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Comment by arrowsmith | Hacker News Reader

Are "society-over-individual values" really such an obviously bad thing?

Oh, absolutely, and it can be seen for example in suicide rates [1], or the weird state of Japanese criminal justice where prosecutors will only go for nailed-shut cases so that they don't "lose face" (while society as a whole suffers) [2], not to mention the entire issue surrounding "forced confessions".

[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Youth-suicide...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...

By definition, negative side effects that can be cherry-picked are more numerous and pronunced in an Individualist society, as the very point of Collectivism is to steer the crowds away from trouble, while Individualism tolerates a wider range of individual tragedies for the potential upside.

Your examples were not well chosen anyway, as their relation to collectivism seems dubious, and US prosecutors also have high conviction rates without trial through threat of big punishment.

yes of course, the enlightened Americans are so much better at handling crime. pointing at western justice systems to say that western values are superior - this must be satire?

This seems like an uncharitable reading. I don't think there was a comparison made.

Any justice system with a very high conviction rate is either unjust or extremely selective. The American federal government is also extremely selective in prosecution, and for the same reason. Losing makes the prosecutor look bad.

East Asian wars tend to be drastically more deadly than the wars of any other group. The Three Kingdoms War wiped China's population to 30% of what it once was, and had half the deaths of WWII in a world with two hundred million people instead of billions.

"Society" in this context can also mean "a tiny number of primarily self-interested individuals". That tends to be evident when the most powerful or influential people also happen to be strict authoritarians.

Already had that copied to quote it now to see you already did that.

I think this item stands out in the enumeration and I honestly question if social behaviour over individualism is a bad thing.

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