Like what? Drugs are becoming decriminalized the world over, but this is an extremely recent phenomenon.
Source: good friend was a public defender.
I’ll need to see worldwide numbers, American numbers, and an exemplar list of laws before I accept such a broad conclusion.
It does help that traveling by public transport here is a lot less likely to be a problem, to be fair.
You may be right that this is a world wide problem, and I’m only imagining places that don’t punish the poor so harshly. That said, I saw an article recently that gives me hope. It was a jurisdiction in the US where police handed out gift cards to some auto parts store instead of citations when pulling over vehicles for faulty equipment. While the cynic in me thinks this is just a play by the auto parts store to grow it’s market, I like to think it’ll provide good data to drive policy.
This is greatly exaggerated. Not that the bad things you see in the news don’t happen. Just that most interactions with the police aren’t in fact any more adversarial than in other countries.
I am not white, and I have been stopped by police multiple times in the US, Europe, and Asia, as well as selected for additional screening in airports in the US, London, and the Netherlands.
Whether the police were adversarial or not was not a function of whether they were in the US. Indeed the one time the police actually behaved in a threatening way was in the UK.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/young-black-adults-less-... https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/press-re... https://www.statista.com/chart/21872/map-of-police-violence-...
Given that your links are not cross cultural comparisons, your response doesn’t seem to be in good faith.
It looks like you just used my comment as a chance to post some anti-US policing links that aren’t actually relevant to what I said.
Bear in mind that racism and racist policing are present in Europe, and Asia too.
I assume you have no experience of police in different countries yourself.
That’s such an odd thing to say on a article about someone getting their home raided bec they called someone a dick in Europe…
I suppose Stalin was right, to paraphrase. One person is a tragedy, hundreds of thousands is a statistic.
How about letting your kids go to school or to a playground without perpetual parental surveillance, without you being persecuted?
How about the right to sit at a beach in whatever (non)clothing you want? How about just changing into your swimming shorts just there on the beach?
How about only being prosecuted for DUI if you were actually under the influence, and not because a passenger had a bottle of beer in their hand?
How about sitting with your friends in any city square in summer, listening to street musicians and drink a beer, and then walk to the next bar while drinking your beer?
How about just playing music on the radio without censoring ‘bad words’, and even having censored CDs in the stores?
How about someone cursing on national television without this becoming a scandal, or someone showing a breast on television as a singer on stage without it ending your career?
How about driving as fast as you want?
And to your example: how about having actual choice of leaving a job because health insurance is not tied to a job? (Yeah I know, with COBRA you can simply pay a couple thousand a month and just keep your insurance)
How about being able to actually retire in old age and not having to work at Waffle House and Walmart with 80?
How about yelling at some asshole in the parking lot without being legally shot dead because of stand-your-ground?
How about the freedom to study at a college of your choosing, without admission scandals and bribery, and without ruining your future with 6 digit debt?
How about freedom from religion, and still being electable for high office as atheist?
How about never having to worry whether you are in a good enough area of town to just drive through?
How about freely choosing your health insurance rather than being forced to pick one of the two your employer has contracts with?
How about freely choosing internet / power / gas, with the dramatic drops in price that go along with competition in a free market?
Why should it be legal to publicly insult someone? You can't punch people in the USA. Does that make the country not particularly free?
Note that it is entirely play pretend anyway. I know for a fact that I can actually say and do far more here than the American society would tolerate in the USA.
For what it’s worth, having lived in both places Americans are less likely to insult you than the British, but more likely to take it seriously.
This, for instance, is clearly an insult; please report to the nearest detention center for your reeducation immediately. /s
But seriously, no; insults are subjective enough to be a terrible legal basis.
I fear that too. Freedom has always been paid for with blood, so if it's just meekly handed back, we are robbing our grandchildren and passing that cost on to them.
That said, what parts of the world are you talking about? If you look at the insults being freely hurled on twitter at politicians around the the English speaking western world, I'm not sure how bad it is here yet. Maybe it's only a problem there if you insult the wrong type of politician?
> Why should it be legal to publicly insult someone?
How do you define an insult? Would it be insulting to call someone a nazi, white supremacist, racist, misogynist, Russian agent, heartless, senile? What if those things were true or you believed them to be true or at least a valid comparison to some degree? What if you call a religion or ideology bad or point out bad things about its teachings? Even if what you say is true, it can still be taken as insults by followers. Should blasphemy be outlawed?
> You can't punch people in the USA. Does that make the country not particularly free?
It does not.
Only if you compare words with the most trivial of physical violence.
> Insults are unneeded. They are unnecessary to a discussion and they are a form of violence. Why should they be legal?
This is dismissive of my perspective and therefore insulting. I think you should be arrested. Maybe the cops and the judge will agree with me.
I'm sorry but that only applies if you are thoroughly infantile. I don't mean this as an offense but that behavior is proper of literal children.
If some random person says a word and that has serious consequences upon the mental health of an adult person that person needs therapy.
Well, exactly.
I consider an insult to be an expression of an opinion and thus protected by the 19th article of the universal declaration of human rights.
As far as I am concerned, ideally such blatant misuse of power in such an authoritarian way should land people in jail.
Murder: People lose the freedom to murder people, but gain the freedom to not be murdered. American society considers taking the first freedom away to result in better society overall. Germany does the same.
Insults: People lose the freedom to insult other people, but gain the freedom not to be insulted. German society considers taking away the first freedom to result in a better society overall. Americans take the opposite side here.
See, it's actually not at all a naive question of "who has more freedom", because each side can be argued to be more free than the other. Ultimately, it comes down to what choice results in a 'better', more livable society.
Germany and the US simply make different tradeoffs.
I can't see anything other than laws like that being abused by politicians and government officials to quell speech and create a chilling effect amongst the populace.
This will only result in those not living paycheck to paycheck being willing to speak out.
If only politicians were protected from insult, I don't think that would be compatible with democracy at all.
But everyone else called him a "pimmel" with no consequences at all.
Judging by immigration numbers, the US.
That metric is hilariously wrong. Consider a country with universal healthcare, but where only a single political party is allowed. You're much more likely to face medical issues in your life, than wanting to start your own party and being prevented.
Does that make the one-party-state more free than every country without universal healthcare?
In other words, by phrasing it as "freedom to live in comfort and safety", you are conflating comfort and safety with freedom.
They typically do so to affect change.
Change that may well be required, for example, to address problems in said one-party healthcare system.
In my case, the US where I am for sure.
(A dickhead manager lying and trying to fire me was the most stressful experience of my life even when I knew I was in the right and got a decent payout eventually; I can't imagine going through that with no legal protection)
How are we meant to make sense of your comment, if you don't state which country your from/in?
I see this often, commenters presuming we know which country they are in.