The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by senderista » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

senderista wrote: post #201

acdha wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> biden imported millions of third worlders with no vetting through a combination of lack of border enforcement and wide ranging refugee and amnesty efforts. Everyone who told you those mistruths was lying to you hoping against you’d vote against your interests. Biden not only enforced immigration laws, he was doing so at a higher rate. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-dep...

Only in 2023-2024. Overall, Biden's tenure saw the largest immigration inflow in US history, and about 2/3 of it was illegal. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/briefing/us-immigration-s...

Curious if any downvoters dispute the substance of my comment or the linked article, or if this is just a "yuck" reflex?

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

#222

Post by midnightblue » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

SpicyUme wrote: post #56

hayst4ck wrote: post #11

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 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.

You are so right. Whatever the benefit of having laws at all is, it evaporates when laws are selectively not applied.

We're seeing the consequencefs of it today, in the "content creation" business and many other. It's a dog eat dog situation. Truth lost any relevance. As the influencer you know very well that whatever you're feeding your audience is empty hope, dreams and fantasy. As long as the check from IG/YT/TikTok is big enough, you don't care. Why care?

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

#223

Post by overfeed » Mon, Apr 14, 2025, 5:20 PM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #204

overfeed wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you won't miss that right at all. Until the day the goons break down your door and drag you away. Then you'll wish you had a fair trial. "It'll never happen to me if I keep may head down" will ensure no one will feel safe about publicly opposing the president on any issue. Your dictator is not special, most of them concentrate their power by claiming to address an issue that's legitimately concerns a lot of citizen…

That fails to understand how power in exceptional situations persists: namely that it still must be supported by key stakeholders. If a leader were to summarily arrest large numbers of random citizens, suddenly they'd lose the support of citizens, one of the key pillars keeping them in power. Which is why you see empowered and pervasive secret police institutions in societies like this -- you require a credible and e…

> That fails to understand how power in exceptional situations persists

I was describing how dictators concentrate power to themselves using reasonable-sounding pretexts during the initial stages of self-coups, not how the regimes use the acquired powers to self-sustain.

> ...suddenly they'd lose the support of citizens, one of the key pillars keeping them in power.

Dictators, and political incumbents in general don't need support (in a positive, active sense) to go about the business of exercising political power they already wield.

On the flip side, they need a lack of unified opposition to avoid being voted out/toppled, hence dictators lean on corrupting the courts, use the secret police to disappear opposition, and the like. Autocrats will be very happy with a 0.05% approval/99.9% disapproval ratings, as long as their physical security is not threatened by riotous mobs, and their political power unchallenged.