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The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

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Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is also seeing far-right ideology spreading and taking over mainstream politics so this really isn’t an American problem only right now.

It is the unholy union of a new unregulated form of communication, social media, and unregulated privatized intelligence companies, such as Palantir and Cambrdige Analytica. Ironically China implemented the GFW because they correctly predicted this exact scenario being used to destabilize themselves.

I don’t think that’s why the GFW exists but ok

Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#113
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I suspect that people like you require the personal experience of having a loved one black-bagged in the middle of the night without recourse to understand OP's position. Every authoritarian regime ever uses the same logic to build up their police state: "for the greater good".

[flagged]

Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s always too early, until you’ll be disappeared for saying it.

Like in the UK for spicy social media posts?

Refresh my memory, who was sent to an extrajudicial prison in a foreign country without so much as a trail for a spicy social media post in the UK?

Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#115
post #49

The homicide rate in El Salvador has dropped from 100 per 100,000 to 2.5 per 100,000 in just a decade: https://www.statista.com/statistics/696152/homicide-rate-in-... . The El Salvadoran government has literally brought the country to an entirely different level of development, vastly improving the lives of most of the country’s 6 million people. Disorder and dysfunction doesn’t just hurt those who are killed. It’s a…

It’s worth a debate, even though in American culture we hold this idea as beyond any consideration. Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer". That's a noble thought, but those 100 criminals can cause suffering of 100s of others. So his assessment isn't necessarily accurate. Every innocent father jailed in El Salvador might save 1…

You can use a proper system to do that though to minimise the risk of jailing innocent people. It's all easy talking until you get locked up in an animal case without recourse until you die. Ask those innocent ones how they like taking one for the team.

Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#116
post #49

The homicide rate in El Salvador has dropped from 100 per 100,000 to 2.5 per 100,000 in just a decade: https://www.statista.com/statistics/696152/homicide-rate-in-... . The El Salvadoran government has literally brought the country to an entirely different level of development, vastly improving the lives of most of the country’s 6 million people. Disorder and dysfunction doesn’t just hurt those who are killed. It’s a…

So they "solved" gangs and installed a ruthless and illegal dictatorship in their place — which may in fact be secretly conspiring with those same gangs behind the scenes. I feel sorry for El Salvador. It may now have to experience several generations of Soviet-style repression and suffering before a new regime is able to overthrow the current one. Meanwhile, thousands of families will never get to find out what happ…

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Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#117
post #84
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get that figure from? There are many sources online that agree, so I won’t bother to link them, that the population of New England was ~100k in 1700 and ~300k in 1750. The claim that that actual rate of murder in all of New England was 2-6 per year is not believable.

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZomfSetCVGTWj1bS9 https://www.cold-takes.com/unraveling-the-evidence-about-vio...

If the population grew from 100k in 1700 to 300k in 1750, and if the homicide rate was right around 2 per 100k, then that would mean that the total number of homicides in New England, over the 50 years span was less than 300.

Do you really believe that fewer than 300 murders occurred during this time?

Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#118
post #49

The homicide rate in El Salvador has dropped from 100 per 100,000 to 2.5 per 100,000 in just a decade: https://www.statista.com/statistics/696152/homicide-rate-in-... . The El Salvadoran government has literally brought the country to an entirely different level of development, vastly improving the lives of most of the country’s 6 million people. Disorder and dysfunction doesn’t just hurt those who are killed. It’s a…

So they "solved" gangs and installed a ruthless and illegal dictatorship in their place — which may in fact be secretly conspiring with those same gangs behind the scenes. I feel sorry for El Salvador. It may now have to experience several generations of Soviet-style repression and suffering before a new regime is able to overthrow the current one. Meanwhile, thousands of families will never get to find out what happ…

Nearly 25% of El Salvador is in America, although they fled gang violence not Bukele.

Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that people like you require the personal experience of having a loved one black-bagged in the middle of the night without recourse to understand OP's position. Every authoritarian regime ever uses the same logic to build up their police state: "for the greater good".

[flagged]

Democracy tends to require a revolution to break free from those authoritarian regimes, to say nothing of thousands (or millions) of deaths along the way. And we're still waiting for Russia, China, Cuba, etc. to reveal their glorious democratic forms. (By your logic, communism must be one of humanity's greatest achievements since it elevated a number of feudal countries to superpower status. Nevermind the millions of dead in famines, gulags, genocides, etc. But hey, at least crime rates were low!)

Re: The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

#120

I don't think many people have actually contemplated what absence of law, defined as rules that apply to rich and powerful people too, is like. In a world with law, there are restriction on what society's most powerful can and can't do, because there are police officers, detectives, lawyers, and judges, who all work together to make sure there are consequences for crimes. In a world without law, the only restriction…

I think there is a decent argument that some of the nihilism we see in the population comes from seeing a general unwillingness to jail or proportionately punish wealthy criminals. As we have heard for a long time, if the bill for breaking the law is too small it is just a fee and if you steal from enough people it becomes a statistic. I'm not optimistic about this. I think removing due process to allow for exporting…

I would go so far as to say that white collar crime is the root of all evil in our society. Every violent criminal, every death of despair, it all can be tied directly to white collar crime.

White collar crime and the lax punishment of it allows individuals to accrue resources that allow them to lobby the government to change laws or bribe law enforcement to not enforce laws against them which allows to accrue even more resources and a feedback loop forms.

This sucks resources away from the system that could be used to enforce other laws against violent crime or even better prevent violent crime nearly entirely through properly funded social programs that stop people from growing up in the terrible conditions that lead to most violent crime in the first place.

If we took white collar crime as seriously as street crime, we’d see a ripple effect. Funds recovered from fraud and tax evasion could go to schools, healthcare, addiction treatment, and housing. Instead, we live under a system where accountability is only for the poor.

A simple and effective way to begin to mitigate white collar crime would be to scale all fines as a proportion of an individuals net worth. This, combined with a rapid escalation of the fine for re-offenders within a period of time (say 3-5 years) would at least begin to chip away at the ill-gotten gains of some criminals.

But I too am not optimistic about where this is all going. I have a terrible in the pit of my stomach that a lot of people are about to die because of the snow ball effect of unchecked corruption in America, and at this point I don't think there's anything that can stop it.

I just hope that there's enough left over to rebuild a more resilient system and that the world can oppose the authoritarians like China that will attempt to fill the power vacuum.

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