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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

Ghosn's handling by the Japanese is utterly despicable. No habeas corpus ... no due process.

Ghosn is credited with a stunning corporate turnaround and creating billions of dollars of value for a Japanese company and the Japanese people. I am certain foreign corporations who do business in Japan are thinking long and hard about the implications and potential risks of operating there.

To be clear - I am not saying Ghosn is innocent. He may very well have created special corporate structures to siphon off cash - and if he did, he certainly didn't do it alone. I think he regretted not taking the helm of GM where he saw US top execs easily earning $20, $30mm a year with no complaints from the public...

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Japan isn’t acting exceptionally with Ghosn. That’s their regular operating procedure.

Ghosn allegedly arranged this overt/covert payment system because allegedly he was unhappy that compared to euro and American auto execs, he was being under compensated.

This scheme if true is unlawful. Euro and American auto execs get paid above board and since there is no need for dual streams (because if you can command 200 million and you can get it, you don’t have to be shamed about it.).

In Japan it’s improper to be overcompensated but in order to be on par with other execs’ pay Ghosn arranged this overt/covert compensation system.

Well let's roll part of that back because there is growing consensus that "if you can command 200 million and you can get it" you should be shamed.

There’s a difference between commanding tens of millions per on the open market and doing illegal things because you want to get around some limits. As I understand it Nissan paid him a handsome amount, he agreed to it, but apparently not enough so he set up subsidiaries in Europe and used those to buy personal properties. In the end he allegedly was reporting only half of the income he earned-only the above board income.

It’s an altogether different discussion whether someone should be remunerated so generously.

> Japan isn’t acting exceptionally with Ghosn. That’s their regular operating procedure.

From the GP: >> Japan isn’t acting exceptionally with Ghosn. That’s their regular operating procedure.

These two ideas aren't mutually exclusive.

Counter-argument: that's how most suspects are handled in Japan (sadly), but people care about it only now that it affects a rich westerner, as you comment demonstrates ("stunning corporate turnaround and creating billions of dollars of value").

>Ghosn is credited with a stunning corporate turnaround and creating billions of dollars of value for a Japanese company and the Japanese people

This should have absolutely no bearing on how the justice system handles him.

Seriously! I know it happens but I feel like it's rare to see someone seem to explicitly argue that someone's business success should be a mitigating factor when considering their crimes.

While not to this degree “mitigating circumstances” is a concept in law, so while I disagree with OP, it is a thing of sorts in some traditions of law.

That's not what mitigating circumstances are for AFAIK.

Here are the examples given in a law dictionary :

"a young man shoots his father after years of being beaten, belittled, sworn at and treated without love. "Heat of passion" or "diminished capacity" are forms of such mitigating circumstances"

mitigating circumstances are conditions that explain and partially excuse a behavior. If anything, being a very wealthy exec that does not need money but still stealing would be an aggravating circumstance.

However, if you look at prison terms, whether this person is a danger to society or not is a big factor. We could also talk a lot about imprisonment and whether it should be used as a punition or only as a way to protect society against some very limited cases of dangerous individuals.

At some point, foreign nations are different and we just have to deal with it. We got habeas corpus and other processes from the Magna Carta back in the eleventh century B.C., and the resultant English Common Law shaped the justice systems of America and other nations. It is not fair of us to expect all justice systems to align with ours.

For an extreme example of this issue, look at the Middle East. They have simply never taken to democracy, and a good number of people are of the opinion it is simply an issue with their culture. This is why nation-building fails there. Japan is so to a lesser degree. They Westernized more due to losing WWII to America, but are still different. It's not our job to play world police.

At some point, foreign nations are different and we just have to deal with it.

Inherent human rights are universal. The closer the world comes to this ideal, the better life is for more people.

For an extreme example of this issue, look at the Middle East. They have simply never taken to democracy, and a good number of people are of the opinion it is simply an issue with their culture.

According to the level of democracy in nations throughout the world published by Freedom House and various other freedom indices, the Middle Eastern and North African countries with the highest scores are Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, and Kuwait.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_the_Middle_East

Democracy, to the extent which it's established in Europe and the United States, is the result of a long process. Many of the Middle Eastern countries are still dealing with their mainstream religion claiming to override all laws and national sovereignty. By that measure, they are over a dozen generations behind the west in that process.

> Inherent human rights are universal.

No, they are not. This reflects a bias to believing that your own ideas and values are best. The only value that is universal is power.

> the... countries with the highest scores are Israel...

I'm not sure what this is meant to argue. It is merely a listing of the countries in a certain area with the highest levels of democracy.

