Should RANSOM be paid to Haitian kidnappers?

[Lumpenproletariat]

Instant gratification vs. long-term benefit


Here is another case where we have a choice: 1) Instant gratification regardless of the long-term consequences, or 2) long-term choice which is painful right now but more beneficial later when we would suffer the long-term consequences of the instant-gratification cost.



Two other examples of instant gratification vs. long-term benefit are that of climate change and the national debt.


• climate change

The short-term instant-gratification solution (#1) is to continue burning fossil fuels at the present rate (or near same rate) in order to enjoy our cheap energy now, which is sort-of a sure thing. While the long-term solution (#2) is to drastically reduce fossil fuel consumption now (meaning higher gas taxes) to make the short-term sacrifice, while seeking other energy sources (probably at higher cost), in order to preserve an environment suitable for future generations.


• national debt

The short-term instant-gratification solution (#1) is to continue running up trillion-$$$$ annual deficits, as we're choosing currently, all of which has to be paid back by future generations in higher taxes or still higher debt later (as we are currently paying costs from previous budget deficits 5 and 10 and 20 years ago), which are costs to be borne by future citizens who may be just as bad-off as we are today. While the long-term solution (#2) is to drastically cut this debt now, meaning we must drastically cut spending programs and also sharply increase taxes, requiring sacrifice by all of us now.


(The long-term solution in both of the above includes higher gas taxes and higher taxes on utilities which rely on coal-generated energy.)


And likewise the choice whether to pay the kidnappers is an instant-gratification vs. long-term benefit choice: the short-term solution (#1) is to give in to instant gratification and just pay the $17 million, which no one individual now will feel but will result in more kidnappings in the future and future ransoms. While the long-term response (#2) is to refuse to pay the ransom, risking the lives of the victims, but leading to fewer such kidnappings and ransom demands in the future, and thus less long-term suffering.


Overall, these choices are currently being decided in favor of the short-term instant-gratification alternative. The U.S.A. is currently disgracing itself before the world and history with its short-sighted choices, stampeded by the demagogues/fanatics of both the Red and Blue crusades.

 

[Enigma]

Obviously, the optimal solution is to give all of the Haitian kidnappers Work Visas so that they can immigrate to the US and do jobs that the crybaby locals want to get paid more to do.

We could probably ensure that we get possession of the hostages when they arrive in the US by requiring them to declare any hostages in Customs as animal products, disease agents, and/or commercial merchandise depending upon the exact situation.

 

[Patooka]

stampeded by the demagogues/fanatics of both the Red and Blue crusades.

Fuck your "both sides" condemnation. One side decided that masks and vaccines are evil in the middle of a global health crisis. Do you need help identifying which one?

One side has openly admitted (quite frequently) that if more people are entitled to vote in the government that dictates them, they will lose. Do you need help identifying which one?

Are you that confused? You don't think that there is one "side" that is only motivated by instant gratification? If you're that confused, I have a red baseball cap to sell you.

 

[Politesse]

By "instant gratification" I assume you mean that the kidnapped individuals will live? I'm not sure those kidnapped would necessarily agree that the remainder of their natural should be considered merely a short term benefit. Out of curiosity, what do you think the response to the situation should be? I mean, I see where you have said not the pay the ransom, but do you mean that we should just ignore the situation and let the people in question die having taken no action at all?

 

[ZiprHead]

I'm beginning to see that Lumpen's posts are clearly displaying sociopathic tendencies.

 

[Elixir]

Lumpen's peculiarities aside, I was thinking about it... "missionaries"? Did they come to spread plague, convert people to Christianity, kill and plunder or just act obnoxiously nice in the face of people immersed in unspeakable hardship? Were they sponsored by a Church that was hoping to gain converts to their Faith? What exactly WAS their "mission"? If this was an effort undertaken by a church/religion, maybe that church/religion should dip into its tax-exempt cash flow and pay the ransom.

 

[Politesse]

Lumpen's peculiarities aside, I was thinking about it... "missionaries"? Did they come to spread plague, convert people to Christianity, kill and plunder or just act obnoxiously nice in the face of people immersed in unspeakable hardship? Were they sponsored by a Church that was hoping to gain converts to their Faith? What exactly WAS their "mission"? If this was an effort undertaken by a church/religion, maybe that church/religion should dip into its tax-exempt cash flow and pay the ransom.

