3/25/2025 at 8:39:13 PM
Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. 90% of it is about extorting the population for funding for the courts and cops. If you can't afford a lawyer, they will provide you with a joke. And if you can afford a lawyer, now its just a question if you are willing to spend more on your lawyer than the state is hoping to extort from you. If you are, you will get off no problem, if you aren't or can't, most courts are going to try and screw you over. Oh whats that, you want to actually fight your charges in court? Now you better not lose because you are on the hook for all of the money the court wants to believe it cost them to prosecute you. Oh you don't want to risk that and just settle for whatever minor fine the law says you might owe? Don't worry, the courts will still fuck you with the addition in mandatory minimum court fees, additional fees and fines not stipulated under the law you broke, inflated "programs" that they get kickbacks from, and an even better excuse for cops in the future to try and screw you over by painting you as some wanton criminal.Just like healthcare, US justice is only for people with money.
by AngryData
3/26/2025 at 8:57:05 AM
I agree 100%.I've written about this here before, but I've been involved in two civil lawsuits in my life. One was in the USA, the other was in mainland China.
I should stress that I am an American, and I wasn't even in China when the lawsuit over there was moving along.
The Chinese process was very fast -- it went before a judge who reached a verdict in something like ten months -- and it was extremely inexpensive. Total fees were less than $10k. What's more, the court attained the right outcome, and I won the case. Still better, the court itself enforced the verdict, and I was able to attain the monetary damages it decided were owed me.
The US process was interminably slow. A year on, we were barely past the starting line. Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. At that point bills far exceeded $150,000. I realized that I was looking at spending >$1M and taking five or ten years to fight the case, and, though I was sure I would have won in the end, decided that I had to settle and get the hell out.
The US civil legal system is basically a game of financial attrition. This is why the big corporations seem to get away with whatever they want, whereas being dragged to court can be life-ruining for smaller entities and persons.
I don't know how things are in Europe, and hope I never have to find out, but the Chinese civil system is truly something like 20x better than the US system. (>10x cheaper, >2-5x faster.)
by A_D_E_P_T
3/26/2025 at 3:08:49 PM
It's only part of the tapestry of the story, but IIRC in the New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, she notes that the USA stopped funding the creation of courts/judges after the 1960s as it had in prior years so now the number of cases per judge is much higher than it has ever been, this is also mentioned the season three of Serial podcast which indicts the American criminal justice system for a variety of reasons through the entire process, but both indicate the perverse incentives to avoid trial, it kind of reminded me of the persecution of innocent protagonist in The Count of Monte Cristo simply by having the justice system work the way it was supposed to with just one bad actor condemning the guy to years of injustice.by stevenwoo
3/26/2025 at 1:21:01 PM
> . Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system.This is common in almost all legal systems. How else would the defendant get to examine the evidence against them and how else would you provide evidence if there was no discovery process?
Its hard to imagine there would be a legal system without it.
by chollida1
3/26/2025 at 1:42:45 PM
In China I recall that "the burden of proof was on the parties" and both sides were asked to submit all relevant evidence to the court. Then there were a couple of meetings where my lawyer met with the other side's lawyer to review the evidence.If you're the plaintiff and you have evidence that supports your version of events, you give it all to the court. If you're the defendant and you have exculpatory evidence, or anything that shows that the case is frivolous, you give it all to the court. The judge can then ask for more evidence, or utilize what's provided.
My legal team didn't need to sift through ten years of emails in order to find a few needles hidden in the haystack. The process wasn't adversarial. The parties can't use "discovery" to get trade secrets or proprietary information. And the costs were near enough to zero.
I wouldn't even say that it's a "better" system. I'd characterize US-style discovery as simply broken, and the Chinese system as something that works in a common sense way.
by A_D_E_P_T
3/26/2025 at 2:00:55 PM
> If you're the plaintiff and you have evidence that supports your version of events, you give it all to the court. If you're the defendant and you have exculpatory evidence, or anything that shows that the case is frivolous, you give it all to the court.Yes, but what if you're the plaintiff/defendant and the other party has evidence in your favor? How do you get it before the court? That is what discovery is for.
Honestly it just sounds like you had an easy case tried in China and a hard one tried in the US and are making some really broad assertions about the two legal systems based on a small sample size.
by ajross
3/26/2025 at 3:58:18 PM
In most countries it's the judge who oversees discovery not the rival lawyers to avoid the whole 'using discovery as a weapon to waste your opponents money' issue while still allowing for the right evidence to come to light.by cwmma
3/27/2025 at 12:02:42 PM
That seems like a distinction without meaning. "Rival lawyers" don't "oversee" discovery. They make requests to the judge, who decides on their validity and issues orders. It's just a formalized suggestion.by ajross
3/27/2025 at 12:43:59 PM
In US Federal court, rival lawyers don't make requests to the judge, they make requests of each other. The judge is merely a referee, who adjudicates disputes that arise as part of the process. Example:Red-Team Lawyer: "Provide us with all emails from 1/1/2010 through 1/1/2020, inclusive, that include or mention [product x] or are of relevance to its research, development, production, or marketing."
Blue-Team Lawyer: "That's overly broad and many of those emails contain proprietary confidential and trade-secret information, which is protected. My client will not provide them."
Judge, intervening after objections are filed: "Counsel, under FRCP 26(b)(1), discovery must be proportional to the needs of the case. Red Team, narrow the timeframe to 2015–2020 and limit the search to emails involving R&D leads and marketing executives. Blue Team, designate confidential portions under FRCP 26(c) as 'Attorneys’ Eyes Only' and produce a privilege log for withheld items. Failure to comply may result in sanctions under FRCP 37."
Every single part of this costs money and takes time. It usually takes a judge ~1-3 months to rule on discovery disputes. Filing the dispute is non-trivial. And "designating confidential portions" can provide junior attorneys with months of work.
That's hardly even the tip of the iceberg. There are so many sneaky tactics you can use in discovery that entire books have been written about them. For instance: https://jamespublishing.com/product/guerrilla-discovery/
Whereas if both sides just provide their evidence to a judge's office which compiles them into an account, all of this cost and effort is spared.
by A_D_E_P_T
3/27/2025 at 1:57:16 PM
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But again that's semantics[1]. You ask for stuff via some mechanism, even an informal one, argue about it as necessary, and a third party adjudicator decides what you're allowed to.Basically you're complaint here is about formality and paperwork. Which, fine. It sucks. But the fact that it exists is precisely what prevents someone from doing stuff like paying off the judge or just destroying evidence. I don't love it either but I sure as shit know which system I'd rather be living under.
[1] It's also actually wrong as a matter of pedantic fact: discovery requests are court filings and are made "to" the court, not the opposing counsel. But again, that's a distinction without meaning.
by ajross
3/27/2025 at 2:19:44 PM
Discovery does nothing to prevent either party from destroying or withholding evidence. There are penalties if the destroying/evading party is caught, but, in order to be caught, the other side usually has to have an idea of what's missing. So, in effect, systems without discovery work just as well or better: They enable you to show the court what you know and how you know it."Paying off the judge" is not a systems-level problem; it's the sort of thing that has been criminal for as long as man has had legal systems. You can't point to it as an example of "legal system is good" or "legal system is broken." Doesn't work that way.
by A_D_E_P_T
3/29/2025 at 1:47:50 PM
> Discovery does nothing to prevent either party from destroying or withholding evidence.It literally criminalizes it! People go to jail and lawyers get disbarred for obstruction every year. And as a result reputable firms won't even try to dance around these things. If you're an attorney and get a subpoena or discovery request, you tell your client to freeze their backups right away and send repeated emails reminding them, then print them out and file them along with the response. This is true even if it's a ridiculous request you know you'll beat. Because you know if you fuck this up you'll lose your career.
I mean... have you ever actually talked to a corporate lawyer?
by ajross
3/27/2025 at 4:42:48 PM
Let's stop this tail-chasing and get to the bottom of the true difference: US (and most common-law) judges are neutral arbiters, strictly opining based on what evidence is there (Adversarial System). This is not how it works in civil-law systems, especially Germanic ones (of which PRC has retained more-or-less despite its communist history), which are entrusted to discover the truth, even if it seems to favor a party, and can do things that would be very questionable in an adversarial system, such as directly calling witnesses (Inquisitorial System).by zinekeller
3/27/2025 at 4:47:15 PM
> and can do things that would be very questionable in an adversarial system, such as directly calling witnesses (Inquisitorial System).https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_614
Rule 614. Court’s Calling or Examining a Witness
(a) Calling. The court may call a witness on its own or at a party’s request. Each party is entitled to cross-examine the witness.
(b) Examining. The court may examine a witness regardless of who calls the witness.
(c) Objections. A party may object to the court’s calling or examining a witness either at that time or at the next opportunity when the jury is not present.
by dragonwriter
3/26/2025 at 2:47:14 PM
> Yes, but what if you're the plaintiff/defendant and the other party has evidence in your favor? How do you get it before the court? That is what discovery is for.What do you know of this evidence and how do you know about it?
> Honestly it just sounds like you had an easy case tried in China and a hard one tried in the US and are making some really broad assertions about the two legal systems based on a small sample size.
lol, no. It was actually the other way around. The US case was completely open-and-shut, whereas the Chinese case hinged on a matter of sensitive technology with military or "dual use" potential and it could have gotten ugly. I'll swear on whatever you like that I could hardly wait to get our US case in front of a US judge, but it was practically impossible. There are just so many absurd pretrial hoops to jump through. And all of them expensive.
by A_D_E_P_T
3/26/2025 at 3:06:56 PM
The Tesla ran into me while I was crossing the crosswalk and then took off. I was able to capture their license plate. We tracked them down and were able to ask them, but they denied that they had done this. I sued them in civil court to cover my medical expenses. I happen to know what Teslas keep a video log of these. The defendant wouldn’t provide it willingly until we went into discovery and they were compelled to provide it, which made my case.This is but one of infinite examples of the other party having evidence helpful to the other side and harmful to themselves.
by MOARDONGZPLZ
3/26/2025 at 3:22:13 PM
> I happen to know what Teslas keep a video log of these.You provide the court with that information, and the judge presiding over the case can (and almost surely will, if you're correct,) ask for the logs. If they don't provide them upon request, they're hit with a adverse inference, just as they would be if they withheld documents in discovery.
It's plain common sense.
Now, it's true that "you don't know what you don't know" and that discovery can be an investigative process, but for the vast majority of cases it's totally unnecessary. And, in very many cases, discovery will actually impede access to justice. In court systems without discovery, judges tend to take on a slightly more investigative role, besides.
by A_D_E_P_T
3/26/2025 at 4:26:07 PM
The 95 year old lifetime appointment judge with dementia and cataracts: “Cars have cameras you say? In my day we only had daguerreotypes. We wore an onion on our belts, the style at the time. Request denied.”by MOARDONGZPLZ
3/26/2025 at 4:37:58 PM
This is an old tired stereotype. Judges are perfectly able to handle complex novel concepts such as technology. The judge before the oracle c. google case learned to program to gain insight, for example.by pests
3/26/2025 at 9:49:39 PM
>The judge before the oracle c. google caseExactly. The US justice system works for people with money.
by ahmeneeroe-v2
3/26/2025 at 4:12:42 PM
> What do you know of this evidence and how do you know about it?It's called "discovery" for a reason. You ask for everything you think might be relevant.
by niederman
3/26/2025 at 3:06:41 PM
>the court attained the right outcome, and I won the case.Ha, well, you would say that.
by LiquidSky
3/26/2025 at 6:02:37 PM
> > . Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. > > This is common in almost all legal systems.This statement is false, both the German and French legal systems do not have something like discovery. To confirm for yourself just Google "is there something like discovery in the German/French legal system". Considering that many legal systems are based on these two (one could argue the German one is based on the French as well) I think we can conclude that not having discovery is in fact common.
> How else would the defendant get to examine the evidence against them and how else would you provide evidence if there was no discovery process? > > Its hard to imagine there would be a legal system without it.
Here is a link how the German system works without it. It also explains why for German legal practitioners it is a concept that violates some of the core principles of fair justice. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/german-way-discovery-just-don...
by cycomanic
3/27/2025 at 6:30:48 AM
Most legal systems in Europe are based on Roman law, including the French and German. The Anglo-American ones are unique in that they are based on common law, not Roman law.by TsiCClawOfLight
3/26/2025 at 1:50:21 PM
> [How] would you provide evidence ...You don't sue people for fun, right? It's either they did something to you and you have damages, costs, paperwork, records, CCTV footage, medical examination records, whatever, or you want them to do something based on some regulation/statute/right.
Discovery usually tries to show that so and so higher up knew about it all along, no?
by pas
3/26/2025 at 1:29:40 PM
You are basing that claim on the "it is impossible to not have the same problem as US have" assumption.by watwut
3/26/2025 at 4:06:05 PM
[dead]by catlover76
3/26/2025 at 10:54:43 AM
> Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system.It’s a part of most common law legal systems.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 3:16:07 PM
I was sued in the US once. Between all the stuff it took about 3mo.You can't just spew blanket judgements when the actual course of events depends so heavily on the specific facts. I question the intelligence of anyone who managed to have a lawsuit going on for 2yr and not come away with an understanding that specific facts matter greatly.
by potato3732842
3/26/2025 at 5:45:21 PM
3 months? Small claims?Federal civil court averages 33.7 months from filing to trial. Needless to say, it can be a lot busier than that in slower districts. (~43 months in the 2nd District!) And then there are appeals, etc...
