Comment by talkingtab | Hacker News Reader

Comment by talkingtab | Hacker News Reader

In the US, our system of lawyers is broken. If we are to be a People governed by laws and not persons, then we People need to be able to use the law to right wrongs. In other words being able to use the law by using the courts is a requirement in a democracy.

As an experiment try to go to court pro se. The experience is characterized by the fact that in US courts, pro se clients can be sanctioned for improper actions, but lawyers can not be sanctioned for purposeful improprieties by pro se clients.

It is sort of like a commoner going up against a knight. The knight has armor and a lance and you have your scythe. Fun! In other words it is rigged.

And here is the kicker. Lawyers are "officers of the court". You could take that to mean that they uphold the standards of the court. Or when a lawyer does bad things, that could mean that the other lawyers - including the judge - see that lawyer as one of them. You know, sort of the way that many priests see abusive priests as priests first and abusers second, and so take actions to "protect" the church.

So whats a poor person to do? You try to get a lawyer. Lawyers will not want to take you on if the other side has a high power lawyer and lots of money. Not because your case isn't proper, but because the economics are not there. For the lawyer. At some point the side with more money will simply run you out. Your lawyer will urge you to settle.

Again this is not an us vs them thing. The issue is that if common people cannot afford to obtain justice, then we are not a democracy. We are something else. Corporations and the ultra wealthy have deep pockets to use the courts. If we tolerate that, it is reasonable to expect that the common people will not find this kind of "democracy" to their taste.

The problem is that corporations pushed for Tort law as a mechanism for protecting the public from harm rather than regulations “if we do something wrong, we will get sued and lose money and that will motivate us to not do harm”. So it means that there is much less proactive harm reduction by regulators (compared to many other first world countries) as well as much less regulators can do if a complaint is made.

The second issue is our lack of universal, affordable healthcare (and other basic safety nets). If you are injured and don’t want to go bankrupt, you have to sue to pay for your treatment, loss of income, etc.

The result is that we have lawsuits constantly all the time for everything. Not only does it clog up the courts, but it also helps the powerful to outspend “the little guy” to avoid accountability. Fighting a government regulatory body with actual powers and authorities is much harder to outspend/outlast than some random person one lawyer working on contingency.

And that doesn’t even get into how corporations have been pushing “tort reform” to neuter how much they can be sued for, therefore the amount they can be punished for wrongdoing. As well as their decades long propaganda campaign to paint tort lawsuits as frivolous, baseless, shameless cash grabs by greedy people attacking the poor helpless business.

Yes. It seems to me important that we correctly understand the problem. It is like your car won't start. If you fail to diagnose your battery is dead, then you keep putting gas in and it still doesn't work. The question is what needs to change to fix the problem AND why.

My diagnosis is Citizens United vs F.E.C. That bizarre has allowed corporations to control the laws that are enacted. So we see "tort" reform - but who benefits? It is not the People.

There is another factor that amplifies this, targeted advertising. Targeted ads, you know like the ones that pay for our "free" internet services are as toxic or more than the pollutants in coal and gas. They have destroyed trust in the internet. And they allow corporations to "fund" candidates for public office.

And question. Do the media such as the Washington Post, owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, address these issues? Nope.

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