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Has lying reached epidemic proportions?
- Thread starter Twilight Hue
- Start date
Aganjuzu
seeker
Many jobs involve some degree of lying or fraud; sometimes it's the entire duty (i.e. marketing, public relations, lawyers).
Lawyers are a special case.
Law should never have been accepted as a paying activity. It is destructive for a society to allow people to live from interpreting or applying it, because it is so darned influential and bendable.
Law should never have been accepted as a paying activity. It is destructive for a society to allow people to live from interpreting or applying it, because it is so darned influential and bendable.
Some problems with your proposal:
- The law is extraordinarily complex. The ordinary person will never understand it enuf to cope with it effectively.
- With no lawyers, interpretation is left up to judges, prosecutors & cops. Do you trust them to look out for our best interest? I don't.
- The law will be "bendable" without lawyers, but it will be bent at the sole discretion of government aparatchiks.
- We cannot eliminate lying by eliminating professions famous for lying.
I've spent much time in court. To be at the mercy of a half asleep barely competent
judge whose wife left him that morning is a dangerous recipe for random injustice.
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That is not a problem. It is a feature in disguise.
Every society must structure itself so that it can afford to have laws applied wrongly or ineffectively.
Mostly because it will be and it is. Attempts to "solve" that fail to see that such defficiency is an inherent part of the very concept of law.
Insulating people from the expectation of having "wise" or "fair" laws will hopefully lead to a more sober, less wasteful relationship with law. More significantly, it is bound to lead to more personal responsibility and social consideration.
No, I certainly do not. Not any more than I trust lawyers.
That is one of the reasons why judges and prosecutors are not to be allowed to live from such practice either (by my proposal).
And that does not happen currently? Why so?
Of course not. But refusing to officially reward lying is bound to be a good start, and very constructive in and of itself.
No doubt. And relying on lawyers to avoid that fate is an even worse recipe for wealth-directed injustice.
The best we can aim for is emptying the judicial system from importance to the absolute minimum, and leave it to citizens to seek their own justice whenever reasonably possible.
Any judicial system is inherently unfair.
I have absolutely know idea what you're getting at.
A big difference is that one hires a lawyer to be one's advocate in a system which would otherwise work to one's detriment. But in my experience, I find that the lawyers I hire are honest. I've even some of the lawyers on the other side to be honest. One of the greatest guys I ever met was suing me for over $1,000,000. I was impressed with the efficiencies we enjoyed because of his ethics, skill & peaceful personality. We settled out of court to the benefit of both parties, btw.
Oh joy...a system with life & death consequences run entirely by amateurs.
Try this in Brazil first, & we'll see how it goes before we adopt it.
Government has limited ability to bend laws to its purpose because thorough knowledge of the law works to our benefit. This is one reason that in criminal cases we receive Miranda warnings, & we're entitled to a lawyer.
We punish liars at the polls. Of course, liars those who don't keep their word aren't punished too severely....voters don't value honesty much.
What is your experience in courts? I'm curious because you would do away with so many rights I frequently enjoy.
Replace it with vigilante justice?
I like it!
No, I am thinking of Nixon. He ran off before it came to the impeachment, then? I forgot about that.
That we should just accept that law is meant to be authoritative and political, which it unavoidably is, as opposed to fair, which it can only rarely be even in the best of circunstances.
A society should not rely on a fairness that is all but assured to be missed by a wide margin.
Therefore, law's importance must be kept to the absolute unavoidable minimum. It is a necessary evil. "Evil" being the operative word.
That may or may not be true for those who can afford it.
It basically can't be so for anyone below a certain level of disposable income, though.
I'm happy for you, but you are missing the point.
It matters little whether individual lawyers are honest. The premise that they should be necessary is the greater and more decisive mistake. It bleeds society of precious resources that could be better employed pretty much anywhere else.
Thanks.
And I mean it!Maybe the USA has the means to make law not an inherently political thing. I guess I can't tell for certain. But it sure sounds like a promise to make birds non-cellular beings.
Things are what they are. And laws are inherently political tools at the service of existing authorities.
Sure, the USA has remarkably divided political authorities. But that does not change that core fact, nor does it make it any less of a waste to value law over civic good will.
When they do at all.
I work giving technical support for lawyers. Thankfully, I never had to truly hire one in any way, shape or form.
I thought you would.
Not that this is what I propose, mind you. Vigilantism is another, somewhat related illness.
From what I heard, Nixon came under considerable pressure from within his own party to step down. Even Kissinger told him to. But he didn't step down before a deal was cut with Ford to pardon him. At least, that's what I've heard.
I wonder how many Republicans today would pressure a law breaking president of their own party to step down for the good of the country? John McCain? Sarah Palin? Rush Limbaugh? Bill O'Reilly? Eric Cantor? John Boehner? Roger Ailes? Hmm...
Those old Republicans like Kissinger and Ford had their faults, but they sure do stack up well against the current crop, in my opinion.
Actually, Kissinger is a horrible example of a human being and may be a good example of a psychopath in politics: REPORT: Henry Kissinger's Long History Of Complicity In Human Rights Abuses | ThinkProgress
Yup. I don't dispute he was a horrible man. I'm merely saying he was better in many ways that our current crop of Republicans.
I don't that's the right way to look at it. :no:
Well, I think it's a legitimate view, so I guess we'll just need to agree to disagree.
Kissinger is just a monster to me. Not many politicians can match his evil today. That's my opinion.
BSM1
What? Me worry?
Still, in my lifetime, it's Republican presidents impeached-0, Democratic presidents-1.
You're suffering from a bias problem.
Here....put on these so you can clearly see that only Republicans are the party of lies....
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Alceste
Vagabond
That's a rather simplistic calculation. Clinton was being persecuted for his personal sex life, which is nobody's business, IMO. Nixon was caught breaking federal law to advance his political prospects. I know it's a feather in the GOP's cap to have pulled it off with Clinton, but to must of the world and much of the US, it made the GOP look worse than him. The prospect of ending up in court being vigorously questioned about who you had sex with, and when, and how, is one of the reasons people are not comfortable voting for Republicans.
For those interested in avoiding the rewriting of history....
Impeachment of Bill Clinton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The real crime is that felons like Nixon & Clinton never see the inside of a jail cell.
Political allies always have enuf power to see that justice & sanctions are limited to the little people.
Impeachment of Bill Clinton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This was the tip of the iceberg, since he also suborned perjury, & later sold pardons.
The real crime is that felons like Nixon & Clinton never see the inside of a jail cell.
Political allies always have enuf power to see that justice & sanctions are limited to the little people.