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You just committed the same error that you're calling on mullingitover; he didn't say the person in the story was on the brink of suicide, he said, "I'm surpris

You just committed the same error that you're calling on mullingitover; he didn't say the person in the story was on the brink of suicide, he said, "I'm surprised he didn't commit suicide." For an otherwise lawful person to lose their career and most of the prospects for their near future, their schooling, a decent place to live, and be subjected to idiotic and hypocritical drug classes twice a week for a year, and then in turn to be given bad advice by their probation officer which leads to further punishments ... well, yes, despondency to the point of suicidal desires depends then entirely on the individual's emotional constitution. (Before you object to that, you should know that merely losing her job led to a downward spiral which has resulted in my mother attempting suicide three or four times -- that I know of -- and my father then attempting suicide just so that he wouldn't have to deal with her anymore.) His record may have been expunged, but as he says in the article, that didn't matter once the various private background check organizations had gotten ahold of it. I think the article did a pretty damn good job of a case study which should make "the system" look ridiculous and over-punitive in this instance. I think that the subject of the article made a good point when he said that it makes sense that many otherwise-lawful citizens might turn to illegal sources of income during a situation like this. So I find him to be quite a sympathetic character. In what way am I surrendering my critical thinking faculties?

tptacek 14y ago
Hundreds of thousands of people with postgraduate degrees who have never committed any felony are currently working menial jobs because this economy cannot employ the skills they invested in. This person, on the other hand, "had his life almost ruined" because he went from stock broker to exactly that same kind of job after committing a felony. Note well: the rest of his punishment was "watching movies twice a week at Narcotics Anonymous for a year" and "9PM curfew for a year". The criminal record itself was expunged.
- thaumaturgy 14y ago
  Fair enough, but those people weren't forced to work menial jobs because of stupid drug laws; they were forced to work menial laws because of a stupid economy. I get what you're saying -- that it's unfair to say his life was "nearly ruined" relative to all these other people -- but that really doesn't make this example of the unnecessary damage done to one individual's life by drug laws any less compelling. He had a promising career and future, and both were derailed by heaps of stupidity; it looks like he's recovering from all that, but there was a perfectly reasonable chance that he might not have. Why not leave it at that? I think that you're understating the rest of his situation because it better suits your argument that his life wasn't ruined. For instance, yes, his record was expunged, however, as noted in the article, his record is still showing up in private background checks -- thanks in part to getting an extra year of probation after being charged with violating his probation because his PO told him it was OK to work late.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    About 10 years ago, I cancelled my account with Sprint and switched to AT&T. For 5 months afterwards, I was billed by Sprint, called Sprint, re-cancelled (orally and in writing) and watched the cycle complete. Eventually I gave up and said "fuck it". Sprint trashed my credit report. Had I not been as fortunate as I have been, that trashed credit report easily could have cost me the most lucrative tier of jobs available to me, because employers routinely screen applicants based on credit history. Being screwed over by Sprint is not a felony. Similar screwups have no doubt cost thousands of people jobs. I'm not sure what the appropriate public policy response to this situation is. We benefit enormously from employment- at- will. There are people on HN who will also convincingly argue that we benefit enormously from credit reports and credit scoring (among other things, the system we had before credit scores was overtly racist). It's a complicated issue and I have no glib answers to provide.

tptacek 14y ago

Hundreds of thousands of people with postgraduate degrees who have never committed any felony are currently working menial jobs because this economy cannot employ the skills they invested in. This person, on the other hand, "had his life almost ruined" because he went from stock broker to exactly that same kind of job after committing a felony. Note well: the rest of his punishment was "watching movies twice a week at Narcotics Anonymous for a year" and "9PM curfew for a year". The criminal record itself was expunged.

thaumaturgy 14y ago
Fair enough, but those people weren't forced to work menial jobs because of stupid drug laws; they were forced to work menial laws because of a stupid economy. I get what you're saying -- that it's unfair to say his life was "nearly ruined" relative to all these other people -- but that really doesn't make this example of the unnecessary damage done to one individual's life by drug laws any less compelling. He had a promising career and future, and both were derailed by heaps of stupidity; it looks like he's recovering from all that, but there was a perfectly reasonable chance that he might not have. Why not leave it at that? I think that you're understating the rest of his situation because it better suits your argument that his life wasn't ruined. For instance, yes, his record was expunged, however, as noted in the article, his record is still showing up in private background checks -- thanks in part to getting an extra year of probation after being charged with violating his probation because his PO told him it was OK to work late.
- tptacek 14y ago
  About 10 years ago, I cancelled my account with Sprint and switched to AT&T. For 5 months afterwards, I was billed by Sprint, called Sprint, re-cancelled (orally and in writing) and watched the cycle complete. Eventually I gave up and said "fuck it". Sprint trashed my credit report. Had I not been as fortunate as I have been, that trashed credit report easily could have cost me the most lucrative tier of jobs available to me, because employers routinely screen applicants based on credit history. Being screwed over by Sprint is not a felony. Similar screwups have no doubt cost thousands of people jobs. I'm not sure what the appropriate public policy response to this situation is. We benefit enormously from employment- at- will. There are people on HN who will also convincingly argue that we benefit enormously from credit reports and credit scoring (among other things, the system we had before credit scores was overtly racist). It's a complicated issue and I have no glib answers to provide.