8 ms·

> Sure, it's not like Russia or the CCP and you're not in danger of being suicided if you uncover some high level dirt You are not going to get disappered, but

> Sure, it's not like Russia or the CCP and you're not in danger of being suicided if you uncover some high level dirt You are not going to get disappered, but you are in danger of getting a fraudulent "psychiatric diagnosis" if you are a tax investigator uncovering dirt about some politicians or their cronies.[0][1] In this case the investigator got free, but I am sure there are some cases out there of people who didn't got as much publicity. Consequences for the people that instigated this? None! Nothig to see here, move on... And the so called "Psychiatrist" is still free, and had to pay a meagre 200000 in damages. > lots of people inside and outside of Germany have no idea of how insanely corrupt the German government and their corporate buddies are That is so true, I always cringe when people use Germany as an example of a society that doesn't have a lot of corruption -- we have, it's just buried under lots and lots of red tape... [0]: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/psychiater-muss-steuerfahndern-in-hessen-schadensersatz-zahlen-a-994523.html https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/psychiater-muss-s... [1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steuerfahnder-Aff%C3%A4re https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steuerfahnder-Aff%C3%A4re

lima 6y ago
The affair you're talking about happened more than a decade ago, it was a major and pretty unique scandal in Germany, and the "expert" has been convicted not only to pay damages, but was also found to be guilty of malpractice. The state eventually offered the investigators to be re-hired. There were no consequences for the "instigators" because, to my understanding, it couldn't be proven that there was criminal intent. The events got plenty of media attention and high-ranking officials and judges denounced the actions of the agency. No country is safe from corruption, but this story certainly doesn't support the notion of the country being corrupt, much less "insanely corrupt".
- Mirioron 6y ago
  Is it unique? Didn't Gustl Mollath [0] also end up in a psychiatric facility and it started with him claiming that a bank was evading taxes? He was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. After years in there it turned out that his claim about the tax evasion was reasonable. From what I can tell, he spent ~6 years locked up in a psychiatric facility and got €600,000 in damages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath
  - ketzu 6y ago
    Based on your "also": According to the spiegel article the investigators didn't end up in a psychiatric facility, but got a diagnosis of inability-to-work and pensioned. The case for Mr. Mollath was much worse.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      And it happened in Bavaria. We do have a certain tradition with such kind of things, it even has nickname since the Strauss days: Amigo Affairs. Most high level political corruption and fraud cases had Bavarian politicians involved. Especially when arms or taxes are involved.
  - lima 6y ago
    I'm aware of the case, hence "quite unique". While ugly, it has nothing to do with corruption whatsoever.
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    Did you actually read the Wiki page? There is a lot of context you are leaving out there. Based on my reading this was not some grand conspiracy by a bank to silence a critic. It sounds like this man certainly did have some psychological issues and assaulted his wife multiple times. Due to his history and his behaviour during the following court case he was locked up in psychiatric care. He did make allegations about a tax evasion scheme during the court case about the assault (and these were wrongly seen by the court as a sign of his psychological problems). But it's not like he was a whistleblower who was silenced through some made-up allegations. The Wiki page also says that the "reported money transfers were not illegal per se", so this isn't even a clear cut case of tax evasion. Clearly a lot of things went wrong in this case and he was partially acquitted and compensated later on. But I don't think this is any evidence for systemic corruption in the entire country.
    - voxic11 6y ago
      > The judgment was based, among other things, on the opinion of expert Klaus Leipziger from Bayreuth, who attested to Mollath's paranoid delusions of a "black money complex" > The first medical specialist statement on Mollath's mental health was created solely from information provided by his wife; the doctor in question, Gabriele Krach, consultant psychiatrist at the Klinikum am Europakanal, had not seen Mollath even once. > In contrast, Hans Simmerl, the consultant commissioned by the local court of Straubing to assess Mollath's mental health during a trial pertaining to his guardianship/health care, conversed with him for several hours in 2007 and did not find any evidence of mental disorders; > On 19 February 2013, Strate applied for a trial de novo based on evidence that the presiding judge had committed numerous instances of perversion of justice against Mollath in the case. According to Strate, the judge was responsible for Mollath's detention for almost three weeks without disclosure of the charges or presentation to a judge, failure to respond to Mollath's complaints or forward them to the higher court that should have decided them, manipulation of the court's composition, obvious misrepresentations in the reasons for the judgment, and unconscionable refusal to discharge