181–190 of 457 posts
"Two men were released after The Times asked about them, half a year after their sentences had been completed." Horrific. This egregious human rights violation is something you'd think you read about in a developing nation, not a developed nation.
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Such as?
Standing out in any way in a small, socially conservative community can have some pretty terrible consequences.
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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 he…
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 foolishl…
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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.
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…
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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.
> 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…
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 ...
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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.
> 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…
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.
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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.
> 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…
In theory.
Articles like this are about how it works in practice.
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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 .)
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 "program…
Source? 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.
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Colonization ended 50 years ago and yet, there were never as many slaves in the world as there are today. There are more than 40 million people enslaved now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Slavery_Index
Colonization has only ended in express terms. In many parts of the world, including essentially all of the developing nations where slavery has expanded in the past half-century, the dominant economic activity are forms of extraction at the behest either multinationals, OPEC, China, or USA.
The Americans are not (to my knowledge) pointing a gun at Bangladeshi sweatshop owners and telling them “You must produce a quota by whatever means necessary.” The Americans might be benefitting from this arrangement, but if they refused to buy these products, it’s not like slave labor would disappear; it would just be redeployed into other sectors. The countries where this slavery occurs have to bear some level of responsibility for the things they permit to happen within their own borders, otherwise they were never sovereign countries to begin with, and they ought to be colonized by those powerful enough to enforce the rule of law.
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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.
> 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…
That 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.