become violent by playing such games, I have no opinion on that. But you cannot possibly enjoy that kind of game unless you somehow think evil is cool and fun and great. As if this planet was lacking in evil already.

OK, we should probably not kill them until they actually do something wrong. Fair is fair. But they bear close watching.

It's probably a good thing I am not president of the United States, although I am pretty sure a killing spree on the worst criminals at least would improve the economy dramatically: The 0.1% of the population that are the greatest lifestyle criminals destroy values corresponding to 4% of the nation's production. Each of them erases the work of 40 honest workers. That is not hard to believe when you add up the houses they break into and vandalize, the cars they steal and crash, the people they send to hospital and the disturbing effect of the fear they spread wherever they go. Imagine what we could save already if people no longer needed locks and alarms and handguns at home. It's not so hard to imagine ... I grew up in a society like that.

It would probably be a good thing if W. Bush wasn't president of the United States either. But that's another story.