> they are over a dozen generations behind the west

Further reflection of your condescending attitude. Who are you to say they are "behind"? I believe in liberty, and would suppose you do as well, but what right have we to tell others what is right? Democracy may or may not take hold, but it is not intrinsically good.

Democracy is not a universal value, and cannot be forced on others. That is moral imperialism.

The only value that is universal is power.

Most of history is dominated by such "might makes right" thinking, and much of human history is dark. It's universal inherent human rights which are the outlier, and which have contributed to the outlier of prosperity and individual human well being we have in the US today.

I'm not sure what this is meant to argue. It is merely a listing of the countries in a certain area with the highest levels of democracy.

I'm not arguing. Merely informing.

Further reflection of your condescending attitude.

?? I think you are projecting.

Who are you to say they are "behind"?

They have ideological/philosophical ideas which the West abandoned well over a dozen generations ago, and for good reason, because those ideas have untenable epistemological problems.

I believe in liberty, and would suppose you do as well, but what right have we to tell others what is right?

Given Freedom of Speech, I believe everyone should be able to express their opinion. Then, there is also freedom of association. It's better to convince than coerce. I think we both agree on that.

Democracy may or may not take hold, but it is not intrinsically good.

Individual human rights are intrinsically good. This tends to result in Democracy, but I would grant that the relationship ends there.

Democracy is not a universal value, and cannot be forced on others. That is moral imperialism.

Sure. Forcing people to be democratic isn't democratic. Nor is it respecting individual human rights. I think we should be doing our part to convince others, however.

> Most of history is dominated by such "might makes right" thinking, and much of human history is dark. It's universal inherent human rights which are the outlier, and which have contributed to the outlier of prosperity and individual human well being we have in the US today.

I did not advocate for this, I simply said it was a reality. It is sad but true. I would ask: why is your set of "universal human rights" true? Who defines it? I would argue that the UN has attempted to define a number of bogus rights that are not intrinsic (indeed, America has in the past protested against some of these; see the holier-than-though stance the UN takes on home-schooling).

> I'm not arguing. Merely informing.

I asked because I wasn't sure what you were arguing by stating which nations were most democratic in that area. Could you clarify?

> everyone should be able to express their opinion

I think most agree on the principle, but courts claim they may restrict time, place and manner. Who draws the line, and where?

> Individual human rights are intrinsically good. This tends to result in Democracy

Yes. Liberty is a good thing. The problem is that not every one's culture has the same degree of liberty. Many languages do not even have the same word for liberty that America does; I believe it is Egypt that has it as a word meaning something granted from above rather than an intrinsic thing given by God.

My point is simply that democracy may never exist everywhere. Quite frankly, it is not perfect. Had America maintained some of her more republican policies (less centralization; state-appointed senators; etc.), we may have had reduced political polarization. Democracy is very difficult at scale.

The problem is that not every one's culture has the same degree of liberty.

Indeed. This changes over time. It's a process.

My point is simply that democracy may never exist everywhere.

No one disputed that, or held forth any opinion contradicting that.

Quite frankly, it is not perfect.

Agreed.

Democracy is very difficult at scale.

Indeed, it is very messy.

> For an extreme example of this issue, look at the Middle East. They have simply never taken to democracy.

This isn’t helped by foreign interference in every election they have. Even the borders, arbitrary lines drawn up by colonial powers, contribute to the problem as the forced groupings don’t suit anyone except for some colonial empire a long time ago. If the meddling stopped for a decent duration democracy might have a chance.

Maybe, maybe not. Counter example. Bangladesh (where I’m from) was created in 1972 with a constitution embodying various western style principles, including secularism. The country was organized along pretty sensible geographic/linguistic/religious borders, and there has been no western meddling with its elections. Regardless, over the decades the people have voted to make Islam the official religion and generally cut back on secularism, free speech, and democracy. One of the relatively few bright spots is the Bangladesh Supreme Court—a western transplantation that e.g. conducts its business and issues opinions in English. Americans love to blame the west for everything. I find it fairly patronizing.

I certainly didn't blame the west. I personally think it has done more good than harm in the long term. My only point was that not all cultures take to democracy in the same way.

I was responding to @lostlogin’s response to you.

I don’t entirely follow sorry, could you expand a little on your comment about it being patronising how Americans blame the west?

In the Middle East, there are so many bad actors it’s ridiculous. I haven’t consciously encountered Americans blaming the west for the situation in the Middle East. Does the definition of ‘west’ you are using include the US?

In case it is relevant, I am from New Zealand and think the disgusting behaviour in the region started long before the US got involved and includes far more countries than any set defined as ‘western’. Even places as far away and as small as New Zealand have ended up with a record of massacres and murders when in involved in the region.

