Life is complex and beautiful and trying to regulate every possible outcome beforehand just makes it boring and depressing.
But yet again we can’t do anything about it because it would interfere with the freedoms of corporations, effectively. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46870147
When rules are vague enough you can pretty much always find a rule someone is 'breaking' depending on how you argue it.
It's why countries don't just have a single law that says "don't be evil".
This is different, it is intentionally ambiguous precisely so bureaucrats get to choose winners and losers instead of consumers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent>
The equivalent doctrine under a civil legal system (most of mainland Europe) is jurisprudence constante, in which "if a court has adjudicated a consistent line of cases that arrive at the same holdings using sound reasoning, then the previous decisions are highly persuasive but not controlling on issues of law" (from above Wikipedia link). See:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence_constante>
Interestingly, neither the principle of Judicial Review (in which laws may be voided by US courts) or stare decisis are grounded in either the US Constitution or specific legislation. The first emerged from Marbury v. Madison (1803), heard by the US Supreme Court (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison>), and the second is simply grounded in legal tradition, though dating to the British legal system. Both could be voided, possibly through legislation, definitely by Constitutional amendment. Or through further legal decisions by the courts themselves.
Also it breaks the trias politica in my opinion. Case in point: the way the Supreme Court plays politics in the US. It shouldn't really matter what judge you pick, their job is to apply the law. But it matters one hell of a lot in the US and they've basically become legislators.
Ah yes, since controversy over how judges decide only exists in the US.
In any case, you're confusing cause and effect.
The US system of having legislators approve/reject nominated judges is not the norm elsewhere. The only restrictions on choices for the Canadian Supreme Court are a) being a member of the bar for 10 years, and b) having three judges being from Quebec; otherwise, whoever the PM chooses becomes one of the nine sitting judges on the court. End of story.
If the Canadian Parliament had to give an up/down vote for a nominee, there would absolutely be far more attention paid to each nominee's opinions and qualifications ... and far more attention paid to that nominee's subsequent decisions.
Well, pretty much, yes. I've not lived in a country where judges really differ that much. And usually we don't even know their political affiliation. Because it really doesn't matter. This goes even for our supreme court (we call it the high council). Which isn't really that important to our daily lives anyway. They are just a last resort when people can't stop appealing.
In Holland they also don't rule on big things like this. They're not allowed to play politics. Just to apply the law in specific cases only. Something like the supreme court deciding to overturn abortion legalisation is really unthinkable. Besides, if they rule on one case it has zero effect on anyone else, because we don't have precedent-based common law. This is exactly the kind of issue I have with common law.
> The US system of having legislators approve/reject nominated judges is not the norm elsewhere. The only restrictions on choices for the Canadian Supreme Court are a) being a member of the bar for 10 years, and b) having three judges being from Quebec; otherwise, whoever the PM chooses becomes one of the nine sitting judges on the court. End of story.
Isn't that a similar process to the US? Basically the currently ruling party gets to pick the supreme court judges. There's congress validation but they rarely would take the pick of the non-majority party.
Though in our case we don't really have a 'ruling party'. We have many parties and one is never enough to gain a majority so there's always a complicated coalition. It is a bit of a stumbling block forming a government but I abhor the first-past-the-post system like in the US because it makes politics a zero-sum game: A loss for one party is a win for the other. That stimulates dirty politics, smearing, and of course there's the risk of a bunch of nutcases coming to power and nothing being able to be done about that. Most of our governments collapse before their 4 years are up and in most cases this was not a bad thing (especially our last one that was full of populists, they were definitely a ton of nutcases and they didn't manage to stick it out a year before they collapsed in infighting lol).
The US Senate must approve all federal judges (among many federal posts, including the cabinet). If the president's party does not have a majority in the Senate, that means the president must nominate someone that at least some Senators from another party will vote for.
In Canada, UK, etc., whoever the PM says will be a judge becomes a judge; Parliament has absolutely no control over the process.
>Something like the supreme court deciding to overturn abortion legalisation is really unthinkable.
You seem to think—likely based on Reddit and Dutch reporters that just copy whatever the New York Times and Washington Post say—that abortion is "illegal in the US". The Dobbs decision in 2022 reversed the Supreme Court's own 1973 decision in Roe that abruptly voided all state laws banning abortion of any kind. In Dobbs, the court ruled that it had exceeded its remit, and returned the ability to legislate on abortion to the individual states.
I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers.
Only if you believe everyone else has no agency of their own. I think most people outgrow these things once they have something more interesting in their lives. Or once they're just bored.
Back when this thing was new, everyone was posting pictures of every food item they try, every place they've been to etc.. that seems to slowly change to now where there are a lot more passive consumers compared to a few polished producers.
If you're calling people delivering the content "abusers", what would you call people creating the content for the same machine?
But I do believe we overestimate our own agency. Or more importantly society is often structured on the assumption that we have more agency then we actually do.
Setting up the argument between agency/no agency misses the point IMO.
And companies should not be allowed to predate on the vulnerable.
The food industry has pretty much invented the whole process of making "addictive" products and then "test[ing] out recipes on the public to make it even more addictive". Of course, we usually call it making products that taste good, and running taste panels with the public for product development (making a new tasty thing), quality control (ensuring the tasty thing stays tasty), and market research (discovering even tastier things to make in the future). Each part of it employs all kinds of specialists (and yes, those too - nutrition psychology is a thing).
The process is the same. The difference between "optimized for taste" and "addictive" isn't exactly clear-cut, at least not until someone starts adding heroin to the product (and of the two, it's not the software industry that's been routinely accused of it just for being too good at this job).
Not defending social media here in any way. Cause and effect is known these days, and in digital everything is faster and more pronounced. And ironically, I don't even agree with GP either! I think that individuals have much less agency than GP would like it, and at the same time, that social media is not some uniquely evil and uniquely strong way to abuse people, but closer to new superstimulus we're only starting to develop social immunity to.