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"Swartz potentially faced more jail time for downloading academic papers than he would have if he had helped Al Qaeda build a nuclear weapon. " Too much for th
by NmAmDa 5y ago
"Swartz potentially faced more jail time for downloading academic papers than he would have if he had helped Al Qaeda build a nuclear weapon. "
Too much for the American values.
- mettamage 5y agoIt's things like this that make me believe that the US isn't a truly free society. It simply pretends it is. But all nations have their problems. The US simply has more than one might think.
- TheTester 5y agoIt is a Masonic society that actually pretends to give freedom to their sheep but is nothing more than an ilusión they merely choose which door to use when they go to the slaughterhouse
- xorfish 5y agoThe US has the highest prison population per capita in the world. Mostly because of an outdated view on justice and crime.
- nivenkos 5y agoIt's good for violent crimes though. Whereas in Sweden for example, a violent rapist was awarded ~$84k - https://www.gp.se/ledare/v%C3%A5ldt%C3%A4ktsmannens-skadest%C3%A5nd-ett-h%C3%A5n-mot-brottsoffren-1.52986188 https://www.gp.se/ledare/v%C3%A5ldt%C3%A4ktsmannens-skadest%... - after he turned out to be a minor but had been tried as an adult, and in the end spent less than 2 years in prison. Some of ThePirateBay founders had longer sentences, absolute clown world.
- xorfish 5y agoThat outdated view in your comment is exactly what I mean. There might be an argument if the US actually had lower crime or recidivism rates than European countries, but it does not have that. Yes, it takes some effort to overcome that primal view on justice, but it leads to a more humane society with less crime.
- markdown 5y agoIt sounds like that Sweden case is justified. An injustice was done to him, and he got restitution. That injustice is separate and distinct from the one he committed on a fellow human being, and for that case he spent two years in prison. This sounds unreasonably short, but without further information, who are we to say whether that was acceptable or not? Perhaps two years was enough to help the rapist overcome his violent tendencies.
- squiggleblaz 5y ago> Mostly because of an outdated view on justice and crime. Mostly because certain people profit off it. If you have private prisons and lifetime voting bans for someone locked up for a few months you have mega incentives to get a lot of people behind bars.
- mandmandam 5y agoMore than an American might think maybe. The rest of the world sees America as the numero uno threat to democracy, peace, and stability. And when that fact is pointed out to Americans, with evidence and polls and sources, it makes no impression somehow (in my experience). It's simply incompatible with their programming, and the data is rejected. Try it.
- nefitty 5y agoNot sure what your agenda is, but you're clearly ignoring the uniquely fashy things China and Russia are doing.
- johncoltrane 5y agoItem A being at index 0 of a list doesn't imply the absence of item B and item C from that list.
- nefitty 5y agoPerhaps it's an unordered list of similar items?
- mandmandam 5y agoYou can question my agenda all you like, though I think it's against the 'guidelines' here. But the fact is that the world agrees with me. More people on this planet think that America is more dangerous to democracy, peace and stability than Russia or China, or Iran, or Pakistan. Thank you for the vivid illustration of my point though. I had nearly added a line about how deflection kicks in like an automatic reflex the second America's superiority is questioned, but kept it short and sweet.
- ncmncm 5y agoRussia and China might like to be greater threats to democracy, peace, or stability than the US, but they simply don't have enough influence or control enough foreign money (although China is ramping up). Iran and Pakistan are completely out of the running.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents. This was a doozy. Such discussions are predictable, tedious, attract the same minority of commenters over and over and bore/drive away everybody else. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.