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I'm currently watching The Wire (Season 2). One thing I'm learning is that the common citizen really does not matter at all - the three different branches of the government keep each other in check by alternatively trying to fuck each other over/brownnose each other as much as they can.

That's the genius of checks and balances. As long as no one branch (legislative, judicial, executive) gets the upper hand, we can ensure that the power-hungry people who rise up through the ranks will hold each other accountable, if only for selfish and corrupt reasons.

I'm not sure what to consider corporations though. They seem to have piled up enough legal protection to be considered a fourth, private wing of government. Some of their incentives align (no taxes, bailouts, less regulation) but many more do not. Google and Apple control enough cash and information that they are de facto more powerful than 95% of world governments, and they play a major role in ours. Eric Schmidt taking on a role at the Pentagon is one recent example [1].

As Dostoevsky put it, viper will eat viper. We are all a little Karamazovian - of the black root. It's what keeps the world balanced.

[1] http://www.wired.com/2016/03/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-head...

Corporations are part of the checks and balances as well. Most of the opposition to SOPA/PIPA came from the tech industry, they've united to fight the FBI decryption challenge, and they started encrypting everything in response to the NSA revelations. On the flip side, the FTC is continually butting heads with Google over what are acceptable advertising statutes, human rights groups love to expose Apple's use of sweatshops, and European governments are big advocates of privacy.

The genius of democratic capitalism is that it's managed to harness the natural desire of sociopaths to fuck each other over to ensure that life doesn't get too miserable for ordinary people. The unfortunate part is that you pretty much have to become a sociopath to enter the class that gets to decide who gets fucked. But I'd much rather have this than every other social system, where the sociopaths fuck over the common people unchecked.

What about the TPP, which is backed by many corporations?

Corporations aren't _good_, they just have goals that doesn't entirely intersect with those of the government.

> ... European governments are big advocates of privacy.

Maybe, but not where "national security" matters.

Edit: Added quotes for clarity.

Very few countries have reasons to fear for their 'national security', that's mostly just a fig leaf for activities that would otherwise not stand a chance of being implemented.

Countries that have legitimate national security issues (Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria and so on) are not the ones using that term the most frequent.

Agreed.

But the intelligence community is an invisible meta branch. Corporations have always been a part of the MIC, as their integral connections to the military, our largest consumer of our resources, is a host-parasite relationship and it is this relationship which has co-opted the idea of freedom in this country.

Now we have a spiral of oligarchs who leach off the whole system.

So firstly, I don't think that's actually a documentary.

Secondly, are you really saying "living in a police state is fine, you just have to make sure you never become more of a threat to someone in power than their peers in government"?

> As Dostoevsky put it, viper will eat viper. We are all a little Karamazovian - of the black root. It's what keeps the world balanced.

This is why I'm not too sad anymore when I hear all this awful news. We are all monsters. Give the average person money and power, and they will behave just the same.

They don't even need you to fall afoul of a crime. They can just make something up and once they are in court and the jury is known, they can pull the files of the jury and figure out how to manipulate the case into a guilty verdict. Having access to every moment of a person life can tell you quite a lot of how to manipulate someone.

They don't even need to convince a jury. 97% of federal cases and 94% of local ones end with a plea bargain. To see why, consider facing a million dollar legal bill (average), with a likely 7 year jail sentence if you lose, and you're offered 6 months in jail if you confess. You know you didn't do it, but can you afford to fight it and the possibility of the jury getting it wrong?

Given this math, I guarantee you that a lot of innocent people plead guilty because as wrong as it is they simply can't afford to fight for justice.

One had a choice of fighting a ticket and potentially be hit with a $2000+ fine or pay a fine of $140+$43 court expenses. The prosecutor explained that since it is a city ordinance, there is nothing to go on one's criminal record. One could say they not guilty but is it worth it?

I don't think the individual prosecutor was evil. They were doing their best to process everyone as quickly as possible. they were courteous and polite. it seemed they offered minimal fines (at least they said the fines were minimal) and it costs more just to retain a lawyer.

who knows? maybe the police officers have a quota to meet. I can't blame them for following orders and looking for the silliest infractions towards the end of the month.

it just seems that we've optimized the process to a point where I don't really care because I get caught up in it so rarely and get off so easily and the people who get caught up more (have a prior history or can't afford $183 fine) probably don't have much of a voice. but what can I do?

