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Comment by jcoffland | Hacker News Reader

Shkreli has repeatedly flaunted his wealth, privilege and false sense of superiority. Although not illegal, it's offensive. Offending the public, whether right or wrong, has consequences. Shkreli is getting a taste of mob justice, or just what he asked for.

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> ...Offending the public, whether right or wrong, has consequences. Shkreli is getting a taste of mob justice, or just what he asked for.

Isn't that exactly what the justice system is in place to prevent?

No, it’s what the justice system is in place to formalize.

... in the US, apparently.

Pretty much everywhere, if the justice system doesn’t reflect the population’s desire for mob justice, the people will administer it extrajudicially. The places with low bloodthirst traditionally have strong civic fabrics and low violent crime. If those things change the justice system will adapt or die.

Isn‘t this a chicken and egg problem? If people don‘t get to know court proceedings when they happen it doesn‘t give them more outrage and justice porn and calms down the overall atmosphere. To compare, Swiss people generally don‘t care about what happens in courts, they care about the next direct democractic vote (and get riled up about it sometimes), but I consider that at least more at the root of politics and not targeted at individuals.

Then that "justice" system should be overthrow, along with every judge who supports that line of thinking.

The justice system is theoretically supposed to be somewhat isolated from this by limitations on democracy. But we've sort of morphed our way out of half of those limitations and we're almost getting the bad stuff without getting the good. The system is very prone to mass public opinion, but there's hardly anything any one individual can do to actively participate in the system. There used to be a strict upper limit of 40,000 citizens to one elected representative. Now the average is something like 20x that iirc, which is such a large number of people that it isn't really practical for most people to self organize and get their representatives attention on an issue. At the same time, people can get hyped up about what they read in internet tabloids or are told through the media, and politicians will be forced to respond to that.

>At the same time, people can get hyped up about what they read in internet tabloids or are told through the media, and politicians will be forced to respond to that.

This is spot on. That gives a heck of a lot of power to news organizations. That's scary when thinking of the quality and journalistic integrity of many, if not most news organizations. People react much more strongly to what they read/watch/listen to on the news. If the news can get them hyped up on a topic (opioid crises is the latest) then the politicians react, typically just enough to get the news off their back. We're left with ham-fisted solutions that make the problem worse. x30 years.

I‘d say it gives a heck of a lot of power to influential Twitter users, the press just seems to react to them nowadays.

Yes, it doesn't help that most of the news is incredibly lazy and very easy to manipulate.

Yes, social media definitely plays a huge role here. At the same time, the average person has next to no power at all. They have virtually no influence on mass opinion, little chances of having any influence on it, and even if they could, mass opinion typically doesn't have much influence on public policy unless its of the 'Manufactured Consent' variety. Perhaps we should be talking less about Russian Twitter bots 'hacking' our democracy and more about the fact that our democracy was barely working long before the 2016 election.

Criminal punishment in a republic [0] is exactly the institutionalization of the idea that offending the public has consequences. Hence, in the US, the popular styling of criminal cases as “The people vs. defendant”.

[0] a “republic” in the sense of a regime where government is notionally an institution for the interest of the public rather than a private property interest of a ruler or distinct ruling class; in non-republics, the non-public “owners” are the persons of whose offense consequences are institutionalized by the criminal justice system.

Wouldn't a more complete explanation mention constitution or code of laws or some such as well? Maybe some ex post Latin?

> Wouldn't a more complete explanation mention constitution or code of laws or some such as well?

Constitutions and codes of laws in a republic are intermediate tools to the effect discussed.

> Maybe some ex post Latin?

You mean, more than “republic” is ex post Latin?

It's breaking the laws of the country who are indirectly created by the "public," it has nothing to do with mob mentality. We are a nation of laws. In fact, republics are a safeguard against mob mentality which can happen in direct democracy.

Until being offensive is illegal, it should hold no bearing in a just trial. Fortunately, we have the first amendment, which makes being an obnoxious asshole in and of itself perfectly legal.

In our system of law being offensive is not illegal and we are be wise to remind everyone of this.

Contempt of court is though

The question is whether we as a law based society should be ok with this.

You only go to jail for being offensive in authoritarian-ruled governments. If we're not better than mob justice, please install decent people in NYC's legal system.

Since when? You can always get yourself in trouble by pissing off the public, regardless of government structure.

You don't go to jail for 7 years for it. (Supposedly) not in first world countries.

You do when you also commit fraud with a 7 year sentence.

Remember this when you end up on the wrong side of the law, and the book is thrown at you when it shouldn't be. Easy to cast the first stone.

Aaron Swartz was eligible for 50 years in prison and a million dollar fine based on his computer crimes. That's fair too, right?

Y'all need some empathy and compassion. People are human, and make mistakes. The punishment should fit the crime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosec...

That is the issue though, someone has to decide whether to "throw the book at you" or not. As long as someone is left to decide that, then you risk things like "being offensive" working against you, or "showing remorse" helping you.

The allowance for empathy, compassion and mistakes are what lead to the (to you) unfair punishment that was given.

Shkreli did not "make a mistake". He purposefully defrauded investors.

Aaron Swartz did not make a mistake. He purposely obtained unauthorized access to JSTOR and exfiltrated data for public consumption [1].

Poor judgment with minimal damage should not cost you a tenth of your life, or in Aaron's case, his entire life.

[1] https://archive.org/details/JSTORSwartzEvidenceAllDocs

Yeah, no. I'm rejecting your argument. The two are nowhere near the same. Shkreli purposefully did what he did, and more so, he showed no remorse in doing it, and he insulted the court.

That's quite disingenuous. Entirely different circumstances and facts.

You're using the absolute maximum prosecutors were threatening Swartz with in order to extract a plea deal. They would not have brought anything near that to trial had it gone to trial, much less convicted him on it. In fact, in your link, this is what he was offered: "During plea negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison".

The statute Swartz was charged under has also widely been recognized as flawed. Not the case with what Shkreli was charged with.

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