1037: A Perfect World

[Bucho]

Nothing wrong with funny and argumentative, or even sillygoose, but in the past I remember him being an adult about it, not being so disruptive and ADD unfocused like a giggly 8 year old schoolgirl who's just drunk four bottles of coke and eaten three candy bars. I still laughed at a bunch of things he said but when Keith was calling out his annoyingness I totally got it.

[jig123]

Originally Posted by jig123

Never mind Chemda and PMS, Victor you made my poor ears bleed.......

It was my best period joke i could thinkof at the time. Seriously fuuuuucccck you, my thoughts are that both Chemda and Keith come from a good place and Victor was just a 'white' noise.

[Junkenstein]

Thinking about it, i have the feeling that Victor gets nervous and awkward when his past with Chemda pops up, where both Keith and Chemda do not skip a beat. But maybe i'm making it up.

[archicat]

Totally forgot about this story until earlier but one of my american friends got arrested for stealing from Walmart. It was somewhere in Pennsylvania and while he's not really the thieving type he'd hooked up with some girl one night and took her home. Realising he had no condoms he went to Walmart to get some. Turns out he only had enough money for a small box, of which he couldn't find any of or they'd run out of (not sure which) so he'd opened one of the big multi-pack boxes to steal a few from there. Then from what I remember someone saw him and called the police; he was arrested and prosecuted. Sentence was pretty strict too; I think he was put on probation for a year and had to pay a $2000 fine.

...and apparently he never even hooked up with the girl in the end. It was an unfortunate series of events.

[marina]

Originally Posted by kissmisskate

Thought from a retail worker: The store I work at is an old heritage building in one of the skeezier parts of town, just a block away from the Salvation army, shelter, and needle exchange. We get a lot of crack addicts and iffy people walking through the doors, and more than a few have pushed right past me on the way out with their arms full of things. All I can say is they don't pay me enough to do security for their store; it shouldn't be my job to fold the towels AND stop the shoplifters. And while it does piss me off to see people get away, in the end it's not my shit they're taking, and it's not coming out of my wages at the end of the day.

I can't imagine the atmosphere in that store already in order for a gang of middle-aged women to beat someone to death.

When I worked at blockbuster, there was a fairly crazy, giant, black, one-eyed homeless man that lived in the neighborhood in a scary-looking Winnebago that he would park in our parking lot.

One of our managers confronted him about his stealing from our store, and he had a vendetta against her for it, to the extent that he showed up at the blockbuster saying he had a knife, telling the employees who had locked themselves inside to send her out or he would come in and stab them too.

That kind of threat against someone's life should garner jail time, but I continued to see him around the neighborhood for the rest of the time I worked there.

This is why it is unwise to confront shoplifters. For the cost of the 1 or 3 movies a month that he would steal from us, he was absolutely willing to murder the manager and harm anyone that got in his way.

And, along the lines of GirlNextDoor's comment about the employees stealing the most, the other time a blockbuster I worked at was under-seige by a theif making threats of violence I was working with the ex-girlfriend of an old manager that got fired for stealing when he parked his car outside the store and spent the better part of an hour calling the store and her cell phone threatening her and cussing her out. I remember trying to get her to call the cops on him since she was the manager on duty, but I think she didn't and he finally went away.

Originally Posted by archicat

Totally forgot about this story until earlier but one of my american friends got arrested for stealing from Walmart. It was somewhere in Pennsylvania and while he's not really the thieving type he'd hooked up with some girl one night and took her home. Realising he had no condoms he went to Walmart to get some. Turns out he only had enough money for a small box, of which he couldn't find any of or they'd run out of (not sure which) so he'd opened one of the big multi-pack boxes to steal a few from there. Then from what I remember someone saw him and called the police; he was arrested and prosecuted. Sentence was pretty strict too; I think he was put on probation for a year and had to pay a $2000 fine.

...and apparently he never even hooked up with the girl in the end. It was an unfortunate series of events.

