5 ms·
We are easily the best large country (over 150M population or so) as far as any sort of civil liberties, standards of living, etc.
by asdf21 7y ago
We are easily the best large country (over 150M population or so) as far as any sort of civil liberties, standards of living, etc.
- paulsutter 7y agoHaving lived in Japan I assure you that you're mistaken. Have you travelled? EDIT: I'm fine with a search by Japanese police, yet I would never answer a question asked by a policeman in the US except through a lawyer. What does that say about civil liberties?
- asdf21 7y agoSure Japan is not nearly as large, and has basically zero ethnic diversity, but it's probably the next closet thing. Did you notice how many higher population countries you passed up to get there..? - China - India - Indonesia - Brazil - Pakistan - Nigeria - Bangladesh - Russia - Mexico
- jdsully 7y agoFunny you mentioned Japan. All the travel videos I see warn you the police can (and will) question you, search your pockets, etc. And can detain you at the police station for merely being suspicious (so you better answer when they ask!). It doesn’t sound like a great place for civil liberties.
- thereare5lights 7y ago> police can (and will) question you, search your pockets, etc. And can detain you at the police station for merely being suspicious That literally happens in the US as well.
- jdsully 7y agoPolice cannot bring you to the police station for merely being suspicious. The standard is much higher for an arrest. They are allowed to pat down the outside of your pockets under the argument they need to be aware of weapons. I do agree this is heavily abused with stop & frisk which frankly shouldn't be legal if the police initiate the contact. But they cannot search inside without your permission. As far as legal systems go, if the CEO of Nissan was held 3 weeks without charge in Japan what hope does the average person have?
- thereare5lights 7y agoYou are talking about areas where police are held accountable. In areas where they flout the law such as Baltimore, they do whatever they want and then sort it out later.
- mrkstu 7y agoI think the previous poster would be correct if you added the qualifier of multi-ethnic.
- oblio 7y agoOk, but past a certain point, let's say 20 million or to be conservative 50 million people, population numbers stop mattering for you as an individual. The average American (out of >330m) won't have a radically better life than a Frenchman (out of >65m) or a German (out of >80m). It's a nice collective achievement to be able to scale to so many people, but individually, I don't think there's a huge individual benefit once the overall population crosses a certain threshold.
- Judgmentality 7y agoI think you are forgetting about the US healthcare system and how horrible it is compared to the rest of the modern world.