Haiti is perennially plagued by mostly Protestant Christian groups from the US doing "mission projects", usually doing things like building a house, planting trees, etc., while trying to rescue the locals from the evils of Catholicism and/or Vodou. This particular group is quite large, and does a fair amount of business organizing such trips for smaller individual churches across North America, you can read more on their website if perversely curious. They are also responsible for many of the evangelistic billboards you often see along American and Canadian freeways.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Lumpen's peculiarities aside, I was thinking about it... "missionaries"? Did they come to spread plague, convert people to Christianity, kill and plunder or just act obnoxiously nice in the face of people immersed in unspeakable hardship? Were they sponsored by a Church that was hoping to gain converts to their Faith? What exactly WAS their "mission"? If this was an effort undertaken by a church/religion, maybe that church/religion should dip into its tax-exempt cash flow and pay the ransom.

Agreed. These missionaries took a baby with them and two other kids under the age of 10. Are you kidding? Putting kids in such a dangerous situation is crazy.

 

[Jarhyn]

Lumpen's peculiarities aside, I was thinking about it... "missionaries"? Did they come to spread plague, convert people to Christianity, kill and plunder or just act obnoxiously nice in the face of people immersed in unspeakable hardship? Were they sponsored by a Church that was hoping to gain converts to their Faith? What exactly WAS their "mission"? If this was an effort undertaken by a church/religion, maybe that church/religion should dip into its tax-exempt cash flow and pay the ransom.

Agreed. These missionaries took a baby with them and two other kids under the age of 10. Are you kidding? Putting kids in such a dangerous situation is crazy.

...

So, I hadn't read much about this but yeah, if they were on a mission for their church their church has executive responsibility for their wellbeing, and legal responsibility for their malfeasance over the mission details, namely the involvement of children.

 

[jab]

Ransom the baby only--it did not chose to take the risk.

 

[Jarhyn]

Ransom the baby only--it did not chose to take the risk.

Free the baby for free, only, you mean?

 

[bilby]

National debt isn't like any other kind of debt in any important ways. It doesn't ever have to be paid off; It's never going to burden future generations. To discuss it as though it were in any way similar to a personal or household debt is to declare yourself incompetent to hold any useful opinion about economics.

"National debt" is called 'debt' because it looks like a debt to accountants.

A better term (for that small subset of people who don't fetishise double entry bookkeeping) might, perhaps, be 'money supply', but that term is already in use elsewhere, and would still cause confusion (though it would be difficult to cause more confusion than is evidently caused by the word 'debt' in this context).

The national debt isn't a liability that will, one day, fall upon our descendants to repay. It's just the difference between how much money has been created, and how much has been destroyed.

Paying off the national debt would be indistinguishable from destroying all the money.

Not only is paying off the national debt an insane and destructive idea that could never be implemented; Even just stopping that "debt" from growing would be a massive disaster (and likely impossible to achieve anyway), in a growing economy.

Fuckwitted politicians who think the national debt is basically like a credit card bill that will need to be paid sooner or later are a menace to civilisation. The collapse of the UK since the 1990s is largely attributable to this insane obsession with the idea that you can and should stop increasing the national debt. You can't and shouldn't. Because it's not a debt in anything but name.

Creating and sustaining the 'national debt' is like paying a ransom to kidnappers in the exact same way that a bowl of petunias is like a supernova: Not at all. Why do libertarians and right-wingers suck so badly at analogies? Or is it that their incompetence with analogy leads them to their counterfactual and bizarre political positions?

 

[TSwizzle]

Instant gratification vs. long-term benefit


Here is another case where we have a choice: 1) Instant gratification regardless of the long-term consequences, or 2) long-term choice which is painful right now but more beneficial later when we would suffer the long-term consequences of the instant-gratification cost.

I don't see how paying the ransom or not paying the ransom has any consequences for me at all. Who is this "we" you speak of anyway?

That reminds me, did "we" ever get the girls back from Boko haram?

 

[Playball40]

Ransom the baby only--it did not chose to take the risk.

Free the baby for free, only, you mean?

I doubt any of the children did.

 

[Jarhyn]

National debt isn't like any other kind of debt in any important ways. It doesn't ever have to be paid off; It's never going to burden future generations. To discuss it as though it were in any way similar to a personal or household debt is to declare yourself incompetent to hold any useful opinion about economics.

"National debt" is called 'debt' because it looks like a debt to accountants.

A better term (for that small subset of people who don't fetishise double entry bookkeeping) might, perhaps, be 'money supply', but that term is already in use elsewhere, and would still cause confusion (though it would be difficult to cause more confusion than is evidently caused by the word 'debt' in this context).

The national debt isn't a liability that will, one day, fall upon our descendants to repay. It's just the difference between how much money has been created, and how much has been destroyed.

Paying off the national debt would be indistinguishable from destroying all the money.

Not only is paying off the national debt an insane and destructive idea that could never be implemented; Even just stopping that "debt" from growing would be a massive disaster (and likely impossible to achieve anyway), in a growing economy.