Best case, we were looking at 40 months from filing to trial in the 9th District, which is statistically nominal, but the whole process would probably have taken far longer.
Current statistical table: https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/data-tables/2024/12/31/st...
I've never heard of a single 21st century US (Federal) civil case that went to trial in less than a year, to say nothing of three months. I can point to a mountain of cases that have been dragging for many years.
by A_D_E_P_T
3/26/2025 at 6:36:50 PM
Now that I look at it it was 5mo, state superior court.It was not a land or probate matter or any other matter for which there is a bespoke streamlined process. Both parties agreed on records, facts, etc.
by potato3732842
3/26/2025 at 11:16:07 AM
> I don't know how things are in Europe, and hope I never have to find outIn Sweden at least this level of insanity is only heard about as anecdotes online...
by lawn
3/26/2025 at 12:31:27 PM
In civil (and criminal) law, yes, but in "förvaltningsrätt", public law, it's somewhat different. Cases are judged mainly from documents and sometimes the state can sort of force you to provide documentation in a manner similar to discovery and subpoena. It's also where you might end up with a reversed burden of proof, notably in tax cases.It's still a much saner jurisdiction in many respects, especially for physical persons. You might get marginally nicer judgements in commercial law in certain US states, though I'd personally prefer both swedish law and swedish arbitration due to a combination of lower costs and the average quality of commercial law here. The Stockholm Chamber of Commerce arbitration institute is actually rather popular among international corporations for roughly these reasons.
by cess11
3/26/2025 at 12:48:02 PM
In Poland it is much cheaper, but it is slow or even slower.by matips
3/26/2025 at 10:54:39 AM
Pretty much what OP said, at least here in Hungary.by johnisgood
3/25/2025 at 8:46:12 PM
> Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken.and just like re healthcare, this is the rub of communicating about this: 90% (to pick a random number out of thin air) of hn's target demo has had perfect/sheltered lives and has never come into contact with the "law". so they believe all the political and institutional rhetoric around it.
the other 10% know it's a myth but fail to be able to convince the 90% because it would cause deep cognitive dissonance to accept that the US is deeply deeply inequitable and unfair and that it's not accidental but systematic. when i was younger i was in jail a handful of times (not prison thankfully). it's impossible to explain to someone how fucked up it is that's never experienced it. i stopped talking about the "justice system" a long time ago to co-workers/friends/etc and i don't tell anyone about my experience (only my wife knows).
by almostgotcaught
3/25/2025 at 8:50:56 PM
I think the most inconvenient thing is actually that it’s both (largely) accidental and systematic.If you go looking for the source of “evil” breaking these systems, you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything. The vast majority of these systems’ behavior (good or bad) is effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever.
by sorcerer-mar
3/25/2025 at 10:04:49 PM
Dirty and thuggish cops are way more common than Americans think. The more benign form is detail and overtime fraud. But I'd bet the dollar amount easily rivals property crime value in your town.Theft and fraud in businesses is more common than software people think. Kickbacks to purchasing managers, for example. You're less likely to encounter this than a casually dirty cop, but it's out there.
by Zigurd
3/26/2025 at 12:31:55 AM
These are often-repeated arguments; we really need some facts to work with. Is there research on this?by mmooss
3/26/2025 at 6:49:42 AM
How reliable do you think research into the amount of undetected crime is?by thaumasiotes
3/26/2025 at 2:18:02 PM
I think it's not perfect, but we have to work with imperfect information. I think it's far more reliable than Internet rando comments, which have zero reliability and are often misinformation, sometimes intentionally.by mmooss
3/25/2025 at 9:42:09 PM
> you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anythingSo you you think, without those few bad folks, these systems would not tend to break, or that these few bad folks are not being challenged? I.e. do you think these few bad folks are completely inconsequential at a systemic level?
by askvictor
3/25/2025 at 9:48:05 PM
> do you think these few bad folks are completely inconsequential at a systemic level?Pretty much yes, and so are the good ones. Such is the nature of systems. A thing becomes visible as and labeled as "a system" only after it's quite stable and resilient, i.e. after it has developed effective responses to common "attacks" (deliberate or otherwise). Achieving fungibility of 99.9% of individual humans is like objective #1 and the systems that fail to achieve it don't exist long enough to be problematic.
by sorcerer-mar
3/25/2025 at 9:00:52 PM
If good people can't run the system right the system is broken and good people ought to support its reform or replacement.by potato3732842
3/25/2025 at 9:02:52 PM
Of course! If the codebase gets non-performant or hard to maintain, all you have to do is rewrite it to be not-that.Typically makes sense to fire anyone who wrote the broken version too, just to get a fresh set of eyes on it.
Not sure why there’s any non-performant or unmaintainable code in light of this fact.
by sorcerer-mar
3/25/2025 at 9:38:16 PM
I appreciate the irony, but it doesn't have to be that drastic. In Australia we have the Law Reform Commission, which looks to gradually make laws better. Is the legal system perfect? Far from it. Does it get political? All the time. Is it getting better? I would argue yes, slowly.To your analogy, it's possible to incrementally improve a code base. It's also possible to stop it getting worse.
by askvictor
3/25/2025 at 9:51:25 PM
Right, which no one (to my knowledge) is opposed to.by sorcerer-mar
3/26/2025 at 3:59:17 AM
Prosecutors have political lobbies.So too do prison guards and their unions.
You would be hard pressed to find a union that represents prison guards which has supported ANY kind of political reform to laws. Legalization, even changes to traffic laws, prison guard unions and their members almost exclusively vote against.
Just for two examples.
by FireBeyond
3/26/2025 at 1:21:08 PM
No no, the claim was that there are people who are trying to "make laws better."No one disagrees with doing that. They might disagree on what "better" means, and in particular better for whom. But 95%+ of the disagreement on these is not because one side is evil and the other is not.
by sorcerer-mar
3/25/2025 at 9:21:21 PM
Irony noted, but I think it's rare for the horrors of a codebase to be deliberately inflicted for self-enrichment or cruelty.by psd1
3/26/2025 at 12:35:16 AM
Isn't that the whole point behind A/B testing? Find the accidental dark patterns that will maximize extraction?by mindslight
3/26/2025 at 11:01:02 AM
Ah, I see. I was thinking in terms of spaghetti hell.I wrote a big chunk before I recalled that this is just an analogy. We're wandering off topic.
by psd1
3/25/2025 at 8:54:38 PM
i wish people, before they commented on really really serious things, did a bit of reflection.> effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever
the agency of individuals in totalitarian/authoritarian institutions has been examined/analyzed/written about at enormous length since the rise of fascism in the early 1900s. the short answer is you're wrong but i'm not going to try to convince you (you have to want to learn to be receptive). instead i recommend a book:
https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-C...
EDIT: i'm being rate limited. to the guy below
> how even a system full of good intentions
you're just proving all of my points - you just can't fathom that the laws really were written with immoral intentions because "the law" is sacrosanct for you.
i note again: the 13th amendment abolished slavery except for in prisons. it's written explicitly in section 1 (no bad faith interpretation needed). please discuss for me the "good intentions" therein.
by almostgotcaught
3/25/2025 at 8:57:28 PM
The vast majority of bad outcomes of big systems are not because they’re principally designed for evil and just lacking a few dissenters.Most systems today are intended to produce outcomes that most people agree would be good, and they’re full of people trying to achieve those outcomes, and yet reliably failing to produce them.
There have been books written about this topic as well, but it’s not as flashy as comparing “every system that produces some bad results” to actual Nazis, I have to admit.
by sorcerer-mar
3/26/2025 at 7:11:43 AM
Because the underlying meta-system is the one that produces the people. Complete with their understanding of what "good" is.The important thing is for that energy to be expended in the pursuit of certain outcomes; the goals themselves are already self-contradictory.
The meta-system uses that to reproduce itself. Our lives are secondary to that goal.
by balamatom
3/25/2025 at 9:11:00 PM
Having it read it again just last year, I’d like to emphasize _Eichmann in Jerusalem_ does support the point being made here.by TimorousBestie
3/25/2025 at 10:18:51 PM
There's a long running historiographical debate about the relative influence individuals have over the ultimate course of historical events compared to systemic factorsFor many years, it was popular (particularly in revisionist circles) almost entirely to deny individual agency and to rely instead exclusively on systemic arguments which highlighted the power of geography, ecology, culture, technology, and other complex systems to shape human events. That revisionist approach emerged partially in reaction to the near universal overreliance of prior generations of historians on the so-called "Great Man" theory of history, which assumes events are largely attributable to the decisions of a select group of politically powerful individuals. Nearly all of those individuals happened to be white, male, and wealthy, and thus Great Man history suffered not only from blindness to systemic factors that can shape events, but also to the experiences, contributions, and agency of anyone who was not rich, not white, not a man, or even simply not politically powerful enough to count. In other words, they ignore nearly everyone who has ever lived.
Although academic history has long since moved away from the Great Man theory, it remains a popular trope of low quality popular history books, and increasingly it has become clear that purely systemic, revisionist approaches with no consideration for the effects of individual actors are also inadequate to explain historical events.
Sometimes systems are more powerful than people, and no amount of good will or effort is going to fix a problem. The Vikings abandoned Greenland during the Little Ice Age because they had no way of controlling the climate or adapting efficiently to the changes. The climate system was more powerful than any individual Norse settler or group of settlers could ever hope to be.
Sometimes systems are weaker than people, and leaders can bend them to their will. After nearly 1000 years of independence from secular authority and mostly uncontested religious domination in England, the Catholic Church in the 16th century formed an incredibly powerful institutional system of religious control built on vast endowments of land. It was by and large extremely popular with the common people and historically served a critical role in bolstering the king's position by promoting a respect for hierarchy that naturally encompassed both their own elevated status as priests and the position of secular authoritarian rulers, who ruled as God's representative on Earth. Despite the Church's enduring local popularity, its immense wealth, its deep connections with the broader Christian world, and the powerful hold fear of excommunication and damnation had on most Christians, King Henry VIII managed to completely transform the institutional, legal, and property-managing system of the medieval English Catholic Church, sundering it entirely from Rome, depriving it of essentially all of its land holdings, and subordinating its institutions entirely to royal authority. And he accomplished this in a shockingly short period of time, only around a decade.
Why did Henry decide to throw his lot in with the Reformation? Was it because he saw the injustice of monks, priests, and friars siphoning off so much of his subjects' wealth to Rome simply to subsidize the already luxurious and decidedly un-Christian lifestyle enjoyed by the pope? Not at all, in fact in the years before his marriage to Katherine of Aragon soured, he wrote a book defending the pope, who promptly named the king Defender of the Faith in gratitude and recognition of his scholastic achievement. Did Henry instead recognize an opportunity to enrich himself? Probably not, the evidence suggests he wasn't that savvy about money, but luckily for him, he had Cromwell to take care of the pounds and the pennies. Ultimately, he just needed a divorce. Because if he failed to produce an heir, the danger of civil war would be intolerable, and Katherine was clearly beyond her childbearing years. But the pope wouldn't give him one, and Henry was a raging narcissist willing to burst through any boundary in service of his own ego, even risking his soul to break from Rome.
So individual idiosyncrasies can also affect the course of events, we can't just look at systems, and we can't just look at individuals, we need systems too. The relative influence of each over how a complex institution like a justice system develops is a highly contingent and fact-specific analysis. Sometimes the climate can push winters to be too cold even for the hardiest settlers. Sometimes an entire nation's centuries-long, enduring religious beliefs and ideologies can depend solely on the whims (and lust) of a single egotistical dictator. And sometimes when such a basic function is this messed up, you might actually find that there are indeed a limited number of individuals responsible, and that replacing them with competent or less malicious individuals will actually solve the problem.
That's the trick though, and where the systemic and individual-focused explanatory variables start to bleed into each other. If it is systematically impossible to find good people to staff these institutions, then yes merely swapping out individuals will not fix the situation because by definition you are swapping out bad people for other bad people. However, I seriously doubt that it is impossible to do so in this case, because even if the US justice system is messed up and broken, this is about the most messed up and broken that it gets. I think it's fair to say that 99.999% of the country does not experience systemic justice problems to the same extent as Maverick County, which is why so many people are reacting to this story with justifiable shock. So even assuming ad arguendo that it is systemically impossible to find truly good people to work in law enforcement or the judicial system, we know it's at least possible to find better people than they have in Maverick County.
by stult
3/26/2025 at 9:37:30 AM
the technical term in "contingent" :https://acoup.blog/2021/10/15/fireside-friday-october-15-202...