Mollath's assigned counsel in spite of many petitions to do so, followed by use of said counsel as a witness against his own client. > On 18 March 2013, in a very unusual move, the prosecution also applied for a trial de novo, based on exculpating evidence that had surfaced only after the original trial. > Judge Otto Brixner had to admit before the committee that he hadn't read Mollath's written defense which he claimed to be irrelevant in his judgment. In June 2013 Mollath testified before the committee, repeating his claim that he wasn't allowed to give evidence during his trial. > On 6 August 2013 the Oberlandesgericht Nuremberg (higher regional court) ordered the reopening of Mollath's case. He was released from mental hospital immediately. The court found that the medical certificate documenting the alleged abuse of his wife was a "fictitious document", because it appeared to be written and signed by Dr. Madeleine Reichel, who never had examined Mollath's wife. Instead the author of the report was her son, then a doctor in training. > Mollath's 2018 action for damages by the unlawful custody has been concluded in November 2019 by an ex gratia payment of €600,000 by the defendant Free State of Bavaria. > Ultimately, the court considered the aggravated assault proven, but fully acquitted him on the other charges citing insufficient proof. Criminal insanity was also considered unproven; Mollath was held in a psychiatric ward unlawfully and was entitled to a compensation. The acquittal from the first trial could not be overturned though, and Mollath was acquitted on all charges.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  I mean, in Wirecard prosecutors literally went after short sellers with criminals charges. For years. They only dropped charges a few months ago after a donation was made to a charitable organization. Seems pretty similar and pretty corrupt to me. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wirecard-accounts-germany-insight/germanys-long-lonely-campaign-battling-wirecards-short-sellers-idUSKCN24H0KM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wirecard-accounts-germany... edit: I guess "we'll ruin you and throw you in jail" is better than "we'll throw you out a window" but it's still pretty bad. edit2: And if Wildcard hadn't imploded there'd have been no scandal about prosecutors going after critics. No issues with silencing complaints or limiting freedom of speech. Just another part of doing business against companies the government support.
  - thespiceisloco 6y ago
    HN silences people like you. Be careful.
    - dang 6y ago
      HN silences people from commenting about Wirecard?! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874420
  - lima 6y ago
    > I mean, in Wirecard prosecutors literally went after short sellers with criminals charges. For years. They only dropped charges a few months ago after a donation was made to a charitable organization. Seems pretty similar and pretty corrupt to me. Corruption, or (gross) incompetence? Don't attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity. Misplaced trust, broken culture, political pressure, or even actual corruption - we simply don't know what happened.
    - raincom 6y ago
      Germans are known for competence, industriousness, according to their PR or propaganda department. So, incompetence is ruled out.
- corty 6y ago
  Current head of the EU comission and former defense minister Ursula von der Leyen is another perfect example of German government corruption. She provided old buddies at various companies with jobs and tons of money for suspicious "couselling", nothing of consequence from that, she just failed upward. Maybe you can't bribe a policeman at a traffic stop in Germany. But in the levels above that, there are plenty of current egregious examples of corruption that has happened and was systematically covered up or ignored.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    For sure you can. It just has to be a very high bribe, to make the policemen accept the risk.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
usrusr 6y ago
Well, that's an example that I'd consider specifically Bavarian, where CSU has been ruling for longer than the CCP has been ruling the PRC (no joke, if you ignore the wartime years the CCP already held power pre-PRC). On a national level things aren't looking quite as grim.
- maze-le 6y ago
  It happened in Frankfurt (Hessen), not Bavaria, you're probably referring to the Gustl Mollath case -- which is eerily similar. You're right its not a systemic issue I think (I hope), but it sheds light on the role of psychiatric "experts" in court proceedings and how corruptible they can be in some cases.
  - usrusr 6y ago
    Oh, there was another one? That changes perspective quite a bit!
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Yeah, but I guess just like in soccer, we Baverians are leading the pack in sketchy political and legal affairs. Nothing to be proud of, so.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  " On a national level things aren't looking quite as grim" With the recent Amthor scandal, where many established politicans really did not see a scandal at all(probably because it is normal), I am sceptical to this claim.
dsabanin 6y ago
I was thinking, that in a scary way, the psychiatric diagnosis for people investigating corruption in Russia or CCP does start to make sense. It is such an extreme risk to go against these regimes, both to their and their relatives' safety and livelihoods that it makes their actions seem insane. Extreme risk-taking without regard for consequence, suicidal tendencies, paranoia towards the government, unbounded anxiety. At the same time, where they live – all of these are reasonable reactions of a thinking human being, consistent with their environment. I want to stress, that this is more of an ironic observation. I admire the bravery of such people and I despise the current Russian regime, it was the biggest reason for my emigration.
