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> What people don't get is the defining feature of the West (or more correctly advanced societies) isn't democracy, it's rule of law.

The trouble with this is that it isn't compatible with prosecutorial discretion. It requires that if someone is breaking the law, they get prosecuted for it. Otherwise unenforced laws accumulate until everyone is breaking a hundred laws at any given time and then only the disfavored get prosecuted.

But if you want laws to be consistently enforced then they need to be few and simple enough for people to understand and comply with them, and that was historically the magic formula, which we've increasingly abandoned, much to our detriment.

> It's why you don't have to fear getting put on a show trial if you piss off the wrong people or they just want your stuff

Civil asset forfeiture suggests that's very much a thing to fear.

> It's why you know the water's safe to drink

Tell this to the people of Flint, Michigan. Or the many communities near fracking sites.

FWIW… that you can only point to one specific place in the USA with bad water, and some non-specific generalized place is a fairly good point against your argument.

Roughly one in three Americans water sources are chemically polluted, predominantly in minority areas: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP14721?mc_cid=180f74...

And those exceptions largely prove the rule - the default expectation (not just desire) is that those things not happen. They still do, but it's not something that occurs to most off the tops of their heads. When you educate people on civil forfeiture you get a lot of shocked Pikachu; somewhat fewer with severe water quality issues, but I think that's mostly due to broad publication of Flint's situation in particular raising general awareness.

> It's why you don't have to fear getting put on a show trial if you piss off the wrong people or they just want your stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Scott_(criminal)

> It's why the rich (and not so rich) are safe storing their wealth there, knowing the bank won't collapse tomorrow, or they won't confiscate their wealth on a whim.

https://troymedia.com/lifestyle/your-money/debanking-is-otta... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/a...

> It's why you know the water's safe to drink and the food's safe to eat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint,_Michigan

> It's why you can produce steel good enough so that your buildings don't collapse, and others will buy your cars know they won't fall apart, due to being relying on a shady subcontractor.

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

> It's why people are willing to pay taxes, knowing they get functioning public services.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/22/tax-evasion-by-wealthiest-am...

I mean, I get that it could be worse, but...

Yeah the comment you're replying to feels very insulated from the real world. It's the kind of thing you'd hear in a middle school social studies class about how great America is.

I mean, I'm not one of those "America/West Bad" people either, it's just "rule of law" is not it. We are well into our Kleptocracy era. Still prefer what we have to alternatives though.

All of these examples serve to prove their point, being that "advanced societies" use rule of law to deal with such problems. It is consistent in that view that they occur due to a lack of enforcement of the laws/regulations that prevent them.

This is a bit complicated. Law can absolutely be used to persecute people.

For example, there once was so-called Bill of Attainder, which basically meant that a certain person was labeled as an outlaw, traitor, and handled as such.

It was an actual law, voted on by the Parliament, but even though usage of Bills of Attainder was perfectly consistent with rule of law, it was not that different from a classical Stalinist show trial in effect.

This is also why Bills of Attainder are banned by the US Constitution.

And by contrast it is America which which has the civil forfeiture practices.