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What are your most controversial or unpopular opinions?

So what is the point?
Justice.

Let the guilty be punished, let the good be rewarded. And let the innocent go free. The world is cruel, unfair, and horrible. Rich and powerful get to do what they want, while the poor suffer what they must. The strong torment and abuse the weak. There is no karma. No one to watch out for us. If there is a god... he is either absent, apathetic, or evil.

Well, now its up to us to set the scales right. To be the force of karma and justice and fairness.

Which is why I absolutely despise "liberals" calling for softer sentencing and citing quotes about how punishing people doesn't work, and how we should instead to rehabilitative sentencing. Ask them if we should punish the Ku klux klan, Alt right shooters, and other politically incorrect people, and watch them change their tune.
 
Justice.

Let the guilty be punished, let the good be rewarded. And let the innocent go free. The world is cruel, unfair, and horrible. Rich and powerful get to do what they want, while the poor suffer what they must. The strong torment and abuse the weak. There is no karma. No one to watch out for us. If there is a god... he is either absent, apathetic, or evil.

Well, now its up to us to set the scales right. To be the force of karma and justice and fairness.

Which is why I absolutely despise "liberals" calling for softer sentencing and citing quotes about how punishing people doesn't work, and how we should instead to rehabilitative sentencing. Ask them if we should punish the Ku klux klan, Alt right shooters, and other politically incorrect people, and watch them change their tune.
You realize that most of the requests for softer sentencing from the liberals is directed at non-violent crimes? Particularly "victimless" ones like drug use and prostitution? Treating a pothead differently than someone who is a proven danger to the community is just common sense.

Conversely you'll usually see then call for harsher punishments on crimes that do great "harm" without violence, particularly white collar crimes and corporate malfeasance.
 
You realize that most of the requests for softer sentencing from the liberals is directed at non-violent crimes? Particularly "victimless" ones like drug use and prostitution? Treating a pothead differently than someone who is a proven danger to the community is just common sense.

Conversely you'll usually see then call for harsher punishments on crimes that do great "harm" without violence, particularly white collar crimes and corporate malfeasance.
Wait.

I thought tough on crime meant tougher on murderers, rapists, and the current menagerie of bad guys.

Why is it directed at prostitutes and potheads?
 
Wait.

I thought tough on crime meant tougher on murderers, rapists, and the current menagerie of bad guys.

Why is it directed at prostitutes and potheads?
Because those are the ones who are easy to catch and punish publicly so people can see how "tough on crime" you are.
 
Wait.

I thought tough on crime meant tougher on murderers, rapists, and the current menagerie of bad guys.
What are you going to do, given them extra-long life sentences? Or are we talking about flaying them alive while hanging them from the rafters of the county courthouse here?


The biggest problem with all tough-on-crime talk is that the US justice system is terrible at actually processing who did or did not commit a crime. It's nice to talk about justice in a hypothetical universe, but in reality your punishments are frequently applied to the innocent.

Let the guilty be punished, let the good be rewarded. And let the innocent go free. The world is cruel, unfair, and horrible. Rich and powerful get to do what they want, while the poor suffer what they must. The strong torment and abuse the weak. There is no karma.

See, you say things like this while being completely oblivious to the fact that the criminal justice system is one of the methods by which the strong torment and abuse the weak. Being "tough on crime" doesn't help to hold the rich and powerful accountable for their crimes, nor it does it stop the poor from suffering what they must; if anything it makes the problem worse. If you incentivize punishment, more people will be punished, regardless of whether or not they did anything wrong. When the application of justice is part of the problem, applying justice harder doesn't fix anything.
 
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Because those are the ones who are easy to catch and punish publicly so people can see how "tough on crime" you are.
That's stupid.

S
What are you going to do, given them extra-long life sentences? Or are we talking about flaying them alive while hanging them from the rafters of the county courthouse here?


The biggest problem with all tough-on-crime talk is that the US justice system is terrible at actually processing who did or did not commit a crime. It's nice to talk about justice in a hypothetical universe, but in reality your punishments are frequently applied to the innocent.



See, you say things like this while being completely oblivious to the fact that the criminal justice system is one of the methods by which the strong torment and abuse the weak. Being "tough on crime" doesn't help to hold the rich and powerful accountable for their crimes, nor it does it stop the poor from suffering what they must; if anything it makes the problem worse. If you incentivize punishment, more people will be punished, regardless of whether or not they did anything wrong. When the application of justice is part of the problem, applying justice harder doesn't fix anything.
Speaking of justice systems, how is Singapore?
 
The biggest problem with all tough-on-crime talk is that the US justice system is terrible at actually processing who did or did not commit a crime. It's nice to talk about justice in a hypothetical universe, but in reality your punishments are frequently applied to the innocent.



See, you say things like this while being completely oblivious to the fact that the criminal justice system is one of the methods by which the strong torment and abuse the weak. Being "tough on crime" doesn't help to hold the rich and powerful accountable for their crimes, nor it does it stop the poor from suffering what they must; if anything it makes the problem worse. If you incentivize punishment, more people will be punished, regardless of whether or not they did anything wrong. When the application of justice is part of the problem, applying justice harder doesn't fix anything.
In that case, why bother doing it at all?

Why not just disband the courts, or just give everyone a slap on the wrist?
 
I point to the black community for proof of the poor living conditions thing. Extremely high rate of single mothers correlates almost directly with the high crime rates. For mental disorders:
Is not the problem.....

Actually, you know what?

Is this an American thing?

Or is this something that works for everyone?

I mean, I'm staggered at the idea there is still poverty and homelessness in America. For fuck's sake, you guys are the current ruling empire. Your military might can take on the rest of the world singlehandedly. You hit the jackpot in geography and luck, a dozen times.