- gumby 6y ago
  BTW this is why arrest records are public in the USA. The British would arrest people and their families and friends couldn’t tell what had happened, so as a result you “can’t” be secretly arrested. I put “can’t” in quotes because of course there are a bunch of ways the rules get bent and twisted, but I suspect the number of arrests unreported by 24 hours is pretty close to nil. OTOH the system has adapted to this constraint: since they have to be reported anyway the police have inverted the sense and adopted the “perp walk”, which prejudices the accused’s chances in court right up front. And of course extrajudicial punishment skips the whole apparatus in the first place...but that can happen anywhere.
  - unreal37 6y ago
    Reminds me of people who were arrested and convicted of "resisting arrest" and no other charges. That should not be a thing. If you're being arrested and the charges are never laid, or are later dropped, resisting arrest should be dropped too.
    - gumby 6y ago
      Yes, the US has a number of other mechanisms that are illegal/immoral in other countries such as the “charge stacking” you describe, plea bargains (there such an asymmetry in power that they are hardly “bargains”), and prison labor. Not picking on the US here: the inverse is true as well: the adversarial trial system and juries, separation of prosecution and the judiciary, etc imho provide stronger protection for the accused. Societies are complex and the design is far from understood.
ketzu 6y ago
Short summary in english of the contents of the spiegel article: Four Hessian tax investigators noted many problems. Their employer (the state of Hessen) got them psychiatricly examined. The examiner found them "paranoid troublemaking" and that they lost their sense for reality. Therefore, they got diagnosed as permanently unable to work and pensioned. According to the wikipedia article the psychiatrist has to pay the four people 226.000€ as compensation for reduced income.
- pkaye 6y ago
  Could the employees have requested a second opinion from another psychiatrist not connected to their employer?
  - ketzu 6y ago
    According to the article by Spiegel, the psychiatrist concluded that the condition is chronic and consolidated, therefore, no second opinion is required. But according to the wikipedia article, they later got more opinions when they got the conclusion overturned in court. (Including a famous psychiatrist whos assessment also helped overturn the Mollath case)
    - SilasX 6y ago
      >According to the article by Spiegel, the psychiatrist concluded that the condition is chronic and consolidated, therefore, no second opinion is required. Yikes, the fact that such a life-changing diagnosis is not subject to a second set of eyes is disturbing. (The later news is reassuring though.)
  - kensai 6y ago
    I happen to work for the psychiatric services of a rich German state. A second independent opinion is always requested from the judiciary.
    - rurban 6y ago
      Opinion yes, but the second assessment ("Gutachten") will not examine the accused personally, only the paperwork. In all cases psychiatric assessors will trust their colleagues more than written defenses or observations. Only if the first assessment is internally severely flawed it can be overruled. In most cases the first assessment just ignores any contradicting evidence, so the independent assessors had no chance to find out any contradictions or flaws. It simply is not in the papertrail.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
brightball 6y ago
This is one of the things that has always concerned me about the idea of putting legal restrictions on people in the US based on mental health. The idea that a diagnosis could be assigned without any type of independent medical or blood test that can disproved it is frankly terrifying.
- beenBoutIT 6y ago
  For the most part(in the US) mentally ill people decide on their own that they have psychiatric problems and then actively seek confirmation of their beliefs with a professional diagnosis.
goliatone 6y ago
> I always cringe when people use Germany as an example of a society that doesn't have a lot of corruption It is definitely interesting how perception works both inside and outside a given actor/nation. What I found illuminating was learning about the German bribery tax break[1][2]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1995-08-06/germany-where-bribery-is-tax-deductible-intl-edition https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1995-08-06/germany-w... [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0214/Top-12-weirdest-tax-rules-around-the-world/Germany-tax-deduction-on-bribes https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0214/Top-12-weirdest...
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Often when a country has a reputation for low rates of corruption, it is because corruption has been concentrated in fewer hands--wholesale, not retail--and the transactions are correspondingly larger. In such places, retail-level corruption can be seen as competition with the market dominator, and crushed. In the US, offering and accepting political bribery have both been officially decriminalized. The profit ratio of bribe to private benefit is typically well over 1000x.
dang 6y ago
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869601)

