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I think the Chinese “social credit” system described here is pretty horrible. But your support of the American system drastically misses the mark. A good summa

I think the Chinese “social credit” system described here is pretty horrible. But your support of the American system drastically misses the mark. A good summary is the ACLU’s position paper on Race & the War on Drugs. https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs You also are repeating a common misconception when you state that “If you want to stay out of the felon caste, do not break obvious laws, like those regarding drug possession.” It has been shown time and time again that black Americans are disproportionately arrested and sentenced. And your trite remark about how “If you do not agree with such laws, work to change them” is puerile. The GP was expressing their opinion; in our democracy that is a critical component of working to change the law.

ygaf 9y ago
>You also are repeating a common misconception when It's a misconception that you could avoid being in the felon caste by not breaking laws? That's what he said. He didn't say "if you want to gamble with not joining the felon caste, you have fair odds". Lots of soapboxing ITT, threads should decapitate at the first post with 'systemic' in.
- pixl97 9y ago
  >It's a misconception that you could avoid being in the felon caste by not breaking laws? With the number of overturned sentences coming out of the courts lately, yes, it seems you can go to jail without ever having actually committed a crime.
- jonathanyc 9y ago
  Your use of the term “soapboxing” to describe what was reasonable argument until your appearance and the bizarre thought-terminating cliché that is your fear of the word “systemic” don’t inspire confidence in me that you are here in good faith. I notice your account is also relatively new. Nonetheless, consider this after rereading the GP’s comment. If a doctor told two patients that they could avoid getting cancer by not exposing themselves to carcinogens, knowing that one somehow unknowingly lives on a Superfund site, but deciding to purposefully neglect to mention the risk this entails, would you say the doctor was presenting one patient an incorrect understanding of the issue at hand? Likewise, if a car manufacturer found a problem with one of their models and decided to notify the US about this by saying “you can avoid harm from the problem by not driving cars,” I would say that thinking that this is not “somehow unfair,” as the GP writes, would be a misconception, as I wrote. The sort of juvenile discussion you are attempting to bring to this conversation is not really appropriate for HN.
  - allthenews 9y ago
    You equate driving cars and living on superfund sites with consuming illicit substances and wilfully committing violent acts, and then have the audacity to call someone else's contribution juvenile? Does personal responsibility exist in your ivory tower? What sort of convoluted logic could possibly drive you to equate necessities of life, or constraints of circumstance, with such antisocial choices? We're talking about smoking marijuana and stealing expensive clothing, after all, not theft of food for subsistence. Why is it that any time race is brought up, any argument that even has the potential to cast minorities in negative light is immediately shouted down with any sort of logic or reason thrown out the window? What about objectivity? We cannot shout down potential truths simply because they have unpleasant implications.
    - jonathanyc 9y ago
      > What sort of convoluted logic could possibly drive you to equate necessities of life, or constraints of circumstance, with such antisocial choices? That you consider all drug use “antisocial” is revealing; that you think the need to use a car would exert more pressure on the average person than an environment which encourages drug use from a young age is telling. Your use of the term “ivory tower” is ironic when your assumptions are based on a kind of life that many Americans do not inhabit. There is such a thing as personal responsibility. I would argue that most drug use is not a good idea. I think environments that encourage people to make bad decisions should be repaired. But to argue that “just one drop” of bad decision making justifies massively unfair treatment is an argument that is as intellectually demeaning as it is dangerously naive. Would you argue in favor of a law that puts people in jail for doing something “antisocial” like using bad language, and that is predominately enforced against people of a particular race? No one needs to use foul language, but having done so does not give us carte blanche to hate. As my final comment, your unprompted use of the term “ivory tower” and your ominous reference to “unpleasant implications” regarding race suspect that you are trying to bring another argument into this discussion in which I have no interest. This is my final reply.
      - allthenews 9y ago
- door3 9y ago
  The united states prison system is designed to systematically incarcerate and disempower black americans. It has nothing to do with "breaking laws". Incarceration is not correlated with crime rate, and nearly everyone breaks laws, but a small segment of the population is incarcerated to a large degree (black men).
allthenews 9y ago
>It has been shown time and time again that black Americans are disproportionately arrested and sentenced. And you also conveniently ignore that blacks disproportionately commit crimes, especially violent crimes. Such discussions cannot be productive until we are willing to admit to both sides of the problem. I do not deny that there are inequities in our justice system. However, disproportionate police presence in low income communities is not a symptom of racist targeting. The blackness of these individuals is incidental to the fact that low income communities have higher rates of all types of crime, especially violent offenses, and in any other context it would be obviously prudent to assign additional police forces to target high crime areas. But this discussion has far surpassed the boundaries of what is acceptable on HN, and I will not comment in this thread further.
- door3 9y ago
  >blacks disproportionately commit crimes, especially violent crimes. This is a racist lie. If you control for socioeconomic factors, the difference totally vanishes.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    If a correlation is completely explained by controlling for a third factor, that doesn't make the original correlation a lie. If black people are poorer than average and poor people commit disproportionately more crimes, blacks committing disproportionately more crimes is just what you'd expect. What knowing the controlling variable does is give you additional information about what interventions are likely to change the situation. If you thought the reason for more crimes committed by blacks were their skin color, you might think that vitamin D deficiency is the culprit and attempt to provide them with supplements. Knowing the influence of economic factors makes that suggestion appear silly, and crime-prevention efforts would be better focused on improving the economic standing of blacks.
    - door3 9y ago
      >If a correlation is completely explained by controlling for a third factor, that doesn't make the original correlation a lie. The implication of "black people commit more crimes" is that there is something about being black that involves a degree of criminality. It is a very poor way of describing the issue. A much better framing is "black people in the US are disempowered socially, politically and economically and black communities are ignored by US social policy." Another, far more useful framing of the issue, that I hardly ever hear is that black people are more often the victims of crimes.

