Juries Require Volunteers
Serving on a jury may seem an inconvenience, but compared to what? Anarchy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_fear
An appeal to fear (also called argumentum ad metam or argumentum in terrorem) is a logical fallacy in which a person attempts to create support for his idea by increasing fear and prejudice toward a competitor. The appeal to fear is extremely common in marketing and politics.
Logic
This fallacy has the following argument form:
Either P or Q
Q is fearsome
Therefore, P is true.
The argument is invalid. The appeal to emotion is used in exploiting existing fears to create support for the speaker's proposal, namely P. Also, often the false dilemma fallacy is involved, suggesting P is the proposed idea's sole alternative.
I'm not afraid of anarchy. Plus, anarchy is not the only alternative. Jurors ought to be paid volunteers. After all, nobody needs to be drafted to have judges and police officers.
Complaining about jury duty when the government takes 50% of your money in taxes shows a lack of perspective […]
Liberty is more important than a paltry tax on tea.
Complaining about jury duty when the government takes 50% of your money in taxes shows a lack of perspective and doesn't endear principled minimalist politics to otherwise reasonable laymen.
Being openly atheist doesn't endear principled secular politics to otherwise reasonable Christians.
I have no sympathy for this man.
I have a lot of sympathy for this man. Alas, c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre: c'est de la folie. What he does is foolish, but at least he's right.
It deeply troubles me that so many people have such a negative attitude toward jury duty. It's the only time where you can actually do something that matters.
The only time? Is that hyperbole? Sounds like, "Let's draft all those youngsters into the army so they can do something useful for once in their lazy lives." So productive work doesn't matter?
The pursuit of justice matters, but it's obviously not the only thing that matters. If there's nothing produced, there's no need for justice, because everybody will starve anyway.
Besides, as every general will tell you, conscripts are useless. Even ignoring morality, it's a fact that forced labor is always inferior to voluntary action. You can't force people to think.
By whom will justice be served better, by paid volunteers or by unmotivated conscripts who think of the defendant, "Let's fry that punk, I wanna go home to my wife"?