lima 6y ago

The affair you're talking about happened more than a decade ago, it was a major and pretty unique scandal in Germany, and the "expert" has been convicted not only to pay damages, but was also found to be guilty of malpractice. The state eventually offered the investigators to be re-hired. There were no consequences for the "instigators" because, to my understanding, it couldn't be proven that there was criminal intent. The events got plenty of media attention and high-ranking officials and judges denounced the actions of the agency. No country is safe from corruption, but this story certainly doesn't support the notion of the country being corrupt, much less "insanely corrupt".

Mirioron 6y ago
Is it unique? Didn't Gustl Mollath [0] also end up in a psychiatric facility and it started with him claiming that a bank was evading taxes? He was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. After years in there it turned out that his claim about the tax evasion was reasonable. From what I can tell, he spent ~6 years locked up in a psychiatric facility and got €600,000 in damages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath
- ketzu 6y ago
  Based on your "also": According to the spiegel article the investigators didn't end up in a psychiatric facility, but got a diagnosis of inability-to-work and pensioned. The case for Mr. Mollath was much worse.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    And it happened in Bavaria. We do have a certain tradition with such kind of things, it even has nickname since the Strauss days: Amigo Affairs. Most high level political corruption and fraud cases had Bavarian politicians involved. Especially when arms or taxes are involved.
- lima 6y ago
  I'm aware of the case, hence "quite unique". While ugly, it has nothing to do with corruption whatsoever.
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  Did you actually read the Wiki page? There is a lot of context you are leaving out there. Based on my reading this was not some grand conspiracy by a bank to silence a critic. It sounds like this man certainly did have some psychological issues and assaulted his wife multiple times. Due to his history and his behaviour during the following court case he was locked up in psychiatric care. He did make allegations about a tax evasion scheme during the court case about the assault (and these were wrongly seen by the court as a sign of his psychological problems). But it's not like he was a whistleblower who was silenced through some made-up allegations. The Wiki page also says that the "reported money transfers were not illegal per se", so this isn't even a clear cut case of tax evasion. Clearly a lot of things went wrong in this case and he was partially acquitted and compensated later on. But I don't think this is any evidence for systemic corruption in the entire country.
  - voxic11 6y ago
    > The judgment was based, among other things, on the opinion of expert Klaus Leipziger from Bayreuth, who attested to Mollath's paranoid delusions of a "black money complex" > The first medical specialist statement on Mollath's mental health was created solely from information provided by his wife; the doctor in question, Gabriele Krach, consultant psychiatrist at the Klinikum am Europakanal, had not seen Mollath even once. > In contrast, Hans Simmerl, the consultant commissioned by the local court of Straubing to assess Mollath's mental health during a trial pertaining to his guardianship/health care, conversed with him for several hours in 2007 and did not find any evidence of mental disorders; > On 19 February 2013, Strate applied for a trial de novo based on evidence that the presiding judge had committed numerous instances of perversion of justice against Mollath in the case. According to Strate, the judge was responsible for Mollath's detention for almost three weeks without disclosure of the charges or presentation to a judge, failure to respond to Mollath's complaints or forward them to the higher court that should have decided them, manipulation of the court's composition, obvious misrepresentations in the reasons for the judgment, and unconscionable refusal to discharge Mollath's assigned counsel in spite of many petitions to do so, followed by use of said counsel as a witness against his own client. > On 18 March 2013, in a very unusual move, the prosecution also applied for a trial de novo, based on exculpating evidence that had surfaced only after the original trial. > Judge Otto Brixner had to admit before the committee that he hadn't read Mollath's written defense which he claimed to be irrelevant in his judgment. In June 2013 Mollath testified before the committee, repeating his claim that he wasn't allowed to give evidence during his trial. > On 6 August 2013 the Oberlandesgericht Nuremberg (higher regional court) ordered the reopening of Mollath's case. He was released from mental hospital immediately. The court found that the medical certificate documenting the alleged abuse of his wife was a "fictitious document", because it appeared to be written and signed by Dr. Madeleine Reichel, who never had examined Mollath's wife. Instead the author of the report was her son, then a doctor in training. > Mollath's 2018 action for damages by the unlawful custody has been concluded in November 2019 by an ex gratia payment of €600,000 by the defendant Free State of Bavaria. > Ultimately, the court considered the aggravated assault proven, but fully acquitted him on the other charges citing insufficient proof. Criminal insanity was also considered unproven; Mollath was held in a psychiatric ward unlawfully and was entitled to a compensation. The acquittal from the first trial could not be overturned though, and Mollath was acquitted on all charges.
marcinzm 6y ago
I mean, in Wirecard prosecutors literally went after short sellers with criminals charges. For years. They only dropped charges a few months ago after a donation was made to a charitable organization. Seems pretty similar and pretty corrupt to me. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wirecard-accounts-germany-insight/germanys-long-lonely-campaign-battling-wirecards-short-sellers-idUSKCN24H0KM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wirecard-accounts-germany... edit: I guess "we'll ruin you and throw you in jail" is better than "we'll throw you out a window" but it's still pretty bad. edit2: And if Wildcard hadn't imploded there'd have been no scandal about prosecutors going after critics. No issues with silencing complaints or limiting freedom of speech. Just another part of doing business against companies the government support.
- thespiceisloco 6y ago
  HN silences people like you. Be careful.
  - dang 6y ago
    HN silences people from commenting about Wirecard?! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874420
- lima 6y ago
  > I mean, in Wirecard prosecutors literally went after short sellers with criminals charges. For years. They only dropped charges a few months ago after a donation was made to a charitable organization. Seems pretty similar and pretty corrupt to me. Corruption, or (gross) incompetence? Don't attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity. Misplaced trust, broken culture, political pressure, or even actual corruption - we simply don't know what happened.
  - raincom 6y ago
    Germans are known for competence, industriousness, according to their PR or propaganda department. So, incompetence is ruled out.
corty 6y ago
Current head of the EU comission and former defense minister Ursula von der Leyen is another perfect example of German government corruption. She provided old buddies at various companies with jobs and tons of money for suspicious "couselling", nothing of consequence from that, she just failed upward. Maybe you can't bribe a policeman at a traffic stop in Germany. But in the levels above that, there are plenty of current egregious examples of corruption that has happened and was systematically covered up or ignored.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  For sure you can. It just has to be a very high bribe, to make the policemen accept the risk.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

