Gladiator-type Arenas

Are these illegal?

With the only difference from the Roman gladiator fights being that the fighters aren't fighting against their will, but rather wilingly, should they not be legalized?

After all, I'm using liberal logic: both combatants would be consenting and agree to the terms of the fight, including that they might die.

 

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lol, entertaining, but should these type of arenas open up if both combatants are consenting?

 

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Sure if both combatants know exactly what they are getting into and both consenting, why not.

 

I feel the same way and it'd be quite entertaining.

 

I bet you they would be sold out if they ever opened up something like that now.
Look how much ppl pay to watch that Extreme Fighting on Pay per View.

 

The main question here would be how pressured would the two consenting adults be to consent to fighting to the deaths? If you start handing out huge amounts of money to the combatants of these fights, how tempted would they be to risk their life despite better judgment trying to tell them otherwise? How idealized would our society make the combatants of these fights? Would it motivate others into willingly risking their lives? These are probably the kinds of things many liberals would throw right back at you.

Personally, I wouldn't be against it. If they consent knowing that they might die (despite whatever pressure they may feel to do it), then I wouldn't care nor would I have any sympathy for them in case they did die. If the individual feels that the reward was worth the risk of possible death, then that was their choice.

 

I bet you would get some real characters coming forward to do it too.

 

I tend to be libertarian by nature, but in light of the external costs I see being foisted on society by such practices, I'd be against it.

The problem is that while two people can give consent to fight in modern highly regulated, but basically non-lethal (unless there is a tragic accident) fights, I question the ability of people to make good decisions about lethal combat. There are too many factors working against them, not the least of which being potential for prizes, fame and groupies. Worse than that, by far though are the loss of human capital and the attendant external costs that foists onto society and the ancillary impact it seems likely to have on the mass psychology of the culture. So: (A) an individual's consent likely would never be as rational as I'd want it to be for me to feel comfortable calling it "informed consent" and (B) even if he consents to the loss of his own life in such a rational way, the external costs imposed on society are still an issue (and his rational calculation would never include the costs being born by society as a whole, save perhaps on a deeply discounted basis).

First, young men in particular are hormone addled and stupid. I know that I did not feel completely "mortal" in my teens and twenties. Historically speaking, young men killed other young men all too often for no good reason whatsoever (and without prizes, money, fame or women coming to the victor)...in many European nations, dueling was once the leading cause of deaths for young men of the upper classes (which in large part led to its being banned).

Second, as with dueling generally, I question how pervasive it might become. Such a competition might disproportionately attract the stupid and hormone addled competitors. We would need to either place limits on ho might become a gladiator, or we do run some risk of its becoming the new form of dueling, with all its attendant social costs.

Third, do we really expect that the televised death as a popular entertainment would have no cultural/psychological influence on us? They say that you know a culture by the games it plays, but the psychological studies I've read suggest that the interaction is more complex. The culture invents such things, which, in turn, reinforce and heighten those tendencies within the culture that led to the games in the first place. Everyone is a product of the way they were raised, including both those things that one's parents taught and those things we absorb from the culture (including popular entertainments). Joan McCord's "Some childrearing antecedents of criminal behavior in adult men.," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1979) was able to accurately predict adult criminal behavior based on the environment in which boys raised in 3/4ths of the cases she followed. While violence committed by the parent are likely stronger influences than those observed in the culture, it seems likely that those of a culture have some effect. That effect is likely cumulative over some period of time as the society acclimates itself to the practice (influenced kids of non-influenced parents grow up and have their own kids, who then have both cultural and parental influences affecting them, then then grow and have their own kids, etc.)

We might as well, at least, work up to human death-matches by legalize dog fighting. After all, those dogs really do want to fight, and there it's just two pieces of property destroying one another for our amusement. One might argue that it's not that the dogs want to fight, but that they are raised in environments that bring out their aggressive tendencies, but I don't personally see how that is any different. People raised in abusive homes where violence was the "go to" solution would be more likely to become gladiators than others...because, again, we are all products of our upbringing.

Or how about this: Suppose I go find a family where a child is dying and they can't pay their medical bills (possibly in a third-world nation). I then agree to pick up the costs of treatment (Hell, I will fly their sick daughter to the U.S. where she can get great care), but the father has agree to allow himself to be torn apart and eaten by lions on national television. It amused the Romans, and the victims did not get nearly so good a deal. The only problem I see with that is that it's not so much of a "sport" as a spectacle, but why limit the right to consent to death to people engaged in sports? That's he may consent to save a sick child (or pay off his gambling debts, or whatever other reason) should be logically irrelevant.

There are, in fact, all sorts of physically degrading/disturbing things that might make for popular entertainment, save that we have banned them. Give an attractive woman a sword and agree to pay her $1 million...if she can escape "The Rape Maze" alive and unspoiled (perhaps we limit that to cable, since we don't want to expose children to that level of sex). We can have game shows with names like: "You Bet Your Body" where the losing contestants lose fingers/hands/feet/limbs or, if they lose during the climax of the show, their organs go to needy donors around the country.

The only downside I see is that some of these may be less cloaked in the comforting veneer of Roman history, and the fact that there's little doubt that future generations will judge us to be psychopaths.

