As someone who was using Steam 15 years ago, reading comments like this feels like entering the twilight zone.
Does no one remember Steam selling broken games you couldn’t return? Removing games from your library arbitrarily or any of the other shady shit they pulled before the EU and Australia rolled out regulations to stop them? The only reason Steam treats customers with a modicum of respect is that it is legally required to do so.
Our whole civilization is a fundamentally asymptotic project. The same way that artists, scholars, and athletes are never satisfied. It’s the human condition.
That said, your claim that
morality has no place in a justice system
is such a basic misunderstanding of the entire point of human civilization, I’d be curious to hear what you think we’re doing when we debate and pass laws.
Yes, it does mean there was an injustice. Any discrepancy between the moral outcome and the legal one is an injustice. Civilization is the struggle to reduce or reconcile that massive dichotomy.
The morally ideal outcome for rapists is instant death. That’s impractical (since it would endanger victims, for instance, and make people upset). So we have optimum alternatives.
You’re misinterpreting my claim. The optimific outcome, the one that results in the most moral good, is the death of the rapist. Literally. If a law of the universe caused rapists to be instantly struck dead, this would be best.
The different normative question of what we should do (by definition, morally speaking) is also a practical one, exactly as you said.
The purpose of my original claim is to highlight the distance between the morally optimal outcome (simpliciter) and the justice system.
While the criticisms are correct, they’re also missing the important context that historically, the sin was heavily associated with hoarding or consuming extravagant amounts while leaving others to go hungry.