usrusr 6y ago

Well, that's an example that I'd consider specifically Bavarian, where CSU has been ruling for longer than the CCP has been ruling the PRC (no joke, if you ignore the wartime years the CCP already held power pre-PRC). On a national level things aren't looking quite as grim.

maze-le 6y ago
It happened in Frankfurt (Hessen), not Bavaria, you're probably referring to the Gustl Mollath case -- which is eerily similar. You're right its not a systemic issue I think (I hope), but it sheds light on the role of psychiatric "experts" in court proceedings and how corruptible they can be in some cases.
- usrusr 6y ago
  Oh, there was another one? That changes perspective quite a bit!
- hef19898 6y ago
  Yeah, but I guess just like in soccer, we Baverians are leading the pack in sketchy political and legal affairs. Nothing to be proud of, so.
hutzlibu 6y ago
" On a national level things aren't looking quite as grim" With the recent Amthor scandal, where many established politicans really did not see a scandal at all(probably because it is normal), I am sceptical to this claim.

dsabanin 6y ago

I was thinking, that in a scary way, the psychiatric diagnosis for people investigating corruption in Russia or CCP does start to make sense. It is such an extreme risk to go against these regimes, both to their and their relatives' safety and livelihoods that it makes their actions seem insane. Extreme risk-taking without regard for consequence, suicidal tendencies, paranoia towards the government, unbounded anxiety. At the same time, where they live – all of these are reasonable reactions of a thinking human being, consistent with their environment. I want to stress, that this is more of an ironic observation. I admire the bravery of such people and I despise the current Russian regime, it was the biggest reason for my emigration.