Fuckwitted politicians who think the national debt is basically like a credit card bill that will need to be paid sooner or later are a menace to civilisation. The collapse of the UK since the 1990s is largely attributable to this insane obsession with the idea that you can and should stop increasing the national debt. You can't and shouldn't. Because it's not a debt in anything but name.

Creating and sustaining the 'national debt' is like paying a ransom to kidnappers in the exact same way that a bowl of petunias is like a supernova: Not at all. Why do libertarians and right-wingers suck so badly at analogies? Or is it that their incompetence with analogy leads them to their counterfactual and bizarre political positions?

So really, it is "our debt to the void from which we took the abstraction of value."

 

[bilby]

National debt isn't like any other kind of debt in any important ways. It doesn't ever have to be paid off; It's never going to burden future generations. To discuss it as though it were in any way similar to a personal or household debt is to declare yourself incompetent to hold any useful opinion about economics.

"National debt" is called 'debt' because it looks like a debt to accountants.

A better term (for that small subset of people who don't fetishise double entry bookkeeping) might, perhaps, be 'money supply', but that term is already in use elsewhere, and would still cause confusion (though it would be difficult to cause more confusion than is evidently caused by the word 'debt' in this context).

The national debt isn't a liability that will, one day, fall upon our descendants to repay. It's just the difference between how much money has been created, and how much has been destroyed.

Paying off the national debt would be indistinguishable from destroying all the money.

Not only is paying off the national debt an insane and destructive idea that could never be implemented; Even just stopping that "debt" from growing would be a massive disaster (and likely impossible to achieve anyway), in a growing economy.

Fuckwitted politicians who think the national debt is basically like a credit card bill that will need to be paid sooner or later are a menace to civilisation. The collapse of the UK since the 1990s is largely attributable to this insane obsession with the idea that you can and should stop increasing the national debt. You can't and shouldn't. Because it's not a debt in anything but name.

Creating and sustaining the 'national debt' is like paying a ransom to kidnappers in the exact same way that a bowl of petunias is like a supernova: Not at all. Why do libertarians and right-wingers suck so badly at analogies? Or is it that their incompetence with analogy leads them to their counterfactual and bizarre political positions?

So really, it is "our debt to the void from which we took the abstraction of value."

Yup. And paying it off would return all value to the void, which strikes me as a bad plan.

Particularly as the void is unlikely to ever send the bailiff around.

 

[Toni]

OK, but suppose these were health care workers, providing basic health care to rural Haitians who had no other access to basic health care needs. Suppose they are teaching Haitian people to read.

Do you feel differently about people who are providing humanitarian aid to impoverished people with little access to education or health care? Suppose these are Peace Corps workers. Would you ransom them?

 

[Jarhyn]

National debt isn't like any other kind of debt in any important ways. It doesn't ever have to be paid off; It's never going to burden future generations. To discuss it as though it were in any way similar to a personal or household debt is to declare yourself incompetent to hold any useful opinion about economics.

"National debt" is called 'debt' because it looks like a debt to accountants.

A better term (for that small subset of people who don't fetishise double entry bookkeeping) might, perhaps, be 'money supply', but that term is already in use elsewhere, and would still cause confusion (though it would be difficult to cause more confusion than is evidently caused by the word 'debt' in this context).

The national debt isn't a liability that will, one day, fall upon our descendants to repay. It's just the difference between how much money has been created, and how much has been destroyed.

Paying off the national debt would be indistinguishable from destroying all the money.

Not only is paying off the national debt an insane and destructive idea that could never be implemented; Even just stopping that "debt" from growing would be a massive disaster (and likely impossible to achieve anyway), in a growing economy.

Fuckwitted politicians who think the national debt is basically like a credit card bill that will need to be paid sooner or later are a menace to civilisation. The collapse of the UK since the 1990s is largely attributable to this insane obsession with the idea that you can and should stop increasing the national debt. You can't and shouldn't. Because it's not a debt in anything but name.

Creating and sustaining the 'national debt' is like paying a ransom to kidnappers in the exact same way that a bowl of petunias is like a supernova: Not at all. Why do libertarians and right-wingers suck so badly at analogies? Or is it that their incompetence with analogy leads them to their counterfactual and bizarre political positions?

So really, it is "our debt to the void from which we took the abstraction of value."

Yup. And paying it off would return all value to the void, which strikes me as a bad plan.

Particularly as the void is unlikely to ever send the bailiff around.

If that's the case, they can absolutely be the change they want to see in the world and I won't stop them.

 

[Gun Nut]

I vote #3 - Pay the hostages a modest reward for removing "missionaries" from the genetic pool... at least pay their costs.

 

[Coleman Smith]

No ransom because it only encourages future kidnapping.