Comment by hdhxbsbsbshs
12 hours ago
The only way to achieve higher levels of competence is to enforce higher levels of accountability. Over the last couple of years Spain has suffered major infrastructural catastrophes without any leadership being held accountable at all. It’s not unreasonable to consider jail time or even capital punishment for such gross negligence.
> It’s not unreasonable to consider jail time or even capital punishment for such gross negligence.
It is entirely unreasonable to consider capital punishment.
* an eye for an eye solves nothing - it doesn't bring dead people back to life, it just results in another person killed
* it's not an effective deterrent, it won't change how people act more than the risk of jail-time will
* it's unethical. It sounds like 'justice' if your idea of justice is simple retribution, but it completely undermines the concept of redemption - it advocates treating people as unfixable and unable to atone for their 'sins' and instead of limiting the pain and suffering - it spreads pain to more people
* no system is perfectly and inevitable you will end up punishing somebody with death based on faulty / flawed evidence that only later comes to light as being flawed/faulty. You can't bring a dead person back to life and say "sorry we got it wrong"
* finally - and perhaps most critically - tragedies such as these are almost the result of failures across an entire system with 10s, 100s, sometimes 1000s of people each culpable to varying degrees with many 'sliding doors' moments where such a tragedy could have been avoided had a different decision been taken. Sure you can always simplify things and point to the symbolic figurehead and say they are ultimately accountable and should take the ultimate responsibility for the group's failure (bonus points if in doing so you highlight how well paid they are to take on such a responsibility). But what you'll arrive at isn't justice and higher standards - instead you'll just have another dead person, killed in cold blood and the generic hope that somehow that additional death will act as a stronger driver of change than the already very real deaths that occurred in the tragedy itself.
> or even capital punishment
You lost me at that part. It is entirely unreasonable to consider that in the vast majority of the world, where state-sanctioned killing of citizens has been abolished.
The OP wrote:
> capital punishment for such gross negligence
"gross negligence" is a very specific legal test.
> Gross negligence is a lack of care that demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people's rights to safety. Gross negligence is a heightened degree of negligence representing an extreme departure from the ordinary standard of care. Falling between intent to do wrongful harm and ordinary negligence, gross negligence is defined as willful, wanton, and reckless conduct affecting the life or property or another.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/gross_negligence
Your viewpoint sounds good in argument on forums, and I'm sure it scores you points.
But there's a reason they used to execute people in the public square.
And people flocked to watch executions - for entertainment.
Capital punishment has never been about deterrence, nor has it ever been an effective deterrent.
But that reason wasn't good.
Tell that to the relatives of the dead. What you said was true and today is true. But will it be true tomorrow?
At least the people responsible for wasting about a quarter billion euros on trains that are too wide for Spains train tunnels seem to have resigned.
The history was a little more complex than that. The trains were not too wide, they were the right legal size where ordered.
The problem is while the trains were being built, the laws changed, requiring now extra space between trains and tunnels to evacuate people.
The only solution would be to dump all the trains and start from scratch in a new design for narrower trains that still keep the same comfort and safety levels. This is not realistic.
If you order a car that has legally given the green light to be built in 2026, the government can't say in 2027 that your car must had measured 1m less. Would be unfair for buyer and maker. Unless the government can show a very solid reason, they must accept the car model for the expected years of car life. This is why we still can drive legally cars with no airbags, and with toy seat belts. Cars that no way would be accepted to be built today.
Who ordered the trains was doing everything right, the problem was created by who changed the specifications in the middle of the process.
Is resignation a true restitution for wasting a quarter billion euros? Is the tax payer made whole?
its not only in spain where this type of issues have been on the uptick. people not getting jailed can be indicative also of the whole story not being told.
We don't tolerate capital punishment as society, keep walking cowboy.