Nordic prison cells look like $3k apartments in San Francisco

>I’m always amused by how fixated Americans (even liberals) are on race in this matter. America is very diverse when it comes to ethnicities but it has a strong program of secular-national indoctrination, which results in a very homogenous culture considering its size.

Race in this case shows up because the mind wants to find an explanation for the discrepancy in social and public trust. Norwegians trust their institutions much more than Americans do. We also know that public trust was higher until the US's "lost decade" in the '70s and figure it probably depends on some factors that have been recently changing.

We look for instinctive, emotional explanations because we're interested in "forcing functions": it's not interesting to say that low-quality government caused by low-trust society leads to low-trust society because that postulates a universal dynamical property of social trust that doesn't really distinguish between societies. The hysteria surrounding the presidency of Barack Obama and the reputational endurance of a tyrant who came into the political limelight spreading ludicrous conspiracy theories about the same, in light of his significance as the first non-white POTUS, is one of many common-knowledge observations lending credence to the idea that racial resentment and mistrust drives an unwillingness to cooperate in American society. And then, of course, it's not really that easy to find truly well-run multiracial societies. Singapore and Israel have both invested in top-down integration and racial justice initiatives but resentment and discrimination stick around -- yet those are probably the best examples. Trinidad might be another example, but may be coasting on easy money from oil extraction.

Your article is irrelevant - and doesn't even support your claim. The article simply states that ordinary citizens have the least effect on policy creation (and they, self-admittedly, offer no data on how effective other participants are). Not that they have no effect. In fact, the purpose of a democratic republic is to provide protections against mob rule by limiting persons' individual effects. You are misinterpreting their study and misapplying it in your argument. Had your argument been valid, then you would be wasting your time anyways - why argue with people who have no effect (definition of a troll)?

So while individuals have relatively little effect on policy creation, you are completely leaving out their participation in policy execution - a major component of my argument. People can file complaints against bad officers or judges. People can file lawsuits when their rights have been infringed (look at policies that were enacted and the payouts against police departments in big cities). People can generate a combined effect on policy creation through voting. An easy way to view this would be to ask yourself what policy changes should take effect if one party or the other took full government control as this requires individual participation as voters and would likely lead to lawsuits against those new policies.

"I bet it makes software engineers in Seattle or SF feel very good about themselves when they can blame the woes of society on the median income household, but maybe you should try to go after people who actually have an impact."

You complain about invalid premises yet you engage in ad hominem fallacies? I wouldn't presume to know what devs in those areas think. I think it's also a stretch to claim that anyone is blaming the median income households - plenty of higher income people are ignorant of the problems as they are disproportionately unaffected.

And definitely had to choose between death or aligning with one of the gangs. Just like a fraternity.

Eliminate for profit prisons in this country.

You are conveniently ignoring primaries, which tend to have more choices.

So you claim that businesses drive the candidates and that it's a problem? If that is really the case, then you are arguing against yourself. The true power is people being able to vote and to create their own parties (protected in numerous laws and court decisions). Then the poor candidate choices would be the result of ignorance on the part of the citizens in not self organizing or seeing what is going on.

"business interests and a couple of large political parties"

Who comprises these institutions? People!

"But some people are just too comfortable to understand such things."

Your arguments would be more effective if you focused on creating coherent arguments rather than consistently engaging in ad hominem attacks.