"(The fancy way of putting the influence of all of those factors, both the big structural ones and the little, subject-to-chance ones, is to say ‘history is contingent’ – that is, the outcomes are not inevitable but are subject to many forces large and small, many of which the lack of evidence render historically invisible.)"
by folbec
3/26/2025 at 7:23:58 AM
What are some of your favorite history books?by MegaButts
3/25/2025 at 9:16:28 PM
Absolutely flabbergasted in the canteen one day when my colleague said, unironically, "well, if they stop you, you were probably doing _something_”...White South African
Yes, working eyeballs
by psd1
3/26/2025 at 12:32:59 AM
Some other White South Africans have taken sides with the same political grouping (I don't know their position on that issue).by mmooss
3/25/2025 at 10:01:48 PM
Part of the problem as I see it is that we Americans are incredibly vengeful and seek retribution. We are particularly incensed when someone poorer (or otherwise different than us) seemingly gets a “light sentence”.by redczar
3/25/2025 at 9:40:59 PM
Forget actual legal culpability, the range of outcomes in the American legal system ranges from cops killing you at worst, to the stacked legal system making you wish they had only killed you at best.by SauciestGNU
3/25/2025 at 9:07:01 PM
It sounds like… you did get caught?by newZWhoDis
3/26/2025 at 7:48:24 AM
You forgot that the prosecution will go over the top on charges, as bargaining chips for a plea deal. None of these would ever stick in a real court, but if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a park, pleading guilty to a lesser crime sounds pretty good.Everyone has a right to a trial by jury in theory, but if you waste the prosecutor's time by exercising it it might just ruin your life.
by dguest
3/26/2025 at 1:53:45 PM
> if you're facing sexual assault charges (and a lifetime on the sex offender registry) for allegedly peeing in a parkPeople repeat this anecdote all the time, but I'd challenge you to find a single person who has ever been put on the sex offender registry for nothing more than public urination. (Let alone being charged with sexual assault, which is nonsensical -- look up how that crime is defined in US law.)
by rafram
3/26/2025 at 5:33:56 PM
I'll bite. It's a little bit more, but I knew a 19yo guy who flashed his girlfriend at a public swimming pool and is on the registry for life. Like most people on the registry he'll spend a significant portion of the rest of his life in and out of prison for minor violations of the registry[].[] e.g., he was driving across country and stopped for a couple of days at a friend's house in Illinois. He was in a traffic stop and while talking to the cop, the cop realized he'd been in Illinois for over 72 hours and was given another prison sentence for failing to register.
by qingcharles
3/26/2025 at 2:26:39 PM
Being put on the sex offender registry happens after conviction. The comment you are responding to is talking about how unconvictable trumped up charges are used to scare people into taking pleas so your challenge doesn't make sense in context.by shkkmo
3/26/2025 at 3:14:20 PM
OK, I would challenge you to find a single case, reported in the media, in which a defendant took a plea deal rather than face charges that included mandatory sex offender registration for nothing more than public urination. If that has ever happened, surely it would've been reported on at least once, right?by rafram
3/26/2025 at 4:05:44 PM
I am uniquely qualified to respond to your question in that over my career I have represented 4,000+ criminal defendants. It is incredibly common for defendants to take lower charges to avoid consequences. This is nearly uniformly true for sex offenses which require registration. While obviously not able to use individual client names, I can guarantee I have personally represented hundreds of defendants who pled to a felony obscenity charge to avoid to avoid registration as a sex offender.by throwaway17_17
3/26/2025 at 4:12:05 PM
And were any of those for public urination alone, without any obscene intent at all? Just a guy peeing in the bushes because he can't find a bathroom?by rafram
3/26/2025 at 4:47:38 PM
My response was to the question about defendants pleading out to a lesser charges to avoid felonies. But, I have pled several defendants to charges based on public urination, both guilty as charged (typically to avoid a Habitual Offender enhancement) and to misdemeanor charges. In my state, Obscenity (which public urination is considered) is not a registration requiring offense, but it is in several other states, like Texas for example.by throwaway17_17
3/26/2025 at 2:11:42 PM
Tarrant County. Mentally ill but competent to stand trial. I’m sure there’s more than one. Source: 1 year in lockup (solitary) with them, often criminal trespass or public urination charges.by 6stringmerc
3/26/2025 at 4:32:57 PM
> Source: 1 year in lockup (solitary) with themAs someone whose main knowledge of the US prison system is only from TV and not from first person (thankfully), I think I don't understand what "solitary" is. I thought the whole point of it was that the detained person didn't have contact with others?
by JadeNB
3/26/2025 at 3:11:14 PM
Not sure what you mean. Are you referring to a specific case?by rafram
3/26/2025 at 3:43:58 PM
This person's source is someone they spent a year in jail with.Cases this small probably don't get articles written about them often. That's why we have the phrase "falling through the cracks"
by MSFT_Edging
3/26/2025 at 4:34:31 PM
I do not think that this person is… all there: https://samhenrycliff.medium.com/when-a-gypsy-woman-loses-he...by rafram
3/26/2025 at 5:12:56 PM
It is called the trial tax. If you dare exercise your rights in American you will pay a price for being obstinate. The justification? It costs the Court too much for people to exercise their rights.https://www.nacdl.org/Media/TrialPenaltyScourgeofAmericanCri...
by _DeadFred_
3/25/2025 at 9:33:56 PM
Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?by kubb
3/26/2025 at 4:39:26 PM
Speaking only for myself, I think Europeans, in general (and most people in this thread) have no real sense for how violent the US really is, how much more crime we have than Europe, how many of our violent offenders serve no serious time, or how many times the modal US prisoner has been previously arrested or convicted of a crime.The typical US prisoner 1) did their crime; 2) did many other crimes besides the one they're in prison for; 3) is very likely to commit additional crimes upon their release.
Small, homogenous European countries have absolutely no idea how to solve our crime problem and their criticisms reflect an irritating combination of ignorance and arrogance.
by dionidium
3/27/2025 at 7:09:42 AM
Your solution to crime isn’t working very well, but that’s OK, nobody’s telling you what to do.We can just observe the society you have and wonder how you can simultaneously not take responsibility for your outcomes, and bash others who make different choices and have better outcomes.
From your post it sounds like you feel that you do know better, and the only issue you’re having isn’t your policy, but your “lack of homogeneity”, which makes it impossible to improve anything.
by kubb
3/27/2025 at 2:24:56 PM
> Your solution to crime isn’t working very wellThat's correct. We should have a lot more people in prison than we do. We are far too soft on repeat offenders and we've allowed courts to deem unconstitutional practices that literally nobody at the founding would have thought were questionable.
When you talk to people about "mass incarceration" in the abstract, they think it's bad. But when you show them what the modal prisoner and the modal prison sentence is actually like, they think it's too soft. Opposition to "tough on crime" policies is based on the myth (the lie?) that most US prisoners are innocent or, if not innocent, guilty only of harmless crimes like drug possession -- that the system is racist and unfair.
But that's not what the data show.
What the data show -- again -- is that the modal prisoner did the crime, and many others besides, and that they are very likely to commit more crimes once released.
Criminal justice is not a mysterious science. You identify repeat offenders and then you execute or otherwise permanently incapacitate them. This works because a large share of all crime is committed by repeat offenders.
But of course that's probably not what you mean when you say that our solution to crime isn't working well.
by dionidium
3/27/2025 at 8:59:12 AM
very reasonable observation. :)i can tell you being physically strong comes with it violence and is at the fabric of being an American. so i’d say the issue is complicated and nuanced as is most.
breaking the law (through violence) is also American. we stand up for what we believe in. even if it means breaking the law and going against our government. this is America.
the fact that you have better outcomes for crime is great. how’s your investment system? how’s your sports teams? how’s your military? how’s your stock market? how’s your currency?
by tkjef
3/27/2025 at 4:16:51 PM
I can respect that breaking the law is American, and by all means, go for it.In general life in Europe is pretty good and could be better, thanks for asking. We can invest, we watch different sports than you do and we don't have a comparable military. The stock market is fine, the currency is fine.
I guess the social media campaign is addressed at those of you, who would like less crime, and who would like rule of law, and less aggression, and a safer lifesytle. To lie to them and tell them that having these things leads to downfall or something.
by kubb
3/27/2025 at 4:38:13 PM
i did say violently breaking the law is American.and i did also say it was complicated and nuanced so please do not ignore that detail of my comment.
i’m glad to hear life is good, and to hear you’re humble enough to acknowledge it could be better. it could be better over here, too. are we doing it right or are you? i have no idea. :)
we’re probably both doing things right and wrong. should it even be solved? are we just living a Memento (great movie) like existence where we’re keeping ourselves busy and at war because if we all got along we would over-populate the planet and destroy earth?
what if our ignorant violent human behavior is actually an environmental mitigation technique?
by tkjef
3/27/2025 at 8:27:34 PM
I don’t think this needs to be solved. We should both strive for what each of us want to have.Obviously in Europe there will be more variety because there’s more cultures and independent countries.
We have the advantage that we can take good ideas from each other, because people can travel easily and observe that certain things work well.
The US doesn’t have this benefit, since it’s so inward oriented. That’s fine, but don’t go saying Europeans don’t have freedom if you can only look at Europe through the domestic lens.
by kubb
3/27/2025 at 8:59:52 PM
> We have the advantage that we can take good ideas from each other, because people can travel easily and observe that certain things work well.True, but, interestingly, we can travel thousands of miles within the United States and in so doing observe that different US states have wildly different outcomes while living under the same federal government and very similar state governments.
Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Minnesota live under the same Constitution, the same federal government, and with very similar state governments -- and yet we see that they have very different outcomes on a variety of measures.
Norway and Louisiana have very different crime rates, but so do New Hampshire and Louisiana. This tells us, at a minimum, that the form of government isn't likely to be the primary factor.
by dionidium
3/25/2025 at 9:39:07 PM
Not only that, but it explains the disdain for Europe in the current American government. European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government. Fascists hate a counterexample.by SauciestGNU
3/26/2025 at 1:18:52 PM
The "official" line about Europe is "they get to live this way because we protect them" or some such.Similar things are uttered by the same people about Canada, but with more denigrating comments.
In absolute terms the US is much wealthier than either. But like always with statistics it's important to look at the distribution, not the average.
Staying on topic: the Canadian legal system is probably about as bureaucratically dysfunctional as the US, just without the private super-prisons and the monetary shakedown. Which is to say it's dysfunctional and broke.
by cmrdporcupine
3/25/2025 at 10:06:48 PM
Seems like "they hate us for our freedom!" has done a complete 180 as of late.by ranger_danger
3/26/2025 at 12:18:35 AM
Yes and it's verifiable via the leaked signal messages from VP Vance and SecDef Hegseth.by SauciestGNU
3/26/2025 at 7:34:10 AM
Like US is supporting fascist moments in Europe and sight heiling.by watwut
3/26/2025 at 12:54:35 PM
Man the European/anti-US folks are really triggered this morning. Yeah criminal justice moves slow in the US and isn’t perfect at all. It’s a huge thing from local police and courts to the FBI and… even more courts. As for lawyers there’s a reason for the joke “what do you call a million lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.”by chasd00
3/26/2025 at 4:27:33 PM
> isn’t perfect at allIsn't this purposefully minimizing what essentially amounts to a poor-people-torture machine.
The purpose of the system is what the system does.
In the US we have deeply ingrained perverse financial incentives in criminal justice with wildly variable sentencing that depends on the mood of the judge that day.
Stray any amount from the fine line of legal, and if you're unlucky you could be plunged into a system where you'll be put into massive debt, while also losing your job, home, important documents, etc. We claim to want to reform criminals, yet we kick out their feet at every turn and expect them to say "thank you".
And then the people who face the smallest amount of risk to being victimized by this system like to say "Yeah, it's not perfect".
by MSFT_Edging
3/26/2025 at 12:57:59 PM
Calling people triggered only works as an argument in the US. It’s meaningless over here.by kubb
3/26/2025 at 1:09:08 PM
Sounds like an observation, not an argument.by bavell
3/26/2025 at 1:14:02 PM
Let me in :(by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF
3/26/2025 at 8:38:08 PM
You'll save yourself a lot of time and confusion by accepting that neither side is jealous of the other. I don't want the lifestyle Europe is selling.by dionidium
3/26/2025 at 8:52:13 PM
The hilarious thing is to get a visa in Europe one of the most reliable ways is to start a business under DAFT or be an investor. They want the evil hypercapitalist entrepreneur, they don't actually want the kind of people that their system often claims to champion the most.by ty6853
3/27/2025 at 10:31:21 AM
Calling European freedom true freedom compared to American one is laughable and I say that as a European. Almost no country in Europe comes close to the freedom granted by the bill of rights.by akimbostrawman
3/28/2025 at 9:47:56 AM
This is the exact reason why Putin invaded Ukraine.Ukraine started to get closer to European Union: more transparent, more democratic, less corrupt and richer.
