Put The Death Penalty Debate On Hold And Focus On Completely Removing Economic Protectionism First

I did write about the death penalty issue -- something that I always feel needs to be heavily studied upon before reimplementing it. I think it's a problem when legislators don't know their priorities. The death penalty is useless when there's a lousy system behind it. It won't do good if all issues such as the roots of heinous crimes aren't addressed. One of the biggest roots of why heinous crimes happen is poverty. Big time crooks love poor people because they're too easy to exploit. One of the biggest causes of poverty in the Philippines is not just corrupt politicians but also poor economic policies such as economic protectionism.

How does economic protectionism guarantee that poverty will increase? A good question to ask is how many Filipino businessmen are there and how many Filipinos are in need of jobs. If the supply-demand gap is that huge then you know it's not a good sign. The problem with 60/40 ownership of foreign investments is that foreigners are only allowed to own 40% while Filipinos own 60%. Is that even a fair game? Most foreigners who invest want to own at least 50% of the ownership with a Filipino partner or do business in the Philippines without a Filipino partner. This kind of mentality such as the decades-long state protectionism driven by the late Carlos P. Garcia (who deserves to have the late Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. buried next to him) has caused huge amounts of joblessness. In short, the Filipino first policy caused the Philippines to fail big time!

It doesn't matter if the death penalty returns if poverty is on the rise. A good example of the death penalty not working would be like China during Mao Zedong's time and North Korea. Mao killed a lot of criminals during his time but his poor economic policies drove China into poverty. North Korea has lots of executions but the economy is still poor. On the other hand, some countries without the death penalty such as Germany, South Korea, and Switzerland are progressive because of economic liberalization. Sometimes, the death penalty may even become completely unnecessary if crimes are so low because people have better opportunities to get out of poverty and that having a good set of rules keeps the crime rate low. If the crime rate is so low due to good economics and discipline then why even bother spending money on electric chairs and lethal injection chambers? Germany may have abolished the death penalty but it's pretty generous with its self-defense laws. Philippine legislators may consider giving generous self-defense laws as an alternative to the death penalty.

Giving jobs to Filipinos is more important than administering capital punishment for major crooks. Foreign investors will be among the job creators aside from Filipino businessmen of various ethnicities. If there are more Filipinos who get a well-paying job because of economic liberalization then there would be much less manpower for rich criminals in the Philippines. Crime should be treated as a symptom. Unemployment due to poor economic policies should be treated as a serious root of why crime is so rampant in the Philippines.