It is true that expanding the death penalty does provide additional work for lawyers, but I suppose a truly rational economist might balance out the monetary costs of extra death penalty cases and appeals in the system, versus the amount of moneys saved from financial fraud through deterrence, and if you could save a few bucks, and you were quite liberal with pulling the switch or releasing the gas pellet or hwatever your preferred method of dispatching human beings is, it would be “worth it” in the end; society would be welathier and better off.

I sometimes think that society is heading towards exapanding the range of death penalty eligible cases, that limiting the executioner’s block to just plain murder is old hat, and that people might think we ought to get “really tough” on crime by not allowing criminals to luxuriate for a few decades in prisons.

Would there be any hesitation, however, if it were just about money, that a human life is maybe not worth taking over money? or is money maybe even more important than human life, or if not more important, at least equal to it? I don’t necessarily mean to imply that is an irrational view; we give up bits of our lives all along by working, we may go to war over money, men live and die over their fortunes. Why not execute over money?