When Russians saw that it was possible in Ukraine, they would get rid of Putin. So he invaded.
by rvba
3/26/2025 at 9:37:27 AM
Corporations and oligarchs effectively own European governments too. Just possibly a bit less than in the US.by tpm
3/26/2025 at 10:44:41 AM
They own European governments far more. They just have several hundred years of extra practice at being subtle.by pclmulqdq
3/26/2025 at 11:31:58 AM
Going by "The purpose of a system is what it does", I think European (specifically EU-member) states do a lot more for their citizens than the US does, in welfare, healthcare, environment, infrastructure and so on, so either the oligarchs are very subtle indeed (looking at our Slovakian oligarchs... I don't think so) or they just don't own the governments far more (yet). They are certainly trying though.I think this is because effectively influencing European politics as a whole (as opposed to individual countries) is much more complicated than the US because of the diversity of languages, cultures and media, but then the EU-level politics will also influence state politics. But also every country has a commissioner in the commission and a vote in the EC, so there are several levels of feedback. Of course many internal and external actors are trying to own or destroy the EU, I just hope they won't be succesful.
by tpm
3/26/2025 at 11:52:39 AM
The European upper class doesn't generally pay taxes, and they are more of internationalists than you are thinking. They move around enough and have their home base somewhere like Monaco so they don't participate at all in the welfare systems. European welfare systems redistribute huge amounts of money from the middle class to the poor, not from the rich.In other words, the European welfare systems are actually a great tool of theirs to keep the competition down: if you're taxing the upper-middle-class workers at a ~50% rate, they need to out-earn you 2:1 to build wealth at the same rate.
by pclmulqdq
3/26/2025 at 12:37:04 PM
I'm not disagreeing with you, just that even with all that "the common people" still get more from the state than in the US, that's at least my feeling.by tpm
3/26/2025 at 3:52:48 PM
European governments do these extra things for their citizens because they have to. Or at least historically had to.Because there was an active socialist & communist movement -- with massive trade union support -- on the continent forcing them to.
That is basically non-existent in the US, and very weak and closer to non-existent in Canada. (We only have universal healthcare here because of the actions of the social democratic CCF/NDP in the 60s in Saskatchewan, winning against a doctor's strike and showing the centre-left in the rest of the country that it was possible. At that moment in time. I don't think such a thing could ever be won now. Not against an established insurance industry.)
by cmrdporcupine
3/26/2025 at 10:49:30 AM
And this is a very important point: there's no "perfect" situation (mandatory Churchill quote: "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried"). But there are so many nuances of gray that it's most important to differentiate. Yes, there's stupid EU bureaucracy. But citizens can influence it, look at the legendary straight banana regulation: it was repealed. And so on, slow, imperfect, annoying and at times even dangerous, but it kinda works. However, it will need much more to be able to withstand these times...by soco
3/26/2025 at 11:15:43 AM
> European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government.Europeans have far more restrictions on their rights of speech, self-defence, and freedom of conscience than the Americans. They are also substantially poorer than Americans, and those numbers get worse when you account for America’s average being skewed lower by having a higher proportion of recent immigrants with lower earning potentials.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 1:30:32 PM
America has more ultra rich people and high income earners.But if you’re poor and have an easily treatable illness, say type 1 diabetes, you’ll die begging for insulin.
It’s very easy to lose everything within a few months.
You get sick, lose your job, your entire family loses health insurance. We have this stupid prosperity gospel idea which conversely means poverty is your fault. Can’t afford medicine for your kids, well I guess it’s their fault for having a loser dad.
Taxes are still absurdly high in America for what you actually receive. Have any serious medical issues and you’ll be spending thousands upon thousands per month on top of 600 to 700$ for essentially useless health insurance.
We’re also a fear based society. When I visited London it’s perfectly normal to see single women waiting for the bus at 2am or whatever. Here as a grown man I got freaked out when I was approached by a stranger around 7pm. Was he going to rob me ?
He actually was a local politician passing out flyers , but we live in paranoia land.
America is closer to a developing country in both medical care and violent crime. I know I’d rather raise a family in Berlin than almost any American city.
by 999900000999
3/26/2025 at 2:47:52 PM
> We’re also a fear based society. When I visited London it’s perfectly normal to see single women waiting for the bus at 2am or whatever. Here as a grown man I got freaked out when I was approached by a stranger around 7pm. Was he going to rob me ?> He actually was a local politician passing out flyers, but we live in paranoia land.
Sounds like you're a part of the paranoia. Violent crime happens mostly in small pockets but quite densely where it happens. But generally, most places are perfectly safe.
I've had so many experiences of telling friends I'm off to walk the dog around midnight or whatever and I get responses like "oh is that safe?" Of course it is! I do it all the time. People seriously think if you walk outside at night nearly anywhere, you're likely to be assaulted despite never having such a thing happen to anyone they know.
So many people are scared to ride public transit thinking "what if I'm attacked?!" And yet hopping in their car is the least safe thing they'll do that day with over 100 people dying in car accidents every day. You're way more likely to die a painful death in that car than you are riding the bus, and yet people question if it's safe to ride transit.
by vel0city
3/26/2025 at 1:09:14 PM
The self-defence thing absolutely fascinates me.What are you guys so scared of?
It's a literal fact that a gun is much more likely to be used to kill its owner (or a member of the owner's own family) than any intruder or external threat [0]
Why is this such a thing in the USA? Why do you guys hold gun ownership up as this amazing freedom when owing a gun is literally, provably, way more of a threat to you and your family than anyone else?
by marcus_holmes
3/26/2025 at 1:21:21 PM
A gun is effective for suicide, yeah. We don't have suicide clinics in the states like Europe has, at least that I'm aware of. So people buy guns then off themselves. You have the causation backwards.by ty6853
3/26/2025 at 1:40:07 PM
Yes, I agree, there's definitely that. I know I would not be alive now if I had easy access to a gun.But the parent is talking about the USA having more self-defence freedoms, and gun ownership is definitely part of that. It's not about suicide, it's that weird "you gotta protect your family" that non-Americans find a bit worrying - what are you so scared of? I've lived in a few countries and nowhere I've lived has this level of fear. I've never felt that I would be safer if I owned a gun. I have no idea who I'd use it against (except myself, obviously).
by marcus_holmes
3/26/2025 at 2:14:59 PM
I live next to the us-mexico border, in a place with basically no police services. There are (true) signs everywhere warning of cartels roaming, often with automatic weapons diverted from the Mexican military. Maybe they won't ever bother me, but better to have and not need, than the other way around.by ty6853
3/26/2025 at 2:59:09 PM
I mean, if the cartel with their automatic weapons come at you, do you really think your stash is going to protect you?Also, lack of police services is probably commensurate with the low levels of taxation that so many Americans desperately want and vote for.
by monkey_monkey
3/26/2025 at 3:36:09 PM
I'll be super real. The numbers from 2021 say the average American household owns 5 guns. This isn't because the average American really has a gun, but because of the people with 100 guns skewing the numbers. Those people are real, exist, and will give the cartel, and the local police, and a swat team a run for their money, if invaded. The real average American doesn't have an armory that can protect them from the cartel, but if you're the cartel, you now have to spend additional time and money doing research on if hitting some random house in San Antonio, Tx is going to result in a shootout that's going to get a bunch of your cartel members killed.by fragmede
3/26/2025 at 4:12:16 PM
Can you point to any actual real-world cases where something like this has happened? It sounds like a movie concept; we're letting real-world policy be determined by a fantasy people have about a lone gun enthusiast killing a bunch of drug cartel members?by yowzadave
3/26/2025 at 4:53:21 PM
Warsaw ghetto uprising bought some people a few extra days (and a couple women their lives spared), which is better than nothing.by ty6853
3/31/2025 at 1:01:18 AM
I really hope your example remains a straw man argument, and not something that Americans are going to have to face up to in the next few years.by marcus_holmes
3/26/2025 at 4:16:34 PM
Nope! I agree it's something out of a movie, but real world people do actually have such arsenals. I'm not embedded enough in gun culture to have any personal stories/know of any news reports, but not everything makes the news. I'm not making a comment on policy, just that such individuals exist.by fragmede
3/26/2025 at 3:39:54 PM
[flagged]by totalkikedeath
3/26/2025 at 4:48:12 PM
Half of ar15.com membership would be dead by now, were that the case. Although I imagine a great deal of the 'retards' are feds fishing for conspiracy charges.by ty6853
3/26/2025 at 5:11:53 PM
[dead]by totalkikedeath
3/26/2025 at 4:02:33 PM
Well they are outnumbered. So if one of their guys get killed one of 10 times they fuck with the locals, that is enough to persuade them not to do it. Of course they could eliminate me, but can they do it without one of theirs getting hurt? Probably, but not probably enough to make it worth their time.by ty6853
3/27/2025 at 2:34:59 AM
Americans have a recent history of slavery. They believe since they would be aggressive if emerging from the same situation, that African Americans would be equally aggressive. Which is why most American own guns…by kennyloginz
3/27/2025 at 4:33:20 AM
Yeah, I've heard this theory before, and it kinda makes sense. Except that there are other countries (most of the Anglosphere, including the UK) that also had slavery, (and/or have confronting relationships with their indigenous population), and don't feel that same fear.Is there something unique about the USA's history with slavery that would cause this?
by marcus_holmes
3/27/2025 at 9:03:16 AM
Its about owning a farm in the middle of nowhere not slavery. It really is not that hard to understand that people have different worries back when the second amendment was written when the nearest town for protection is weeks away and not hours.by akimbostrawman
3/27/2025 at 10:02:01 AM
Yeah, interesting. But we don't see the same reaction with Aussie farmers. I mean, most of them do own guns, but that's more about the wildlife...by marcus_holmes
3/27/2025 at 10:16:28 AM
It does not matter what threat its about protecting or even if its that likely to happen. Its human nature to have things to protection youself and things you care about. Like insurance you never need it until you do but then its too late.“God created man. Sam Colt made them equal.”
by akimbostrawman
3/31/2025 at 1:02:37 AM
And yet, that's not true in any other country. So I doubt it's human nature.by marcus_holmes
4/1/2025 at 12:12:25 PM
Other countries have locks and self defense weapons even firearms. marshal arts have existed in all cultures world wide.Denying self defense isn't a core part of human history and desire for political reasons is very unscientific.
by akimbostrawman
3/26/2025 at 5:42:43 PM
> What are you guys so scared of?All the other terrified people with guns.
by autoexec
3/26/2025 at 2:19:00 PM
You don’t need to ask rhetorical questions if you want to make a statement; it’s incredibly obnoxious and not in the spirit of the forum.by lurk2
3/27/2025 at 12:58:10 AM
The question is "what are you guys so scared of?" and it's a genuine question, I would love to know what the fear is that drives someone to buy a gun when the plain fact is that buying a gun puts them in more danger. It's not a rhetorical question.The two answers I've read so far are: mexican cartels (ok, but if you don't live on the border what are you scared of?) and "all the other terrified people with guns" which I think is intended to be joking (but many a truth said in jest).
If you have a different answer, I'd love to hear it.
by marcus_holmes
3/26/2025 at 11:39:16 AM
We're really not. Just the health care issues, which can be directly seen in the life expectancy figures, make us materially richer, never mind anything else.And I much prefer not needing to exercise my rights to self-defence in the first place, than to have to worry about carrying a gun around all the time, and whether or not a child might get accidentally get access to it. See also gun shooting figures.
by neffy
3/26/2025 at 1:44:57 PM
> We're really not. Just the health care issues, which can be directly seen in the life expectancy figures, make us materially richer, never mind anything else.They don’t. Americans earn something like 1/3rd more than the average European. They have substantially larger houses and own more cars.
> And I much prefer not needing to exercise my rights to self-defence in the first place
The vast majority of people will never need to use a gun whether they are in the US or Europe. The position you’re taking is one that it is convenient for you to take because you are not currently the victim a violent crime. This is akin to someone talking about all of the money they are saving by driving without insurance.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 2:16:57 PM
I lived in Berlin for a while. Most people don't own a car in Berlin. Not because of poverty, but because the city is walkable (you can walk from one side to the other in an afternoon, it's a lovely thing to do on a summer's day). Your metric of "own more cars" is not incorrect, just irrelevant. It's like saying that Europeans are wealthier because they are more likely to have a passport.Likewise for "substantially larger houses". This is just not a relevant metric - Europeans generally live in denser cities, with more apartment living, more cycling, more parks. That's a preference. It's got nothing to do with wealth. Europeans don't have smaller houses because they can't afford them, but because they prefer living in smaller, denser, more walkable cities.
by marcus_holmes
3/26/2025 at 2:28:04 PM
It's interesting because I have been to many walkable places in southeast Asia with extremely cheap collective taxis, but even then most extended families have a small motorbike so they can visit another village without all the bother of begging/renting/borrowing.by ty6853
3/27/2025 at 12:53:28 AM
Yeah, I have lived in SE Asia too, and I think the reason is public transport - in Berlin there are two train systems, trams, and buses. You can get anywhere cheaply, safely, and relatively quickly. In SE Asia there's usually tuk-tuks, sometimes taxis, and that's it. And owning a moped is a lot cheaper than taking a tuk-tuk every time. Owning a car is a lot more expensive than taking the u-bahn every time.by marcus_holmes
3/26/2025 at 2:39:47 PM
> It's like saying that Europeans are wealthier because they are more likely to have a passport.It’s not like that as we were discussing tangible measures of wealth. Can you provide any evidence that Europeans are materially wealthier than Americans? That is, that Europeans earn, own, and / or consume more than Americans?
by lurk2
3/28/2025 at 10:29:42 AM
But I don´t want to "consume" more than Americans. I want to eat healthy food in reasonable quantities and maintain a sensible weight.I don´t want to own a car and drive 2 hours to work every day, and consume more car ownership - I want to cycle or walk, and stay fit and enjoy the sun.