ygaf 9y ago

>You also are repeating a common misconception when It's a misconception that you could avoid being in the felon caste by not breaking laws? That's what he said. He didn't say "if you want to gamble with not joining the felon caste, you have fair odds". Lots of soapboxing ITT, threads should decapitate at the first post with 'systemic' in.

pixl97 9y ago
>It's a misconception that you could avoid being in the felon caste by not breaking laws? With the number of overturned sentences coming out of the courts lately, yes, it seems you can go to jail without ever having actually committed a crime.
jonathanyc 9y ago
Your use of the term “soapboxing” to describe what was reasonable argument until your appearance and the bizarre thought-terminating cliché that is your fear of the word “systemic” don’t inspire confidence in me that you are here in good faith. I notice your account is also relatively new. Nonetheless, consider this after rereading the GP’s comment. If a doctor told two patients that they could avoid getting cancer by not exposing themselves to carcinogens, knowing that one somehow unknowingly lives on a Superfund site, but deciding to purposefully neglect to mention the risk this entails, would you say the doctor was presenting one patient an incorrect understanding of the issue at hand? Likewise, if a car manufacturer found a problem with one of their models and decided to notify the US about this by saying “you can avoid harm from the problem by not driving cars,” I would say that thinking that this is not “somehow unfair,” as the GP writes, would be a misconception, as I wrote. The sort of juvenile discussion you are attempting to bring to this conversation is not really appropriate for HN.
- allthenews 9y ago
  You equate driving cars and living on superfund sites with consuming illicit substances and wilfully committing violent acts, and then have the audacity to call someone else's contribution juvenile? Does personal responsibility exist in your ivory tower? What sort of convoluted logic could possibly drive you to equate necessities of life, or constraints of circumstance, with such antisocial choices? We're talking about smoking marijuana and stealing expensive clothing, after all, not theft of food for subsistence. Why is it that any time race is brought up, any argument that even has the potential to cast minorities in negative light is immediately shouted down with any sort of logic or reason thrown out the window? What about objectivity? We cannot shout down potential truths simply because they have unpleasant implications.
  - jonathanyc 9y ago
    > What sort of convoluted logic could possibly drive you to equate necessities of life, or constraints of circumstance, with such antisocial choices? That you consider all drug use “antisocial” is revealing; that you think the need to use a car would exert more pressure on the average person than an environment which encourages drug use from a young age is telling. Your use of the term “ivory tower” is ironic when your assumptions are based on a kind of life that many Americans do not inhabit. There is such a thing as personal responsibility. I would argue that most drug use is not a good idea. I think environments that encourage people to make bad decisions should be repaired. But to argue that “just one drop” of bad decision making justifies massively unfair treatment is an argument that is as intellectually demeaning as it is dangerously naive. Would you argue in favor of a law that puts people in jail for doing something “antisocial” like using bad language, and that is predominately enforced against people of a particular race? No one needs to use foul language, but having done so does not give us carte blanche to hate. As my final comment, your unprompted use of the term “ivory tower” and your ominous reference to “unpleasant implications” regarding race suspect that you are trying to bring another argument into this discussion in which I have no interest. This is my final reply.
    - allthenews 9y ago
door3 9y ago
The united states prison system is designed to systematically incarcerate and disempower black americans. It has nothing to do with "breaking laws". Incarceration is not correlated with crime rate, and nearly everyone breaks laws, but a small segment of the population is incarcerated to a large degree (black men).

allthenews 9y ago

>It has been shown time and time again that black Americans are disproportionately arrested and sentenced. And you also conveniently ignore that blacks disproportionately commit crimes, especially violent crimes. Such discussions cannot be productive until we are willing to admit to both sides of the problem. I do not deny that there are inequities in our justice system. However, disproportionate police presence in low income communities is not a symptom of racist targeting. The blackness of these individuals is incidental to the fact that low income communities have higher rates of all types of crime, especially violent offenses, and in any other context it would be obviously prudent to assign additional police forces to target high crime areas. But this discussion has far surpassed the boundaries of what is acceptable on HN, and I will not comment in this thread further.

door3 9y ago
>blacks disproportionately commit crimes, especially violent crimes. This is a racist lie. If you control for socioeconomic factors, the difference totally vanishes.
- yorwba 9y ago
  If a correlation is completely explained by controlling for a third factor, that doesn't make the original correlation a lie. If black people are poorer than average and poor people commit disproportionately more crimes, blacks committing disproportionately more crimes is just what you'd expect. What knowing the controlling variable does is give you additional information about what interventions are likely to change the situation. If you thought the reason for more crimes committed by blacks were their skin color, you might think that vitamin D deficiency is the culprit and attempt to provide them with supplements. Knowing the influence of economic factors makes that suggestion appear silly, and crime-prevention efforts would be better focused on improving the economic standing of blacks.
  - door3 9y ago
    >If a correlation is completely explained by controlling for a third factor, that doesn't make the original correlation a lie. The implication of "black people commit more crimes" is that there is something about being black that involves a degree of criminality. It is a very poor way of describing the issue. A much better framing is "black people in the US are disempowered socially, politically and economically and black communities are ignored by US social policy." Another, far more useful framing of the issue, that I hardly ever hear is that black people are more often the victims of crimes.