The content of book one was fairly sparse in regards to Utopia actual policies for governing its society, but I managed to distill the main ideas of book 1
Idea: punishment of thieves: In Utopia, instead of thieves being killed (as is the custom in England) they are instead put to work on public work projects and given much leniency, as well as an opportunity to learn from their previous errors.
Opinion: I think this is an excellent idea, from a purely pragmatic perspective, a dead thief is no use to anyone, but an enslaved thief can at least be used to benefit the society he stole from. Punishment scaled to the crime in general is also a better policy option as I agree with the notion that death penalties for crimes only encourage lesser criminal to go for broke commit more heinous crimes than they normally would, simply because the punishment is the same.
Idea: King’s Wealth: A king should only be allowed to have so much gold in his coffers at a time, promoting the circulation of money serving as a check on corruption and graff.
Opinion: Another good idea, money is the root of all evil and all that, history does not shed a favorable light on large sums of money in the hands of an administration and this policy helps to shift the focus of the monarch from his own decadence to the welfare of his people.
Idea: War=Bad: Fairly simple idea; princes needs lots of money to wage war (the above idea prevents war by the way) and must there fore take advantage of his citizenry, allowing crops to spoil, lives to be lost, livestock to die, all at the expense of acquiring new territory that will most likely reject this new ruler anyways (these princes clearly have not read Machiavelli), a lose-lose situation.
Opinion: If the above tone wasn’t enough of a hint, yes, I think war is bad for the above reasons, not much else is really necessary to say…
3 comments:
I agree with most of your ideas in Book 1. The punishment of thieves by making them work in society is good because they are punished for wrong-doing, but if they are made to do this for the rest of their lives, then wouldn't this become much like slavery? As long as this didn't get too out of hand and the punishment wasn't cruel or unusual, then this would be far better than death. Also, only giving the king limited money is a good idea because of power issues. Too much power=not good. This was one of the points I did not include in mine. Good job.
Oh Nick, I agree with you on everything besides the set money for the King. To go with the idea of the thieves, it is very productive to punish them in a way that they will come back and benefit their country, rather than just doing away with them and throwing their bodies in the ground. I definately agree with you on the fact that war is bad and usually does not do any good and it ends up being very costly to everyone in the end. Now on the idea of the King only having a set amount of money, I do not agree with you in that money is not the root of all evil, but power is. So really it depends on what type of King is in control at the time.
I agree with all the above statements although I would like to make that point that although yes, war is bad. I believe that sometimes it is still necessary. Our own country is a prime example of that. It is as the saying goes, freedom is not free.
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