You see the mistake you're making?
I lived in the US for 6 years, and could have stayed. It was an easy decision to go back to Europe.
by neffy
3/27/2025 at 12:50:16 AM
My point was that your metrics (more cars, bigger houses) are as invalid as my metric (more passports) because Europeans have fewer cars and smaller houses as a choice, not because of poverty. Like Americans have fewer passports because they choose not travel internationally, not because they can't afford to.by marcus_holmes
3/26/2025 at 3:16:28 PM
I think there's maybe a value discrepancy as well. Admittedly I fall more on what I perceive to be the European side of this, so that's my bias here.As someone of moderate wealth (high earner, investments), I still live in the same small house in the same inexpensive city I did when I was earning a quarter of what I do now. Americans talk about "starter houses" and moving up, but that's a consumptive pattern I don't value. Instead, I value the financial freedom of not having a mortgage and having stable, well-constructed housing that I continuously improve. I could afford the bigger house but I don't want it.
As for cars, I have 2 but they rarely get used. One is a business van for transporting large equipment and the other is a cheap hatchback. I bike most places though, and drive only a couple times a week. I understand their utility as a tool, but if I could get away without owning one I would.
Money is nice, but financial security with social safety nets and public healthcare is a trade-off I'd gladly make.
by SauciestGNU
3/26/2025 at 1:42:37 PM
The thing about being “poor” in Europe is, you can be “poor” your entire life by American standards of income/assets, but still never take on medical debt, travel more than a month out of the year, have a couple kids and educate them in good schools, and retire.Most Americans cannot.
by pseudocomposer
3/26/2025 at 1:49:15 PM
> Most Americans cannot.You have no idea what you’re talking about and there is no statistical basis to the claims you are making. The only two metrics Europeans win out on is life expectancy (by around 4 years) and (narrowly) on home ownership rate (around 5 percentage points higher in Europe). Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier than Europeans by every other metric.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 2:33:54 PM
there is no statistical basis to the claims you are makingAre you really arguing that Americans (and especially Americans below the median) don't have higher levels of medical debt, higher rates of medical bankruptcy, and get/take less vacation than Europeans.
by dagw
3/26/2025 at 2:49:24 PM
Those were not the claims being made. The claim was that:> Most Americans cannot: Never take on medical debt, travel more than a month out of the year, have a couple kids and educate them in good schools, and retire.
Most Americans do these things, with the possible exception of month-long vacations.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 3:48:50 PM
> Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier than Europeans by every other metric.$1.21 trillion in credit card debt, $1.66 trillion in car loans and $1.6 trillion in federal student loans - yes, Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier.
by ponector
3/26/2025 at 4:08:25 PM
Yes, they are. The largest of those three figures involves the purchase of a hard asset that provides utility to the purchaser over time. If you buy a $30,000 van, you’re not out $30,000, because you’ve received the van in exchange.I note that you didn’t provide equivalent figures for the EU, however, so I imagine you’re less interested in making an actual argument than you are in looking clever.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 9:27:34 PM
Do you know why it's hard to get national student debt figures for Europe?Credit cards and car loans are also not that popular.
PS: if you buy 30k van you are down more than that as you need to get an insurance, gas, parking lot, pay tax, etc.
by ponector
3/26/2025 at 11:19:35 PM
> Do you know why it's hard to get national student debt figures for EuropeIf you’re implying that student debt doesn’t exist in Europe because schooling is “free” for everyone you are wrong. Plenty of European countries don’t provide free schooling and even the ones that do such as Germany often have a parallel private system for those who fail to get into the more exclusive public schools. Europeans who do graduate are then faced with substantially higher tax rates - education, like healthcare, doesn’t just fall out of the sky for free.
Europeans also own credit cards; they probably have lower levels of debt than Americans (who have a fairly unique culture of credit-financed consumer spending), but they also aren’t capable of servicing the debt that an American can service, for the simple reason that they earn less than Americans.
> PS: if you buy 30k van you are down more than that as you need to get an insurance, gas, parking lot, pay tax, etc.
This is a red herring. When you eat dinner you not only have to pay for the food but also spend time purchasing, preparing, and eating it. This doesn’t prevent people from eating because they derive utility from eating which exceeds the opportunity costs associated with purchasing, preparing, and eating it.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 6:23:06 PM
It's certainly true that Europeans take more vacations and spend more time abroad. They also win on spending less time at work and more time with their loved ones.by autoexec
3/26/2025 at 10:58:07 PM
Those weren’t the claims the grandparent made. Europeans do work less and vacation more often, but even when you account for this, they still earn less per hour worked.Vacation time itself might be a good metric for quality of life (which I am not disputing is probably comparable if not better in Europe if you discount the importance of material wealth), but time abroad is not since Americans have access to a lot more variety within America than a European would have within their own country; it’s the same reason more Europeans have passports.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 11:45:40 AM
> Europeans have far more restrictions on their rights of speech, self-defence, and freedom of conscience than the Americans.In theory.
Articles like this are about how it works in practice.
by Viliam1234
3/26/2025 at 1:05:30 PM
My point here was not to idealize America but to criticize the idealization of Europe.by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 11:38:50 AM
And yet, by all accounts we have a higher life quality than Americans. Only Americans care about money, because in USA you don't get anything without paying for it all yourself. Here we have minimum mandatory vacations for 4 weeks per year, and many countries have a lot more than that, most countries have a year or more of maternity leave, paid of course, we have plenty of public holidays, paid of course, and we don't need to do work while in a hospital or when giving birth, as that would be illegal for the employer to ask of you. There's also no at-will firing just because your boss doesn't like your face, there needs to be an actual reason proving that a person cannot fulfill responsibilities, and there also needs to be a chance given to improve on the mistakes before firing a person.Our food is not riddled in toxic waste because of those horrible regulations that Americans don't like, our air is breathable because of those same horrible regulations, companies are not allowed to just steal and sell all of our data or keep it indefinitely, because of those horrible regulations, which makes American tyrants mad because they can't make their billion dollar startups here so easily since they're used to breaking the law, abusing people, or paying off governments to get what they want, which is a lot harder to do here. Much sad, many tear, for the poor American startup founder.
Europeans by and large don't share the same values as Americans. Being filthy rich isn't our goal, our goal is good health, spending time with our loved ones, having plenty of time to rest and dedicate on our hobbies, and being treated fairly and with respect. Americans on the other hand care about money at all cost, doesn't matter if it's at the expense of working class people, and they view people who work less than 80 hours a week as lazy.
I also don't know what freedom of speech you are talking about since I read the news and USA seems to have everything, BUT freedom of speech. Your education is down the toilet, crime is rampant, police murders minorities on a regular basis, school shootings everywhere, a government as corrupt as can possibly be, people fired en masse everywhere for not replying to an e-mail ...
by askonomm
3/26/2025 at 1:04:39 PM
> and they view people who work less than 80 hours a week as lazyIn my last startup in Germany, I worked with a bunch of ex-management consultants who had all worked in a famous consultancy in the USA (you've definitely heard of it).
They all shared stories of Americans staying 12+ hours in the office but not actually doing anything. It was all performant "we're working really hard", mostly chatting to each other and scrolling social media. The Germans were incredibly frustrated because getting anything actually done was really difficult, and they ended up mostly sharing the work amongst themselves so they could actually get it done. Needless to say, their American colleagues thought they didn't work hard because they left the office after only 10 hours or so.
I've seen this in American-influenced startup culture, too - a tendency to use hours spent moistening a chair as a productivity measure, because measuring actual productivity was "too hard".
by marcus_holmes
3/26/2025 at 11:54:20 AM
After reading your comment, one might come to the conclusion that Europeans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media, just as Americans see Europeans through the same lens. Both sides believe characterizations of the other.by mattw2121
3/26/2025 at 1:04:02 PM
> one might come to the conclusion that Europeans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social mediaHeck, Americans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media.
Look at the incredibly polarized climate. Why is it a novelty to just bring together people of "opposite sides" to talk? When political "debate" is just a grounds to get your sound bites out to the media, democracy is in danger. And not just from the current administration.
by fn-mote
3/26/2025 at 12:43:14 PM
The conclusion is correct, I would say. I know plenty of Americans who are not the archetype I portrayed, but this is HN, and that’s the HN American I see here a lot. Not all, but a lot. And we seem to be fundamentally incompatible. It’s really unfortunate, but that’s what it seems to me, and I’m sorry for the bitter undertones, it’s just really hard to stay optimistic in the current social climate.by askonomm
3/26/2025 at 3:24:13 PM
Rent free.by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 11:47:20 AM
> Europeans have far more restrictions on their rights of speech, self-defence, and freedom of conscience than the AmericansThat is true. However Europeans tend to believe that restricting some freedom leads to higher overall freedom: I can exercise a lot more freedom when I don't risk a gun pointed at me. I'm a much freer thinker when religious agenda pushed (overtly or subtly) on me (directly or through societal influence). Same for misinformation and other propaganda.
From a European perspective, "american freedom" seems like "free as in free-for-all", which certainly doesn't lead to the highest level of personal freedom. It's a local optimum at best.
> They are also substantially poorer than Americans
According to this random source (first result for "poverty rate by country") https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-r..., America has a similar or worse poverty rate than a lot of Europe (not that European countries can easily be compared).
Salaries tend to be higher in the US of course, that doesn't translate directly to living conditions and poverty.
Regardless, I don't think that Europe's path to improve poverty level is US-style individual freedom.
by williamdclt
3/26/2025 at 12:31:02 PM
I think it's not just about poverty, some stats about "precarious employment" - as in "I'm above the poverty line, but if I lose my job (or even one of the two jobs I have to do to get by), that will change very quickly" - would also be interesting...by rob74
3/25/2025 at 11:31:56 PM
I mean if you think the US is the greatest country on earth, but for some reason needs to made great "again" and that has to involve scapegoating then having an ally where they solved most of the problems you are having with simple commons sense measures isn't all that attractive.It amazing how US billionaires managed to have a majority vote against their interest and endure this shitshow. Time for the US to realize that their governments are meant to represent them and not the other way around.
by atoav
3/26/2025 at 3:55:30 PM
If you think people are voting against their own interests, what's probably happening is you don't know what their interests are and don't even realize that you don't know. Other people's interests are obviously not the same as yours but often they're not even what they publicly claim so you won't find out without actual empathy and effort. But it's easier to just be a bigot than understand other cultures.by foxglacier
3/26/2025 at 8:04:34 PM
I grew up in a Austrian province governed by a neo-nazi connected right wing party, when I say voting against their interest who I mean are those who aren't ardent Nazis.Sure, there might be actual Nazis who would like to lose everything if it just allowed them to force their beliefs on others as was historically the case. But most people who vote for right wingers do so because they believe they will have tangible benefits.
But if your premise is false, your conclusion is also false.
by atoav
3/28/2025 at 11:25:34 PM
I don't understand what you mean. People in your province voted against their own interests because they believed (incorrectly?) that it would benefit them? How do you know what their interests were or whether it did benefit them in ways that were important to them or not?by foxglacier
3/29/2025 at 4:13:31 PM
Do you believe people have perfect knowledge of the consequences of their vote, and of the plans of the people they vote for? If no, then it's not hard to fathom that people can get manipulated into voting against their own interests.by OKRainbowKid
3/26/2025 at 7:16:38 AM
no, not really, this is a separate issue.yes, American exceptionalism relies on a comparing itself to the worst countries in the world and ignoring that developed nations exist and work out decently.
but there really is a skepticism about some Europe nations, can they - and the bloc - sustain its 21st century advances and social safety nets while adequately paying for its own defense? inquiring minds would like to know, and now we don't have to debate it anymore. Is the budget really balanced if all commitments were funded as agreed? Can European nations really tolerate each other with the rearmaments?
stay tuned
by yieldcrv
3/26/2025 at 7:51:08 AM
Does rule of law require the same investments as healthcare?Isn't America spending the most per capita on healthcare in the world with horrible outcomes (life expectancy 4 years behind poor countries like Portugal)? Aren't there public healthcare systems outside of Europe?
Doesn't America have an insane amount of natural resources and the benefit of controlling world's exchange currency to make up for any additional defence (and offence) expenses?
Seems to me a like story to help cope with a subconscious inferiority complex.
by kubb
3/26/2025 at 10:49:32 AM
> life expectancy 4 years behind poor countries like PortugalDemographics has a big impact on life expectancies. Asian Americans have a life expectancy of 84 years for instance. Which is better than Portugal by 3 years. Comparing life expectancies on a per country basis is fraught with error if attempting to attribute differences to health systems. Genetics, climate, diet — all have huge impacts on life expectancy.