I knew a guy that worked at CVS and he said their unofficial store policy was not to prosecute condom theft, but he was kind of a liar so I wouldn't be surprised if that was untrue.

[Junkenstein]

I dont understand one small point: there was a lot of people who were on Keith's side when he talked about his idea of justice, and now that he simply was coherent with his views everyone is acting so shocked. I'm still on his side, as i was with the idea of "Keith's justice". If the Wal-Mart case was as it was presented when they first read about it (a woman beaten for shoplifting), his point is just coherent with the idea of a society with stern rules applied with no exceptions.

I'd rather live in a world with less freedom and more sanity than one where everyone is free but people act like savage animals without consequences. And people will do that if you let them. There's too many people who think that you can make compromises in a civilized society, but it does not work like that.

[Bucho]

Originally Posted by Junkenstein

If the Wal-Mart case was as it was presented when they first read about it (a woman beaten for shoplifting), his point is just coherent with the idea of a society with stern rules applied with no exceptions.

In Keith's justice you know the consequences ahead of time because they're legislated but in the case of the Chinese woman it was unsanctioned vigilantism. The fact that the story as told on the show made incorrect assumptions has muddied the issue a little but that's what the difference is for me.

As things appear to stand now though the Chinese woman's story is about the potential for dangerous retardedness in vigilantism, not the perils of comitting theft.

[Junkenstein]

Originally Posted by Bucho

As things appear to stand now though the Chinese woman's story is about the potential for dangerous retardedness in vigilantism, not the perils of comitting theft.

Yes, the story is quite different now, and that's a possible (actually quite probable) developing of absolutist justice. But as it first appeared it sounded like a concrete application of a brutal punishment for a crime, made to atrike fear in the heart of people. Whioch is kind of what the whole "Justice" issue was about. If it was only a threat without any actual concrete punishment, it would be pointless, right?

And everyone, please, remember that i've been arrested for drunk driving once. I would be dead now. But deservedly so.

[Bucho]

Originally Posted by Junkenstein

But as it first appeared it sounded like a concrete application of a brutal punishment for a crime, made to strike fear in the heart of people. Which is kind of what the whole "Justice" issue was about. If it was only a threat without any actual concrete punishment, it would be pointless, right?

And everyone, please, remember that i've been arrested for drunk driving once. I would be dead now. But deservedly so.

Yeah it was the application of a brutal punishment for a (minor) crime but it's not how Keith's Justice works. In Keith's Justice the point is people know the consequences are deadly and make their decisions based on this. This hardore application of the law is a deterrent, it's the fence at the top of the cliff to try to stop people falling into the deadly ocean of criminal activity below. In the Chinese shopkeepers' case (if we stick to the original assumption of guilt) the shoplifter didn't know the consequences would be death so the deterrent wasn't as powerful as it could have been.

Ask yourself this Junk, would you have driven drunk if the sentence for breaking that law was capital punishment?

[Junkenstein]

Originally Posted by Bucho

Yeah it was the application of a brutal punishment for a (minor) crime but it's not how Keith's Justice works. In Keith's Justice the point is people know the consequences are deadly and make their decisions based on this. This hardore application of the law is a deterrent, it's the fence at the top of the cliff to try to stop people falling into the deadly ocean of criminal activity below. In the Chinese shopkeepers' case (if we stick to the original assumption of guilt) the shoplifter didn't know the consequences would be death so the deterrent wasn't as powerful as it could have been.

Ask yourself this Junk, would you have driven drunk if the sentence for breaking that law was capital punishment?

I agree with that, i'm saying that the bare bones of that is the concept of capital punishment for even a small crime. But, yeah, the woman did not know. I thought about it, and it is true. That's the problem with China's hyper-stern idea of government. To call up another example, they have beaten to death a kid in one of their "Internet addiction" clinics.

Concerning me, back then i would have probably done what i did even if i knew i could be executed for it (the point of my drinking was not giving a fuck about anything). So, i would definitely have deserved death.