Epic WTF

Billionaires and the one percent don't have much to do with the careless brutality of the justice systems in Britain and our English-speaking former colonies. It's just an Anglo-Saxon thing, some kind of Puritan hangover. There are different nuances in all those countries - in the U.S. I think it's partly because of their Wild West foundation myths - but in the U.K. it comes down to the typical "Little Englander" being paranoid about the idea that somebody, somewhere is just getting away with something, even if it isn't hurting them. Hence most of the British public being hugely keen on benefit fraudsters being hunted down and punished, despite that costing the country a fairly small amount of money, especially compared to tax fraud by rich businessmen. The one percent benefit from that attitude, but they didn't have to do anything to create it; it's just bloody-minded Anglo Saxon pettiness.

You're in a bar and someone thinks you looked at them funny, then kicks the shit out of you in response, hospitalising you in the process.

What should happen to them?

Dropped on a remote island with the other wrong'uns

Did this just happen to you?!

No, but was the sort of thing I remember happening to friends of friends when I was younger. Me and my mates managed to run or not get beaten up that badly.

But just throwing out the question to understand what we're saying the appropriate societal response is? Fwiw I'm yet to have a billionaire try and kick my head in.

I assume this scenario is less common now given the cost of getting drunk in a pub.

Where did that come from? Seems an odd tangent from the miscarriage of justice that started this conversation. A bit reactionary, even.

From experience;
Your friend gets out of hospital the next morning, goes home gets his mums kitchen knife, goes to the fellas house and stabs him 3 times and then only serves 4 years inside. I feel he may have overreacted a little bit.

This bit of the post from the other page;

How fucking obvious does it have to be before the penal system is seen as the vast net detriment it actually is? Are people really that fearful and easily turned against each other?

Why is it so hard for us to see who we really need to turn against?

I recognise that there are a lot of problems with our current system, so I'm curious about what the progressive answer is to what I'd say has been my most common experience of crime.

And honestly, sure it's something that does illicit a reactionary gut response. But the question stands.

Bollocks it does. This started with a miscarriage of justice, Kimmo went all Jacobin and Eat the Rich, and I was actually trying to talk them down, only for you to steam in from the opposite direction all Kelvin MacKenzie. I was only talking about benefit cheats, but apparently I'm trying to make excuses for GBH I shudder to think what monstrous crimes you'd accuse me of condoning if I'd mentioned that, until very recently, we were imprisoning people for not paying their license fee: paedophilia? Mass murder?
.

Calm down, it’s only a bike forum!

I thought it was a "Miscellaneous and Meaningless" forum where the threads are only occasionally derailed by arguments about helmets.

And frequently derailed by helmets with arguments.

That might be so, but don’t call me a helmet!

Wait did you both just call me a helmet?

What does the helmet thread get derailed by/about? I haven't looked in there for years.

This is a bike forum?

Kelvin MacKenzie

Nice reference.

But genuinely I wasn't. Fwiw I even misread your post as fruad not benefits fraud.

Presumably the helmet thread gets derailed by dimwitted cockwombles, much like every thread, on every forum, everywhere.

Yeah, but what about jumping red lights?

I'm curious about what the progressive answer is to what I'd say has been my most common experience of crime

I’ve been punched in the face for shits and giggles by a guy pretending to be an aeroplane, just while walking down the street. Not a great experience, despite it actually being quite funny in retrospect, but generally there are reasons for this behaviour.

You could lock the guy up to protect others, or you could do a number of other things which dissuade him from doing it again. Maybe compulsory therapy, fines, anger management, community service, a violence register with various consequences in the public realm, and I’m sure there are lots of other methods too.

Bang them in prison for a couple of years. They can both suffer and commit some more violence in there. Then when they come out they can repeat the original offence. Or maybe worse. The system works!

Billionaires aren't likely to punch you in the face, but they sure are in the habit of creating the circumstances which increase the likelihood of you getting punched in the face. And the circumstances in which archery may become a necessary life skill for our kids and grandkids.

We're born into a system which, although occasionally claimed to be about lifting us all up Maslow's hierarchy, is based on a zero-sum mentality which sees us all increasingly pushed down that hierarchy. We're sold this impoverished view of human nature which maintains that people are greedy and lazy, and society is already optimally organised because only the wolves at the door make most people contribute... to ever-increasing corporate profits. Morale will improve if only the beatings are continued.

Fuckwit who punches you in the head on a Saturday night only does so because we've been convinced that refusing to invest in people is what makes them turn out well. And we'll maybe throw him in a cage with a bunch of other antisocial types to sort him out, because somehow we're too thick to realise that the best possible punishment is making him fully comprehend the consequences of his actions, at which point the vast majority of folks would feel remorse and want a chance to atone.

Saturday night fuckwit is a Saturday night fuckwit because his da was a Saturday night fuckwit, and they watch the footy together and gamble and eat food made out of numbers and all the things that get advertised to them by the vultures and parasites given pride of place in our society, while fuck-all ever systematically happens to edify anyone not born in a swimming pool of cash.

You get the picture?

How about the fact that cops were only invented a couple of centuries ago to beat down on Paddy? How ever did we manage for the previous hundred thousand years, fetch my smelling salts.

Ah, the comforting flavour of boot sole. If I keep on licking I can outsource my collective responsibility for our destiny to those who so obviously know best

Maslow's hierarchy

This is an interesting read:

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-06-18/the-blackfoot-wisdom-that-inspired-maslows-hierarchy/

Hell yeah.

It's amazing how much changes when people trust in others and operate on a basis of paying it forward.

Domination is the one true original sin; all is immiserated around it.

Thanks, that's really interesting.