Puerto Rico has a life expectancy of over 82 years and has the same system as the U.S. It’s a year higher than Cuba in fact. Why does Puerto Rico do better than Cuba when the Cuban system is often claimed to have a better health system? Puerto Rico also has a higher life expectancy than Portugal.
by briandear
3/26/2025 at 11:20:31 AM
> Puerto Rico has a life expectancy of over 82 yearsWhere are you getting that figure from? I’m seeing 79 years, which is still higher than I would have guessed, but not higher than Portugal at 81.
by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 2:10:23 PM
The life expectancy of white people in Washington DC says a lot.by hattmall
3/26/2025 at 11:17:23 AM
>but there really is a skepticism about some Europe nations, can they - and the bloc - sustain its 21st century advances and social safety nets while adequately paying for its own defense?Yes. The EU's defence is a political unity issue. Not a spending one. It needs a unified foreign policy where that makes sense and the like. Not countries receiving preferential gas pricing and pusyfooting when it comes to giving arms to Ukraine or the like. It's greatest single threat is russia. One may think they spend a far greater share on it's military and so Europe should too. But it's economy is smaller than Italy's and it has no capacity to fight the block.
by modo_mario
3/26/2025 at 2:45:16 PM
Yeah I'm fairly confused about what hugely-increased costs folks think Europe will need to "adequately" defend herself when it's now been definitively demonstrated that the on-paper weakness of Russia (due to its lagging economy) is also in-fact weakness.Europe might need more spending to launch major military adventures on the other side of the globe, which is what the US does quite a bit and why we "need" so much military spending, but for defense? LOL, no. Adjustments in procurement strategies, maybe a little more spending, given the US can no longer be regarded as a solidly reliable supplier and so Europe's going to have to de-globalize some of its military supply chain, but... lots more spending? Why???
by alabastervlog
3/27/2025 at 9:24:15 AM
>Zelensky highlighted the disparity in forces between Russia and Europe, saying that Ukraine's army consists of 110 brigades, while Russia fields 220 and plans to expand to 250 this year. In contrast, Europe, including U.S. troops stationed there, has only about 82 combat brigades, he said.https://kyivindependent.com/europe-could-face-russian-occupa...
by 0xDEAFBEAD
3/26/2025 at 7:24:48 AM
These are separate issues. Healthcare aint cheap anywhere for the state, but its perfectly fundable for any but the most poor and broken countries in the world, to a very decent level. But US is broken in another way - everything is for-profit, no real oversight, and unrestricted capitalism full throttle. Then you get what you got.There are 2 absolutely basic pillars of modern free society worth living in - 1) how it takes care of its weak and injured ones (healthcare and social services); 2) and how it builds a better future via good available public education. US fails in most if not all of those. There are aspects it excels in but they are not primary markers of happiness, life fulfillment, low stress and such.
by jajko
3/26/2025 at 10:01:19 AM
> unrestricted capitalism full throttleThis definitely isn't true. American healthcare has vast amounts of public funding of it. It's the mixture of private companies working within a Byzantine regulatory framework (or multiple frameworks) that's causing the issues.
by robertlagrant
3/26/2025 at 10:50:45 AM
> no real oversightThe US health system is excessively regulated. It’s anything but unrestricted capitalism. I would argue that the regulation is what makes the system so broken.
by briandear
3/26/2025 at 2:48:00 PM
We should pick one of the other OECD states to copy, then. One supposes their systems are less-regulated, since they're cheaper for similar or better outcomes. That must be the case, if excessive regulation is the key problem with the US system, and not something else.by alabastervlog
3/26/2025 at 11:23:06 AM
Which regulations do you believe are contributing to the system being broken?by lurk2
3/26/2025 at 7:38:37 AM
correct, but Americans as a whole aren't envious of what other countries are doing. There is very little consensus to suggest envy - as the supposition above had suggested was the root of European bashing.There is more consensus on accessing these things - healthcare and higher education - via wealth, or programs within the state of residence. Some individual states/cities do offer free higher education, and free healthcare. Segments of the population also get healthcare subsidized from the national federal government, the same experience as if it was universal. Private options are available for all, just like many European nations have or even mandate, to complement a public system.
The consensus is very similar to what JD Vance wrote in the group chat: that it remains to be proven that Europe can solve its own problems while gloating about what they've built up domestically by appropriating their budgets towards advances we aren't willing to do. and its "pathetic" that we subsidize their defense, while we do experience squalor and infrastructure problems. The American perspective is very similar to what JD Vance - the vice president - wrote, even if its oversimplified or even inaccurate.
Vance didn't just appear from the void, he is a 40 year millennial, who briefly lived in Bernal Heights, San Francisco for more than a year while working at a Menlo Park-based biotechnology company in Silicon Valley, was in the army, from the middle of the country, who openly criticized Trump like anyone else in the SF Bay Area would before finding it more favorable to seek power. His perspectives are not fringe in any way. He is just saying them outloud and with journalists around now.
by yieldcrv
3/26/2025 at 8:25:33 AM
That perspective, as anything US based, is very US centric and wrong.EU supported US war on terror, or whatever you call last 25 years of US invasions, with our own troops and what did we get out of that? Immigration crisis. We basically had to spend huge amounts of money on handling immigrants because of all the wars US (our so called ally) started.
Also, EU banks invested a lot of money in US scam financial institutions and our saving got wiped out in 2008. All of that money dissapeared in US economy.
US doesn't charge you for services by issuing an itemized bill, but instead they suck it out through different venues. Like a leach. I guess you can easily ignore things like that if it doesn't fit your narrative.
You are at the same time complaining that the EU is too dependent on US and that it doesn't pay its' share. The main problem with dependence is that you don't develop your own industry and instead you rely on imports and send money to other countries for services. So how can EU at the same time be both dependent on US and not sending money to US? That doesn't make any sense.
Citizens of EU have been complaining about reliance on US to our governments for years, but our bureaucrats ignored it and kept sending money over seas because it was the easiest thing to do. Current US administration has finally shown that this dependence is dangerous, and now hopefully instead of sending money to US they will divert it into EU economy.
by mixologist
3/26/2025 at 9:55:48 AM
Exactly this. I don't remember European, Canadian and Australian governments trying to extort the US after 9/11 when those countries spent billions fighting alongside the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.by monkey_monkey
3/26/2025 at 9:30:44 PM
Victoria Nuland 2014: "Fuck the EU" https://www.france24.com/en/20140207-ukraine-usa-eu-nuland-l...Europe 2025: Fuck the US.
by data_maan
3/26/2025 at 1:26:22 PM
Some people existing near a shipping lane thousands of kilometres away in a foreign sovereign country does not constitute a “problem” that Europe needs to “solve”.by freeone3000
3/26/2025 at 8:12:03 AM
Sure we can solve problems. In fact, the only problem - underfunded military. We already started across most Europe, to the tune of half a trillion of additional spending just now. Most of that money will come back to our economies, so expect EURO value to rise. Since russia has 0 motivation to stop its war and its goals are pretty clear, this will also increase in near future. It won't be immediate since we foolishly planned long term for peace, but give it a decade and ie Wehrmacht will be in completely different shape than now.Also, its not just US throwing money into black pit of Europe - the money came back with interest in form of global power projection with additional half a billion people standing by you even in your most fucked up invasions like Iraq, thats over for good. We mistakenly bought tons of military hardware from US to the tune of hundreds of billions USD - thats over now too, and it doesn't matter who will be the next guy, the trust is broken for good (for what - some additional negotiation pressure on Ukraine to force them into some minerals deal? Bravo, this is how things are when you give too much power to a bipolar narcissistic person).
I am not holding my breath that US will fix half of the issues I've mentioned, although they are pressing issues now.
Also, every time I mention healthcare costs in US somebody comes and tells how its almost a fixed issue already. then I read how people give 20k or 40k for a birth, how open heart surgery costed them 60k on top of insurance, how some long term medicine is crushingly expensive. Compare it to here - 0, our 2 childbirths, wife was twice off work for 6 months, full salary kept coming. Even in most capitalistic country in Europe - Switzerland. Also I've had paragliding accident last year with both legs broken, been off work, on wheelchair, tons of MRIs, physiotherapies and so on. Cost - 0, also salary fully compensated by mandatory employer's insurance.
Where jdv comes from and his background is irrelevant, he is ass licking amoral pos and showed it to whole world live numerous times. If he represents half of US population, well then the division is just naturally following discord between our continents, cultures and philosophies.
by jajko
3/26/2025 at 8:38:42 AM
> We already started across most Europe, to the tune of half a trillion of additional spending just now.I’m aware, this is the best inception I’ve ever seen because Europeans are acting like its their own idea because they're scared of the US / Russia now
and not that the people in the current US administration have been demanding Europe to do this for 8 years straight.
less talking, and just scare people into action. Same result, at the expense of some relationships that wore out its welcome. and everyone investing into their local economies.
sidenote: I like Switzerland. Way to go guys.
by yieldcrv
3/26/2025 at 9:56:19 AM
Of course they would be demanding that, they wanted Europe to buy Usa gunsby Vilian
3/26/2025 at 10:02:36 AM
I think they just want to stop feeling as though they have to fund all that defence out of their taxes and then be made fun of by the people they're defending that they don't spend enough taxes on US social safety nets.by robertlagrant
3/26/2025 at 10:52:34 AM
No sane person will tell you that EU should accept all the consequences of US starting wars in our neighborhood and also pay for that privilege.Nobody is forcing US to field the largest army in the world. It is their own choice. We all would much rather if they didn't have such an incentive to arbitrarily start wars just to justify their defense budget.
BTW, if US is such a mighty nation as they advertise themselves, they should have no problem providing safety net for their citizens. The problem is that they just don't want to do that. They don't care about their citizens. All administrations just want to avoid taxing the rich and shift the blame to made up external enemies.
by mixologist
3/26/2025 at 11:38:12 AM
I don't see the point in this bad faith stuff. Clearly the US has provided a massive defence umbrella not limited to wars the US started. EU countries are now arming up and spending increased GDP on defence to accommodate the US spending less on their defence. The US has spent a fortune that those countries didn't have to previously spend, and could instead spend on social things. I think the US was fine with this, but they're not fine with doing this for the EU while the EU is laughing at it for not spending enough on social things.by robertlagrant
3/26/2025 at 12:43:35 PM
What bad faith?US has been destroying Middle East for decades. Where do you thing that migrants from those regions run to?
Wars in Middle East are not something that EU needs or wants. We just went with it because of all the "we are allies and we respect each other" lies that were used by US administrations to swindle EU and get what they want.
Or do you propose that US pays for the costs of immigration problems around the world?
It is obvious that only reason US doesn't have safety net for their own citizens is US.
by mixologist
3/26/2025 at 1:40:44 PM
We all know where the middle east strife comes from. America has supported it, but not America alone. Is Germany going to stop providing financial and military aid and hardware to Israel?by lupusreal
3/26/2025 at 3:54:52 PM
I have a feeling (haven't seen any studies) that support of Israel by EU countries is done mainly by politicians who are listening to US polititans.It will be interesting to see how long EU support for Israel will last without the pressure from US.
by mixologist
3/26/2025 at 1:38:43 PM
European NATO members were well within their rights to refuse to participate in Afghanistan when America invoked Article 5 (read it!). They should have in fact, because it was a bullshit war and they knew it at the time. They chose to participate anyway and have been whining about it ever since. Fine, mistakes were made, but now you lot should be happy to put distance between yourselves and America and take on full responsibility for your own defense.As for America starting wars in the region, if you think America started the wars Russia has waged and is waging against Georgia and Ukraine, you've been huffing Kremlin retard gas. You lot have a problem on your border, America didn't make it and its not America's responsibility to fix it. Maybe the American people would be more eager about helping Europe if Europeans didn't take every opportunity they could to gloat about how they're better than America, how Americans are stupid to spend so much on the military. Doesn't matter now though, the damage is done. Take care of yourselves.
by lupusreal
3/26/2025 at 4:10:24 PM
Region as in "relatively close to Europe". Immigrants are coming all the way from Middle East where US performs the operations, not our neighboring countries.Russian thing is all EU fault. Glut for cheap oil made putin think he has a big bargaining chip against EU and that this will all be a simple task.
I don't know what propaganda media you get your information from, but people of Europe are not gloating or thinking you are stupid. I work for a company that has US offices (as many Europeans do) and we work very well together. We travel a lot between countries and work face to face and there have never been any problems.
by mixologist
3/27/2025 at 12:43:34 PM
> but people of Europe are not gloating or thinking you are stupid. I work for a company that has US offices (as many Europeans do) and we work very well together. We travel a lot between countries and work face to face and there have never been any problems.I think this is a mixed bag, but also I think the perception is there. There is a lot of "Scandinavia does this perfectly" talk that creates the perception in the US, even if perhaps no one in Scandinavia is the least bit bothered either way!
by robertlagrant
3/26/2025 at 5:59:40 PM
European defense stocks are what’s moving, hope you’ve been trading themby yieldcrv
3/26/2025 at 11:37:38 AM
Actually I would argue that Europe taking care of itself reduces single point of failure in the system. Even if there was no Trump, it would have been the right thing to do.by ivell
3/26/2025 at 12:56:48 PM
> In fact, the only problem - underfunded military.If you think this is the only problem that Europe has at the moment, we most likely do not live in the same Europe. Europe has an energy crisis, a demographic crisis, a budget crisis, a housing crisis and an illegal immigration crisis.