Why can't you fix this?
 
I mean, I'm staggered at the idea there is still poverty and homelessness in America. For fuck's sake, you guys are the current ruling empire. Your military might can take on the rest of the world singlehandedly. You hit the jackpot in geography and luck, a dozen times.

Why can't you fix this?

The size and how things are distributed. Same reason things like trains wouldn't solve transportation issues. Most poverty is in cities along with most crime, cities are always expensive to live in, american cities more so than most because everyone wants to move there. And because everyone wants to move there, housing costs go up really fast. Housing costs go up and that means even a slight change in someone's economic situation can cause them to lose their house, no house means their economic situation rapidly worsens.

Then you have our welfare system. A good idea, really poorly implemented. Tends to encourage women getting pregnant just for bigger checks and discourage marriage, perpetuating the other problems. It also discourages finding work once you're on it, simply because the way it's set up means that finding said work means you make less money overall unless it's a really good job... something you can't find because you lack the money for schooling and lack experience in the fields that pay that well. At which point the only way out is to join the military, something that's labor intensive and if you aren't very knowledgeable in certain fields you'll likely leave with no gained skills and quite likely with mental and physical disorders: making every other problem worse.

If I sound bitter it's because my family and I went through this. Stayed together thankfully and my father was skilled in computers and signalling, so that allowed us to get out of the cycle at the literal last minute.
 
Much of that which is referred to as "culture" is hopelessly outdated, pointless, divisive, and even harmful. Attempts to enforce the "preservation" of many of the parts of culture are wasteful, don't make lives better, and slow the progress.

Notes:
1) Many, MANY parts of the culture, of course, are crucially imortant to our civilization and wellbeing. I am not talking here about things like ethics or scientific method or law - all of which are the parts of the culture we base our civilization on. But... they are often less focused on than arbitrary parts and outdated parts of culture - things I am talking about here.
2) I don't mean "culture" as "art and media" here, but, you know, we do prioitize the books (paintings, etc) relevant and innovative in the past over the ones relevant and innovative today, in both education and in normal life, though prestige.
3) I don't say we shouldn't preserve the information about the culture of the past, I'm saying that we shouldn't force random, unwanting people to absorb all of it. It's not beneficial for anyone. As many information as possible should be preserved, of course, but it should be left to those willing to do that. The information should be accounted for, of course, in the of modern-day culture, but it's not right to prioritize it over what we have today due to historical prestige alone.
 
Maybe I spent too much time on SV but...

Communism is bullshit.

I mean, really, the system that communists espouse themselves are unworkable, and when these are pointed out, they go into tirades about 'internalised capitalism' and 'bullshit human nature' and 'it won't happen'. They don't really answer your question. When pointed out about the Khmer Rogue and Venezuela and the Soviet Union were horrible, they explain it away as 'not being true communism'.

Newsflash. If there hasn't been any "true" communist state, its even worse for you. Lots and lots of things were good on paper, and when put to practice, it became horrible. If you have no working models, no good examples, and no actual things you can point to for your own claims.

They claim that communism will be better than capitalism. Where's the proof? They claim that communism will deal with environmentalism and climate change better than capitalism. Where's the proof?

Seriously, why do they believe anyone should take them seriously, when they themselves have no good examples of their own ideology, and cannot even make it coherent?
 
Maybe I spent too much time on SV but...

Communism is bullshit.

I mean, really, the system that communists espouse themselves are unworkable, and when these are pointed out, they go into tirades about 'internalised capitalism' and 'bullshit human nature' and 'it won't happen'. They don't really answer your question. When pointed out about the Khmer Rogue and Venezuela and the Soviet Union were horrible, they explain it away as 'not being true communism'.

Newsflash. If there hasn't been any "true" communist state, its even worse for you. Lots and lots of things were good on paper, and when put to practice, it became horrible. If you have no working models, no good examples, and no actual things you can point to for your own claims.

They claim that communism will be better than capitalism. Where's the proof? They claim that communism will deal with environmentalism and climate change better than capitalism. Where's the proof?

Seriously, why do they believe anyone should take them seriously, when they themselves have no good examples of their own ideology, and cannot even make it coherent?
Khmer Rouge. I point this out only because I'm so used to seeing people writing rouge when they mean rogue and this is the first time I've seen the reverse. Also, they were weird even by Maoist standards. Other than being communists they were incredibly right wing by all other standards. Racist, Nationalist, Anti-Intellectual, attempting autarky (always assume a government that tries for this is insane), heavy emphasis on ruralism and traditional values, contempt for urban workers (the actual proletariat as described by Marx), supported by the US, class based system (how Marxist?) that determined marriages, heavy focus on the nuclear family, distrust of higher education, de-emphasis on education in general, etc...

Basically, other than economic collectivism it was literally the opposite of Marxism in every way imaginable. You can argue about some of the regimes, but the Khmer Rouge were so bad at communism, they got US support.
 
Khmer Rouge. I point this out only because I'm so used to seeing people writing rouge when they mean rogue and this is the first time I've seen the reverse. Also, they were weird even by Maoist standards. Other than being communists they were incredibly right wing by all other standards. Racist, Nationalist, Anti-Intellectual, attempting autarky (always assume a government that tries for this is insane), heavy emphasis on ruralism and traditional values, contempt for urban workers (the actual proletariat as described by Marx), supported by the US, class based system (how Marxist?) that determined marriages, heavy focus on the nuclear family, distrust of higher education, de-emphasis on education in general, etc...

Basically, other than economic collectivism it was literally the opposite of Marxism in every way imaginable. You can argue about some of the regimes, but the Khmer Rouge were so bad at communism, they got US support.
Pol Pot was basically a Naz Bol in action.
 
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