I’m saying Americans blame the west, not necessarily that Americans blame America. America had very little to do in the subcontinent, for example.

As to it being patronizing. Speaking for myself—I think if you can’t blame people for the state of their own country, you’re taking agency away from those people. The British did lots of bad things in the subcontinent and looted it. (They also left some really good values and ideas and institutions.) But that ended 70 years ago. In that same time period, South Korea went from being nearly as poor, and far more war torn, to being a developed nation. It’s not the absence of interference from the west that did that, it’s the industry and virtue of the Korean people. Likewise, to the extent Bangladesh hasn’t grown as fast as it should (and to be fair, things have gotten better at least on the economic side in the last decade), who is to blame? I think it’s patronizing to continue to blame the west. Maybe blame the fact that Bangladeshis supported a military dictator for President, supported dismantling secularism, invited fundamentalism in from the Middle East, etc. Whose fault is it? Maybe it’s the fault of the clerks in the Bangladesh Supreme Court that demand bribes to quickly your filings quickly. If we credit Koreans for the development of their country, Bangladeshis must get their fair share of blame for what is happening in their own country.

Thank you for that reply, I see your point and it’s a good one.

I think that the two arguments are not in opposition though. It is possible for foreign interference to have harmed democracy in the Middle East and for locals to have damaged it too, and there are plenty of examples of this.

Whoops, thanks.

If thats the case, why can other nations stand up so easily even after colonialization and western occupation? Why are japan, china, south-korea and taiwan successes? Why did australia succeed? Why is Chile succeeding? If keeping western powers at bay is all it takes- why is north korea and cuba not a singapor? Why is singapor thriving?

This whole narrative gets more implaussible by the day, the more you look at it. And by defending it, and not trying to look for the real issues, those who push it - further the only counter-quack-narrative, which is basically racism.

It sounds like the rambling of a homeless men by now, inventing invisible foes to justify all bad and random events happening to him.

Japan and South Korea succeeded due to substantial American occupation and influence. Taiwan is a similar situation. From the perspective of liberty, China is an abject failure. Australia succeeded because it was a transplant of Englishmen.

What narrative? What quack? What racism? Please clarify.

I didn't say all cultures were unsuited to self-determination. Many are. All I said was that some are not, and that we may do better if we recognize this and learn from it.

Very true, though without such interference, the idea may never have arisen there.

Iran is in the Middle East and had a democratic revolution. (Perhaps somewhat betrayed by their strange bedfellow, but still.)

You would call Iran democratic? You would claim it protects the liberty of its citizens? Allows for religious freedom? Iran's elections are widely considered shams: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/05/12/irans-farce...

Timeline of Iran & Democracy:

1. Overthrew the shah in the ~1940s, created a democracy

2. Because a large majority of the economy was going to the british in the form of of the anglo persian oil company, iran nationialized it's oil industry

3. This pissed off the british, who poked it's friend america to overthrow the government in Iran. The first president said no, but the next one said yes, which eventually led to the CIA's first sponsored coup and installed the shah again.

4. This pissed off a lot of people and eventually led to the 1979 revolution and the oligarchical theocracy we have today in Iran.

Today the average young civilian in Iran doesn't really like the government.

You conveniently left out Soviet interference. The reason the CIA got involved was because the country was turning communist, which is the worst thing that can happen to a nation.

And yes, I would imagine that most don't like it; it's not a great place to live. This is why I said it was not really a good example of successful democracy.

> The reason the CIA got involved was because the country was turning communist, which is the worst thing that can happen to a nation.

Was it? I'm not super well informed on the topic, but my impression was that Mossadegh's policies were largely the kind of mild social democracy that Europe has been engaging in pretty comfortably for a few decades. The two big exceptions would be nationalizing natural resources under foreign influence and raising land taxes, and again, you could probably find plenty of moderate to conservative economists today that would find both of those reasonable.

Is there anything in particular you're thinking of when you say Iran was "turning Communist" in a way that warrants comparisons to "the worst thing that can happen to a nation"?

I say strange bedfellows for a reason. The Iranian Revolution had two components: people wanting a more democratic country, and people wanting a more theocratic country. The result was a weird hybrid, and arguably the latter group got the better deal.

A.D. :-)

What Ghosn is experiencing is identical to what the US justice system inflicts on non-wealthy people.

Poor people and even "middle class" cannot afford to be accused of a crime. It is incredibly, impossibly expensive to afford justice.

In the US, it is far cheaper to accept a plea deal for a crime - even if innocent. Look at the US numbers for accused that actually "get their day in court".

Nolo estimates over 90% of cases never go to trial (https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-criminal-cases-a... ) This sounds remarkably close to the Japanese numbers.

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