>I can't blame them for following orders

Stew on that for a bit. If I get a job, where someone lays me to rob you, would you blame me for following orders?

The individual police officer on the street has little influence on how the system works. If we need meaningful change, it can't come from putting our police officers between a rock and a hard place.

Now, I say this as someone very vocal about the blue code of silence. However, there are no easy answers. Any unconcerted attempt to rid our law enforcement agencies of the blue code will result in it getting stronger and create more of this "us vs them" mentality.

We don't need more of that.

Now to answer your question, yes if someone robbed me or killed me I'd want them to be held accountable. However, I think the person giving the order is more responsible than the person pulling the trigger. Is that not so?

> who knows? maybe the police officers have a quota to meet. I can't blame them for following orders and looking for the silliest infractions towards the end of the month.

Hmm. Shouldn't you ? Even more so as an American citizen (I suppose you are) ?

>> One had a choice of fighting a ticket and potentially be hit with a $2000+ fine or pay a fine of $140+$43 court expenses.

The root of the problem is that a choice is even offered. If you got the ticket, why is a court willing to waive the fine for any reason? It's easier for the court, it's easier for the offender, lazy all around. But the real problem may be that some ticket carries a $2000 fine. Imagine if the ticket could not be waived. More people would fight it because it's worth the effort. Eventually enough people might get angry at the high fine and move to get it changed. Or put another way, why is there this infraction with such a high fine in the first place? It doesn't seem that important since they're willing to make a huge compromise.

You are absolutely right. There are many city laws and ordinances that I doubt would stand a constitutional review.

I don't think police officers today are any lazier it more corrupt than police officers in the good old days. We are a bit too harsh on them I suppose. It is just that with an easier access to communication, we can all tell about our particular nuisances which paints a bigger picture together.

If you yell back at someone who yelled at you, should you get a $200 ticket while the other person who started it gets away? Hey, maybe have a plain cloth police officer yell at random people and see who bites and issue them a $200 ticket when they do?

While I agree with the general premise, it appears Harvey Silverglate is a fraud. This came up on HN a while ago and I looked up a few of the cases mentioned. A brief search revealed that these people were all actual criminals and he had grossly misrepresented the cases.

The one I remember had to do with shipping undersized lobster tails. He made it out that a bunch of average restaurant owners were sent to jail for years b/c they broke a foreign export law which was somehow enforceable in America due to a law he had a problem with.

What actually happened was these people had been conspiring to to break environmental law for decade by packaging lobster tails in such a way that inspectors found it difficult to inspect them and made mistakes. They had a whole system for routing their stuff to specific ports that had inspecting facilities that were easy to manipulate. They continued doing this for a year after they were informed they were under a federal investigation, right up until they were all arrested.

They made millions of dollars by poaching undersized lobsters and all of the rules they broke were not vague and specifically made their packaging actions illegal, in order to prevent people from doing exactly what they did.

So I wouldn't put too much faith in this guy.

Atty. Silverglate is very much not a fraud.

He's the author of "The Shadow University" which was one of the most disruptive blows that's been struck against the large-endowment administrations in the past few decades.

I actually happen to know one of the subjects of Mr. Silverglate's case studies, Nicholas Hermandorffer, who later wrote his thesis on the topic. In my view, his experience was represented accurately and fully, and Mr. Hermandorffer's accounts were closely aligned with phone records, texts, emails, etc., as well as physical evidence.

He's also head of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which ranks universities on their free speech rights, as well as informs students that they sacrifice Constitutional protection to a certain extent living in University housing, as well as provides information on the rights one does retain and how to invoke them.

You seem like somebody with an axe to grind. I wouldn't put too much faith in this guy.

I think things should work OK if either the laws are reasonable so normal people don't accidentally break them or if we don't police them thoroughly. If neither condition is met, then we have some horror dystopia where everybody lives in fear of unexpected arrest.

The laws are already too tough, so we depend on poor quality police work to keep ourselves safe. If the police use NSA data to actively discover crimes, then we would fail both conditions and be in trouble.