gumby 6y ago
BTW this is why arrest records are public in the USA. The British would arrest people and their families and friends couldn’t tell what had happened, so as a result you “can’t” be secretly arrested. I put “can’t” in quotes because of course there are a bunch of ways the rules get bent and twisted, but I suspect the number of arrests unreported by 24 hours is pretty close to nil. OTOH the system has adapted to this constraint: since they have to be reported anyway the police have inverted the sense and adopted the “perp walk”, which prejudices the accused’s chances in court right up front. And of course extrajudicial punishment skips the whole apparatus in the first place...but that can happen anywhere.
- unreal37 6y ago
  Reminds me of people who were arrested and convicted of "resisting arrest" and no other charges. That should not be a thing. If you're being arrested and the charges are never laid, or are later dropped, resisting arrest should be dropped too.
  - gumby 6y ago
    Yes, the US has a number of other mechanisms that are illegal/immoral in other countries such as the “charge stacking” you describe, plea bargains (there such an asymmetry in power that they are hardly “bargains”), and prison labor. Not picking on the US here: the inverse is true as well: the adversarial trial system and juries, separation of prosecution and the judiciary, etc imho provide stronger protection for the accused. Societies are complex and the design is far from understood.

ketzu 6y ago

Short summary in english of the contents of the spiegel article: Four Hessian tax investigators noted many problems. Their employer (the state of Hessen) got them psychiatricly examined. The examiner found them "paranoid troublemaking" and that they lost their sense for reality. Therefore, they got diagnosed as permanently unable to work and pensioned. According to the wikipedia article the psychiatrist has to pay the four people 226.000€ as compensation for reduced income.

pkaye 6y ago
Could the employees have requested a second opinion from another psychiatrist not connected to their employer?
- ketzu 6y ago
  According to the article by Spiegel, the psychiatrist concluded that the condition is chronic and consolidated, therefore, no second opinion is required. But according to the wikipedia article, they later got more opinions when they got the conclusion overturned in court. (Including a famous psychiatrist whos assessment also helped overturn the Mollath case)
  - SilasX 6y ago
    >According to the article by Spiegel, the psychiatrist concluded that the condition is chronic and consolidated, therefore, no second opinion is required. Yikes, the fact that such a life-changing diagnosis is not subject to a second set of eyes is disturbing. (The later news is reassuring though.)
- kensai 6y ago
  I happen to work for the psychiatric services of a rich German state. A second independent opinion is always requested from the judiciary.
  - rurban 6y ago
    Opinion yes, but the second assessment ("Gutachten") will not examine the accused personally, only the paperwork. In all cases psychiatric assessors will trust their colleagues more than written defenses or observations. Only if the first assessment is internally severely flawed it can be overruled. In most cases the first assessment just ignores any contradicting evidence, so the independent assessors had no chance to find out any contradictions or flaws. It simply is not in the papertrail.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

brightball 6y ago

This is one of the things that has always concerned me about the idea of putting legal restrictions on people in the US based on mental health. The idea that a diagnosis could be assigned without any type of independent medical or blood test that can disproved it is frankly terrifying.

beenBoutIT 6y ago
For the most part(in the US) mentally ill people decide on their own that they have psychiatric problems and then actively seek confirmation of their beliefs with a professional diagnosis.

goliatone 6y ago

> I always cringe when people use Germany as an example of a society that doesn't have a lot of corruption It is definitely interesting how perception works both inside and outside a given actor/nation. What I found illuminating was learning about the German bribery tax break[1][2]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1995-08-06/germany-where-bribery-is-tax-deductible-intl-edition https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1995-08-06/germany-w... [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0214/Top-12-weirdest-tax-rules-around-the-world/Germany-tax-deduction-on-bribes https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0214/Top-12-weirdest...

ncmncm 6y ago
Often when a country has a reputation for low rates of corruption, it is because corruption has been concentrated in fewer hands--wholesale, not retail--and the transactions are correspondingly larger. In such places, retail-level corruption can be seen as competition with the market dominator, and crushed. In the US, offering and accepting political bribery have both been officially decriminalized. The profit ratio of bribe to private benefit is typically well over 1000x.

dang 6y ago

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869601)