One problem that might take away from the fun, is that I am not sure that the money to be won by contestants on these shows (gladiator or the trivia-whiz-who-has-bet-his-kidneys alike) would be huge. It might be, but (again) western culture has a long history of dueling, where people often killed others for no good reasons at all. We might like to believe that people would be rational and refuse to participate unless the rewards were very good, but that is not the way humans have behaved in the past. To quote something I wrote in a different thread in response to the notion that bringing back gunfights and dueling would be a good idea:

As I also noted in that post in the late middle ages/early Elizabethan period, when public executions for trivial offenses became commonplace, the murder and violent crime rates went up (in cities, at least). There are a few possible explanations for that effect (some historians either question how well we know the rates or how well we know the dates when the increasing crime rates started) but there are plenty of historians who believe that life simply seemed "cheap" in a age where people were being hanged, left to starve outside in hanging cages, dipped in pots of boiling water or oil and left to die in public from the wounds for crimes like stealing 5 shillings (or more), excessive begging by the poor, or committing "immoral" acts like buggery or repeated adultery (though how anyone repeats adultery after having their faces permanently mutilated the first time they were caught...).

 

As long as they'd be mentally healthy, and consenting, frankly I think such arenas have no issues.

And of course there'd be ratings in order to protect the minors.

 

We have boxing, kick boxing, karate, judo and many other forms of arena sports already. Many of them end in death or permanent injuries to someone. Isn't that enough bloodshed already? I really think it shouldn't be allowed but I can't stop stupidity very easily.

 

In those, the risks are real, but actual deaths are rare and accidental (and if they are intentional, the the surviving fighter can still go to jail for murder), so I think the point must be just to sate a certain curiosity and/or bloodlust. Likely more of the latter, since I expect the curiosity would abate shortly after the first few matches were held.

 

That isn't true. In boxing there have been numerous boxers that have been hit so hard that it breaks a blood vessel in their heads and kills them. Those that hit them aren't arrested for murder. Same thing with kick boxing and other forms of martial arts. There have been many people injured very badly in other sports as well which no one was arrested for.

 

If a fighter punches another and blood vessels break, that is an accidental death and not a crime. If the fighter falls unconscious and the other fighter keeps pummeling him until he is dead, or steps on his throat choking him until he is dead, the living fighter goes to jail.

Fighters accept the customary risks of fighting (including the risks that one will be accidentally killed or permanently disabled), but the other person having the specific intent to kill is not considered a customary risk. (In fact, in most countries/States you can't consent to your own murder, hence the "assisted suicide" controversy sent Kevorkian to jail.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_(criminal)#Consent_as_an_effective_defence

It can in many cases be hard to tell what was in the heart of a fighter when he landed a killing blow, but if there is clear evidence that the intent was "to kill" then consent is not an effective defense. If the goal was to knock his opponent down or out or simply injure him a bit more to aid in winning the fight, that's customary risk even if it results in death.

 

This is besides the point. I'm using liberal logic, and by this and because both of these "gladiators" would be consenting, I do not see why it would be illegal.

 

Gladiator puppy farm

Interestingly, I had skipped over this possibility in my mind, going instead straight to the gladiator farms, where women from poor families serve as breeders to provide the sport with a generation's worth of warriors.

There was an article a few years ago in ... Forbes, I think ... about people becoming property, and the Olsen twins were used as an example. Before they were old enough to make their own decisions, their "brand" (their very names) was incredibly obliged. We're not far from the time when we face certain ethical questions that come with the trade of human beings. We duck the questions by keeping prostitution illegal, but indentured human guinea pigs aren't far off, and it seems a short leap to having one's life as a gladiator determined even before conception.

 

As I said, nobody is forced. It's like a "do it when you grow up" sorta thing. What's so bad?

 

First, in theory nobody was forced to duel either. In practice, refusing a duel was the end of your public life in Europe and early-America. Social pressures can do strange things.

Second, when's "grown up"? If you mean age 18 or 21, those are still ages where a lot of men feel invulnerable because men have testosterone addled brains.

Third, when death is treated as a form of entertainment, there is the risk that all life will be devalued. Human beings are not entirely rational creatures, and while there is no reason to believe that for a rational being increasingly seeing the brutal deaths of others around you will make a society more likely to tolerate brutal killings in other contexts, in general, historically, that is what happens. It's possible that it's just the borderline personalities are the ones committing the additional brutal acts, but all societies have citizens with borderline personalities and there's no easy way to say "Gladiatorial combat is okay, as long as the 'crazy people' of the world don't see it." In short, there is evidence to suggest that humans (perhaps just some humans, but more likely all or most of us) are prone to being affected by social conditioning that can even be extended to a tolerance for brutality.

 

Yes they were. They were enslaved and the only way to win freedom was to fight for it.

No, I'd say an age of something like 24.

Perhaps to idiots. But I highly doubt it will make everyone want to kill each other. Besides, we watch people beat each others brains in for entertainment, like wrestling or boxing, why not combat?

 

there is a movie that kind of tackles this issue though in that case they were "bought" from prisions. To be honest the movie made me sick and i cant think of the name of it off the top of my head

It went like this, there was a group of people who were all dropped on this island, if they tried to escape they would be blown up, they had to kill each other or the producer would blow them all up (using these bombs straped to there legs).

it was one sick film