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Comment by oceanplexian | Hacker News Reader

> Increasingly, though, people in the United States feel that the rich and powerful have become effectively insulated from the legal system, such that the common person is denied any redress.

They're not insulated from the legal system, the problem is the public is being misled.

It works like this: The media lies to the public and tells them that a CEO or Public Figure is getting away with X, so they get some washed up lawyer to do an opinion piece on it, a politician or two co-opts it, and possibly throws in some bait about the working class being screwed over, and then the public buys the made-up story- hook, line and sinker.

Since TV Law is not the same thing as real law, the person in question is put through actual due process and the allegation or accusation turns out to be unsubstantiated. The public then feels outrage because "The man on TV said this person was a criminal and he got away!".

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There are two outcomes here. Either they are insulated from the legal system (and in many cases, they absolutely are by virtue of having enough money to squash and drag out cases into oblivion), or the legal system is deficient.

Consider the Yotta/Synapse situation. Many people have lost a huge sum of money and the two companies involved are simply shrugging and saying they have no clue where it went. In many countries, either this problem would've never been allowed to occur in the first place or the government would start jailing people from the top down until someone starts to talk.

You're missing the point. The people running corporations are NOT flagrantly violating the law-as-written, with the courts just refusing to enforce it (for the most part). Rather they bend the law, often through tiny repeated violations of the law-as-written, and also through lobbying/bribing to undermine the creation of directly applicable new laws, to produce abjectly terrible outcomes that end up being de facto legal. So when the average person feels ever-more subject to the law themselves while seeing the terrible corpos continually getting pass after pass, they become ever-less invested in the general idea of the rule of law.

There are still the factors of exposure rate and a difference between legal reality and expectations.

Fundamental to this is that people are increasingly siloed and have little idea how closely the legal system reflects the will of the majority. They just think that their opinion is the majority and anything that deviates is the product of a corrupt system and public disenfranchisement.

Sure, that gap exists. But that doesn't mean it explains away the whole topic the way it had been invoked.

Furthermore I'm quite wary of hand waving arguments about the "will of the majority". "The majority" just complained about price inflation, while electing the former president that approved most of the monetary inflation they were complaining about, while he was actively promising even more inflation. And that is on a topic the average person should be able to understand! Never mind more subtle points about the downstream effects of more abstract policies. The way I see it, most everyone is extremely frustrated with the current system (hence spitefully voting for more destruction by President Inflation). But most of the energy gets used up arguing about which direction we should go, while the corporate machine stands ready to latch onto and nullify whatever attempts at reform that may arise.

I wouldn't do it, but I actually do understand and respect the argument, "neither political side is going to materially help me, so why not vote for a wrecking ball that will surely change something?"

I don't respect it because it was not an overt message being campaigned on, but rather the same 4d chess contortionism of people pulling out their own wishful signal from the noise of a double-talking con artist.

Furthermore even taking that argument at face value, it takes for granted how much we still do enjoy - even people on the shit rungs of society. The US military and world alliances making it so that we don't have to worry about military invasions, USD as the reserve currency making it so what we consider high price inflation is actually quite tame, bureaucratic authoritarianism keeping corporate authoritarianism from completely taking over, federal law enforcement keeping armed gangs in check. The economic meat grinder wealth/hope extraction machine is abjectly terrible, but also things can be so much worse.

When you put it like that, I agree it's difficult, but I'm trying my best to be charitable. It'll be an interesting 4 years.

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