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China has to walk a tightrope where if they're too humane they're accused of randomly treating arbitrary innocent bystanders like criminals, and on the other ex

by VLM 7y ago

China has to walk a tightrope where if they're too humane they're accused of randomly treating arbitrary innocent bystanders like criminals, and on the other extreme they'd be letting co-conspirators walk free. They seem to be taking a sensible path down the middle? Lets be realistic, the kids aren't significant co conspirators if the dollar values of the supposed identity thefts or conspiracies are really small compared to the whole (at least... as far as the authorities can publicly announce, LOL, maybe they are in deeper than they can announce), and you can't expect relatives to testify or cooperate against each other reliably anyway. On the other hand they're literally members of a "crime family" and if this happened to mafia members, people would not be overly surprised to hear semi-clean conspirators are having a rough time with the law. Much like "anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time", arbitrary detention is hardly limited to one specific country or political system. I'm sure Assange, Snowden, and the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay would beg to differ with your opinion.

wutbrodo 7y ago
> China has to walk a tightrope where if they're too humane they're accused of randomly treating arbitrary innocent bystanders like criminals What do you mean by this? Why would being too humane cause accusations of arbitrarily treating people like criminals?
godelski 7y ago
> China has to walk a tightrope where if they're too [harsh] they're accused of randomly treating arbitrary innocent bystanders like criminals, and on the other extreme they'd be letting co-conspirators walk free. Is this not a tight rope that every single country walks? What's being described above doesn't sound very middle road to me. Though I prefer that when systems fail criminals go free vs innocent lose their freedom (Blackstone's Formulation).
- chillacy 7y ago
  It is, and while Blackstone's Formulation is foundational in western legal systems, I also acknowledge that other countries may choose different lines to draw. At the very least it's a grand experiment into what works the best.
  - godelski 7y ago
    > At the very least it's a grand experiment into what works the best. I really hate this phrase. Because implicitly it is using the wrong metric. So far we've seen the democracy, free speech, and advancement actually compliment one another. But we're at a turning point. We're already redefining what advancement means. Does it mean most powerful? Being able to feed and provide basic needs to everyone? Most scientific? Richest? Most humane? Historically most of these just correlated with wealth, so that metric became the target. But we're getting to the point where you can have many of those things without wealth, simply because they are so cheap. And soon they will be trivial cheap. So a grand experiment into what? I think we had a good metric before but it isn't so clear anymore.

by VLM 7y ago

wutbrodo 7y ago

> China has to walk a tightrope where if they're too humane they're accused of randomly treating arbitrary innocent bystanders like criminals What do you mean by this? Why would being too humane cause accusations of arbitrarily treating people like criminals?

godelski 7y ago

> China has to walk a tightrope where if they're too [harsh] they're accused of randomly treating arbitrary innocent bystanders like criminals, and on the other extreme they'd be letting co-conspirators walk free. Is this not a tight rope that every single country walks? What's being described above doesn't sound very middle road to me. Though I prefer that when systems fail criminals go free vs innocent lose their freedom (Blackstone's Formulation).

chillacy 7y ago
It is, and while Blackstone's Formulation is foundational in western legal systems, I also acknowledge that other countries may choose different lines to draw. At the very least it's a grand experiment into what works the best.
- godelski 7y ago
  > At the very least it's a grand experiment into what works the best. I really hate this phrase. Because implicitly it is using the wrong metric. So far we've seen the democracy, free speech, and advancement actually compliment one another. But we're at a turning point. We're already redefining what advancement means. Does it mean most powerful? Being able to feed and provide basic needs to everyone? Most scientific? Richest? Most humane? Historically most of these just correlated with wealth, so that metric became the target. But we're getting to the point where you can have many of those things without wealth, simply because they are so cheap. And soon they will be trivial cheap. So a grand experiment into what? I think we had a good metric before but it isn't so clear anymore.