This suggests that an alternative solution would be to fix the unreasonable laws rather than keep the police crippled.

I'm not a fan of U.S. law as it currently stands, but not enforcing laws as a matter of course (i.e. not an act of protest) pretty much demolishes rule of law. That sort of activity goes hand in hand with corruption and failed states.

Selective enforcement is a thing. Lying to the FBI in the course of an investigation is a crime, and because the lie can be about something the FBI already knows, it's frequently used as a proxy for actual crime.

What happened to retired General David Petraeus was a pretty good example of "justice for your friends". Lying to FBI agents, actually giving away classified documents, and he pled to one misdemeanor and got two years probation[1].

It's not like they didn't have evidence of the False Statements charge.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/petra...

or how about clapper? http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com

The great Roman jurist Cicero said: "summum ius, summa iniuria." (Greatest law, greatest injustice.)

Enforcing laws to the letter demolishes the rule of law as well.

I've always thought that the only reason the general public tolerates a lot of the laws in place is that said laws are rarely or never enforced.

Think about speeding. Most people wouldn't accept having a government-monitored GPS in their car, and one common objection is "but then if I accidentally slip a couple of km/h over the limit I'll get instantly busted". Well yeah, and if you thought that universally enforcing the speed limit was fair then you'd be OK with this. It's not fair, and often the speed limit is far below what you could safely do in a modern car under good conditions. Breaking the speed limit often poses no threat to anyone.

Just one example of an unjust, but relatively unenforced, law.

Maybe just leave the United States? Canada is a lot like a colder America without the crazy surveillance state. You can help advocate for rescuing your country from abroad.

Have you heard of Bill C-51? We're just a lot quieter about the surveillance. Also Canada is pretty extradition-happy with its big bro down south.

Yeah, C-51 is almost completely reasonable. What part about it don't you like other than the lack of parliamentary oversight?

Well, the lack of oversight is a big one. But I remain concerned about the overly broad usages/references to terrorism, "promoting" terrorism, and phrases referring to actions that undermine "the economic and financial stability of Canada".

If an Indigenous tribe protests a pipeline being built on their ancestral land, are they undermining the economic stability of Canada?

I don't like leaving the distinction between what constitutes activism and terrorism up to interpretation by the frontline LEO's and CSIS agents collecting and acting on the data.

A lot of scary stuff in those 134 laws:

S. 994: A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1 Walter Hammond Place in Waldwick, New Jersey, as the “Staff Sergeant Joseph D’Augustine Post Office Building”

S. 599: Improving Access to Emergency Psychiatric Care Act

H.R. 33: Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act

H.R. 431: To award a Congressional Gold Medal to the Foot Soldiers who participated in Bloody Sunday, Turnaround Tuesday, or the final Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March in March of 1965, which served as a catalyst for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I think I know what your point is, that we might need to know what elected officials are doing, but I think this was a little more FUD than was necessary. Perhaps we need to think if these issues need to be a law a the national level.

Keep in mind that the title of the law often does not describe its true scope.

John Baker's quote makes more sense if you realize there is no judge or trial or defense in a grand jury indictment. A prosecutor just makes their case and presents their best evidence. One hopes the majority of the indictments he refers to would be foolish to actually prosecute.

> One hopes the majority of the indictments he refers to would be foolish to actually prosecute.

https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSumma...

> According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2005), in 2003 there were 75,573 cases disposed of in federal district court by trial or plea. Of these, about 95 percent were disposed of by a guilty plea (Pastore and Maguire, 2003). While there are no exact estimates of the proportion of cases that are resolved through plea bargaining, scholars estimate that about 90 to 95 percent of both federal and state court cases are resolved through this process (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005; Flanagan and Maguire, 1990).

A 95% plea rate makes indictment almost always a conviction [effectively]. If they don't plea, the prosecutor can drop the case.

The only people who can defend this are the upper middle class [6 figure incomes] and the wealthy.

http://www.reulandlaw.com/about/fee/

For an example of rates, its 35-75k for a federal case.

Another explanation for these numbers is that prosecutors are also resource-bound and risk-averse and prefer to go after cases they are almost certain to win.

There are, of course, exceptions of all kinds, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev.

As against Beria, Cardinal Richelieue (1585-1642) needed a little more - "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him".