Re:Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
by wolverine876 on Saturday February 19, 2022 @09:16PM
(#30402620)
> It's not defeatism-- it's just being realistic.
You must have heard that line from pessimists 10,000 times before. There would be no startups, science, democracy, etc. if people believed it. We'd be living in caves - 'let's be realistic, we've been living in them for 190,000 years!'
> I don't believe there's any useful method to make government actors comply with the law.
The evidence is overwhelmingly otherwise: Many, many government actors have been caught, prosecuted and punished, at every level - including multiple Presidents, at least one Vice President (off the top of my head), members of Congress, federal judges, generals and admirals, and more, and that's just the federal level.
Goverments have widely differing levels of corruption, and the US has in the past been one of the best - so it's effective. Other countries are also more and less effective than the US, and we can see what they do and what works. There is plenty of research. Nothing is stopping you, but you.
The current trend in defeatism - against all evidence, in a country with one of the most effective governments in the history of humanity - serves someone's interests. Who? Who benefits from spreading this message?
You must have heard that line from pessimists 10,000 times before. There would be no startups, science, democracy, etc. if people believed it. We'd be living in caves - 'let's be realistic, we've been living in them for 190,000 years!'
> I don't believe there's any useful method to make government actors comply with the law.
The evidence is overwhelmingly otherwise: Many, many government actors have been caught, prosecuted and punished, at every level - including multiple Presidents, at least one Vice President (off the top of my head), members of Congress, federal judges, generals and admirals, and more, and that's just the federal level.
Goverments have widely differing levels of corruption, and the US has in the past been one of the best - so it's effective. Other countries are also more and less effective than the US, and we can see what they do and what works. There is plenty of research. Nothing is stopping you, but you.
The current trend in defeatism - against all evidence, in a country with one of the most effective governments in the history of humanity - serves someone's interests. Who? Who benefits from spreading this message?