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There's nothing inherently wrong with third parties helping each other out. I can't understand why anyone would be worried about that. In fact, a lawyer is an u

by csallen 10y ago

There's nothing inherently wrong with third parties helping each other out. I can't understand why anyone would be worried about that. In fact, a lawyer is an uninvolved third party. What is wrong is the degree to which wealth influences the outcome of a case. That's the real problem. In an ideal world, a person's case could be presented with equal strength regardless of the money spent for or against them. Obviously we don't live in this ideal world, but imo we should be laser focused on moving in that direction. What frustrates me is the utter lack of focus on that task. Almost nobody seems to care about the broken legal system itself. All of the attention is being diverted to Thiel, billionaires, etc, and it's maddening. How do we expect to fix problems that we are willfully ignoring? The media is acting in its own self-interest by framing this as a free speech issue. The "99%ers" are acting in their own self-interest by framing this as a billionaires-vs-the-rest-of-us issue. Where are the "good and just" people who should be acting in their own self-interest by demanding improvements in justice? Shouldn't that be all of us?

bduerst 10y ago
It may reach the point of fixing the court process eventually, but understanding why it's an issue is also an important first step. The how this issue is going to be fixed will probably be a long time coming, unfortunately. Give it time. An interesting first step would be to include more transparent disclosure of the third parties who speculate on these court cases. Thiel very obviously knew this would backfire if it became public, which is why they kept it secret for so long.
- csallen 10y ago
  I hope you're right, but I'm not so confident. People as a whole are not systems thinkers. We tend to take systems for granted, and assume they are eternal and unchangeable. I think this case is a perfect example. It's hard to mobilize the masses behind something boring and complex like court reform. It's easy, however, to incite them to hate an individual person, especially if he's a billionaire. Even on HN, it's mostly people attacking/defending Thiel himself. Also, for what it's worth, the fact that something backfires in the court of public opinion doesn't mean that it's bad. It could just mean the public is under-informed or easily deceived.

by csallen 10y ago

bduerst 10y ago

It may reach the point of fixing the court process eventually, but understanding why it's an issue is also an important first step. The how this issue is going to be fixed will probably be a long time coming, unfortunately. Give it time. An interesting first step would be to include more transparent disclosure of the third parties who speculate on these court cases. Thiel very obviously knew this would backfire if it became public, which is why they kept it secret for so long.

csallen 10y ago
I hope you're right, but I'm not so confident. People as a whole are not systems thinkers. We tend to take systems for granted, and assume they are eternal and unchangeable. I think this case is a perfect example. It's hard to mobilize the masses behind something boring and complex like court reform. It's easy, however, to incite them to hate an individual person, especially if he's a billionaire. Even on HN, it's mostly people attacking/defending Thiel himself. Also, for what it's worth, the fact that something backfires in the court of public opinion doesn't mean that it's bad. It could just mean the public is under-informed or easily deceived.