> We already started across most Europe, to the tune of half a trillion of additional spending just now. Most of that money will come back to our economies, so expect EURO value to rise.
Sure, let's just keep adding to the debt of the EU countries who most of them are already broke. I bet our children and grand-children will thank us for spending their money to buy weapons so that we can defend ourselves against an hypothetical war again Russia. Russia who by the way has trouble holding on to a 5th of Ukraine but who somehow miraculously will have it's tanks roll around Paris and Berlin in just a few years if we believe out dear European leaders.
> Compare it to here - 0, our 2 childbirths, wife was twice off work for 6 months, full salary kept coming. Even in most capitalistic country in Europe - Switzerland. Also I've had paragliding accident last year with both legs broken, been off work, on wheelchair, tons of MRIs, physiotherapies and so on. Cost - 0, also salary fully compensated by mandatory employer's insurance.
The fact that you think all of this costs 0 tells me all I need to know. There is nothing free in this world. If you are not paying then someone else is. Usually it's done through taxes which are paid by companies and people.
When people talk about universal/socialized healthcare as free healthcare, they simply sweep under the rug the real cost of healthcare. And when the economy is doing poorly and companies are leaving, most of the cost will be shouldered increasingly by the middle class who will start wondering why they should be the only ones paying for all this.
The fact of the matter is that even France which ranks second as the most taxed country on the planet, had a 6% budget deficit last year. But it's got "free" healthcare so it's all good.
by rdm_blackhole
3/26/2025 at 8:20:55 AM
[flagged]by Hikikomori
3/26/2025 at 1:18:07 PM
Let's just Europe does not send its best to represent itself on social media (a curse we all share, frankly). You talk to enough confidently-ignorant assholes and any desire to be polite vanishes. The number of europeans who think preservatives are illegal in the EU is pretty befuddling.by nukem222
3/26/2025 at 2:52:31 PM
When I spent a year in Germany circa 1999 I thought the food labels sucked compared to food labels in the US. There were cigarette vending machines on the streets all over Dresden and they even had little candy vending machines below them.When it comes to occupational health and safety you can't say European standards are better.
The established process for making plutonium fuel is to grind uranium oxide together with plutonium oxide in a high energy ball mill, then pack the powder into pellets, sinter them, and then have somebody stick the pellets into a fuel rod with gloves. The process creates Pu nanoparticles, once of which could give you lung cancer if it gets deep into your lungs.
In the factory Karen Silkwood worked at they couldn't control the dust to the extent that people could work without wearing respirators. The factory successfully made fuel for the Fast Flux Test Facility but being forced to wear respirators was a "normalization of deviance" that regulators would not grant to subsequent MOX (mixed-oxide) facilities in the US. In France on the other hand, wearing respirators was seen as just fine.
It was a difficult problem to determine the occupational hazard at that kind of factory, confused by the "Healthy Worker" effect such that people who work in almost any job are healthier than the average population. Circa 2015 the evidence was clear that MOX workers really do get lung cancer, I think it's no coincidence that the US shuttered a planned MOX factory around this time.
by PaulHoule
3/26/2025 at 3:24:17 PM
> I thought the food labels sucked compared to food labels in the US.> When it comes to occupational health and safety you can't say European standards are better.
First off, US food labels aren't nearly as strict as most people think. There are a number of exceptions and cases where things simply don't have to be listed, and in others the label can outright lie. Tic tacs somewhat famously are listed as having "zero calories." They do not. But because tictac says the serving size is one and it has below a certain number of calories, they're allowed to round down to zero. But there are also allowances for simply not listing ingredients.
Another example is that US food manufacturers were required to label if a product contained allergens, but the whole thing has been watered down because they lobbied for an additional rule, which was that they could just slap a warning that a product might contain allergens and not have to test for allergens at all. Similar to CA' widely mocked Prop 65 labels. The reason those labels are worthless is because the industry lobbied to be allowed to just slap the label on everything and not have to test their products for toxic materials.
Speaking as someone who lives in the US: US food labels contain more because there's far more allowed to go into the product, because corps have said "let the market decide, if they don't want RED40 in their food they won't buy it." The industry also incessantly fights the FDA on what's considered toxic, and even if it is, trolls over "well there's only a very tiny bit of it, so you have to prove it'll ACTUALLY have an effect on people" which of course is very difficult if the risk is statistically small and there's a million other things that can be the same or greater risk.
In the EU, toxic crap for the most part isn't allowed in the food period, so there's less need to be so strict about what does or doesn't go into a food label, because EU consumers don't have to both educate themselves in what's toxic and check a label to see if it's got something that is toxic in it.
by KennyBlanken
3/26/2025 at 3:31:17 PM
I think regulators just have different attitudes, often about arbitrary points. For a while the EU had many artificial sweeteners that weren't allowed in the US.EU regulators seem less bothered by psychiatric medicines that have serious side effects (agranulocytosis) or might make you have your liver enzymes checked periodically. What you find is that EU regulators permit things that US regulators won't accept and vice versa.
by PaulHoule
3/26/2025 at 7:11:01 PM
[dead]by nukem222
3/26/2025 at 7:09:40 AM
There's a similar phenomena with how Russians view Ukraine."Who allowed them to live so well?".
by lawn
3/26/2025 at 11:29:43 AM
Ukraine is and was literally the poorest european country. Even before this war.by raincole
3/26/2025 at 12:35:52 PM
And what do you think this says about the average Russian?Remember that wealth distribution in Russia is extremely skewed and many people don't even have access to luxury such as an indoor toilet (roughly 1/4th of the population).
by lawn
3/26/2025 at 11:52:15 AM
So why do the Russian invaders keep steeling the toilets and washing machines?When you measure wealth, it makes a huge difference how exactly you calculate it. Having a few astronomically rich oligarchs in your country increases the arithmetic mean, but does nothing about the median.
This is how Russia can have better numbers in national statistics, and yet the average Russian soldier can feel the other way round in Ukraine.
by Viliam1234
3/26/2025 at 12:46:42 PM
Your making stuff up.[del: Most Russian soldiers are paid over $100,000 a year to volunteer to fight in Ukraine. :del] In contrast, most of the Ukrainian soldiers are conscripts.
Here's a Youtube channel by a Brit who moved to Russia in 2002 or 2003:
https://www.youtube.com/@SamsRussianAdventures/videos
At the current time, the top video (i.e., the latest video) in that list is titled, "I'm Much Happier Here in Russia - Here's How Much it Costs".
Sadly, I haven't been able to find out (after watching about 5 of his videos) how much he earns and how he gets his money.
Russia's Gini coefficient is 35.1 whereas the US is at 41.3. Zero means perfect equality whereas 100 is the most unequal society possible.
by hollerith
3/26/2025 at 12:54:52 PM
Most Russian soldiers are from the poorest areas of Russia. Most of the poor schlubs getting fed into the meat grinder are never going to get their payday.by barrkel
3/26/2025 at 1:00:57 PM
If the Russian volunteer gets killed, his family gets paid.by hollerith
3/26/2025 at 1:37:19 PM
Provided that things like paperwork are in order, which often they are not, on purpose. For example, there are so many examples of Russian command refusing to collect the bodies of dead soldiers. No body, no death certificate, no payout.by mopsi
3/26/2025 at 1:28:58 PM
[dead]by EB-Barrington
3/26/2025 at 1:30:27 PM
[flagged]by monkey_monkey
3/26/2025 at 2:14:04 PM
That article was written 14 months ago. Since then, the amount the Kremlin is willing to offer volunteers to sign a contract has gone up substantially.However, my research is telling me that I was wrong when I wrote, "Most Russian soldiers are paid over $100,000 a year to volunteer to fight in Ukraine". Even the ones who signed contracts recently probably get less than half of that.
by hollerith
3/26/2025 at 3:15:59 PM
[flagged]by monkey_monkey
3/26/2025 at 1:45:42 PM
So? The issue is, are they living better than (most) Russians - the Russians who see them as "one people"? That's the issue in lawn's post.by AnimalMuppet
3/26/2025 at 11:33:57 AM
As a context because I see people downvoting it - that slogan was on a semi-famous picture of how the invaders left one of the houses. It was painted on there.by StefanBatory
3/26/2025 at 7:31:52 AM
You should have seen what Ryssians say about Europeby watwut
3/26/2025 at 10:50:27 AM
Before or after they emigrate to Europe? Or are they coming to Switzerland out of spite?by soco
3/26/2025 at 1:31:59 PM
Majority is not emigrating and believe what state media says.by watwut
3/26/2025 at 1:20:30 PM
> Just like healthcare, US justice is only for people with money.In most times and places, this is true. Ancient times, recent history, autocracies, democracies...
Justice is expensive.
Justice, and the legal college as an ideal often specifically negates this. Equality before the law. Blind justice, etc.
That said... justice is inevitably ridden with contradiction, hypocrisy and whatnot. That's what justice is.
Degrees vary, but the structure is usually constant.
Say you are a ceo, fund manager or whatnot. You are in dispute with your employer over $10m of compensation. Your bonus, performance-based compensation.
Now imagine that you are a normie, with a dispute over $10k.
Those to legal processes are entirely dissimilar. One will have teams of lawyers, many proceedings. Completely different aspects of justice will come into play. It's a different justice.
There's no way around this.
by netcan
3/26/2025 at 4:32:33 PM
> There's no way around this.I don't think that is necessarily true. But the system favors the rich and powerful, and that has been true of legal systems throughout history, which means that those with the capacity to make the system more fair are incentivized to maintain the status quo, or at least not change it too much.
by thayne
3/26/2025 at 6:22:48 PM
> those with the capacity to make the system more fair are incentivized to maintain the status quoOften true... but networks of incentives are subtle in how they build up. It's rarely just macro, societal-level incentives.
Anyway... one major aspect is that lawyers do law for a living. It's an industry. An industry that thrives, and has thrived since at least antiquity, by representing the interests of well paying clients.
Besides that... formal truth is expensive. It's expensive to have a procedurally validated scientific truth (eg drug testing). It's expensive to create a judicial truth via trial. Very expensive. That's why we do so little of it, even though judicial (and scientific) ideals demand quite a lot of it.
Most legal matters are settled by lawyers negotiating. Courts are a rubber stamp, and (usually) theoretical last resort. Most (vast majority) criminal convictions involve a confession. In Medieval Europe they would publicly torture convicts, obtain a confession and then hang them. These days, you can confess and serve 2 years in prison... or contest and serve 12.
Otherwise, courts could not handle the volume.
The problem here is high standards. People know about the ideals of justice. Expect justice to live up to these standards. IRL it never has. Not close. Justice is an institution of society that exists to solve problems. Often sticky, ugly problems. The ideals play a role, in keeping that institution balanced... but the ideals are not the balance.
by netcan
3/26/2025 at 3:19:29 PM
>Justice is expensive.Nitpick: Process is expensive. Process does not yield justice by itself. It (assuming it's crafted right) just makes the outcomes more consistent.
by potato3732842
3/26/2025 at 4:36:32 PM
> Nitpick: Process is expensive. Process does not yield justice by itself. It (assuming it's crafted right) just makes the outcomes more consistent.While I agree, and it's an important distinction, I think it's probably true conversely that the chances of justice for the average person are increased by the imposition of "good" due process.
The weasel word "good" there means that I can disagree with any specific instance, but I mean to say that I don't think process is inherently bad. Bureaucracy is definitely a bane of most of our lives, but the obvious alternative, a greased-wheels process where somebody makes decisions quickly and without significant accountability, is great only if the decision maker is on your side, and terrible otherwise.
by JadeNB
3/26/2025 at 1:21:19 PM
> In most times and places, this is true.Thankfully most of the instances of it not being true exist right now. Let's stay grounded in current reality or just agree not to discuss the topic. Saying "welp what do you expect" is downright worse than ignoring it entirely.
by nukem222
3/26/2025 at 2:12:49 PM
Where is this untrue currently?by netcan
3/26/2025 at 5:46:52 PM
Wherever people think their justice system hasn't failed them so completely. So, this includes many people in the developed world. Approximation of justice was always a matter of degree, not a boolean.by nukem222
3/26/2025 at 6:28:06 PM
People think their justice system sucks or is wonderful, because the king is from their tribe. Or... when media fashion is to venerate rather than critique. Or when religious attitudes preference one or the other position.It can (usually does) have nothing to do with how well the justice system works, or whether it favors those who can afford a good lawyer.
