Starship Troopers

Now that I'm finally almost done with my medical school essays, I've decided to take a little time and do some reading. My first selection in what I hope to be a fruitful year is Starship Troopers, which I've read previously. Although I don't have one favorite book, I do have sort of an informal Top Ten list, and this is definitely on it.

The first time I read it, I was intrigued by Heinlein's take on future combat, which he does a great job of portraying first hand through the main character. But what brought me back is that during the training of this soldier, there is a lot of thinly veiled socio-political commentary that I really wanted to digest.

The thing that I find most interesting is a part that talks about the necessity of training individuals through corporal punishment. Not simply in a beat-'em-'til-their-silly, brainwashing kind of way, but using it as discipline all the way from spanking children to using it as punishment for crime. Heinlein (through one of the characters, a teacher) says that morals must be rooted in a person's survival instinct - that is if there is something you don't want a person to do, like rape or kill, the consequence must be so great that they choose not to do it in order to survive. And even for lesser crimes like theft, the society he describes has taken to public floggings as punishment. The book mocks the current prison system, describing it as a minor discomfort where they were able to socialize with other criminals and get ideas of what to do when they got out. The last claim he makes is that people have no moral instinct, and can only be taught one by consequences of actions.

I am intrigued by this idea for several reasons. First I work in a psych ward, where people are brought when their behavior is unnacceptable to society and it appears that they weren't thinking clearly enough to be sent to jail. I have wondered a lot about this thin line, and what would really be best. I have also seen lots of cases where poor parenting is probably the underlying reason for a person's current behavioral problems. Which brings me to number two - I am a parent, and what parent has not gone through the Great Spanking Debate both personally and with their spouse? And third, I am an economist, and modern economics is all about incentives. The basic idea is to provide the incentives, either positive (usually $) or negative (punishment, in this case physical), to get people to do what is best for society.

So where do you stand? Do you think jails work? Would public lashings and more frequent death sentences make things any better? What about the cases where there is uncertainty? How do you factor mental illness into that? If you have also read the book, did I summarize correctly, or did you get something completely different?