From Birth to Death

As I said before, the trouble with the pill is that it's not 100% effective, and it's not effective at all if you don't use it. There is nothing wrong with passing out free pills, but vasectomies and tubal litigations are more reliable. Vasectomies can  sometimes be reversed, I'm not sure about tubal litigations. There would be no way to prevent somebody from taking the money and then attempting to have the operation reversed, so my plan isn't 100% foolproof either.

I'm not sure how much we'd have to pay people to make this option attractive, but not too attractive.  We don't want everybody to do this, but I think we should offer it to everybody to avoid being charged with racism or genocide or something like that. If it looks like too many people are choosing the option, we could reduce the payment and vice versa. The program could be financed with a bond issue because it will save money in the long run. We just have to make sure they apply the savings to paying off the bonds instead of diverting the money to some other program.  

I don't think it's a good idea for anybody under the age of 18 to have a baby, married or not, but we can't offer the option to minors because they are not legally capable of making a decision like this. All we can do is give them pills, rubbers, and things like that and hope for the best. Speaking of rubbers, when did they start calling them "condoms"? That  must have been one of the language changes they slipped in when I was out of the country back in the 60s.

Michigan was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to abolish the death penalty, way back in the 19th Century. Legend has it that this initiative was the result of a popular saloon keeper being executed for killing his wife, who was not so popular. For whatever reason, we haven't had the death penalty for a long time, and nobody seems to miss it. I think that what motivates most people to advocate the death penalty is simple revenge. While I agree that there are certain people who deserve to die for their crimes, I think that the death penalty is more trouble than it's worth. With all the endless appeals, there is a good chance the guy will die of old age before he gets executed. Then there's the chance that he might be innocent, and you can't undo death.

I once read a short story by some famous Russian author called "Seven Who Were Hanged". It was about these six people, who were caught conspiring to assassinate a government official, plus one other guy who was arrested on an unrelated charge and thrown in with them. As the title implies, they all were hanged in the end but, before that, an interesting point was brought out. The government official was informed of the plot and assured that it had indeed been foiled. They told him the exact day and time that the assassination had been planned to happen, and assured him again that it wasn't going to happen now. Nevertheless, as the appointed hour approached, the official got more and more nervous. When the clock struck the hour, his heart leaped and a shudder shook his whole body. From this experience, he concluded that killing a person is not nearly as inhumane as telling him ahead of time when he is going to die. This epiphany, however, did not inspire him to extend clemency to the conspirators.