Anyway... name a country. Where's this country with just justice?
by netcan
3/26/2025 at 6:51:43 PM
[dead]by nukem222
3/26/2025 at 1:55:52 PM
Small claims works (arbitration too), it should be used more. (But people somehow think that arbitration is fake, but of course ignore all the downsides of the public courts. And of course what people who have given it a few minutes of thought usually don't like is that there's no way to do class-action arbitration. But that's not set in stone.)by pas
3/26/2025 at 2:13:49 PM
Sure. I didn't mean to say that justice is 100% corrupt and unavailable to normies.I said that it is different.
by netcan
3/26/2025 at 2:52:27 PM
In God's system (Mosaic law), they would go before the judges, plead their case, bring evidence (eg witnesses), and something would be decided. The U.S. was originally based on Jethro and Moses' method. Over time, the self-centered and godless people did to it what the Pharisees did to the other system. It was no longer about what's good or even doable for human beings.I also like that the Biblical law, from commands to its case law, is the size of a small paperback. Much of that is redundant or case specific, too. One person could learn it in a few months of study. Whereas, there's no hope of ever knowing if you're breaking some law in this country.
by nickpsecurity
3/26/2025 at 6:41:47 PM
Pharisee here.Joshua and the other judges were chiefs. They lead armies, built alters, pronounced judgements and whatnot. Often advised by prophets.
Mosaic Law, the scrolls of the torah, dod not exist at this point. Not even according to the bible. This came later, during the time of kings.
The stuff quickly scribbled on rocks by The Almighty so that Rabbi Moses could go deal with that whole mess down below... it's sparse. It's got a list of things god likes to eat. A recipe you are not allowed to make.
It doesn't even tell you what to do when a Midian Schiester sells you a faulty woman. Not one word on right to representation, if you can believe it.
American' legal system is based on a mostly illiterate culture's legal tradition, form the black sea. It's very good at dealing with disputes involving fish, pillage and private property.
Also... who ya'callin godless. Get your own god. You can go back to Thor if you don't like what you got here.
by netcan
3/26/2025 at 2:56:45 PM
> godless people did to it what the Pharisees did to the other system.Oops, sorry about that.
by monkey_monkey
3/26/2025 at 3:55:05 PM
[dead]by qotgalaxy
3/26/2025 at 1:17:06 PM
Let's not forget how the Massachusetts AG (Carmen Ortiz) (hopefully) unintentionally drove Aaron Schwartz to suicide to protect the sanctity of elsevier's IP. Even our most obviously rotten institutions are placed on a higher pedestal than human life and recognizable justice.by nukem222
3/26/2025 at 4:01:28 PM
So AGs are suppose to flout or ignore the laws as long offense is against a disliked company and defendant is an activist?by geodel
3/26/2025 at 7:57:23 PM
[dead]by nukem222
3/26/2025 at 1:24:43 PM
[dead]by infinghxsg
3/26/2025 at 7:57:07 AM
Some defense lawyers have a flat rate (a few thousand USD) for drunk driving cases. They call up a few "experts" who can brandish a threat of paperwork at the prosecution and reliably get charges dropped to negligent operations or similar.So if you are in the know a bit of drunk driving is a 2k fine. If not, you loose your drivers license and likely your livelihood.
by dguest
3/26/2025 at 3:00:28 PM
Same as speeding tickets. Nobody who knows what's what and has even a little cash to spare gets an actual moving violation out of a speeding ticket for less than a crazy amount over the speed limit, unless somebody in the court system is pissed off at them.The reason is that a moving violation fucks up your insurance rates and costs a ton of money over time, so it ends up being in everyone's interest to pay a lawyer (takes a cut of what would have been paid in higher insurance rates) to ask their colleague's golfing buddy ("hey, Jim says your short game's getting better!") to accept a plea (less work, hooray!) for a non-moving violation that, gee, would you look at that, just happens to have a fine double what the speeding ticket would have (another cut of the would-have-been-higher-insurance-rates goes here) so sure, the city government and courts are perfectly happy with that arrangement.
by alabastervlog
3/26/2025 at 5:36:01 PM
I almost never see any experts being called by the defense. It's practically unheard of except for the luckiest defendants or the ones with deep pockets.source: thousands of hours observing criminal courts
by qingcharles
3/26/2025 at 9:02:17 AM
I have a bigger conceptual problem with the workflow of:1. The police are looking for someone. They arrest you, a second, different person.
2. They determine you are not the person they were looking for.
3. They bill you for their time.
by thaumasiotes
3/26/2025 at 3:13:51 PM
We once had a purse stolen out of a car (our bad, shouldn't have been left out there, and we left the car unlocked, total fuckup on our part).A credit card from it was used twice at a gas station (cameras galore) that is not near anything—except it's the last gas station on the route to the local, rural-located (little other reason to be out there) Amazon distribution center. We lived in a typical dead-end shitty suburban neighborhood where nobody ever passes through who doesn't live there, except delivery drivers. It was an Amazon delivery driver who stole it, I'm not even Sherlock Holmes and I figured that out in about two minutes with one CC statement and a Maps search.
The cops took a report, didn't give a fuck about the fact that it'd almost certainly take take comically little work to catch the perp and informed us they didn't intend to even try, then... fucking charged us for a copy of the police report we needed for the CC companies.
Definitely didn't feel protected, and only "served" in the sense of "you got served!"
I can only assume resistance to the "defund the police" movement comes entirely from people who've never dealt with them. Ok, our issue was pretty minor, sure it was about the easiest damn case to investigate in all of history but they only have so many people—but I've got a half-dozen other stories like that, from employers, relatives, and friends, and they're all the same, even with much bigger-ticket and serial(!) thefts. They're completely useless, the amount I'm happy to pay them unless they significantly improve is zero dollars. That's before even factoring in their fucked-up "warrior culture", normalized rampant civil rights violations, and lots of murders. Like, putting aside the abuse, they're just goddamn useless at their supposed primary function.
by alabastervlog
3/26/2025 at 3:32:47 PM
Reform is necessary. In a literal and figurative sense both. Reform the Police should be the message. Make the Police force live up to that old line "to serve and protect", to provide justice.Yeah, to get proper value out of a service it usually needs a little more funding, not less.
by mjevans
3/26/2025 at 4:04:30 PM
Get rid of them, replace the traffic part with a dedicated and much-cheaper traffic enforcement group, and start over with a far smaller police force (no more traffic enforcement, which is a ton of the work they do) with completely different training. The current form of police forces needs to be replaced, the fundamental structure is broken, it's not fixable.by alabastervlog
3/26/2025 at 3:11:39 PM
Agreed. There is an assumption that all the Sheriffs and judges are good, while in the south, and Pennsylvania, this was shown not to be the case. In the south, it was a sheriff who was jailing kids, and in Pennsylvania it was a judge who put kids in jail for a kickback.In Southern California a family law judge was actually censured for putting deceased people's real property on his name. He retired with full pension.
I would like to cite this, but my cell phone search engine and small screen prevent it.
Anyone here who keeps chiming in about a specific case... Please use Google... West Law and Lexis are available for free at most law libraries.
I want names, dates, case summaries, court locations, judgement summaries, contact information. For both parties.etc..etc...etc.
by ForOldHack
3/26/2025 at 11:04:44 AM
> Now you better not lose because you are on the hook for all of the money the court wants to believe it cost them to prosecute you.In a criminal case you aren't liable for the legal costs of the prosecution. I think you're confusing criminal court with civil court.
by CrossVR
3/26/2025 at 1:09:38 PM
Many jurisdictions add fines for various parts of the process. Lab fees, probation fees, rehab fees, jail fees, and on and on. Some do even charge a prosecution fee to fund the district attorney.by treis
3/26/2025 at 1:39:58 PM
One of the most repulsive and eye-opening experiences I have had is sitting in my local traffic court for 4 hours. It became clear to me that court was filled with people trying to go to work or live their lives but end up being saddled with thousands of dollars in fines.The worst part of the experience for me was agreeing to pay my $150 fine. This was the amount stated by the judge. But of course when you actually go to pay, the cost if $400 because of the fees. I'd rather just pay a lawyer next time.
by sixothree
3/26/2025 at 2:58:52 PM
Back when I was too broke to afford a lawyer, my favorite part of traffic court the couple times I went was all the people video calling in from the local jail who are in jail because they didn't pay tickets they couldn't afford and then inform the court that no they still can't pay them because they are in jail.by fkyoureadthedoc
3/26/2025 at 5:38:37 PM
The bail payments are awful too.For a few years before Illinois did away with cash bail they had a rule you could pay your bail off $5/day by... sitting in jail. So if you sat in jail for a year you might actually save up enough credit to be able to bail out.
by qingcharles
3/26/2025 at 2:47:37 PM
The state has nearly unlimited power and resources to build a case against you. They also have nearly zero risk to the outcome. Merely being taken to court is already material loss to you. How is that fair?by user9999999999
3/25/2025 at 9:38:59 PM
My understanding is the root of the evil is in our overcriminalisation of day to day life. Is this accurate? Or would reducing the prison population through reduced sentencing not alleviate the worst of the problems?(Reduced sentencing loads mean you can raise standards for court-appointed counsel, possibly ban plea deals, et cetera.)
by JumpCrisscross
3/25/2025 at 10:09:02 PM
I think it is less to with "overcriminalization" in the sense of legislation, and more to do with the enforcement process. In some sense I think we need more criminalization, in that the types of malfeasance described in the article (e.g., keeping people imprisoned beyond their sentence, failing to provide an attorney, etc.) should result in long jail sentences for the officials who perpetrated them. The problem is that in the US we have become accustomed to an enormous gap between the law and its implementation.by BrenBarn
3/26/2025 at 6:04:50 AM
You can’t add more criminal laws to deal with systematic refusal by law enforcement to obey and hold other law enforcement officials accountable for obeying existing law, because that relies on the same people whose behavior you are trying to correct to auddenly behave differently to have any effect.The US, in fact, has a comprehensive federal and civil and criminal prohibition applicable to such behavior (the prohibition on deprivation of rights under color of law and conspiracy against rights), but the criminal prohibition is consistently inadequately enforced, and the civil prohibiition has been neutered by applying qualified immunity against it, which arguably is inconsistent with the letter of the statute.
by dragonwriter
3/26/2025 at 8:12:16 PM
There's some truth to that, but I think that changes in such laws have resulted in slight improvements over time. Also, passing such laws at a higher jurisdictional level can allow comparatively "good" people at that level to disrupt local bad behavior like the stuff in the article. There are also other kinds of legal changes that can help, like transparency requirements and bans on certain kinds of police union contract provisions. More controversially I think there should be laws that shift the burden of proof (something along the lines of "every police officer is assumed to be unfit for their job unless they affirmatively demonstrate otherwise").I think one thing that is needed is a "viral" kind of law that criminalizes essentially all attempts to perpetuate, conceal, aid or abet the underlying malfeasance. So that if you can get some people wedged in who do want to do the right thing, they can bring the whole house crashing down by convicting the whole network of corrupt officials.
Ultimately you're right though that there does need to be some cooperation from "inside the system". The question is just what can we do do lower that threshold.
by BrenBarn
3/25/2025 at 11:17:59 PM
I don't think there is just one problem, although that is a big part of it. Prosecutors and judges are often picked by how profitable they are to the local courts, neither cops nor prosecutors lose anything if they make up and push bullshit charges even when caught red handed, states and locales continuously tack on all sorts of random court charges to increase revenues, and there is no verification that any "programs" they tack on and receive kickbacks for actually improve anyone's situation. Not to mention all the inter-family connections and "ill scratch your back if you scratch mine" backroom dealings between cops, courts, prosecutors, and jails.The only checks on any part of the justice system are from within the justice system itself, and its pretty hard to get those people to voluntarily cut their own pay, staff, benefits, and control in the name of justice, especially when it would most likely just get them fired and blacklisted. There are very little checks against what they do, and the people who have been involved with the courts and know how it works either benefit personally from it, or are considered a no-good criminal who's word is given zero heed. In most places if you get a felony you even lose your right to vote.
by AngryData
3/26/2025 at 11:46:03 AM
> Prosecutors and judges are often picked by how profitable they are to the local courtsSource? This is certainly untrue for elected judges and DAs, so we’d expect to see a difference if that were the reason. Instead we see elected judges and DAs running on tough on crime pitches due to voter preferences. Not funding concerns.
by JumpCrisscross
3/26/2025 at 12:30:15 AM
It would solve a lot of problems, including taxes spent on all the process, facilities, etc., and to provide services to people who become indigent and sometimes unemployable, and to their dependants.Through someone in jail unnecessarily for a felony, and now you've taken a productive person and made them negatively productive (in jail) and destroyed most of their productivity when they return (nobody will hire or train them for anything valuable). Now their dependants, such as kids, also lack resources. Family lose not only their futures, but homes, health care, education, ....
Obviously prison is necessary in some cases, but other countries have low crime rates with far less incarceration.
by mmooss
3/26/2025 at 10:56:18 AM
System designed by lawyers is good for lawyersby energy123
3/26/2025 at 8:51:22 AM
there are decent public defenders, but they have to sort of pick and choose how hard they will work for you, because of the unbearable case load.I knew a guy who if you were not a death penalty case you got the joke, and if you were a death penalty case you got the all out work his ass off to save you. He took a lot of death penalty cases.
by bryanrasmussen
3/26/2025 at 6:45:44 AM
I agree that this is unfair, and far violates constitutional rights.I would willingly donate to their cause.
However, mass violation of the constitutional rights of citizens seems to me the venue for a class action?
by chasil
